Ocean Alley

For a band renowned for how laidback they sound, Ocean Alley have nonetheless been maturing all the while. “We can hear all the years that have come before us,” guitarist Mitch Galbraith told Apple Music about their 2025 album Love Balloon. “We focused on spending more time with the tracks and demoing, and figuring out parts and sections that complement each other.” Formed in 2011 when six mates began jamming in a backyard shed in Sydney’s scenic Northern Beaches, the group channelled their fondness for smoky psych rock and head-nodding reggae into a satisfyingly fresh sound on their first album, 2016’s Lost Tropics. Singer-guitarist Baden Donegal’s coolly expressive vocals and Lach Galbraith’s spacey keyboards became major calling cards—especially on 2018’s funky slow burn “Confidence”, which topped Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown and went multi-platinum in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand alike. That firmly embedded the album Chiaroscuro into the Antipodean firmament, while 2020’s Lonely Diamond refined Ocean Alley’s intuitive approach on leisurely jams like “Tombstone”. Rather than reset their sound, the post-pandemic 2022 LP Low Altitude Living saw the band deepen those feel-good grooves with increasing shades of blues and soul. Even after tapping top-shelf American producer Nick DiDia (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam) for Love Balloon, the sextet greeted the upgraded polish with some of their most chill earworms to date.