Bandcamp is an online music platform used largely by independent artists and record labels to stream songs and sell merchandise. It’s also a vibrant virtual community teeming with interesting sounds just waiting to be discovered. Each week, I’ll highlight three releases available on the site that are well worth your time and attention. If you find something you dig, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.

NOTE: On March 23, Bandcamp waived its revenue share of sales to help musicians impacted by COVID-19. In turn, music lovers spent $4.3 million for nearly 800,000 items — about 15 times a normal Friday for the site. So they’re doing it again. On Friday, May 1, Bandcamp will waive its revenue share for all sales from midnight to midnight.

X

“Alphabetland”

https://xtheband.bandcamp.com/album/alphabetland

It’s been 40 years since legendary L.A. cowpunk act X released its landmark debut “Los Angeles,” a finely tuned collision of SoCal hardcore, rockabilly bounce, psychedelic soul and sinister strut. Heck, it’s been 35 years since the band’s classic lineup — vocalist Exene Cervenka, bassist John Doe, drummer DJ Bonebrake, guitarist Billy Zoom — released an album together, and an X reunion has been one of punk rock’s holy grails ever since. So imagine the planet’s collective surprise last week when a new full-length from the original members suddenly showed up on Bandcamp. Even better: “Alphabetland” roars and twangs and swings with a musicality that is distinctly X. They haven’t lost a step.

R.A.P. Ferreira

“Purple Moonlight Pages”

https://afrolab9000.bandcamp.com/album/purple-moonlight-pages

Two summers ago at the Pickathon music festival near Portland, I caught a free-flowing live set by the entrepreneurial indie hip-hop artist then known as Milo, who spent part of his stage time amble-rapping over a palette of interesting beat-sketches. Since then, Milo has changed his name to R.A.P. Ferreira, and in March he released this album, which features his typically brainy wisdom set against 18 tracks of low-key bleep-bloop jazz-hop. “I think I’m improving, but who can say? Since no point is fixed, more or less, I think my point is missed,” Ferreira raps. “I’ve decided to embrace what differentiates me from the anointed clique.”

RVG

“Feral”

https://rvgband.bandcamp.com/album/feral

For fans of jangling guitars and toe-tapping pop-rock songs, Melbourne, Australia is the center of the universe right now, thanks to acts like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Courtney Barnett, Camp Cope, The Stroppies, Possible Humans … the list could go on. Add to it RVG, whose easygoing grooves and faint ‘80s vibe set them apart from their tightly wound contemporaries. Led by singer-songwriter Romy Vager, the band’s second album is packed with deeply personal songs, universally relatable sentiments and a seemingly endless supply of hooks.