Indiecast · Amazon Music

RIP D'Angelo, Plus: A Tame Impala LP Preview + Sky-High Ticket Prices For Geese

October 17, 2025·57 min·4 clips

Ian Cohen reports from an emo festival where 90s bands look identical to the 45-year-old fans, setting the stage for a week of indie nostalgia and news.

The cold open is pure Indiecast. Hyden lays out the usual news, reviews, and trend-hashing setup, then passes to Cohen, who has just returned from Best Friends Forever Festival. It starts with cargo shorts, naturally. Cohen makes the Vegas emo scene sound like fieldwork, with 90s bands and 45-year-old fans collapsing into one very specific blur. The joke works because the details do. Then the episode turns to D'Angelo, and the room gets more careful. Hyden's read is simple but strong: a lot of neo-soul wears its record collection right on the sleeve, and sometimes that can feel like cosplay. He names the family tree plainly. Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Prince, Donny Hathaway, and George Clinton are the reference points hovering over the music. Bruno Mars is the useful foil. His throwback jams work as pop, but you can still see the outfit. With D'Angelo, Hyden argues, the past is there without taking over. The records sound old, new, odd, warm, and still a little out of reach. Voodoo gets the clearest treatment. Hyden hears it as naturally eccentric, not as someone filing a careful homage to Sly Stone or There's a Riot Goin' On. That is the point that sticks. D'Angelo sounds like the next artist in the line, not a talented student dressing up as the old masters. The Tame Impala preview gets only the setup here, but it sits comfortably inside the usual Indiecast churn. By the end, the mood loosens again. Hyden recommends Glass Beagle's Early Riser with the quick-reference confidence of a host talking to people who know the shelf.

As heard by us

A warm, sharp IndieCast episode anchored by D'Angelo's legacy and the line between influence and costume.

IndieCast opens with Stephen Hyden and Ian Cohen doing what they do best: turning a festival dispatch into a miniature scene study, this time from Best Friends Forever, where 90s emo bands and their aging audience seem to have met in the same shorts-and-hat middle ground.

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Why you'd press play

You want D'Angelo talk that feels lived-in, not a tribute-card rerun.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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