Well, August is officially in the rearview mirror, and after being away for a little while, I’m finally digging back into the inbox, the playlists, the charts, and the ever-growing pile of “you need to hear this” music that apparently reproduces when I’m not looking.

And yes, I’m pretty sure I missed some stuff. Probably a lot of stuff. Such is the danger of stepping away from the Canadian indie music internet for a minute. You come back and suddenly there are approximately 47 new albums, 200 singles, three new bands you’ve never heard of, and someone has already released their “album of the year.”

So, let’s call this August’s Release Radar: a musical catch-up with a little bit of chaos.

There are more than 200 tracks in this month’s playlist, wandering all over the Canadian indie map — indie rock, folk, electronic, pop, punk, hip-hop, experimental weirdness and whatever else happened to catch my ear. As always, the tracks at the beginning are the ones I’m putting front and centre as a starting point. They’re not the whole story — that would be a very long blog post — but they should give you a pretty good idea of where my ears were going.

We kick things off with Kacy Lee Anderson’s “Giving In,” followed by Belle Plaine, Tennyson King, Julian Taylor, Daphni, AHI, Ada Lea & Common Holly, Astrocolor, Andy Shauf, Jon McKiel and a whole bunch more. There’s plenty of familiar Canadian talent in here, alongside artists who may be completely new to you — which is pretty much the point of the exercise.

And because I was away for part of the month, there are almost certainly some gems that slipped through the cracks. If you released something in August and I somehow missed it while I was off doing whatever it was I was doing, feel free to send it my way. I make no promises about catching everything, but I do make promises about listening.

The Release Radar isn’t a ranking, a definitive list, or some grand declaration of what Canada’s music scene has decided is Important™ this month. It’s a snapshot of what landed in front of me, what grabbed my attention, and what made me stop whatever I was doing and say, “Oh, that’s good.”

So grab a coffee, put on some headphones, and start digging.

The August 2026 Release Radar is up now on TIDAL Music, YouTube and Spotify.

Press play, wander around, and see what you find. There’s always something hiding in the pile.

Happy listening from OurBasement.

TIDAL Music link:

https://tidal.com/playlist/01c12ae0-5d7e-45cf-99e3-74f6d780bf7e