Release Wave
The best curated new music releases.
Our role
Product and brand build — Next.js, Spotify API integration, MCP server (public + admin), editorial design system, Vercel.
A curated music-discovery platform that surfaces new and underground releases through a release calendar, genre browsing, a weekly newsletter, and AI assistant access over MCP.
Release Wave is a curated guide to new and underground music — alternative, emo, shoegaze, punk, and indie — surfacing the records worth hearing through a release calendar, artist and label directories, and a weekly newsletter.
We built it on Next.js with Spotify integration and an editorial, newsprint-inspired design that treats music discovery like a magazine you actually want to read. A continuously updated playlist connects the curation straight to the music, and an MCP layer opens the catalog to AI assistants — a public read-only connector for ChatGPT and Claude, plus an authenticated admin server that lets editors manage the catalog in plain language.
A month-by-month calendar tracks upcoming records by drop date across a catalog of 988+ curated releases.
Browse 40+ genre tags — dream pop, grunge, emo — with search and multi-axis sorting by date, name, or recency.
A weekly email delivers new releases, premieres, and upcoming records straight to subscribers.
A continuously updated “The Wave” playlist links the editorial curation directly to listenable music.
A public read-only MCP server lets anyone connect ChatGPT or Claude and query the catalog — newest releases, artists, genres — answered straight from the curated data.
An authenticated MCP server lets editors run the catalog in natural language — Claude creates and updates releases, sets genres, and pulls in album art and descriptions.