Pond

Formed by participants from Tame Impala’s road ensemble, the Australian collective Pond specializes in neo-psych pop that fuses the exploratory spirit of psychedelia across eras with the crisp contours of indie pop and occasional prog-rock accents. Their initial efforts, Frond from 2010 and Beard, Wives, Denim from 2012, captured the loose energy of a group tracking together in real time, yet growing assurance brought greater structural weight; by the time The Weather appeared in 2017, Tasmania in 2019, and Stung! in 2024, a clear synth-pop thread had surfaced while the band’s core identity stayed intact.

Based in Perth, Pond originated in 2008 when guitarist Nick Allbrook and drummer Jay Watson, both then touring with Tame Impala, assembled the project alongside multi-instrumentalists Joe Ryan and Jamie Terry, rotating additional percussionists as needed. Conceived as an open platform for inviting outside players, the band issued two early self-released sets—Psychedelic Mango in 2008 and Corridors of Blissterday in 2009—that drew scant attention at first. Their third album, Frond, arrived in 2010 via the independent Hole in the Sky imprint; that same year Tame Impala’s breakthrough Innerspeaker indirectly lifted Pond’s visibility. The subsequent Beard, Wives, Denim, released in 2012 on Modular Recordings—the same Australian company behind Tame Impala—quickly established the group as an emerging favorite.

After Allbrook’s final performance with Tame Impala in May 2013, he concentrated on Pond’s concise, somber fifth album Hobo Rocket and other endeavors. The following year the band sequestered themselves in a modest studio, emerging with the brighter, more celebratory and groove-oriented Man, It Feels Like Space Again in 2015—their debut for Universal Australia—whose title reportedly originated from a remark Ryan made while tracking. Referencing both political and climatic currents, The Weather surfaced in 2017 and leaned further into synth-driven textures within their psychedelic indie-rock framework. Those electronic components expanded on Tasmania, issued in 2019 with production input from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. Two buoyant synth-pop singles, “Pink Lunettes” and “America’s Cup,” preceded the full-length 9 in late 2021. Early 2024 saw Pond supporting Queens of the Stone Age across Australia and New Zealand while unveiling the single “Neon River,” which heralded their tenth studio album, the buoyant yet intricate Stung!, released that June.