Recently, I had the chance to talk with two of the leading lights in contemporary indie rock. First, I visited 19-year-old phenom Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail, whose full-length debut album due next month, Lush, is one of the most anticipated indie releases of 2018.

Jordan has already garnered wall-to-wall coverage in the media, though in our conversation, she expressed some reservations about the PR narrative overwhelming her songs. When we spoke, Jordan was eager to get past the hype and talk about two of her great loves: hockey and guitar shredding. So, that’s what we did. She was hilarious.

I also met up recently with Molly Rankin of the delightful fuzz-pop group Alvvays. We spoke in late April at the National’s Homecoming Festival in Cincinnati, meeting up a downtown hotel that was hosting a drag brunch for a boisterous group of diners. Meanwhile, Molly and I sat in the corner and talked earnestly about indie rock. She told me about her Celtic folk past, and how studying Teenage Fanclub’s 1991 classic Bandwagonesque helped her become one of contemporary indie’s best writers of melancholy rock songs. Molly, also, was funny and engaging.

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