Swapmeet – Mount Zero

Swapmeet is a 4-piece band from Adelaide, Australia composed of Venus O’Broin (guitar, vocals), Joshua Doherty (bass), Maxwell Elphick (guitar, drums, vocals), and Jack Medlyn (guitar, drums, vocals). The group met as teenagers, and have been gathering momentum since the release of their debut EP in 2024 which caused a stir in their home country, earning praise from Rolling Stone Australia and Triple J and spurring Monster Children to dub them “the next big thing to come out of Australia.”

In March the band announced their signing to the Los Angeles label Winspear (Wishy, Teethe), and released a single called “I Know!” that earned best of the week nods from Consequence, Paste and Stereogum, before making their US debut at SXSW where Rolling Stone dubbed them “one of the year’s most impressive new acts.”

Today, the band are back to announce their debut LP Mount Zero (out July 17th on Winspear), and share the single “Sand.”

To coincide with the announce, Rolling Stone have published and Artist You Need To Know feature on the band.

A sweeping, guitar-driven road trip that recalls and reinvigorates the alt rock and slowcore of the 90s and early aughts, Mount Zero, marks the moment that Swapmeet come into their own. Mingling airy sweetness with jagged surrealism, the album transmutes so many of the regrets and uncertainties of young adulthood into a burgeoning, newfound confidence.

Though the members of Swapmeet often begin their songs by writing individually, the tracks on Mount Zero ended up circling common themes: first loves, first heartbreaks, first embarrassments, first disasters. As they’ve done since their earliest days as a band, Swapmeet traded instruments throughout Mount Zero and shared production duties as a foursome, developing their sound by layering dozens (sometimes hundreds) of tracks within each song, then carefully removing elements until the production took a clear shape. The result is a record where Swapmeet bottle up the tooth-gritting intensity of feeling yourself change at the cellular level under reality’s unyielding pressures. It’s a tribute to all the lives that can never be lived, all the paths that will never be followed–and an ode to the one that lies just ahead, too.

Jack Medlyn, who sings lead with Venus O’Brion on “Sand”, says of the track:

“Sand” is about wasting your own time, then being so, so mad at yourself. And a little bit mad at the people who make apps and phones so addictive.

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