Watch new KEXP and Paste sessions from Peel Dream Magazine ahead of Winter tour
Peel Dream Magazine has already had a busy and productive 2025 – last week the band released the deluxe edition of its debut album, Modern Meta Physic (with 8 bonus tracks). Today you can watch new sessions from the band at Paste and KEXP, performing (mostly) songs from their 2024 LP, Rose Main Reading Room (Topshelf). The band will play its first show of 2025 on Sat. Feb. 8 in LA at the Teragram Ballroom (presented by KCRW), with a limited edition lathe cut single at the merch table, feat. two previously unreleased tracks recorded during the Rose Mainrecording sessions, with all proceeds going to LA Fire Relief. The single will only be sold at this show, it will not be available online (or on streaming platforms). On Feb. 25, the band launches a string of shows supporting Friko in St. Louis, which concludes on March 7 in NYC at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Joseph Stevens, the mastermind behind Peel Dream, also recently scored the film Let’s Start ACult, which premiered on Hulu this week and is already one of the most popular films currently on the platform (sitting at #5 on the movie charts at present!).
About Peel Dream Magazine & their recent album, RoseMainReadingRoom:
Rose Main Reading Room, the fourth full length by Peel Dream Magazine, is a lush, inviting headphone record; the kind of album made to accompany city bus rides and rainy-day solo trips to accidental destinations. The band, whose name nods to the BBC Radio 1 legend John Peel — arbiter of all things underground, quality, and (it must be said) “cool” — has since its inception been a genre-hopping experiment, jumping from motorik krautrock to shoegaze and space ago pop, and their newest work is a perfect starting point for the uninitiated, beckoning toward a newfound romance and nostalgia with their catchiest collection of songs to date.
Set to the backdrop of New York City and its towering landmarks — The American Museum of Natural History, Grand Central Station, and the like — songwriter Joseph Stevens weaves personal stories into the wider fabric of the natural world, touching on themes of instinct, animality, and evolution. On tracks such as “Central Park West” and “Migratory Patterns” Stevens and his principal contributors, vocalist Olivia Babuka Black and multi-instrumentalist Ian Gibbs, evoke a woodland sound palette juxtaposed against drones and various electronics, like on side one closer “Gems and Minerals”.
Pre-release singles “Wish You Well” and “Lie in the Gutter” conjure the driving feel of the band’s earlier output, which often draws comparison to Stereolab and Yo La Tengo, while songs like “Dawn” revel in arpeggiating woodwinds and mallets, recalling the wide-eyed contemporary classical of Steve Reich and Sufjan Stevens. Rose Main Reading Room also touches on Y2K indie pop nostalgia by incorporating breakbeats and acoustic guitar-driven ear candy, as heard on tracks like “Counting Sheep” and “Four Leaf Clover.”
Across its fifteen songs, Rose Main Reading Room ultimately proposes a world of marvels and compelling complexity: “Oblast” cheekily prods at mutually assured destruction; “Ocean Life” explores the infiniteness within ourselves; while “R.I.P (Running in Place)” unpacks an all too familiar stagnation. It’s all part of and crucial to, Rose Main Reading Room’s transportive power, ever reaching for the wonder and magic of the world we live in.
TOUR DATES:
Feb 08 – Los Angeles, CA – Teragram * (KCRW Presents)
Feb 25 – St. Louis, MO – Atomic #
Feb. 26 – Louisville, KY – Zanzabar #
Feb. 27 – Nashville, TN – The Basement East #
Feb. 28 – Atlanta, GA – Smith’s Olde Bar #
Mar. 01 – Raleigh, NC – King’s #
Mar. 03 – Washington DC – Union Stage #
Mar. 04 – Philadelphia, PA – The Foundry #
Mar. 05 – Kingston, NY – Tubby’s % (SOLD OUT)
Mar. 07 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg #
* = w/ Sour Widows
# = w/ Friko
% = w/ Babehoven
Download Hi-Res Album Cover Art HERE

Peel Dream Magazine
Rose Main Reading Room
(Topshelf)
Street Date: Sept. 04, 2024
Purchase it here
Track Listing:
Dawn
Central Park West
Oblast
Wish You Well
Wood Paneling Pt. 3
R.I.P. (Running In Place)
I Wasn’t Made For War
Gems and Minerals
Machine Repeating
Recital
Migratory Patterns
Four Leaf Clover
Lie In The Gutter
Ocean Life
Counting Sheep

