Why And How Should You Submit Songs To Indie Music Blogs?

July 25, 2025

Split screen showing a song submission email to Across The Culture (left) and editor Zander Tsadwa (right)

Why do representatives of musical artists — both major label and independent — continue to pitch songs to us at Across The Culture (ATC)?

In a world where Machine Learning (i.e. algorithms) and a persistently small number of human decision-makers choose the handful of artists who receive major investment, indie music blogs continue to empower artists to build a trustworthy presence beyond the major label system and encourage artists and listeners to engage in more direct business. Learning how to pitch music to credible indie music blogs, then, is an important skill to have as an independent artist or artist representative.

Between this site and our parent website Across The Culture, the ATC portfolio contains a number of thorough artist profiles and music reviews from a wide variety of independent and major label artists. Whether they were en route to stardom or sitting in obscurity, these artists and their teams pitched music to our blogs because they deeply valued the credibility a thoughtful, honest written review could provide for their art.

Any serious independent artist with a low marketing budget needs to make the most of organic (i.e. free) opportunities to gain social proof for their music. Submitting songs to indie blogs are chief among these opportunities to this day, and pitching successfully requires a couple of important steps and considerations. Here are the ones we’d like to highlight from years of receiving such submissions.

Watch the video on the ATC Sound YouTube channel

Know Who You’re Pitching Your Song To

Across The Culture has accepted song submissions from artists with next to no online visibility and turned down artists with viral singles. Why?

Quality independent music blogs have editorial perspectives. They do not cover anything and everything for the sake of new content, meaning great songs and streaming successes regularly get turned down by blogs due to misalignment with the platform’s content focus.

Understanding your values while doing your research will help you more easily identify indie music publications to submit your music to. Alignment in areas such as mood, worldview, and genres covered does not guarantee a successful pitch, but the chances of a quality engagement increase significantly when an independent artist has a strong “why” for pitching a specific blog.

Draft A Pitch Template

Blog submissions can happen in a number of ways including third-party platforms (e.g. SubmitHub) and social media DMs. But many indie music blogs still receive song submissions through good old-fashioned email. It is a direct, professional, and effective tool at organizing and containing all relevant materials necessary for a strong pitch.

Every pitch should be personalized to the blog you are reaching out to, but a pitch template will be critical for streamlining the process. Consider the items below when creating an email template to pitch your songs to music blogs.

Narrative First, Numbers Next

Because the internet (shoutout Donald), musical artists have more information about the performance of their songs and their brands than ever before. That being said, quantitative data does not tell the story of an artist better than people can. Statistics help people grasp reality, but they are not reality in and of themselves. Numbers need to be used strategically in order to communicate anything of value.

In short: do not lead with your followers, stream counts, and view counts when submitting a song to an indie music blog. Those pieces of information need to support your artist narrative, not become the narrative.

Who Are You? Where Have You Been? Where Are You Going?

a song submission is a chance to make a valuable friend as much as it is a marketing play

If you are an independent artist that has figured out how to earn significant online engagement, you have valuable social proof of your art’s value. But what is it about you, exactly, that is resonating with listeners? What differentiates you and/or your music?

With so many ways (of varying ethical degrees) to increase online engagements, help the writer/editor you are pitching understand why anyone should care about your music. An artist earning a few thousand streams per song mashing regional subgenres of rap and shooting peculiar, low-budget music videos is a more interesting subject to us, for instance, than a guy who went viral on TikTok for his perfectly-okay song-of-the-summer attempt.

As editor of ATC Sound, I want to help artists along on their journey. I’d rather be invited to the next stop on your journey than to be told you already made it. Even a pitch that doesn’t result in a published piece on your music can succeed in building a relationship and gaining a new set of ears tuned into your future work.

There are a number of artists who have pitched Across The Culture that I initially declined to cover but have continued to listen to years later. Indie music bloggers love music and those who make it — a song submission is a chance to make a valuable friend as much as it is a marketing play.

Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

An EPK is a collection of essential media (i.e. music, photos, videos) and information about an artist meant for industry professionals consider before doing business with an artist. Along with writers and editors, this includes A&Rs, radio staffers, and booking agents.

Relevant supporting content is necessary for a publication to put together a quality piece on an artist. An individual blog/article requires a feature photo to properly engage readers and signal the content’s relevance to them before they decide to read. Additional photos in the piece can help to break up text for better readability and visual reinforcement for written coverage of an artist and their music.

Other Considerations When Pitching Music To An Indie Blog

Data Privacy

Using embargoed (i.e. protected) links to give a blog pre-release access to a song and other assets adds professionalism and confidentiality that both protects your work and earns respect from whoever it is you are pitching.

Timing

If submitting a new song or project to an indie blog is part of your release strategy, pitching a blog at least one week before the release date is recommended. The privilege to hear unreleased music and be the first to talk about it is not lost on writers and editors, so blogs love to assist with new release marketing. Help yourself by helping a writer/editor cover your song in a timely manner by pitching your upcoming song in a timely manner.

Things To Do After Submitting A Song To A Blog

Don’t stop! Persistence is most of the battle in music, especially without an established institution behind you. Below is a list of potential next steps based on the state of your song pitch several days later:

Politely and concisely follow up on your pitch if you’ve heard no response
Identify similar blogs + the points of contact you’d like to approach
Use your initial pitch as a template and begin customizing it for other priority blogs
Don’t wait on a blog for validation: use your pitch template as the foundation for your own narrative building
- YouTube community posts, social media captions, and perhaps your own blog are all spaces where your artist narrative can gain definition and visibility

How ATC Sound Can Help On Your Independent Music Marketing Journey

Best of luck to anyone daring enough to take their self-expression seriously in a world built to stifle it. There are a couple of ways ATC Sound can accompany and support you on your journey.

Subscribe to ATC Sound’s email list as we develop an informative newsletter for both independent music artists and supporters
Submit your song to ATC/ATC Sound at the following email address: zander@acrosstheculture.com
Subscribe to the ATC Sound YouTube channel for indie artist music videos and music industry analysis
Add our “Survive a Toxic Workplace” playlist to your library on Spotify
Suggest Spotify playlist themes, blog content, and more via email: zander@acrosstheculture.com

Wet Leg’s “CPR” Makes a Lifeline Out of the Raptures of Desire

Fajar Zakri

July 24, 2025

Wet Leg lead singer Rhian Teasdale looking up at the camera in the

To use de rigeur lingo, Wet Leg understand the assignment.

Rock music, at its most distilled, boils down to attitude, essentially embracing the intricacies and eccentricities of life with knowing, studied wryness. This disposition succinctly illustrates the gist of Wet Leg’s music, first launched with fervor via 2021’s Grammy-winning “Chaise Lounge,” carrying over with aplomb to “CPR,” the strutty, sinewy lead single from the group’s excellent sophomore set Moisturizer.

“Is it love or suicide?” vocalist-guitarist Rhian Teasdale intones in the track’s pre-chorus, simultaneously evoking the dry, wry syncopated coolness of PJ Harvey. But unlike Harvey’s proclivity for slow, simmering blues, “CPR” is terse and goes for the jugular with a delectable push-and-pull between kinetic basslines, four-on-the-floor drums and skewed, dissonant guitar riffs.

The quiet-loud dynamic eventually reaches its apex nearly two minutes into its running time with a fake 911 call and its “I’m! In! Love!” proclamation before launching into an ecstatic cornucopia of electric instrumentation and sirens blaring, amped all the way up to their loudest volume. Next thing you know, the song is over and you’re compelled to press play all over again.

How Wet Leg Continues To Shake Up Rock Music

What makes “CPR,” and indeed, the Isle of Wright-hailing outfit’s oeuvre, a cut above the rest is precisely the tension between its minor chords and major feelings as filtered through a distinctly British female lens. It’s calm and collected but also unabashed and sardonic, and in its own way, helps both redefine and revitalize rock music in the poptimist age.

In 2017, New York Times declared that rock was ruled by women; fast forward eight years later, the statement has held up quite well given the likes of Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, Wolf Alice, and M(h)aol, to name but a few.

Furthermore, Wet Leg punctuate their tried-and-true indie rock formula with a sense of playfulness and humor that makes it highly compelling, even with (or perhaps exactly thanks to) its curtness. Similar to Mitski, Wet Leg revel in the economy of words, encapsulating grand sentiments and moments in traditional meters without once undercutting their intent. “CPR,” for instance, opens with the following:

I tied a rope around my waist / I tend to get lost in your eyes / I took a breath, jumped off the cliff / Because you told me to…

It is tricky to convey the all-consuming chokehold of desire without resorting to verbosity, even more so to make it sound genuinely charming and even invigorating. And yet, “CPR” does exactly that – all in the space of two-something minutes. “With songs, you listen to the lyrics and you know that not all the words and not all the details and not all the exposition have been included—you kind of expect to take leaps of faith,” Lorde once astutely described. With “CPR,” Wet Leg ask us to do exactly just that: taking sonic leaps of faith in their latest emotional shenanigans, exactly as they’re going through it, even as they flat-out inquire, “Is it fun? Is it a vibe?”.

The Value Of A Strong Indie Rock Presence In The Mainstream

In a culture with a penchant for aesthetics but one that also exclusively prizes polite polishedness, it is unlikely for an act like Wet Leg to break through the mainstream and shift numbers the way groups like Hole, Garbage, or Sleater-Kinney did during the alternative rock boom of the 1990s. But it doesn’t — and shouldn’t — matter when the music is this good, this relatable, this irreverent, this thought-provoking, and this life-affirming.

With ample support from iconic indie label Domino, which also includes Noughties-era main characters (Arctic Monkey, Franz Ferdinand) and envelope-pushing solo trailblazers (Julia Holter, Tirzah) in their roster, Wet Leg are in good hands to help reshape and reinvigorate indie rock. Articulating big feelings as tectonic shifts occur socially, politically, economically, and yes, culturally serves as a lifeline more than ever, especially in the age of detachment. Wet Leg are proof that you can still do so while sounding as cool and disaffected as you please.

Also Peep: UMG, Vivendi, and the Need for Independent Music

Moisturizer was released on July 11, 2025 via Domino Recording Company and available for streaming and purchase here. Schedules and tickets for their upcoming US tour are available here.

To Zander, an American, “Everything in the hood romantic”

Zander Tsadwa

May 30, 2025

Zander, an American holding a rose wearing an MN United hoodie for the

Bando with the tags on the wood boards /
Charger hit the gas on a red light /
Cheeto bag beneath the leaves beneath the snow until it melts… /
March it look just like November

From North Minneapolis With Love

Caring about North Minneapolis is a radical thing to do. You are not expected to care about North Minneapolis. In fact, the city is counting on you to not care so “the way things are” can continue on smoothly — like its active gentrification.

Generally speaking, it’s cool to not care.

If an American is not a self-important workaholic, they’re likely nihilistic. But whether they believe the world is counting on them or nothing really matters, these common personas can agree on one thing: to not give a fuck about other people.

Out of all the groups of people we treat like NPCs and never stop to listen to, working class Black people are among the most marginalized.

From news channels and political speeches to daily commutes through the “sketchy” parts of town, few people talk about neglected Black communities in a way that suggests the residents are real people. Black working class neighborhoods are treated like District 8 in The Hunger Games: the hood is a setting and its people minor characters, pawns in a big game who are little more than bodies to control.

There is brilliance in North Minneapolis. Persistent and refreshing art, academic pride, and community building continue with or without more grocery stores. Sharp and compassionate opinions on what elected officials should be doing continue to be shared with or without validation. With or without an ethical police force.

It’s time to let go of the assumption that people in North Minneapolis don’t care about North Minneapolis.

A BRAT Worldview

On some completely different shit…

Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek are sensational pop artists.

With the BRAT era, Charli accomplished a number of artistic and broader cultural feats that few could imagine to even attempt. Among them was packaging sincere, existential drama about being in your 30s into a cocaine-fueled club soundtrack. Charli is like the best version of a Skins character grown-up (UK version, of course): charismatic, cocky, messy, fucked up, and able to party out of any situation. “Everything is romantic” stitches together a throbbing, edgy collage of all the things you’d see and feel coming down after a London rave in the wee hours.

Taking thorough notes and confidently doing things her way, Caroline Polachek remixes “Everything is romantic” with a complete fall girl makeover. Where the original walks around in a sweaty, torn-up t-shirt, the remix is in a flowy dress with a cardigan and over-ear headphones on a metro bus ride on a rainy September night. From this spot, everything is serene — the girl vomiting from the back of a Lime scooter, the ACAB tags, cheap wine, the rain, everything.

That must be how it feels to accept where you’re from and what it gives you.

Listen to “Everything in the hood romantic” by Zander, an American

Written in the key of C# Minor with a Jersey club kick pattern as the backbone, “Everything in the hood romantic” preserves the spirit of the “Everything is romantic” remix but places it firmly in North Minneapolis.

Listen to “Everything in the hood romantic” by Zander, an American on your streaming platform of choice. You can also watch the accompanying music video on the ATC Sound YouTube channel.

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