Indie band Sore brings a rare, timeless craft to Indonesia's music scene. The identity of their work is elegant genre-blending — chamber pop, indie rock, folk, and jazz woven together with vintage instrumentation like vibraphones, mellotrons, and horns that evoke the golden pop of the 1950s through 1970s without ever sounding merely retro. Formed in Jakarta in 2002 by childhood friends, the band carries a few quiet quirks that became part of its legend, including the fact that every member plays left-handed. What makes Sore distinctive is how each member contributes lead vocals and songwriting, giving their albums a shifting, many-voiced character — and how their debut, Centralismo (2005), a tribute to the Central Jakarta where most of them grew up, was praised by TIME Magazine Asia as one of five Asian albums worth buying and later ranked among Rolling Stone Indonesia's greatest Indonesian albums.

Sore's credibility as a band grew more assured across two decades on stage and in the studio. Their catalog runs from Ports of Lima (2008), named Rolling Stone Indonesia's Best Album of that year, through Los Skut Leboys (2015) and their long-awaited return Quo Vadis, Sore? (2023), with the melancholic, richly-voiced style of frontman Ade Firza Paloh so central to their DNA that listeners coined the term "Paloh Pop" to describe it. Paloh died in March 2024, a profound loss for Indonesian music, and the band chose to continue with founding members Awan Garnida and Bemby Gusti carrying the work forward. However, Sore never treated their many influences as a formula — allowing each record to explore new textures while holding onto the poetic, atmospheric sensibility that made them one of the most quietly influential bands in the country.