This one has to be at least one of the defining hits of the year, even if every Twitter smugster used it as an opportunity to say she's ripping Kate Bush. Well, is she? Do I look like I care? The track's great, she can sound like whoever she wants if it works. And if you haven't listened in a while, a reminder that the outro is otherworldly.
Yet another song that hit some viral note, though I was not aware of that until well after the fact. I believe I just stumbled onto it in some playlist or maybe as a recommendation. I like the whole Adele thing she has going on with naming each album after how old she was at the time. That whole album is her coasting through melodies effortlessly, but this has to be my favorite of the bunch.
Had I known in advance these guys were known for doing some soft boy cover of Murder on the Dance Floor, I would have avoided them like the plague. Instead, I heard a couple songs from their flawed but altogether decent debut album and decided they were worth a shot. Jangly, androgynous, and surprisingly cryptic. Hard to escape that hook also.
I don't know, call it a guilty pleasure if you will. These guys serve well in a live setting at festivals like Coachella, but I wouldn't tend to put their tracks on lists like this if not for them just out of nowhere dropping something this immediate and this inspired. What was once an earnest but thin pastiche turns into something that elevates the sorts of things it looked to in the first place.
...has Jamie xx surpassed the group that originally brought him attention in the first place? Granted, he's a frequent collaborator with the other members of The xx, but the degree to which his work is hyped and remembered feels on a similar or even greater level. I like the playfulness and the different styles of his solo material, and this is most certainly not something I'd ever expect as an intro to even the looser latter-era material of The xx themselves. Even Romy's been taking house cues lately. Off-topic, but does anyone know what happened to Baria Qureshi? I wonder if she gets any royalties.
Okay, the higher-register vocals are an acquired taste. Maybe that's why it got relegated to an "extended edition" of her (amazing) prior album. Still, she hooks me right away with "Who's that you've been calling?" The answer, Amaarae, is no one. Neither do I text, nor finesse. Don't ever accuse me of such things.
I'll concede the 'soul' tag just this once, but this is a country melody if I've ever heard one. mk.gee hasn't 100% won me over just yet, but dammit if he hasn't given me hope with this track in particular.
The shortest cut of this entire top 100 (if you don't count Doris' 'Close Friends', one of many honorable mentions), and a much appreciated energy coming from a usually more abstract rapper taking things in a more upbeat direction. Not saying that's better or worse, but I do very much like this side of him. Seltzer's production throughout the full album is perfect for MIKE's cooler deadpan delivery. I haven't heard the sequel album that came out a month or two prior to me writing this, but unfortunately I've heard mixed things. The first, however, is one of my favorites.
Maybe it's Sturgill Simpson's increasing level of alienation from the country and/or broader music industry as a whole that resulted in his dropping an album under a new alias despite sounding a lot like a Sturgill Simpson record. Maybe that's just the standard he's set as an artist willing to go in different directions and studying different themes about sailors or outlaws or uhh anime? I don't remember what Sound and Fury was about. The album was good, but this track in particular hits that emotive level I admire him most for.
Maybe it's a hot take to say Yanya has one of the coolest voices in indie music at present moment, but I think that with every subsequent release of hers. You probably thought Like I Say (I Runaway) would be the pick, and I do dig that song well enough, but this is my personal standout from that record.
Ehh, I bought into the industry plant allegations some years ago. If anything, she's one of the more likely candidates for that accusation. And from what I can tell, she's never been a great live performer either. But dammit if she isn't getting better with each album. I have NO idea what inspired her to go in this direction, one that both sounds very much like her and yet also like nothing she would have ever done prior, but she did it, and I love it. I think more bedroom pop artists should (if budget allows) dive into the deep end of extravagant studio production just to see what happens.
I can't act like Caribou's latest album isn't filled with bizarre, sometimes even misguided experiments, but bright glimpses of his greatest work still persist in bits and pieces. This track came the closest to the sort of appeal he hit with his previous album, and even plays into the uncanny valley nature of the vocals which I appreciate. It's still very clearly Caribou, though in a seemingly happier mode than usual.
Everyone latched onto 'Like That' for its inevitable consequences, that being Kendrick Lamar (who featured on the track) vs. Drake vs. J. Cole (with J. Cole bolting almost immediately afterwards.) I enjoy that track too, in or out of that context, but THIS one was the real highlight of that record. I'd tag it as chipmunk soul, but some part of me feels like a buffoon for even using that term. Last time I checked, chipmunks don't even have souls.
The plugg equivalent to the first time I heard Cherry Colored Funk. A voice should not be allowed to sound so ethereal, especially when the majority of the population would think you're a lunatic for loving it the way you do. And I know you do. That's why you're here.
Ironically (and likely intentionally) a very bitter song. "They get along on sweet talking/I get along on sleep walking." Yeah, the metaphor's kinda lame on first glance, but I like the angry humor that bleeds in throughout what some might otherwise mistake for another generic indie beard band. I don't think many of those other bands could nail something as uplifting-sounding yet strangely upset-feeling as this.
ANOTHER bonus track? Maybe the chipmunk-register vocals of this particular song is why it got relegated to that status rather than making the album proper. Doesn't change the fact that this might be the album's grooviest cut altogether, and definitely the one that hooked me the quickest.
JPEGMAFIA continues to be at a bizarre point in his career where his own bitterness and paranoia is eating himself alive, possibly to the detriment of his work. And yet... rapping over a beat by DJ RaMeMes of all people might just be the most inspired choice of his whole career. More rappers should take note.
Some songs just upset you with how good they sound. Who does this pretty boy think he is? Is this even his song or a cover? And why am I too cowardly to translate any Spanish write-ups to find these things out for myself? Maybe I just prefer the mystery of not knowing. Or maybe I'm just bitter I like it so much. A little of everything, I suppose. The album's great too, though hopefully the next one has better cover art to go with it.
Six whole years since we last heard from this singer-songwriter with the hard-to-spell last name. Well worth the wait with the intricate folk arrangements and a voice impossible to mistake for anyone else's. Leaves you wanting more while still so happy with what you got.
Before you ask, yes there is a playlist with all of these songs provided at the very bottom of the article. And no, 'Kingdom Come' is not on that playlist. Cindy Lee's decision to keep things off the usual streaming services might do a number to my fledgling sense of convenience, but hey, the tunes are cool. This one's my favorite by far, and in competition for the best of an entire catalogue. The wall of sound taken to its psychedelic apex.
Goofy to the point where that main sample could almost be insufferable if not for one of the greatest grooves in contemporary music bridging it together. In the right environment, an energy like this is irreplaceable.
A song I'm almost afraid to describe. Some artists tend to interpret their own work in a much different category as their own listeners, and maybe Forsyth sees this as being something far beyond my own understanding. But if you're curious, this song sounds like an absolute rapture to me. Just a universe collapsing in on itself. Maybe not Forsyth's most mysterious song, though it may very well be her LOUDEST.
As far as the "indie mainstream" is concerned, Nourished by Time has to be among the most exciting new-ish voices to break through. Already cracking my 2023 list with the hypothetical song of the summer in 'Daddy', this track is less about the party and more about soaring through some bitter but potent nostalgia. That synth absolutely makes the whole track and elevates it to new heights.
Beyoncé's take on country music may have been earnest and admirable, though for the most part left me far colder than her previous experiments with house music. 'Daughter', on the other hand, is not only an exception to that rule, but genuinely one of her most subversive and strongest tracks. And considering how often she's been willing to bend the industry to her interests, it's shocking that she can still have that effect in relatively new territory.
There's just something about Perc's bass. Not just here either, just in general. When I think of capital-I Industrial Techno, Perc tends to be the first artist that comes to mind. Like everything he sources is a machine breaking in tempo with the mood of the track. And in this case, a perfect tone for a post-lockdown world seemingly unsure of what to do with itself.
Oh Josh Tillman, you just won't let me quit you. Every time, I'm convinced he's been a hack this whole time and that insufferable personality will be seen through by yours truly this time around. But this nine-minute opening track, a concept that sounds on pace to be his most unbearable choice yet, only reaffirms that maybe he's always been as talented as our teenage selves once proclaimed him to be.
On a Various Artists release featuring a ton of my favorite electronic artists over the years putting together some of their coolest material, the highlight ends up being from someone I know very little about in Maya Q. I might just be a sucker for vocal samples, but God if this one isn't worn well.
SZA might be easy to appreciate on the basis of an exceptional singing voice and grasp on melody, but the thing that really push her over the top for me is her surprising melancholy and self-reflection turning to observations that are as poetic and elevated as they are accessible and human. If anything, she feels like the genre's ultimate tragic figure, rarely flexing and mostly yearning.
A painfully repetitive song on an album of painfully repetitive songs. In the context of the album, I mean that as a criticism. In the context of this specific song however, it is VERY much a compliment. Whereas she tended to get stuck on limp musical ideas on the full project, 'Underdressed at the Symphony' spirals with its hook as more and more instruments build and layer its meaning into something gorgeously miserable and stark even for Webster's own standards.
This song's inclusion and high placement is a bit of a surprise even to me. I liked Bock's work with Goat Girl well enough I suppose, but her general sound is hard for me to parse from her peers generally-speaking. But maybe that's my closed-mindedness, because this track knocks me off my feet. The saxophone gets me invested, but it's Bock's vocals as the song culminates that win me over. Nothing hits me quite like an emotive voice crack.
Sometimes you find something and you don't know where it came from or how it got there. This droning, piercing, nearly nine-minute folk track got dug up by a few of the left-field publications overseas and somehow stumbled onto my radar as well. I believe I mentioned Lankum earlier in this list, but this is absolutely something you'd hear in any decent "Something Similar" playlist or station. Well worth the patience once the drone finally breaks and splits into something transcendent.
Pratt's always been an artist lost to some half-remembered time, not so much a specific decade, but rather the iconography as it morphs into something newer and more distinct from just another influence. Here, Pratt strays further back than she's seemingly ever have before, while somehow avoiding pastiche entirely.
Invites a similarly primal urge in me that was once reserved for the works of Burial. Densely layered, yet so easy on the ears. Yet another victim of the streaming curse, meaning you won't find this one on the playlist provided below either. Instead, you'll have to seek it out for yourself by clicking the embed above. Trust me on this one. And STAY UNTIL THE END. One of the best drops I can imagine a general "chillout" vibe could ever conjure.
I've talked about a few speaker-breakers already on this list (d.silvestre, Polar Inertia), and while this isn't the most intense of the bunch, it will put your sound system to the test. I can't remember the last time I've heard sub-bass this deep and this wide-sounding. An entire world within one track. The whole album is stellar for that, but this is my pick for the most atmospheric and the most earth-shaking, a terrifying combination in the wrong hands. Will likely kill your Corolla if you let it.
I'll stand by Beirut being a consistently incredible artist largely shafted as an indie legacy act. They nearly topped my 2023 list with Hadsel's title track, and while I still consider their debut album to be their brightest moment, the push toward more lush production is a worthy journey to take. A sad, haunted, stunning little song scoring a... circus, I think? But doctor, I am Pagliacci.
The quiet behind-the-scenes return of the mysterious Jai Paul, one that made a few waves but evaded most of the sort of people who'd be looking out for such a thing in the first place. I certainly wouldn't call it identical to Paul's own work, yet it scratches that same itch without calling too much attention to the stranglehold it takes on your mood. Yet another instance of a tasteful throwback that sees restraint as a benefit rather than as a given.
In terms of favorite vocal delivery of the year, Katie Crutchfield singing "and I implant all your ideas on mine" shows how even a single vowel can express so much. And then following that up later with "and I know that you can't read my mind", which hurts because I've been trying to convince people I could do that for ages now. A song you could fit into country radio effortlessly despite the majority of its listeners not knowing what the hell she's waffling about. I know that, because I don't know what she's waffling about either. But it's concrete enough that the images she sings about are fun to piece together and try to make sense of.
Okay, I get it, you're upset because you spoiled the list for yourself and a certain neo-psych duo didn't make the list proper (they are in the honorable mentions though, if that makes you feel better.) I understand people adored that album which I will not name for fear of angering the indie Gods, but it just didn't have the sort of standouts I thought their debut did. Meanwhile, Night Tapes at around the same point in time dropped yet another EP and I feel it captures that sound much more consistently to me. I honestly just consider the melodies much tighter and the vocals a bit less grating. I can't say which one I believe inspired the other, but despite a number of great tracks from you-know-who, I'm siding with Night Tapes once their debut LP drops in September and the debates turn into Bonnaroo fistfights.
Where did THIS come from? I know Hamish Hawk has been building momentum over the years, but I did not expect my first impression of him to be this sleazy, this nocturnal, this darkly funny, and most of all, this brazen. Not speaking of 'Autobiography of Spy' specifically, moreso the whole album it comes from. But yes, 'Autobiography of Spy' is my pick for the cleverest of the bunch. I love those stark rhymes that the listener can try and predict, only to half the time get subverted by something smarter than you'd think it'd be. Sex to Hamish Hawk is a strategy and a difference maker, and the way his mind centers on it is so self-aware that it comes back around to becoming another mystery.
A Montreal duo unfairly ignored by those who, unlike me, didn't ask random Redditors for obscure recommendations in the process of making this very list. How inconsiderate of them. Honestly, I thought I hated this sort of yacht rock sensibility, but maybe my parents had a point this whole time. Clearly these guys know how to hit all the pop essentials in excess, even if one of their members looks suspiciously like the Gamer Gear Guy from Dust Off.
I talk about these tempo changes with those who will listen like your uncle talks to his buddies about Steely Dan. Having your brain readjust to these shifts so comfortably is an absurd achievement for something so casual-sounding. I got this as a recommendation and otherwise know little to nothing about Morphy as an artist, besides I think Rolling Stone doing a piece about her at one point. I don't believe she even has many other songs yet, let alone a full-length project. My mind can't really handle that possibility, so I choose to reject it instead.
I feel like an idiot for saying this doesn't sound like a Gnod song. What does a Gnod song even sound like anymore? I guess somewhere between Swans-style noise/punk rock and heavy psych jam band-y stuff? This track is entirely leaning toward the latter, though they haven't strayed this far in that direction in what feels like ages. I can't even really recall the last time they sounded this... ethereal? I adore the vocals buried so deeply in the distance.
I already loved this song in the context of the album, but that bonkers music video might be my favorite of the whole year. Maybe the whole decade. How do you even commission something like this? Yet I love how deliriously it fits a song as operatic and as striking as this one. Even with her exceptional work with Portishead kept in mind, this might be my favorite thing Gibbons has ever done. And if not, it's surely up there.
I love Not Like Us in spite of its overplay and occasional clunker line ("the Other Vaginal Option"), I love Meet the Grahams despite that weird digression about Drake's hypothetical daughter who has yet to be proven even exists, and I love Squabble Up despite him threatening to fight me throughout its duration. But with the benefit of hindsight, Euphoria is the perfect melding of all those tracks' strengths into something that's aggressive, playful, and most of all, very funny. ("Some shit just cringeworthy, it ain't even gotta be deep I guess.")
Make fun of me all you want. I heard this song before I knew it was already becoming a hit, or that Tommy Richman is a rather lame-looking white guy, or that any hit song will inevitably receive haters who say that the singer sounds like Mickey Mouse or something along those lines. But for me, this is all about the influence of Brent Faiyaz coming to fruition with an associate who finally pushes the charts. I like a lot of the Faiyaz songs, and I reallyyyy like what Richman does with that sound. And sure, the album that followed was a bit of a let down, but all of the non-album singles I thought were awesome. If anything, I hope that in addition to Richman honing his own craft, we can break Faiyaz back in alongside him. I like that guy.
"Oh, you mean the girl who blew up on TikTok right?" Buddy, you're on Neocities, does it look like I keep up with TikTok trends? If anything, I learn about these trends after they affect me indirectly, which does admittedly happen more times than I'm willing to confess. I have to assume the growing zoomer (not derogatory) interest in bossa nova stylings comes from that one Backyardigans video essay. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Plus Flores has been doing this for over half a decade now, so she's had time to refine her sound within this unique melding of genres. She really does have the voice for it, practically perfect for a song that seems like an absolute nightmare to nail. Pop music is all the more fun when it does unexpected things within its understood conventions, and this is a good example of that I feel.
This was my number one for the mid-year list, and really up until the last minute any of the top five songs here could have been the number one pick on this list too. Fratti increasingly astounds me with her innovations in the realms of pop, folk, and electroacoustic, making her in my humble opinion one of the best living musicians despite only having a decade up until this point to prove it. The last minute of this track in particular is beyond description for me.
I find it funny how Chappell Roan got all the Kate Bush comparisons when Kinsley feels like the much more obvious send-up. That airy percussion and almost yodelling vocals on the chorus especially feels very much in Bush's own wheelhouse. I predicted after Kinsley's prior EP that her full-length debut would bring her into a new stratosphere, though unfortunately critics largely ignored her exceptional work up until this point despite it, of course, getting some virality on that one app everyone uses. She even got an appearance on 'The Kelly Clarkson Show'. My mom watches that! Also I'm pretty sure most people who know me predicted that this would be my number one, so hopefully they didn't bet money on it.
Some songs are just so beautiful that they remind me of Christmas – as if this deeply embedded and romanticized childlike innocence is a beauty I tie specifically to the holidays. Maybe it's the feeling of returning to what you once knew, and what you might remember (or wish to remember) fondly. I'm not sure any group exemplifies that better than the seemingly timeless The Innocence Mission, somehow landing that feeling directly since... 1982??? There's no way that can be right.
No. No, I don't know who Storefront Church is. Apparently his name is Lukas Frank, who was once a drummer for the band Kitten (who I also do not know), and this song in particular comes from his second full-length album under the Storefront Church name. I see a nerdy-looking guy in glasses with the chamber/baroque pop tag and assume it's going to be another Windmill Scener trying to sound like one of their principal artists. And instead, here's something more orchestral, more organically suspenseful, more uniquely explosive and beautiful beyond the sort of ironies I tend to associate with other bands and artists trying to reach this size in their sound. Would a Radiohead comparison be a little corny? The song's second half is remarkably Thom Yorke... and you can take that for granted if you'd like, but most of us at least know what it's like when Radiohead takes us over that wall of sound for the first time. Even if you think you've outgrown that sensibility, this loser from Los Angeles of all places reminds you that there's still peaks you have yet to discover.
If you enjoy this stupid list of stupid songs, you can also find me on Letterboxd, Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, or even in your home if you invite me. An (almost) full playlist is provided below, including the many honorable mentions I had to cut in the process. If something you love didn't make it, maybe you'll find it there. If not, you probably just didn't recommend it to me hard enough. Any tracks from the main list or in the honorable mentions not already on Spotify should be listed in the playlist description.
