Podcast Corner: Indiecast's return is refreshing — it's as good as it gets
Indiecast starts by trying to make sense of Mad Men star Christina Hendricks spinning records during a four-hour DJ set at a 'high-end audio bar'. Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
has been running for nearly six years, hosted by music critics Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen.
As the former says when introducing every episode, they talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and hash out trends. It’s an easy, conversational format that rewards regular listening.
At the end of 2025 they announced they were going on hiatus and were “pretty sure” they’d be back, before pulling back the curtain on how difficult the media landscape is nowadays.
“I never assumed anyone’s listening to this show. I don’t think we have any listeners, in my own mind, but then I go out in the world and I find that that’s not the case,” Hyden said.
Like a long-running TV series, it can be daunting to press play for the first time, knowing you’ve got dozens of episodes to catch up on. Podcasts that have run for years often stretch into the triple — if not quadruple — digits. In-jokes don’t land, banter can feel blasé.
Stick with it, though, and eventually the show starts to feel like a record that’s always in rotation. “You can actually make a good amount of money doing a show that’s targeted, that maybe doesn’t have a big audience but the people who listen, they’re into it,” explains Hyden.
New shows now launch with big names attached: Roman Kemp and Tom Grennan’s , with Maisie and Ellen Peters, and have all arrived in the past year. So it’s refreshing to see return in the same format as before, with the show now presented by Amazon Music — not quite ‘indie’, but we’ll take it.
“I’ve always been extremely proud of the work we’ve done here,” says Cohen, explaining that there will be bonus content to come in due course, like artist interviews, but otherwise it’s the same old reliable Indiecast.
They start by trying to make sense of star Christina Hendricks spinning records during a four-hour DJ set at a “high-end audio bar” — how very 2026.
Then it gets niche, as they talk about a spat with a band called Cheekface whose frontman may or may not be called Chaz Cheekface. They discuss new albums by the Strokes and Wu Lyf, predict the most acclaimed records of the next three months in their regular Fantasy Albums Draft, and offer music recommendations.
Hyden has written for Grantland and The Ringer over the years, both headed by the ‘podfather’, Bill Simmons, who has mused in the past that he’s never quite figured out the best format for a music podcast. is as good as it gets.
