Lo! Peninsula are making shoegaze out of Manipur's hardest years

Shoegaze is a genre built on blur: guitars turned into weather, vocals half buried, feelings you hear before you can name them. For Lo! Peninsula, that blur has had something very specific to sit inside. The trio is from Imphal, and their newest song is about what more than three years of conflict in Manipur does to ordinary people.

Who they are

Lo! Peninsula are Nitin Shamurailatpam on guitars and vocals, Avinash Thokchom on bass and Jyotin Elangbam on drums. They describe themselves as a shoegaze, psych rock and dream pop band, and on their Bandcamp page their stated mission is to "weave dreams for a living". The name has a suitably lo-fi origin: the band has said it came from a business card they found inside a guitar amp.

Seattle radio station KEXP is a big part of their story. The non-profit station picked up on the band around their debut EP, AKA Lo Peninsula, a self-released record from August 2018 that was recorded, mixed and mastered by Sudip Kongbrailatpam. It was as DIY as records get. The band has described making it in an ordinary room with no soundproofing, with Sudip, then an aspiring engineer, working on microphones he had built himself, and none of them had set foot in a professional studio at that point. KEXP has kept championing them since, including picking their cover of "Super Glue" as a Song of the Day in May 2023.

Along the way came songs like "Chasing Tidal Waves", "Battleships" and "Kintsugi", all on the band's Bandcamp, plus live slots at Magnetic Fields, Ziro Festival and NH7 Weekender.

The song

On 31 July 2026 the band released "Song For The Undead", their latest single. In their own words, it was written in response to living through the conflict in Manipur since May 2023, and it reflects on how empathy and hope wear away under prolonged violence and injustice.

It is a hometown production. Satish Elangbam recorded it, Sudip Kongbrailatpam (the same engineer from the first EP) mixed and mastered it, and the video was shot by Borlin Chanam and Somba Pukh at Warin Chingra, with live footage by Sanahal Phairenjam and Faiz Khullakpam and editing by Rahul Laishram.

KEXP gave the song a premiere spin, and the band has said that airing led to an enquiry about a show in Seattle.

The cost of being a band from Manipur right now

It is worth sitting with what the last few years have looked like from Imphal. Since the violence began in May 2023, life in the state has been shaped by curfews, bandhs and shutdowns, along with long state-ordered internet suspensions. Nitin has put a number on it: by his count, Manipur has been through at least 523 days of bandhs, shutdowns and economic blockades since then, with the internet cut for more than half of that stretch and regular power cuts on top. For a band, that means rehearsals, recording, releases and promotion all happen around disruptions most Indian indie acts never have to plan for.

Touring adds another layer. The band has talked about how often road travel out of the Imphal Valley is unsafe, which leaves flights as the only real option even when fares are steep. Add the pandemic years, personal commitments and what Nitin has called a period of lull, and you can see why Lo! Peninsula have moved in starts and stops since that first EP. He has also said the time away helped the band find a different way into the music, and "Song For The Undead" is the sound of them coming back on their own terms.

Bengaluru, and what is next

Lo! Peninsula were booked to make their Bengaluru debut on 26 September 2026 at The Humming Tree in Indiranagar, for the tenth edition of the Oaf Big Gigs series, alongside Mumbai band Long Distances and local act Packers & Movers. Tickets were sold through Skillboxes.

Next up, Nitin has said, are a few shows in Manipur before the end of the year, with the band aiming to put out an EP in early 2027. There is no official date or title yet, and we will update this story when there is. Further out, a US tour is the bigger dream. He has admitted the money and logistics make that hard, but not impossible.

The Cosign

We are cosigning Lo! Peninsula because this is exactly the kind of band Indian indie needs to keep in its sightlines. They found an international ear years ago, from a DIY room in Imphal, and they have kept making music through conditions that would have ended most bands. "Song For The Undead" is out now. Give it a proper listen with headphones, and keep an eye out for that EP.