Hopeless romantics will find a new fix in Payola’s ode to Indie Britpop, ‘Wait’ –

Here with their stop in your tracks Britpop track, Wait, breakthrough indie band Payola disintegrate the timeline between 2025, the reign of the Vaccines and the peak of the fervour around the Stone Roses. The steady assurance in the guitar chords anchors you in the track before the first anthemic lift, where the guitar licks turn angular and the vox shift from indie rock croons to stadium-ready proclamations of lovesick patience.

If you are the kind of hopeless romantic who would happily wait a lifetime for the right person instead of chasing the high of superficial friction, Wait will cut deep, especially when the song crescendos into a virtuosic echo of the kind of tension delivered by the National.

Born in the backroom of the Argyll Arms just off Oxford Street, this London five-piece first bonded over shared record collections before turning those late-night chats into a band that lives for melody, momentum and heart. Across four singles, they have nudged past 12k Spotify streams while sharpening their sound on stages from Spice of Life and The Dublin Castle to Camden Assembly and Liverpool’s Cavern Club.

Wait wraps up a year of sweat-soaked sets by channelling that live-wire energy into a studio cut that still feels sticky with spilt pints and shouted choruses. Clearly, Payola are stitching their own sonic signature together through the reverence they find in the annals of indie history and within the sparks of their own creativity; if you like your indie anthems wired on devotion rather than detachment, this one will sit nicely on repeat.

Wait is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast