March 31, 2025

The Best of Q1 2025

March 31, 2025/ The Swim Team

In 2025, I think it’s become clear to pretty much everyone how nefarious the tech industry is. All the major social media platforms are owned by oligarchs, actively pushing narratives that benefit them, silencing dissent, and forcing users into isolated echo chambers of a uniquely hellish making. AI-generated slop has proliferated every corner of the internet, from braindead comment-generating bots and nonsensical recipe introductions to a snowballing quantity of deadening content designed to keep you scrolling forever and ever. Every move is being tracked, reported on, and sent back to some advertiser who’s going to try to squeeze another couple of pennies out of you for a new-and-improved dish soap tailored specifically to you and your ideals.

In a way, it’s a hell of our own hyper-customized making, but also one we’re utterly helpless to as the current of technology transfers power further and further up. It’s fascinating and frustrating to have watched the internet evolve from this place of wonder and near-limitless potential to an ad-sponsored wasteland where only the rich and the stupid survive.

To that end, I’ve never found it more important to log off and experience the real world. To touch grass and stare at water, to keep my nose in a book and my head on the positives. When I am logged on, I try my best to seek out things made by real people. I’ve found great comfort and camaraderie in newsletters, music, and the carefully considered creations of friends. It’s never been more important to be intentional about the things you interact with. To question the recommendations of the algorithm and ask, ‘Who is this benefiting?’ because, more often than not, you’ll find that it’s something terrible if you follow that chain for long enough.

Jesus, I didn’t mean for this to be such a bummer. This is all a long and slightly dour way for me to say that I see a great deal of worth in genuine recommendations from real people, and that’s exactly what this round-up offers. Part of me dislikes that I instituted a quarterly cadence for recapping our favorite new releases because it makes me sound like a dumb business bro. Stocks were down in Q1. Feeling bullish on alt-country. Sell all your ownership in shoegaze. That’s just not how music works. The title of this article might seem silly, but honestly, it’s just a way for us to make a case for our favorite releases of the year so far in hopes that you find something new to enjoy.

Sure, we’re only a few months into 2025, but the dedicated crew of music geeks that make up the Swim Team have found no shortage of records to love. It’s a fast-moving world, and we want to help you keep up by giving you something new and fresh to obsess over. Every Friday, I find about a dozen new records I want to listen to, and I almost never get to them all, but that ever-elusiveness is part of the game. You find a bunch; you love a few. What follows are 18 recommendations from 18 of our writers. That’s 18 records made by real people that are worth your time and effort and money and love.

Fuck your algorithm, trust your heart. Thanks for being here.

Anxious – Bambi

It feels like whenever I’m writing a Swim Into The Sound “Best Of” entry, it’s for some band on Run For Cover. I'm still not sure if Bambi is my favorite record of the year (the new Cloakroom, Spiritbox, and Art d’Ecco are fantastic), but it's certainly the one I've gone back to the most, thanks to its unique blend of indie-rock and emo inspirations. It's hilarious to listen to this mostly melodic record and think about how, just five years ago, I was watching Anxious open for Knuckle Puck and had to actively avoid stage divers and crowd killers. That's not to say you won't find those in 2025, but with songs like “Some Girls” and my personal favorite, “Jacy,” in a tracklist like this, nestled alongside “Head & Spine,” you get the best of all worlds. This is the sound of a band maturing, and not in a bad way.

– Samuel Leon

Caroline Rose – year of the slug

When I think of Caroline Rose, I picture the cover of LONER, which depicts a vacant-eyed Rose staring off into the middle distance with a mouth crammed full of cigarettes like that one file photo of Homer Simpson. That album was one of the best releases of 2018: a red-washed indie rock release packed with wildly inventive songs, fun music videos, and an excess of personality. I liked 2020’s Superstar a fair bit, but by the time The Art of Forgetting came out in 2023, it felt like something had been lost in the equation.

year of the slug scales things back in the most wondrous way, reminiscent of that free-ranging invention I first fell in love with back in 2018, even though it sounds much different. Self-recorded entirely through Garageband on their phone, most of these songs are sparse and simple, featuring only guitar, vocals, and Rose’s uncanny knack for uncovering a melody. There’s some ornamentation: the occasional multi-tracked vocal, drum loop, or piano dirge, but in comparison to Rose’s previous albums, everything is paired back in a way that’s striking and remarkably catchy.

When announcing the album, Caroline Rose posted something of a mission statement, outlining their desire to live life more slug-like. Through these constraints: self-recording, self-releasing, avoiding streaming services, exclusively touring independent venues, and pairing things back to the absolute bare minimum, Rose has created an immaculate and inspirational collection of songs that stand on their own as a testament to pure, artistic creativity. Thank you, Uncle Carol.

– Taylor Grimes

Cloakroom – Last Leg of the Human Table

When our editor put out the call for Swim’s Q1 roundup, I ran to claim Cloakroom’s Last Leg of the Human Table as fast as my fingers could type. This moving, variegated album has had me and my colleagues buzzing since its release – its vast emotional depth and intensely satisfying density have proven that Cloakroom just keeps getting better. The opening track, “The Pilot,” is a soaring and spacey anthem that I unabashedly claim as my favorite off of the album. Heavy without being overwhelming or cluttered, I’m calling it now as the song of the summer. Though Last Leg of the Human Table stays true to the band’s shoegaze-y, self-described “stoner emo” sound, the album also proves Cloakroom’s range with the thoughtfully strummed “Bad Larry” and the wistful interlude “On Joy and Undeserving.” When I need a hit of pure dopamine, I’ll be cranking Cloakroom at max volume with the windows down.

– Britta Joseph

Coheed and Cambria – The Father of Make Believe

When it’s a Coheed and Cambria release year, I tend to make the joke that no other album stands a chance. This is mostly because Coheed has been my favorite band for well over the last decade, and that’s just the expectation at this point, but there is always the fear in the back of my mind that this will be the album of theirs that doesn’t resonate for me. Fortunately, this is not the case with the band’s (somehow) eleventh studio album and the third act of the Vaxis saga, in which Coheed comes back stronger than ever, delivering possibly my favorite of the three. The hints were all there, but realizing this was secretly a third Afterman record not only satisfied the part of me that loves referential themes but produced some of my new favorite Coheed experiences like this album’s acoustic slow burn “Corner My Confidence.” The Father of Make Believe reminds me exactly what I adore about this band, specifically in bringing back their epic, album-ending suites, as well as continuing to lock in their tried and true formulas, arresting rhythm section, and grandiose, operatic sequencing. Despite alluding to the eventual ending of the band in their new pop ballad “Goodbye, Sunshine,” I truly hope Coheed continues to produce these kickass, sci-fi epics for as long as possible.

– Ciara Rhiannon

Denison Witmer – Anything At All

I really hope Denison Witmer finally gets his flowers. Witmer’s been making thoughtful and contemplative folk songs for almost 30 years, and I’ve been a fan for almost 20. I saw him play the student center at my Christian college in the year of our Lord 2005; he played simple solo folk songs about sleeping, dreaming, and longing, and I was never the same.

Anything At All was recorded and produced by Witmer’s longtime friend and collaborator, Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan is only credited as a featured artist on two of the ten songs, but his voice and musical fingerprints are everywhere. Witmer’s writing seems to focus mostly on the intersection of the mundane and the divine: trying to be a good dad and husband, working in the garden, planting trees, dealing with self-doubt, questioning what sort of life we’re living and what sort of legacy we’re leaving, reconciling the smallness and the existential largeness of middle-aged domestic life. Maybe it’s the fact that I turn 40 this year, but honestly, these are the sort of songs my soul longs for. It’s good shit! If you like Anything At All, check out 2020’s American Foursquare and 2005’s Are You A Dreamer?

– Ben Sooy

Fust – Big Ugly

In a world full of new artists that you NEED to know about, the simple solution to the glut is to look to North Carolinian photographer and musician Charlie Boss, who seems to be best friends with some of the most important musicians of our day. Charlie’s work introduced me to the Durham, NC band Fust, and for that, I am forever thankful.

I only moved to the South three years ago, but gah-lee, if Fust’s Big Ugly don't make me feel like I was born with a Mountain Dew in each hand. Aaron Dowdy’s writing about the South spoke to a newcomer like me in ways that caught me off guard. Big Ugly guides me down through kudzu-covered hollers and helps to remind me just how beautiful it is down here. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about “Spangled,” the lead single and lead track of the album, which takes you soaring down dotted highway lines and over dilapidated buildings, all while the structure of the song itself steadily turns into an Appalachian free association. Big Ugly goes on to oscillate between Springsteen-style power ballads and sharp songs of yearning. It is an album of beauty, humor, and truth-telling. If I could have any superpower, it might be to have whatever Fust band leader Aaron Dowdy has. It might just be better than flying.

– Kirby Kluth

Jaye Jayle – After Alter

Evan Patterson is already underway ruling my first quarter listens in 2025, most recently with Power Sucker, the new Young Widows album and the band’s first in eleven years. On top of that, there’s After Alter, the latest offering from his solo project Jaye Jayle, which kicked off the year with a thunderous punch back in January. It’s a heavy and dynamic release that continues Patterson’s tradition of recontextualizing sludge metal into the singer/songwriter realm, channeling the more intimate moments of artists like Nick Cave, Neurosis, and Swans. The rhythmic drones of tracks like “Father Fiction” and “Doctor Green” are emotional and entrancing, dark ballads for doomful druids. After Alter’s final moments are introduced with a seven-minute rendition of The Beatles’ “Help!” done in a way only Jaye Jayle can do and doesn’t sound out of place with the rest of the record at all. It’s one of Patterson’s finest works to date in an already prolific catalog worth celebrating.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Men I Trust – Equus Asinus

I think a lot about how Christopher Nolan had Clémence Poésy, who appears in one sequence of Tenet to “explain” the time-bending mechanisms of the sci-fi spy masterpiece, tell the Protagonist and audience: “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.” Tenet is a vibes movie, one to ride with and luxuriate in, one to let the craft wash over you and feel it rip you away.

Men I Trust’s albums are vibes records. They lure you in with sultry, lounging grooves, but on Equus Asinus, the songs are full of aching. Aching to feel like you did before, aching to return. These aren’t the sweet dreams that earned dream-pop its genre tag; these are the dreams of Twin Peaks. So close to being reality, but with one glaring, off-kilter element that knocks you off balance. It’s in the warm creak of the piano on the closer, “What Matters Most.” In “All My Candles” questions of what our time even amounts to. In the mud, we come with and come from. In the melodramatic instrumental on “Paul’s Theme,” which would fit perfectly over Shinji psychically breaking in the back half of Neon Genesis Evangelion. One set of lyrics repeatedly asks in French: “Little man, what do you want?”

You feel it too, don’t you?

– Lillian Weber

Midcard – Sick

Growing up in a no-stoplight town in Montana, my world was saturated with the podunk culture of rural life in the American West, so I denounced country music on principle, opting for my version of things that felt rebellious (pop-punk, metalcore, screamo, etc.). It’s only been in the past several years that I’ve had a redemptive journey with twangy music by way of country-tinged emo rock, and Midcard from Austin, TX, is one of my favorite bands doing it. I’ve been a fan since “BMI” made me cry real tears in 2023, and this new EP is my favorite thing they’ve done. The southernness is apparent, but there’s not even a hint of affectation in these indie punk songs that land somewhere between the last couple Hotelier records, early Manchester Orchestra, and 90’s alt-rock in the vein of Everclear. What hits especially hard for me are the lyrics, tender and pissed off in equal measure, often flirting with cynicism, with plenty of wit and passion to cut the acid. There are gang vocals, tappy emo riffs, dudes yelling, “Woo!” before guitar solos, panic chords, an all-time great diss about “very publicly misunderstand[ing] The Catcher in the Rye,” and none of it feels anything less than earnest. Rock music.

– Nick Webber

Oldstar – Of the Highway

Back in February, Oldstar’s Zane McLaughlin posted on the band’s blog about recording Of the Highway and said, “Oldstar went Hi-Fi, is what the critics will say, all three of them.” Well, I’m a critic, and I am here to say they went Hi-Fi, and it’s fantastic.

Even with a full band, a new home in New York City, and a real-deal recording studio, the melancholia of Florida’s Oldstar still weaves through the album. The band deals in lyrical storytelling, with McLaughlin recalling conversations or tall tales, all over songs that lean into a country twang (“Wake Me”), alt-rock fuzz (“Nail”), or blend both seamlessly (“Alabama”). Oldstar is a band that I wanted to make a huge album, and I am so happy they did. It’s getting warm again, so go find a chair outside, crack a beer, watch the sunset, and listen to this.

– Caro Alt

Pink Must – Pink Must

Pink Must, the collaboration between Mario Rubio, aka more eaze, and Lynn Avery, two of the most delightfully eclectic musicians in American experimental music, is straightforward. Well, in a way. What started as a process of sending demos back and forth, trying to make a grunge album, eventually clicked into place once both relocated to New York City. Two specialists in pulled-and-stretched compositions united to craft an album of AutoTuned alt-rock songs. What sets Pink Must apart from potential pastiche is total commitment and earnestness. Exploratory tendencies aren’t sanded down; they are poured into the space permeating these songs, surrounding warbled poetry, guitar riffs, and mirage-like full band grooves (everything was recorded and performed by Rubio and Avery). Six-minute lead single “Himbo” unfolds into ambiance and guitar strums, only slightly hinting at its creators’ oeuvres. Pink Must is one of the year’s best rock albums, inverting tropes, sounds, and expectations and making something special, making something unique.

– Aly Eleanor

Pyre – This Is How We Lose Fullness

I, like many of us, have been waiting for the album of 2025 that feels like it will help me soundtrack all this absurdity. Cloakroom certainly has done a great job, but when I finished my first listen of This Is How We Lose Fullness, a very frantic energy that had been pinging around my bones and muscle finally seemed to have dissipated through and out of me like Hawking radiation, but for bad vibes. Pyre’s potent blend of screamo, hardcore, and emo mechanics create an invisible latticework of gyres and pulleys, riffs seizing guitars, vocals drawn to bass thrums, drums propelling gang vocals like a moonshot. Force as we know it and (barely) understand it exists in This Is How We Lose Fullness; its inexorable pull, push, and grasp all feel so physically present that you’d think the album was actually shaking you. From the vile clarion call of the album opener to its final quieting death rattle, Pyre have nailed the feeling of our current doomscrolling existence while you urgently battle your growing need to claw at your face from the madness of it all. But hey, you know what they say: A body for the pyre, pile it on and get on with it.

– Elias Amini

Rose Gray – Louder, Please

This one’s for all my fellow pop princesses out there. My brats, my partygirls, my club rats. Lovers of all things Charli XCX and Tove Lo.

Rose Gray’s Louder, Please honestly had me at the album cover – something about the harsh lighting, the face-melting scream on Gray’s face, the beach, the red hair. She charmed me even before the first song. I was then pleasantly surprised to see that the image on the cover completely matched the vibes of the music upon hearing the thumping club banger opener “Damn.” The East Londoner (and Harris Dickinson’s long-term girlfriend? Okay queen, go off) channeled her underground rave roots throughout her sophomore album, mixing EDM and dance-pop with anthemic hooks to create a record that feels like one big, whirlwind night out. B-side sleeper “Everything Changes (But I Won’t)” is already primed to be my top song of the year. Gray’s vocals are the perfect mix of detached and all-consuming, making her songs that much more enticing. And she was certainly citing her sources: songwriting credits include the guitarist for Cobra Starship, Ryland Blackinton, on “Angel of Satisfaction” and synth-pop “Pop the Glock” queen Uffie on “Just Two.” The season change makes this the perfect album to add to your hot summer rooftop pregame playlist.

– Cassidy Sollazzo

Saba and No I.D. – From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.

I’ve listened to many great albums this year, but none had me running it back over and over and over again like this one; I probably listened through the full thing about six times the day that it dropped. When people talk about No I.D. these days, a lot of focus is put on the way he’s mentored and influenced other artists, and though that is a huge part of his legacy, I feel like more needs to be said about the fact that he’s still one of the best producers in the game. The beats on this record wrap themselves around you; you can live in them, and they stand up alongside almost anything else in his impressive body of work. Pair that up with Saba, one of Chicago’s greatest storytellers, laying down some of his best verses since Care for Me, and the result is just a beautiful record. The features are all great too, particularly MFnMelo on “Westside Bound Pt. 4,” an absolute gem of a track. I know that I mostly write about emo music, and the people reading this are probably primarily emo listeners, but even if rap isn’t something you listen to regularly, I’d implore you to check this one out (that goes double if you’re from or live in Chicago). Anytime two titans like this link up, it’s a blessing, and though it’s still early, it’s tough for me to imagine anything else coming this year that can top this one. So happy that we have this.

– Josh Ejnes

Tobacco City – Horses

Chicago’s Tobacco City is alt-country in look alone, with mustaches, rattails, and arms full of tattoos, but when the music starts, they deliver pure Conway and Loretta. They are as swingin’-doors a saloon band as Merle Haggard’s Strangers. There’s nothing really “alt” about it; their country sound is authentic and captivating, and their melodies and instrumentation are as unique as they are antique. Horses, their second LP, is more distilled country than their first, and the band has built on that original sound. The songs are airtight, and the lyrics are true 21st-century Americana—strip malls, late-night diners, and struggle. The heroes of the album, without question, are the dual harmonies of bandleader Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard, as well as the pedal steel stylings of Andy “Red” PK. Coleslaw has a classically deadpan-style country voice, like Waylon Jennings or Jay Farrar. Goddard’s heavenly voice laces and loops around like Emmylou Harris or Miranda Lambert. When their voices meet in harmony, they reach a truly ethereal plane. Red lays down pedal steel somewhere between Jerry Garcia on Workingman’s Dead and Lloyd Maines on Anodyne—and he joins Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis as a titan of the Pedal Steel Moment.

– Caleb Doyle

The Tubs – Cotton Crown

The best export to come out of Wales since Gareth Bale, jangle pop quartet The Tubs have created an album that has already made a permanent home in my rotation for 2025 and further. The songs are packed to the brim with energetic, uptempo guitar strokes to circumvent the melancholy, glum lyrics of vocalist Owen Williams. Williams’ deep, love-scorned voice is a soothing siren that comforts you while he spills his guts out about lost relationships and the tragic, untimely death of his mother. Cotton Crown is a fascinating case study in successfully masking the deeply personal lyrics of Williams that oftentimes venture into darkness with a bright, sunny disposition of music. “Narcissist” and “Strange” will have you feeling like Otto Rocket while surfing on nonstop waves of jangle pop guitar strings. Cotton Crown doesn’t possess a dull moment in its brief twenty-nine-minute runtime. The Tubs have the energy of a spiked Celsius drink with the passion of a grief-stricken poet, making this an instant favorite of mine.

– David Williams

wakelee – Doghouse

Brooklyn indie-emo trio wakelee appeared to me in a particularly ferocious doomscrolling session on TikTok. The band’s video snuck in a substantial three seconds of screentime before I swiped up to feed my ever-insatiable brain rot. However, in those three seconds, the unit introduced some of my favorite music of the year thus far. Doghouse, released on February 7th, is the band at their most confident and commanding.

Ironically, the song that piqued my interest during that fateful doomscrolling bout was track one, “mildlyinteresting.” Starting inquisitively with a hazy arpeggio, the jarring, fat guitar chords kick in before the captivating opening verse strikes. The track explicates vocalist/guitarist Alex Bulmer’s (and clearly my) noxious dependence on being online. The song will not only have you returning for an ungodly amount of repeat listens but also dwelling on all the times you shut the blinds and sought strangers’ advice on Quora.

Equally as catchy but largely less upbeat is the ensuing track, “Bangkok.” Following the same arpeggiated intro as the initial track, it’s here that wakelee takes a much more reclusive and introspective route. Driven by melancholic vocals and guitar melodies, the track paints pictures of leaving relationships with wounds. Hemorrhaging and haunting, Bulmer musters, “It’s not fair, I wish that you could be here.” The rest of the EP is just as fantastic – from more delicate, pensive tracks like “Doghouse” to the alt-rock-dunked anthem, “Gary’s Outcome.” Combining aspects of acts like Remo Drive, Pinegrove, and oso oso, wakelee’s Doghouse is required listening in 2025.

– Brandon Cortez

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds

It’s rare to find a new release that genuinely opens your mind, expanding possibilities of what’s viable within a genre, but YHWH Nailgun do just that on 45 Pounds. Between Sam Pickard’s frantic drumming and Zach Borzone’s delivery that falls in a liminal space between whimpers, grunts, and screams, the rest of the band is left to inject whatever jagged pieces of melody they can. The result is 20 minutes of some of the strangest punk music I’ve heard in my life. Guitars and synthesized noise echo in response to each hollow drum fill, like sheet metal crumpling in response to the hits of a hammer. The individual components sound mechanical, but together, they twitch in ways that feel disturbingly lifelike. As Borzone sputters out seemingly every fear, delusion, or revelation that crosses his mind, a soul makes itself known. Is it pretty? Almost never. Do I dare look away? Not on your life.

– Wes Cochran

February 14, 2025

Heart Sweats: A Swim Into The Sound Valentine’s Day Mixtape

February 14, 2025/ The Swim Team

Rip open that box of chocolates, pour that red wine, and grab some chalky heart-shaped candies, ‘cause we’ve got a lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day roundup for all you hopeless romantics out there. In celebration of the most amorous holiday, we asked the Swim Team about their most memorable music moment tied to their love life–it could be something that made their heart melt, something that made them cringe with embarrassment, or a song that played during a confession of love that they’ll never forget. Regardless, we wanted to hear about those moments when the music stuck an irreversible chord with their heart.

Here’s a playlist of each song as a little Valentine’s Day mixtape from The Swim Team to you. I strongly encourage you to listen along as you read and enjoy the happy-accident tonal whiplash in the sequencing. We hope you have a love-filled Valentine’s Day, please have an extra chocolate-covered strawberry in our honor ❤️

Death Cab for Cutie – “Passenger Seat”

The road from Southern Illinois University to Missouri Baptist University is about 40 minutes. Maybe 35 when you speed down the highways in your Ford Focus. It was a route I became deeply familiar with in 2008. My now-husband was studying to be an engineer, and I was getting a communications degree I had no clue what to do with. We’d spend hours together watching stupid comedies in his dorm room before I would sneak out to try to make it back before the 10 PM Baptist curfew. I spent those autumn trips diving into albums, but the one I always came back to was Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism. I would queue up the title track as I started the drive, but I always slowed my car down the second it turned to “Passenger Seat.” As if obeying the song, I would roll the windows down and watch the deer of the campus fields look up at my headlights before returning to their indifferent grazing. The smell of crisp autumn leaves and bummed American Spirits would flood my car as I made my way through the empty streets. Then, once the song was over, I would hit repeat.

Death Cab would come to play a big part in those early months of our relationship. He even asked me out with a ticket to their Narrow Stairs show, and if he judged me for crying throughout the set, he never showed it. This year will mark our 14th year of marriage, and with that comes 14 years of changes, most of which are good. We’re wildly different people than we were our freshman year in college. Yet the second I hear those opening piano keys, I’m back on the road in my busted Focus, smiling as the leaves fall down around the deer of the field.

– Lindsay Fickas

Less Than Jake – “The Rest of My Life”

When I was in middle school, I had a big crush on one of my neighbors. We’d hang out a lot, but things never really took a romantic turn. Whenever anything happened that reinforced the fact that we’d likely never be a couple—be it her getting a new boyfriend or saying that she wasn’t interested in hanging on a particular day—I’d go into my room and blast this song on loop while fantasizing about moving to a different neighborhood where there was a neighbor who loved me back. I would never have admitted this back then—both because it’s very pathetic and because my appreciation of “The Rest of My Life” ran counter to my stance that Less Than Jake were traitors for abandoning ska to make milquetoast pop-punk—but now I’m ready to tell the truth. Also, for the record, I don’t think I ever actually believed what I was saying about Less Than Jake being traitors for their stylistic shifts; it’s just the sort of thing that’s fun to say when you’re 13 (though I was hyped when GNV FLA came out and they brought the horns back).

– Josh Ejnes

Talking Heads – “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”

In the summer of 2014, I lived in Richmond, Virginia. My wife and I had been married for almost 3 years, and we had just moved away from Denver in order to reinvent our lives in a new city. We lived in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood, and I was making 26 thousand dollars a year working for a non-profit. We had no money, no friends (because we were in a new city), and no real idea about the future and what shape it would take. Spotify had recently gotten a real hold on me, and I was rediscovering my love of making playlists. One playlist I made that summer was just 60 minutes of different covers of “This Must Be The Place.” I remember us dancing around our small apartment, trying desperately to figure out how to execute the logistics of “sing into my mouth.” I don’t know, man. Every year with Kate, I think I understand that song more and work to be in love that way even more deeply. Will you love me till my heart stops? Love me till I’m dead. Eyes that light up, eyes look through you. Cover up the blank spots, hit me on the head.

– Ben Sooy

Ezra Furman – “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend”

Perhaps it’s a bit obvious to use this song to ask out a girl, but I’ve never been one to catch subtlety, so when I got a message from my future wife with this song in it, I, of course, still had to be sure she was saying what I thought she was. Unfamiliar with Ezra Furman, a transgender woman making punk that falls between Laura Jane Grace and PUP, I quickly looked up the lyrics to the song. After all, you don’t want to accidentally miss that the third verse could be sarcastic and mean the opposite of what it appears on its face. Thankfully, I found no such thing and quickly said yes as I read the lyrics, “That’s right, little old me, I want to be your girlfriend and blow your mind each night when you come home.” Subtle, it was not. Having gotten caught up in the energy of the moment, I didn’t actually listen to the song and wouldn’t for weeks. Less than a year later, I married the girl. I’m happy to call myself a fan of Ezra Furman’s now, with this song being particularly heartwarming as a moment I can share with my wife every time it comes up on a playlist or album listen.

– Noëlle Midnight

Car Seat Headrest – “Beach-Life-In-Death” Live at the Royale in Boston

On this day in 2019, I was staring at Will Toledo.

In the second semester of my sophomore year of college, I was fresh off a breakup when my friend threw out that we should see Car Seat Headrest when they came through Boston. It was an immediate ‘yes’ for three reasons: I love my friend and would do whatever with them, Car Seat Headrest was the most important band to me in college, and I needed to hear “Beach-Life-In-Death” live. The show was on Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember much of the show, honestly. I remember the opener sucked, I remember a crowd surfer dropping directly into my friend’s arms, and I remember piles of college kids smoking Golds outside. But what I remember most fondly is waiting for “Beach-Life-In-Death.” I think it’s still my favorite song, but back then, it felt so big and so meaningful (it still does, so I guess that’s why it’s still my favorite). Which brings me back to the beginning of this. On this day in 2019, I was staring at Will Toledo, washed in a pink glow, with my friend, screaming the lyrics to my favorite song together. Love is so beautiful.

– Caro Alt

Sufjan Stevens – “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”

For someone who has largely built their life around music, I can’t make a playlist to save my life. I rarely listen to songs outside the context of albums, and if someone passes me the aux cable, Lord have mercy on the hapless souls trapped in the car with me: the vibes will be chaotic. If I were a wedding DJ, I’d have people bolting for the fire exits.

My wife Ellie learned this the summer of our first year dating. I flew out to visit her at her family’s place in Minnesota, and we decided to take a day trip to Duluth. We set out before sunrise, and since she was driving, she tasked me with music duties, requesting “peaceful early morning vibes,” which started out okay! Indie folk à la Gregory Alan Isakov, Iron & Wine, The Head and the Heart, First Aid Kit, coffee shop core (non-derogatory). And then I queued up a little ditty from Illinois by Sufjan Stevens: “Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!” In my mind, this was a perfect song for a Midwest road trip, but Ellie burst out laughing as soon as she heard that perky banjo and accordion cutting through the predawn tranquility. It’s an obvious misstep in retrospect, as we went from sweet whispery love songs to goofy rhymes about chickenmobiles and making amends with your stepmom. In any case, the vibes were totally off the rails from there; I unearthed our collaborative playlist on Spotify, and somehow, we ended up at “Guilty Cubicles,” a moody post-rock instrumental from Broken Social Scene’s debut.

This began a tradition of sabotaging drives by dropping “Decatur” in the middle of completely incompatible queues (it’s sort of my version of Rickrolling, specifically for my wife). Eight years later, it’s a sweet way to remember one of my favorite days with Ellie, just driving up the North Shore, sharing our favorite songs, and stopping at every lighthouse we could find.

– Nick Webber

Insane Clown Posse – “The Nedan Game”

TikTok has transformed my girlfriend into a Juggalette, which means she has pushed all her chips in on the court jesters of horrorcore, the Insane Clown Posse. How did this happen, you say? The culprit lies in the freshly painted face that goes by the username @carissadid. Carissa is a sight to behold as she metamorphosizes from human into clown while rapping seamlessly to a different ICP song in each video. I’m afraid a spell has been cast abound my girlfriend, as she has watched far too many of her posts and is past saving at this point. I fear one day I may be ambushed in my sleep with Violent J’s face paint on me or, even worse, Shaggy 2 Dope’s.

“The Neden Game,” which is my girlfriend’s favorite ICP song, is a crude humor spoof of the show The Dating Game. The track plays over in my head repeatedly like I’m trapped in some kind of vulgar clown P.O.W. camp that would have had Bozo turn in his red nose and oversized shoes. The song sounds like it would play at frat parties in between keg stands for degenerates. If you see me at this year's Gathering of the Juggalos festival, I have been held against my will in a Liam Neeson Taken-type situation. If this happens, please, someone call the F.B.I.

– David Williams

The Sidekicks – “A Short Dance” + “Don’t Feel Like Dancing”

For a relationship that’s more or less founded on a shared love of music, I find it odd that my girlfriend and I don’t have “a song.” There is no single piece of music that we can point to as “ours,” on the contrary, it’s more like we have the opposite problem: there have been far too many songs that feel like connective tissue throughout our three years together. I suppose when faced with hundreds of possible songs, dozens of back-and-forth playlists, and a seemingly unending spool of bands we’ve bonded over, it becomes hard to pare it down to just one entry.

Thus, this is but one pit stop in a densely populated field: the one-two punch of “A Short Dance” and “Don’t Feel Like Dancing” by The Sidekicks. Starting with the 48-second prelude, “A Short Dance,” is how so many relationships start: trepidatious and unsure–a nervous and unshakable energy as you psych yourself up for the big moment. You can imagine all the possible futures just as quickly as you can picture the stinging rejection. Either way, you find the courage to accept your fate and approach this person, ready for any outcome.

In comes “Don’t Feel Like Dancing,” a joyous explosion of love and adoration. Over sun-splotched major chords, Steve Ciolek explains how nothing in life (not dancing, not flowers, not even ridiculing dudes!) is as sweet as when you’re experiencing them with your person. Avoid the pit of nostalgia! Sip that mimosa! Fucking boogie! You can make excuses all you want; you’re gonna get pulled onto the dance floor no matter what.

– Taylor Grimes

Pup Punk – “My Real Girlfriend”

The first thing my now-partner ever said to me was, “Hey, nice shirt!” The second thing she ever said to me was a suicide pass. Pointing at her sister, she said, “Do you think we’re twins?” I correctly answered, “No?” and it’s been a love story ever since.

In the first 18 months of knowing her, we had 20 in-person days together. We met while I was briefly in Minnesota for a conference, but otherwise, I was studying abroad in France. We hit it off immediately, sending each other a playlist less than 24 hours after meeting (mine to her, hers to me) and dooming ourselves to a year and a half of extra-long distance FaceTime calls.

Nowadays, we’re much closer—just a short 8-hour drive away or 4 hours of airport and plane time! While we were on different continents, telling our friends about each other felt very much like this song: “She’s a model, you don’t know her // She lives in Minnesota where it’s colder // I’m in love and you’re not // My real girlfriend’s really hot.” The catch is she is really real—I swear! We have pictures together!

I look back on that time when we were so far apart and wonder how we ever did it. Ultimately, what made it possible, and what makes our relationship so strong, is complementary knowledge of pop-punk and emo music. That, and a strong foundation of mutual respect and shared love for all forms of music and humor or whatever.

– Braden Allmond

David Gray – “Please Forgive Me”

“We don’t have A Song, do we??” I had to text Emily.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think we do??? I’m ashamed..” she replied.

Surprising, and ironic, because so much of what we love about each other started with our taste in music. Hers isn’t exactly like mine, nor vice versa. But we love many of the same things, and we’ve opened each others’ worlds to new and different music. I now know about Modest Mouse’s deeper cuts, and she now knows whether ’91 or ’84 was a better year for the Grateful Dead (it’s ’91).

It’s a new relationship, though moving very quickly (we’ll be roommates in May!), and it has been built on vulnerability and honesty. Communication has been the number one factor in the initial success and comfort of our relationship. For two people who haven’t had the most luck in the past, this feels like our first adult relationship. We both feel totally at peace and have the liberty to speak our minds and lay bare our vulnerabilities.

“I will ALWAYS think of you sending me ‘Please Forgive Me’ by David Gray but idk if it’s *our* song. Just one of the first moments I remember being like oh shit, I’m so cooked,” she said.

“Please Forgive Me” is a song about falling deeply in love with someone fast and having to ask their forgiveness because you’re acting like an absolute freak. And that’s just perfect for us.

“Feels like lightning running through my veins / every time I look at you.”

– Caleb Doyle

Alanis Morissette – “You Oughta Know”

There are pros and cons to every romantic entanglement. With this one in particular, the pros were that he had fantastic music taste and was very funny, while the cons were that he refused to sing karaoke and was cheating on me. While we were together, he was in a Jagged Little Pill phase, and for a few weeks, we’d blast it every time we drove in his car. He, karaoke-averse, was always taunting me, a karaoke devotee, with a potential pick—“Okay, I think I’d actually do this one”—and “You Oughta Know” was his latest false promise. “I’d go up to a guy with a girl and sing ‘and are you thinking of me when you f— her” in his face as a bit,” he’d joke, flipping his hair.

Well, you mess with the cat, you get the claws, I think to myself in the karaoke bar a few months ago in Brooklyn, stepping up to finally lay his alleged pick in its grave. “And every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back, I hope you feel it,” I yelp to the room full of starry-eyed lesbians. Karaoke’s supposed to be light, and perhaps a little too much real rage seeped into my performance, but I think Alanis would understand. I hope he can’t hear her without feeling like shit, and I hope he’s thinking of me when….nvm.

– Katie Hayes

Antarctigo Vespucci– “Impossible to Place”

My relationship with Claire is full of false starts. We kept matching on Tinder for years as I reset my account, and finally went on two good dates at the start of our junior year in film school, which resulted in me ghosting her and dating another girl for a month.

Right after ending that interim relationship, I was out to dinner with my friends and scrolled on Instagram to see a photo of Claire. My spirit floated at the sight of her gentle smile, her beautiful black hair, and those sparkling eyes behind her tortoiseshell glasses, and I knew I wanted to rest my head against her leg forever. Two days later, we were on a kinda-first-kinda-third date for coffee. She viewed it as a revenge date, a chance to rub it in my face that she’d gotten picked for our film school's elite Spring Break trip to LA, but it ended with us cuddled up on my twin-size bed, showing her Star Wars for the first time. On the way from coffee, we stopped in my apartment's mailroom to pick up my copy of Love in the Time of Email, Antarctigo Vespucci’s sophomore record. As we watched Star Wars, I murmured the chorus of Antarctigo Vespucci LP1 highlight, “Impossible to Place,” Chris Farren’s soft plea to his wife to “stay, stay around me / for the evening.” Claire asked what I was singing, and so, for the first of hundreds of times, we listened to the song together.

If you asked me what I feel for Claire, I would sputter and stammer that she’s my best friend, that she’s the person who makes me laugh the most, and that she has a mind I adore. But none of those words really captures the feeling.

When she left the morning after our first/third date, I posted a Snapchat story of me holding up Love in the Time of Email with the caption, “If she doesn’t make you feel like an Antarctigo Vespucci song, she isn’t the one.” When Claire asked if that was about her, I lied and said it was a general statement. But the truth is that “Impossible to Place,” with those layers of angelic vocals on the bridge, Jeff Rosenstock’s lackadaisical chiming guitar riff, and the longing in Chris Farren’s voice, is the only place I’ve been able to pin down the pure essence of what feels like to love Claire.

– Lillian Weber

KISS – “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”

I have talked about KISS way too many times for an indie/emo-leaning blog, and I thank Taylor for letting me get in my zone once again here. It is the biggest cultural phenomenon that I am the most in love with, so it finds its way into all aspects of my life, including the romantic ones. But I won’t be talking about “Bang Bang You,” “Take It Off,” or “Let’s Put The X In Sex.” The story goes that Paul Stanley wrote “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” and brought it to Gene Simmons, with Stanley singing the dark and sensual verses and sticking Simmons with the “do do do do do do do do do” chorus backing vocals. It’s a divisive song among the KISS Army; some fans love and embrace it, as it was a number-one charting hit in multiple countries (but only as high as 50 in the States). Some fans disown its disco flavor, the Dynasty album it came from, and nearly everything that followed for the next 40 years. It was teased in the fantastic Detroit Rock City film, released in 1999 and taking place in 1978, where a character named Christine, played by Natasha Lyonne, notes, “[It’s] so big right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if KISS made a fuckin’ disco song.”

I saw KISS for the first time in 2017 and took my then nine-months girlfriend, despite her previous disdain for the band due to an annoying Ace Frehley obsessive from her high school. From one night, she was a convert, if maybe initially just being considerate to my obsession. And she’s done just that for the last eight years, standing by my side through every phase and fixation, listening to my diatribes about how Gene tried to reunite The Beatles on his 1978 solo album, and how Paul was clearly lipsynching on the End Of The Road tour, but I suppose it’s better than him sounding like shit. I saw KISS six more times on that tour between 2019 and 2023, and she patiently accompanied me to half of them. We spent my 27th birthday in Las Vegas at the KISSWorld exhibit and mini golf course at the Rio Hotel & Casino. Truly, we’ve shared so many bands, songs, and musical moments in our relationship that it feels unfair to focus on only my dumb one. Music is the foundation that brought us together in the first place, from a year of Tumblr DMs about Hostage Calm and Japandroids to finally meeting at Riot Fest 2016. But she’s my Dr. Love, she’s hotter than Hell, and she’s my rock and my roll, all nite, all the way. I was made for lovin’ her. Do do do do do do do do do.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Amber Run – “I Found”

“Do you like him?”

My best friend Kris and I were sitting in my grad school apartment, cross-legged on my bed. She had just asked me the above question, and I, though embarrassed, admitted that I did, in fact, have feelings for the boy in question. I mean, Kris didn’t even need to ask; it was more that I just needed to admit to my crush aloud. (Everybody could tell. It was really, really obvious.)

A few weeks later, I handed my crush a letter scribbled on notebook paper. I was way too nervous to try to confess out loud, so I let this missive do the talking for me. You can imagine the beaming joy that washed over me when he admitted his mutual feelings. We were already close friends, but neither of us had ever talked about the obvious chemistry and bond that we had.

After that day, we would spend hours together in a rickety car (borrowed from a generous friend), driving through the Florida dunes at night. We talked about anything and everything and would hit the Whataburger drive-thru for fries and malts afterward. It was a glorious and happy season. On those drives, we would take turns picking music to listen to, and one of my favorites was the gorgeous and moving “I Found” by Amber Run. The lyrics describe finding love “where it wasn’t supposed to be / Right in front of me.” It fits our relationship so perfectly, and I still smile whenever I put it on. My favorite version of this song is their Mahogany Session, which features the London Contemporary Voices. It’s recorded a cappella in a cathedral, and the melancholy beauty of this song is captured so perfectly.

We found love right in front of us and kept it - this May marks our seventh year of marriage.

– Britta Joseph

The Beatles – “I Will”

Forgive me for writing more about the Beatles in the year of our Lord Paul twenty twenty-five. The world may be exhausted from ceaselessly hearing about how good these four fuckers were as a band, but fortunately for my last.fm scrobbles, I’m far from exhausted. “I Will,” despite being slightly buried towards the tail end of The White Album’s first disc, is far from a deep cut. It’s my favorite Beatles ballad (there’s no need to get started on other qualifiers) and also the second half of my favorite Beatles sequencing choice. Immediately following a lowdown bluesy number about, um, mid-highway exhibitionism is one of the sweetest love songs ever laid to tape.

It bears a simple conceit. “Love you whenever we’re together, love you when we’re apart.” Well, yeah, that’s what love already is. Most songwriters wouldn’t get credit for laying out obvious facts with a pleased grin plastered on their Liverpudlian face. In McCartney’s words, facts are utterly ignorable. He merely caught a glimpse of the song’s subject — that was enough for a galactic force of love to obliterate him. The simplicity is necessary. Sometimes, you’re so smitten that even the most glaring truths need to be reiterated; sometimes, it’s all that grounds you. The plainspokenness of the song is cradled by softly strummed intervals and a capella vocals sneaking into the bass register. The love depicted is unadorned with instrumentation to match.

Before I even met my partner, I would sing this song nonstop. Queuing up the 2018 White Album mix in full aside, “I Will” played in my daydreams and trickled from the clouds. When I was singing it, my voice belonged to the song and to whomever might one day hear me. In the absence of a lover’s song to fill the air, I was unconsciously hellbent on providing the air with an ample supply of music. At least the oxygen and I could enjoy it together. After falling in love, the song didn’t leave my mind, but it doesn’t occupy the air nearly as often. There is someone else’s song. The constant dawning of romance is null and void. It never really mattered; I will always feel the same. Sing it loud so I can hear you.

– Aly Eleanor

December 27, 2024

Swim Into The Sound’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024

December 27, 2024/ Taylor Grimes

This year frightened me. Too often, it felt like things could turn on a dime at any moment. I’m talking about that sudden, drop-in-your-stomach type of worsening that is both abrupt and disorienting. There were also moments where it felt like everything was gliding along effortlessly: complete bliss, total contentment, and unadulterated happiness, if only for a short bit. 2024 was a year of bouncing around, saying “yes,” and trying to follow my gut. Quite often, it led me to some beautiful moments.

This year contained some of my greatest personal strides, painful lows, and profound revelations. I experienced strife in my career (both internal and external) for the first time in like a half-decade. Over the course of 2024, this job wound up contorting my heart and warping my brain in really painful ways. It was uniquely distressing, but I’m free now and on to better things, which is all that matters. On a more light-hearted note, I also kept a mustache all year, so that felt like a real marker in my life. This year, I saw Sufjan on Broadway and got to take in Niagra Falls with my own two eyes. I saw 36 immaculate concerts and listened to a ton of incredible music. Oh, I also made a documentary with my buddy about a sick-ass band. That was pretty rad.

I don’t want to blather too much, but I do want to speak genuinely. I have felt more love and support this year than ever before in my life. Love from people who follow or write for this blog, love from friends and colleagues, love from people out on the street just passing by. I think it’s important to feel that love, recognize it, and spread it around as much as you can. I got fatter and happier and hairier and sillier and closer to who I want to be as a person. In those moments where I fell catastrophically short, I tried to take them as lessons of who not to be. I’ve felt an immense amount of appreciation, growth, and progress this year, and that’s only because I’ve allowed myself to open up and feel it. It’s really scary, but I swear it’s worth it.

Anyway, let’s talk about music.

This year, more than any other, the title of this article feels like a misnomer. In previous iterations, I’ve questioned what this publication’s “album of the year” truly means, but now that we have a sizeable team of writers, each with their own favorites, it’s evident that “Swim Into The Sound’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024” is really just “Taylor’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024.” In other words, this is a hyper-subjective list because it’s all from one point of view.

As I sat down to list out my favorite albums of the year, there was a clear tendency to lean toward the genres that seem to be my “beat,” meaning emo, punk, shoegaze, and indie rock. I listened to a ton of music this year, but I won’t pretend I listened to everything. As such, this won’t be the most diverse AOTY list you’ve seen all season (it contains albums from Gleemer, Gulfer, and Glitterer), but it will be the most singular because it’s all from the mind of one weird guy typing this into his soon-to-be-revoked work laptop from his childhood bedroom. These are the albums that stuck with me all year and made a difference. In some cases, they’re weeks-old releases that have already connected to something deeper. Regardless of how long they’ve been in my life, these are pieces of art that I’ve found refuge and understanding in–collections of songs that make me feel seen and heard; it only makes sense to hold them up so others can hear them as well.

To circle back to the beginning of this intro, it feels like we (collectively) have experienced several Events™ this year that have acted as drop-of-the-hat paradigm shifts. From presidential elections and assassination attempts to an avalanche of regressive policies, “natural” disasters, and forever wars that turn into forever genocides, there’s a lot to be upset about. With the rise in fascism, racism, and every type of phobia in the book, I think there’s been a lot of forced introspection, admission, and reconciliation over what’s happened in the last 360-some-odd days. I’m sure you had a few moments like that in your own life, and I’m sure that we’ll have many more in the coming year. To that end, at the onset of 2025, I’d love to be more explicit about where we stand: trans rights, free Palestine, healthcare + clean water for all, and defund the fucking police.

I want Swim to be a safe space for writers, artists, fans, and people to discuss things they love. To that end, let’s get the fuck into it and talk about the music that has soundtracked my year. As always, I hope you find something here to love because, at the end of the day, that’s all we got.

⭐️ | Carpool – My Life In Subtitles

I want to start this off with an album that feels like it’s on a secret third plane of AOTY existence: My Life in Subtitles by Carpool. This is a loud-ass, real-ass rock album. I’m talking guitar solos, vocal acrobatics, infectious moshpit choruses, piano balladry, the whole package. This album has shaped my year more than any other after spending all of 2024 with it and spending three days on the road with the band in an attempt to capture their amazing live show. It resulted in a 17-minute documentary and accompanying two-part essay. It’s all very DIY and scrappy from my heart, and it was infinitely fulfilling to create. I want to do more stuff like it.

If you want to know what record was truly indispensable for me this year, it was My Life in Subtitles. The rest of this is a numbered list, but Carpool had to start it off. In my Google Doc, it’s actually denoted with a “★” bullet point rather than a number, so if those 8k words linked above aren’t enough, I hope that star tells the rest of the story.

Read our full review of My Life In Subtitles here.

15 | Gleemer – End of the Nail

Even though it’s only a couple of weeks old, the new record from Gleemer has utterly floored me. The band has been iterating on a particular strain of shoegaze for three albums, plus a couple of EPs and adjacent projects, but pivot to something with distinct character here. On End of the Nail, the Denver group sound nothing but authentic. As you would expect from a cover like this, these are dark and frustrated songs that openly grapple with feelings of dissatisfaction and pain. There are still moments of dreamy shoegaze distortion, but there’s also a grungy emo edge that pairs well with Nick Manske’s cool-guy deliveries. This record sounds like your brain throwing itself against the walls of your skull, thrashing around until it either reaches a conclusion or tires itself out. There are individual phrases and riffs that land like punches in a back alley fight, but it all coalesces into an immensely satisfying listen.

14 | Glitterer – Rationale

How much can a band realistically fit into 21 minutes? When it comes to Glitterer, it turns out quite a lot. Rationale takes the once-solo project of Ned Russin and transforms it into a collaborative full-band effort where all the pieces gel together in a swirl of bass, keys, and disaffected bellows. Just like his tenure in Title Fight, Russin utilizes his signature shout and melancholy strum to evoke a powerful reaction from his audience, but this time, his creations are honed into finely pointed tracks that often hover around the one-minute mark. From the reclusive abandon of “I Want To Be Invisible” to the synthy strut of “Plastic” and the utterly heartbroken “No One There,” it’s astounding how much catchy relatability Glitterer is able to fit into these one-minute slices. Occasionally, they might leave you wanting more or waiting for a resolution, but after a while, you realize that’s preferable to overstaying your welcome.

13 | see through person – every way of living

For a good few years, see through person had exactly six songs to their name. Throughout chariot and sun, the trio fleshed out their own thrashy brand of emo punk built on jittery guitar slashing and Robin Mikan’s passionate wail. The songs were immediate, electrifying, and constantly circling around some deeper truth. On every way of living, that truth comes to bear with a record about self-discovery and trying to experience every way of living you possibly can.

While this process includes everything from moving across the country to experiencing fallout in your old friend groups, the most interesting moments on the record are the ones where Mikan writes openly about her exploration of gender identity and subsequent transition. We’re placed right there alongside her as family members use dead names and awkward small talk devolves into feeling out of place. This is all scored with jagged, ever-shifting instrumentals. Between Robin’s Fall of Troy-level heroics, you’ll hear Nikolas Kulpanowski’s bodyslamming bass and the bouncy dodgeball snare of Ethan Thomas. These are restless songs that exude an awkward, compelling, anxious energy. While see through person are tied to the emo music scene, their debut leans far more into mathy post-hardcore than anything else, an apt way to capture the frustration and elation that comes when you look inward and honestly ask yourself who you are. There’s a lot of feeling unheard, silencing yourself, and lonely reflection, but the band harnesses everything into these outpourings that are pure catharsis to hear. The inscription, written in emphatic all-caps, at the bottom of the album’s Bandcamp page summarizes things far better than I ever could, reading: “IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY. EVERY WAY OF LIVING.”

12 | Heart to Gold – Free Help

With soaring vocals, glimmering guitars, and a beefy rhythm section, Free Help is a pitch-perfect punk rock album. Press play on any of these ten songs, and you’re guaranteed to hear something hard-hitting, fist-balling, and filled with forward momentum. Outside the sturdy instrumental work, there’s an impressive economy of writing at play here: choruses where seven words are stretched across two bars, and it all works beautifully. There’s frustration and anguish, commitment and confidence, powerful strides, and meager progress. This is music for when you’re surrounded, overwhelmed, and backed into a corner. Shout it out.

Read our full review of Free Help here.

11 | Ben Quad – Ephemera

Sometimes, I question where else there is to go for Ben Quad. The Oklahoma group’s debut was my favorite emo album of 2022 in a way that seems hard to top, yet they’ve seemingly spent every moment since then on the fast track toward world domination. The band spent 2024 ripping sold-out gigs on multiple nationwide tours, all while covering peers and fourth-wave forefathers alike. By the fall, Ben Quad signed to Pure Noise Records and released Ephemera, venturing into the world of screamo with effortless mastery. It’s not like this post-hardcore pivot was too much of a surprise. It turns out 2022’s “You’re Part of It” wasn’t just a Piebald-referencing one-off; it was merely the first entry in a larger vent session that appears to have been a long time coming. With a list of influences that range from Underoath and Norma Jean to Youth Novel and William Bonney, there’s no question that these four know their shit, synthesizing two decades of metalcore and skramz into a cathartic five-song collection to help listeners air out every ounce of anger and frustration they feel towards the people that hold us down. There’s no more waiting for things to fall apart; it’s time for action, and Ben Quad is ready to soundtrack every motion.

10 | Bedbug – pack your bags the sun is growing

Anyone who has driven across the country can attest to how monotonous it can be. Hours upon hours of shooting straight down the highway with expanses on either side punctuated by gas stations and rest stops. While that’s often a repetitive experience, it can also be meditative and downright sublime. There are grandiose moments of beauty where the highway seems to stretch out to infinity and you feel connected to everything. That sense of wanderlust is precisely what the first full-band album from Bedbug aims to capture. Pivoting from their humble bedroom pop origins to something that more resembles Modest Mouse with midwest emo riffs, pack your bags the sun is growing is a sprawling release that looks off into the horizon, ever-searching for that glint of heaven. The crazy part is they actually manage to embody it on at least a few occasions.

Read our full review of pack your bags the sun is growing here.

9 | This Is Lorelei – Box for Buddy, Box for Star

Box for Buddy, Box for Star twangs to life with “Angel’s Eye,” a saloon-ready duet between an alien and a cowboy who fall in love in which bandleader Nate Amos sings both parts. An ambitious concept, but merely the opening salvo for a project like This Is Lorelei. Throughout the rest of the record, there are alarm clock wake-up noises, autotuned Steely Dan namedrops, music box breakups, and earnest Elliott Smith homage, all amounting to one of the most inventive, fun, and free-wheeling records I’ve heard all year. Despite the impressively diverse range of instrumentation and ideas, these are pop songs designed to be immediately enjoyed and endlessly returned to. After a string of numbered EPs and one-off singles, Box for Buddy, Box for Star arrives fully formed with a spirit of boundless exploration. This one’s for the losers, for the reformed stoners and ex-burnouts who realize there’s still more life to live. It’s affirming in the way all great music should be.

Read our interview with Nate Amos here.

8 | Ben Seretan – Allora

Just to establish the backstory: Allora was recorded in Italy back in 2019. Ben Seretan, flanked by Nico Hedley and Dan Knishkowy, ripped through the LP in three sweaty summer days, creating a piece that’s endlessly reaching out for the divine. The whole thing starts with “New Air,” an 8-minute expedition that opens with a guitar solo before a lyrical refrain that repeats and circulates until it takes on a meditative quality. It prattles forward like a song by Wilco or Yo La Tengo, settling into a groove and gradually building to something hypnotic and transcendental. Beyond that, there’s post-rock ramble, synthy spirals, dust-caked exaltations, and modern hymnwork. The whole thing is explosive and expansive, with one powerful movement after another.

In the excellent album bio by Caleb Cordes of Sinai Vessel, he explains that there was a period of time when Allora was simply known as Ben Seretan’s “insane Italy record.” While that’s a funny way to pitch an album, the more apt articulation is found in its name: Allora being an expressive Venetian catchall that translates to “at that time.” While Cordes lays out what “that time” meant to the people creating this album, it’s impossible not to think about the infinite times that lay ahead: all of the people who will pick this record up and discover it in the coming years, all the times over the past months I’ve ventured into Allora and found something different within its walls. No matter when or where you come to this record, I can assure you that it’s ready to meet you in the present until ‘this time’ becomes ‘that time.’

Read our full review of Allora here.
Bonus points for having one of the sickest tie-dye shirts I’ve seen all year.

7 | Merce Lemon – Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild

After an eventful summer zipping from the West Coast to New York, Chicago, and Rochester, I spent a month at my parent’s house back in Oregon. Just about every day, I’d get off my aforementioned soul-contorting job, sit in the backyard, and stare at the sky while listening to Merce Lemon. Some days, I would read a book or indulge in a backyard beer; other times, I would just sit and listen and breathe. It became a centering ritual for me, guided by songs like “Backyard Lover” and “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild,” which proved to be wellsprings of empathy and beauty at a time when I needed them most. As a full-length experience, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild is naturalistic and gorgeous, penned during a period when Merce Lemon was living off the grid gardening, farming, and sleeping outside as she looked inward to ask herself what she really wanted. The resulting album approaches the world with a sort of folksy reverence that makes you appreciate every atom of your surroundings. There are lyrics of birds and blueberries and mountains that tickle the sky’s belly. It’s a big, beautiful world, fleshed out even further by a standalone single and split of Will Oldham covers, all of which collectively prove that wonder is an infinitely renewable resource and beauty is always there, hiding in plain sight, so long as you’re willing to look for it.

Read our full review of Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild here.

6 | Oso Oso – life till bones

The fifth full-length from Oso Oso is a compact and unfussy indie rock album about how life continues even after the unthinkable. It’s littered with truths from the very first line, “I love you, but life is a gun,” acknowledging the soaring highs and painful lows of day-to-day existence. Whether he’s relaying charming dirtbag anecdotes, meditating on the passage of time, or memorializing the loss of a loved one, Jade Lilitri manages to make everything sound buoyant, with an unshakable brightness shot through every beat. There are anti-love love songs going toe-to-toe with actual love songs, because you can’t have one without the other. After nine tracks of these naturally occurring rises and falls, album closer “other people’s stories” questions exactly what it is we’re all doing here: “other people's stories got me feeling bored / yea, other people's stories aren't like yours / look at all the people, looking at their phones / with how much time left? life till bones.” It’s a series of lines that directly address the uncomfortable truth lingering at the center of it all. Like every other Oso Oso track, Lilitri delivers it with a smirk and a riff before jettisoning off to whatever’s next, acknowledging the bad and holding onto the good while knowing that neither are permanent.

Read our full review of life till bones here.

5 | Charli xcx – BRAT

2024 was the year Charli xcx became inescapable. A fair bit of that is internet echo chamber, but as someone who’s followed the pop star since she was on the periphery of the charts a decade ago, it’s been surreal to watch her ascend the ranks of Spotify’s top 500 and fully establish herself as a household name. BRAT is more than just a collection of really good pop songs; it’s a genuine event-level album seeded by feverish singles, bolstered by hot girl music videos, and chased with a remix album that brought new definition to every track. There was a sold-out tour, countless magazine covers and interviews, plus a whole damn season shaped by the vernacular and attitude of Charli. There was a bottomless supply of hot looks, silly dances, and sleazy parties, each with their own dizzying ripples of discourse, but I suppose that’s how you know you’ve made it. This resulted in seven Grammy noms, a #1 album in the UK, and unparalleled cultural impact–one that feels increasingly remarkable in the ever-splitering landscape of 2024. The impressive part is that, despite how vast and multi-faceted its impact, BRAT still felt true to Charli. The record is catchy, dancy, exhilarating, cunty, fun, raw, tender, and honest. I guess that’s the true magic of pop stars: living an existence that’s larger than life which normal-ass people can still relate and aspire to, then make their own.

4 | MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks

At this point, I think even MJ Lenderman is sick of hearing about MJ Lenderman. I alone wrote like 3k words about his breakthrough Manning Fireworks, and this year was home to a bit of oversaturation for the Asheville rocker as he was subject to countless interviews, think pieces, magazine covers, profiles, and general writing. I’m reticent to add even another paragraph onto that tally with this blurb because sometimes it’s just not that deep. Lenderman makes hazy, funny, groovy indie rock that pulls inspiration from slacker greats of the 90s while simultaneously nodding to classic rock mainstays of the decades before that. MJ modernizes these influences and puts his own spin on things as he weaves tales of pathetic fuck-ups, dead-end wasters, and people who are too scared to try. It’s all delivered with a surprising amount of empathy and humor that makes these cautionary tales go down easier, plus a number of knockout riffs that make you want to hoot, holler, yelp, and wail. “She’s Leaving You”? Generational. “Joker Lips”? That’s a tasty lick. “Wristwatch”? I’ll never look at houseboats the same again. If I had one hot take to level at Manning Fireworks, it’s that the back half ventures into territory that doesn’t always land as hard for me, but even then, we have the masterful “Pianos” as a consolation. Despite all the hay that’s been made of Lenderman’s output this year, Manning Fireworks just plain rocks, and I’ve never had a bad time when I throw this record on. Lenderman is an artist who makes me hopeful for the future (both of music and in general) because I think his best work is still ahead of him.

Read our full review of Manning Fireworks here.

3 | Wild Pink – Dulling The Horns

Dulling The Horns is a disorienting album about the impermanence and beauty of life. Its lyrics are a beautiful Rorschach Test of observations, phrases, and memories filtered through the eyes of bandleader John Ross. Recorded live in-studio, the album still retains the wide-set heartland rock lens found on previous Wild Pink releases, but cakes on layers of dirt and distortion that gives everything a much more compact, classic rock feel. The lyrics are abstract and difficult to parse, but that makes them all the more alluring as you attempt to peer into the album’s inner workings.

Everything buzzes and crackles with an excitable energy that shakes off the darker expanses found throughout 2022’s ILYSM. Instead, Ross and co. opt to bask in the light that comes from a million miles away because, as he explains, “we get a little every day.” Whether they’re recounting sports esoterica or retelling the story of “Lefty” Ruggiero before throwing to a crunchy shoegaze riff, everything flows with a sort of dreamlike logic with its own internal reasoning. All the while, there are folksy truisms strewn throughout, helping ground things between incendiary guitar solos, pedal steel weeps, and disintegrating fuzz. Dulling The Horns feels like a car console CD destined to be sandwiched between Tom Petty and The War On Drugs as it sits primed for cross-country road trips and short jaunts all the same. As Ross poses questions like “How can there be / Really nothing in between / That big-ass moon and me?” he places the listener alongside him, prompting them to ask the same questions as they wait to get swept up in the next riff.

Read our full review of Dulling The Horns here.

2 | Gulfer – Third Wind

Given their decade-plus discography of mathy punk, midwest mastery, and monumental splits, it’s tempting to call Gulfer an emo band, yet everything on their fourth LP points elsewhere. Aptly titled, Third Wind sees the band set off from a fresh crossroads as guitarist/vocalist Joseph Therriault takes on principal songwriting duty. There are still glimpses of the band’s previous stylings strewn throughout, but for the most part, these are poppy indie rock songs with Rube Goldberg-like math-rock guitar riffs. It’s proggy but simple, with choruses that still manage to stick in your head despite the ornate instrumentation. There are left-field decisions that make each song feel distinct, like the winding whammy bar riff on “Cherry Seed” or the pummeling breakdown of “Too Slow” that expends all of its energy halfway through the song.

On tracks like “No Brainer,” the band hammers the same phrase over and over again as the instrumental rages around them, meanwhile, they take the exact opposite approach on songs like “Prove,” stretching the song’s title into an elongated “prooOOooOOooOOoo-ve” over some intricate guitar tapping that does my midwest emo heart good. There are love songs alongside reckonings of climate change and tales of exacting burnout-fueled revenge on an uncaring boss. It’s all assembled in a bleeding highlighter package of turquoise, yellow, green, and blue–an expired film strip that still manages to capture snapshots of absolute awe.

A few months after the release of Third Wind, Gulfer announced they were calling it quits, but not before dropping LIGHTS OUT, a five-song collection that only serves to further emphasize how high of a level they were operating at. While they’ll be forever missed, there’s no denying thst Gulfer went out on a high note. Bands should be so lucky to have a last album as good as this.

Read our full review of Third Wind here.

1 | Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

I’m not sure what Tigers Blood is about, but it’s stunning. The sixth record from Waxahatchee captures the beauty of life in sun-dappled snapshots like a shoebox full of old polaroids or a night spent reminiscing with a long-lost friend. This is all run through with an undercurrent of delight and despair that feels true to life, a reminder that, while these events have passed, we can still appreciate and honor them for what they were. The songs are lush and elaborate, framed by sturdy drums and bass, splotches of banjo and slide guitar, plus additional guitarwork and occasional background vocals courtesy of MJ Lenderman. Pretty as it all sounds, the album is about people whose fire burns out at midnight. It’s about people who are beaten down, broken up, and bored. It’s about modest ways of life and individuals who are perpetually “Right Back to It” in the most Sisyphean sense.

Details come from allusions to the Bama heat and locks on doors that cost more than the beater parked out front. Much like 2020’s Saint Cloud, everything is still centered around Katie Crutchfield’s ironclad voice and poetic observations, but on this record, they take on a slightly more ragged alt-country tinge. Through the smoldering twang, a picture emerges of a humble, attainable lifestyle of living within your means, counting your blessings, and being thankful for what you have.

While the cover for Saint Cloud saw Crutchfield in a flowing blue dress perched atop a Ford with a truckbed full of roses, the cover for Tigers Blood sees her standing underneath a rusted-out neon sign. She’s wearing blue jeans and flannel over a red bikini top, plus a “KC” trucker hat that obscures her face as she stares down at the grass beneath her feet. The back cover of the vinyl focuses in on a snow cone, flush red with Tigers Blood dye–a simple pleasure in the final act of the good old days. A small consolation, but one we ought to indulge and find comfort in all the same.

December 19, 2024

Hater's Delight – 2024 Edition

December 19, 2024/ The Swim Team

Back by popular demand, Hater’s Delight returns for one last ride through the depths of 2024. While we retired the column for most of this year, by the time December rolled around, the Swim Team realized there was more than enough material to constitute a roundup of our collective displeasure.

If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight was a recurring micro-review column we ran throughout 2023 intended to be a space where our team of Swim Into The Sound writers could vent about the things online, in music, and in culture that got under our skin.

Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then, once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, check out our staff’s favorite albums of the year or our 2024 Song Showdown to see what we actually enjoyed this year. Swear it’s not all bad vibes.

Enough being tempered; let’s get into the hatred. From the bland and banal to the offensive and insulting, let’s take a look back at all the things we’d prefer to leave in 2024.

Zach Bryan’s Waste of a Great Idea

My litany of grievances with Zach Bryan is long. From the credible accusations that he’s a manipulative and abusive boyfriend to the fact that his head looks like a LEGO, the sin which warrants the below column is Bryan’s penchant for making the most mealy-mouthed milquetoast records and giving Country music a worse name.

The roll-out for Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene set the tone. Bryan announced that “select cuts” from the album would be played in “23 bars across the country that embody the spirit of American culture.” From Iron Horse Saloon in Oologah, Oklahoma, to Saratoga Lanes in St. Louis, Missouri (a bowling alley that still allows cigarettes inside), the selected bars represented a sort of divey blue-collar cash-only vibe.

Direct references to real-life bars and the inclusion of background noise like pool balls clacking are pretty much as far as the Great American Bar vibe goes—and the din gets quickly abandoned after a few tracks. If the goal was to create an album that tells a story about “Real Americans” and the watering holes at which they gather, this album is not quite that. If the goal was a collection of a few too many tracks with a loose thematic rubber band around them, that’s closer.

Sonically, The Great American Bar Scene is an overstuffed collection of Zach Bryan’s signature sound: mid-tempo meandering with brushed drum shuffles and the occasional Stom-Clap-Hey chorus. It’s mumbly SaddBoi low-energy background music with maybe one or two genuine upbeat foot-tappers. At 19 tracks and over an hour, the album is far less Happy Hour and far more Marathon Bender–and the hangover is just as bad.

This type of low-effort and lower-interest bullshit is not surprising coming from Bryan. What is so galling and frustrating is that he wasted a fun, exciting, and interesting concept like “an homage to dive bars” by just dipping back into his signature deflated sound. Sure, every great bar needs some dirgey sad bastard music, but there’s just nothing here worthy of slugging shots to. For an album that set out to honor the Great American Bar, one would expect more Molly Hatchet and less Damien Rice. Americans pine to link arms with their fellow barflies and scream catchy choruses together. Unfortunately, The Great American Bar Scene sounds more like silently sipping neat gin under a naked lightbulb.

So, on top of being a bad boyfriend, Zach Bryan also squandered an amazing opportunity to make a kick-ass saloon classic. And for that, may Merle and Waylon never forgive him.

Caleb Doyle – @ClassicDoyle

AI-Generated Album Art: Every Day We Stray Further from God’s Light

While my 2024 bingo card didn’t include Tears for Fears releasing a new album, it certainly didn’t include them releasing an album featuring abysmally ugly AI-generated cover art (if you can even call it art). An astronaut? In a field of sunflowers? What is this, 2011? You’re telling me that NONE of you had a throwback photo, concert shot, or a starving artist you wanted to commission? Pretty embarrassing for them.

Even worse, the band doubled down on their decision and defended it online. It was cringe-worthy to see, especially considering that “Mad World” is one of my favorite songs of all time. You will never be able to convince me that AI art is a better option than hiring a living, breathing, feeling human being to create something for you. “But it’s so convenient! Computers are forever! AI is shaping the future!” SHUT UP! As the modern sage Caleb Hearon said, “The beauty [of mortality] is that the cup runs out.” Impermanence is part of being alive. It is part of the human experience. It is part of creating art.

Tears for Fears’ decision is sloppy, distasteful, and thumbs its nose at the very essence of being an artist of any kind. And you know what? I like Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” better anyway.

Britta Joseph – @brittajoes

Katy Perry Explaining Satire

“Girlboss Shit!” exclaims the demon that sits on my chest at night as I try to fall asleep. It’s referring to a video of Katy Perry rising from the ashes of the crumbling institution of the American Brain to explain the concept of satire to the mouth-breathing masses. Dressed like an oiled-up construction worker projecting the simulacrum of sexuality, Ms. Perry lets us know that it’s okay, she’s not being serious about sexuality and femininity. Or maybe she is? Either way – it’s satire! You dumb fuck. You mushy-brained numbskull. How could you think for a second that she believes this or doesn’t believe it? Whatever “It” is. The inscrutable politics are a statement on… women? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. As she stands in front of a line of silent, sexualized Black women, Katy Perry says something about the male gaze before retreating to her trailer to write a lengthy defense of her producer/notable rapist Dr. Luke before going to vote for Republicans to execute unhoused people in the streets of LA. Sorry, honey! That’s satire. She’s like the white Paul Beatty or the American Coralie Fargeat.

As America was sweating through the designer-drug-fueled heat of Brat Summer, Katy Perry was busy constructing her own world. It’s a Woman’s World, you see. And we’re lucky to be living in it. Eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that this Woman’s World was filled with imagery stol– uh, borrowed – from other women. Women like Arca – whose transhumanist iconography Katy claims as her own “idea of feminine divine.” But the beauty of Katy Perry’s world is that everything is fair game. Interestingly, as Katy explains in this video, her ascension to the divine requires the literal smashing of Black working-class women. What happens to them? Doesn’t matter! Girlboss Shit!

As our handle on nuance continues to slip day by day, it’s heartening to know that there are people like Katy Perry out there, doing the lord’s work by loudly exclaiming that you can project your own meaning onto them. The lack of perspective is the point.

As I am finally about to drift off to sleep, I hear a sincere-sarcastic whisper in my ear: “You go, girl.” Thank you, Demon That Sits On My Chest, that means a lot.

Joshua Sullivan – @brotherheavenz

The Insurmountable Greed of Taylor Swift

Look, I like Taylor Swift a lot. I’ve been following her career and enjoying her music for well over a decade now. According to last.fm, I’ve racked up nearly 2k plays on her music. Last year, I snuck a bottle of wine into my local theater to enjoy The Eras Tour on the big screen. Five years ago, I went as Lover-era Taylor Swift for Halloween, complete with a glitter heart around my eye and a blonde wig atop my head. I’m laying all this out because, again, I like Taylor Swift. That said, she hasn’t exactly been on a hot streak lately. While I was initially on board with “Taylor’s Versions” as a concept and loved that she was reclaiming her work, after she butchered my beloved 1989, the sheen started to wear off. Then there was the middling Midnights and, this year, the insipid Tortured Poets Department. To me, the 16-song base version was bland enough, but then one day later, Swift dropped a 31-song version of the record, effectively turning it into a double album that brought TPD to an unwieldy two-hour runtime. If that wasn’t enough, she spent the year dropping 36 different variants of the album, sapping her audience of all disposable income, and keeping other artists from reaching #1 on multiple occasions in a way that feels more strategic and insidious than accidental. Shrewd business moves aside, this just seems like pure gluttony on Swift’s part, and all this for what’s easily her snooze-worthy album. The worst part is that it worked. Her tour made billions of dollars, her janky-ass book is a best-seller, and diehard “auto-buy” Swifties lined up to buy each version in droves, so what incentive does Swift have to change? It’s art as consumption carried out to its logical extreme. This is no longer about the music or even the artist; this is about owning all the things you possibly can. This is the type of greed they talk about in the bible.

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG

Being Shamed For Using Apple Music By Spotify

It’s funny how every year, on the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving (it’s an official date, people), Spotify users take the opportunity to brag about their “in-depth” Spotify Wrapped and subsequently use that opportunity to exclaim how much better they are than Apple Music users. To an extent, sure, Apple Music doesn't have the most advanced UI, and the streaming service is only linked with Apple products, but come on. When compared to Spotify, Apple Music pays about double per stream, has much better audio quality, and, to my knowledge, doesn’t add any of their in-house AI monstrosities onto their own playlists. But sure, go ahead and talk about how you had a bubblegum-house-daydream March or whatever while you post Taylor Swift in your top five artists for the fifth year in a row.

Samuel Leon – @sleonpics

Stan Culture: Internet Feudalism Without Sick-Ass Trebuchets

I think we’re done here, y’all. I think it’s time for some internal accountability. I think it’s time to emulate the love and light that you so loudly claim to absorb and bathe in from your faves. It’s time to osmose some humility and grace from that single you’ve been stream farming. In the last decade or so, I’ve watched a simple dig at people who take their love for artists too seriously morph into a wild, uncountably headed hydra that has wreaked real-world havoc on innocent people with dissenting opinions. Frankly, it serves no one and nothing. Acting as a roving band of marauders for someone you basically treat as a liege lord has become so unrepentantly weird, heinous, and toxic that if it becomes a psychological diagnosis in like 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised. I am begging you to decouple from centering a person who doesn’t know you exist and not to use your redlined dopamine receptors as your compass when acting on your punitive impulse to act against people who critique or vocally express distaste for someone who creates subjective art. I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, and that’s unfair to those stans who are actually normal people who understand how to react to another human being on the internet. But we neeeeeeed to start really pushing back for all of us, baby.

Elias Amini– @letsgetpivotal

Internet Irony-Poisoning at Concerts

I'm going to keep this short. I'm going to keep this sweet. Take off the cowboy hat at that show. Don’t wear a shark costume to the gig. Don’t bring a Nintendo DS to a concert for the sole purpose of holding it up for a grainy picture. If any of this was funny, it was funny in the IRL meme-saturated days of, like, 2017. I just checked my calendar, and it says it's December 2024. It's embarrassing, and I’m telling you this because I love you. I really love you, and I want you to put the sarcastic approach to everything you love down. Like...why are you wearing that costume anyway? Because it’s ironic? Because you’re being sarcastic? It's not like it's comfortable, and now you’ve committed your whole night to what? Being a banana? Do you just want someone to take a picture of you, post it online, and say you’re funny? Post it online and say you’re funny? Does everything have to be a joke to you? Do you have to be the center of attention constantly? Can't you just enjoy yourself? Are you scared of being earnest for two seconds? Is this music so brutally honest to you that you have to wear a big, funny hat about it like weird armor from Amazon dot com? And now I can't see the stage, jackass.

This also applies to sarcastic pit-starting, filming yourself crowd surfing, and most Lightning McQueen merch at MJ Lenderman concerts this fall.

Caro Alt – @firstwaveemo

Hater-dazed, Psychedelic, Mood-core, Genre-Identifier Daylists

At the beginning of 2024, people would head to social media to share the latest daylist Spotify had generated for them. Suddenly, descriptions like “soccer-pilled, high school senior, emo afternoon” and “piano-keyed, dandelion-farmed, folk evening” began to appear everywhere. At first, the genres seemed like a fun way to let an evil corporation roast you with nonsense. And then, it became inescapable. Clueless-closet, rainy 90s, grunge-core afternoons bled into fork-in-socket, indie-haze, orchestral rock nights. The one consistency? None of these words were ever in the Bible.

The entire thing was a way to monetize a larger trend in music: the subgenre-ization of subgenres. It was no longer enough to be shoegaze. It had to be doomgaze or countrygaze or something else entirely. This trend in categorizing wasn’t new, but the hyper-specific approach seemed to take on a meteoric rise with the constantly generated playlists. Let me be clear: I'm not against breaking genres down a bit further than the typical labels of “rock” or “hip-hop” or “indie folk.” Categorizations are necessary when searching for new bands or recommending beloved artists, but at the end of the day, Spotify’s method was total nonsense. It served as their way of forcing a feeling of fomo by creating something new that wasn’t necessarily good or coherent.

So, if you need me in 2025, you can find me shaking my fist at the cloud-core, sleeper-heavy, frustrated morning sky.

Lindsay Fickas – @lindsayfickas

Disheveled Alt-Mullets on Men

Once upon a time, mullets were mock-worthy. Now, they are everywhere, on all types of people, worn to widely varying degrees of success. But the one strain that really pisses me off is the wannabe-Mac DeMarco mullet. You know the one: greasy, unkempt, worn by a guy who is 85% likely to have a trust fund. The guy who is cosplaying being a slacker with a dose of feigned childishness. Despite being so Quirky and Goofy, he is somehow too cool to talk to you at the local indie rock show. His girlfriend is a lithe, oddly successful ceramicist. Like every other dude with the exact same scraggly, unwashed cut, he can't be burdened by society's onerous male attractiveness standards. He and his ilk are pioneers in an aesthetic that no one before them has ever tried: irony. What better way to show you are too cool to care than a purposefully ugly haircut? Well, I see right through you. The shag doth protest too much.

Katie Hayes (Wojciechowski) – @ktewoj

Drake Lawsuit

What happened to the game I love? Drake, coming off an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Kendrick Lamar in the Great Rap War of 2024, is now suing his own record label for cooking the books with “Not Like Us,” the song that dealt the final blow. I understand wanting to go after the evil empire of record labels; they’re all corrupt, so it’s the right act but the wrong messenger. Let me get on my Al Pacino Devil’s Advocate horse real quick, for argument's sake, and say the books were cooked; Drake benefitted from this same foul play for years on end from this same record label. When the result finally doesn’t go his way, he throws a temper tantrum.

In 2001, Nas rapped about Jay-Z “being 36 in a karate class,” he wasn’t taken to court for slander accusations. There was no opening testimony from Jay-Z speaking to a judge, “Well, your honor, I was actually 32, and it was a taekwondo class.” He took his loss on the chin and kept making great music. Drake needs to take a page out of every other rapper’s book by taking the loss and moving on. Lose with a little dignity, why don’t you? And I like Drake, so this is coming from a place of love like a concerned cousin. But damn…. even Ja Rule didn’t even go out this pitiful.

David Williams – @davidmwill89

BRAT-Overdose

No record had a bigger cultural impact in 2024 than Charli xcx’s BRAT. When Charli began painting the town lime green with her wildly successful album rollout, BRAT felt like the culmination of a decade-plus of pop music experiments. After years as a poster girl for Pop’s Middle Class, a hero to funemployed twinks, and “the ‘Boom Clap’ Girl” to your coworkers, Charli made what could in some ways be considered the anti-pop star pop album. On BRAT, she sings about her inability to fit into the mold occupied by more conventional and commercially successful pop artists, the pressure to compete with other musicians who occupy a similar niche as her, and her admiration of another cult pop hero who was ahead of her time before her life was tragically cut short.

As a young woman in a creative field who is lucky enough to be friends with many other young women in creative fields, the songs on BRAT resonate with the part of me that knows well what it’s like to be brimming with both pride and jealousy for a friend’s talents, or to stand around nervously sipping my drink instead of networking at a party where I feel glaringly out-of-place. I love BRAT in the same way that I love getting a text from a confidant that reads, “can i be a total bitch for a minute?” It’s the Hater’s Delight of pop records!

Brat Summer was fun at first. When “360” first dropped, I played the video on a loop each morning while getting ready in the morning for a week straight. I dashed from a BRAT listening party to a Wild Pink show like a true Gal About Town. The coolest thing you could be was a girl with thick, curly hair, a wardrobe full of black clothing, and a resting bitchface—I was in my element.

I loved Brat Summer up until the infamous “Kamala IS Brat” tweet and Charli’s subsequent breach of niche containment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful to see Charli get her flowers after all this time. The album really is that good! And so are the remixes! But something shifted when lime green became the unofficial color of the DNC. Now that Kamala was Brat, everything was Brat. And if everything is Brat, nothing is.

If you’ve been on the Girls ‘n Gays side of the internet this year, you’ve probably heard of the term “khia,” which, first of all, put some FUCKING respect on Khia’s name—“My Neck, My Back” is a banger! And second, the line between “khia” and “niche” is thinner than Gabbriette’s eyebrows. Is that C-list pop girl khia, or is she a cult hero? Who among us wouldn’t love to be Carly Rae Jepsen-famous—a one-hit wonder to the general public, the People’s Pop Star to those who can truly appreciate her brilliance? Maybe being everything to everybody is overrated and being “famous but not quite” is actually where it’s at.

Runner-Up: I wrote about this for Paste a few months ago, but can we all please agree to be more normal about Chappell Roan in 2025? I don’t think people realize how jarring it is to go from being a fucking camp counselor in suburban Missouri to being one of the most famous pop stars in the world in just a couple of months. That’s a massive change, and almost no time to adjust to it; you’d probably be yelling at photographers too if you were her.

Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso

Enemy Of The Music Business

Everyone’s an easy target. I could write about how I still don’t understand the post-Lana Del Rey underperformance of Billie Eilish, or the post-Lady Gaga third-rate cabaret flamboyance of Chappell Roan, or the promotion of underage alcoholics who get their news from TikTok of Olivia Rodrigo, but they all make children’s music for children, so what reason do I have to be mad at them? I could write about how the new Foxing album is for kids who were too smart to join theater but too dumb to take calculus, or how the new Vampire Weekend album is for people who criticize jam bands and hippies but listen to music more void of substance than the worst selling Dick’s Picks concert release, or how the new Tyler, The Creator album is for people who think about thinking about maybe one day having a deep thought on culture or society but never actually get there and instead try to tell me what the highlights are on Vultures, but I’ve never bought my girlfriend’s dad a shirt he hated that he can’t return, so that’s not really worth my time. I could write about how Jack White has stumbled and failed to reach the same immediacy of The White Stripes ever since the band broke up and only ends up becoming a Tim Burton reject version of Prince, which frankly is more of an insult to Prince, or how Green Day has been canonized as dad rock for fifteen years, releasing songs that sound like they discovered their sons’ diaries with introductory knowledge on anarchy, and how they look like washed up Social Distortion tattoo havers telling their grandkids about a hip band from back in their time they used to listen to called Green Day, or how Kings Of Leon transitioned from being a cocaine-fueled, cousin-kissing, southern rock Strokes spinoff into a band that hardly qualifies as music, now putting out albums that are even less noticeable than the Goodwill new age cassettes I bought last week, but if you think any of these bands still qualify as rock music, then there’s nothing I have to offer you. I guess enjoy the new Rian Johnson mystery movie next year? Some artists just aren’t for me (Clairo), some artists I will never understand the hype for (St. Vincent), and some artists I think objectively make shit from a butt (Father John Misty). But I’m having a way better time lately defending music others are criticizing than hating on music others are praising. Is this progress? Am I growing as a person? I’ll be 30 in 2025, and maybe it’s a sign I can’t spend all day online tweeting (blueskying?) at people about how they’re braindead simpletons for enjoying Fontaines D.C. or MGMT. I listened to almost 500 new releases this year, so trust me that I’ve earned the haterade I regularly drink and spit out, and the reality is that I listen to more music I like each year than music I don’t. But come the fuck on, you people actually think Beyoncé made a worthwhile country album and not just another bland pop-rap album with slide guitar? Please.

Logan Archer Mounts - hate mail can be directed to:
1122 Boogie Woogie Ave, PO Box 42069

Pitchfork and the Record Economy

For the last ten years, I’ve had Cindy Lee’s Act of Tenderness in my Discogs wantlist. You know why? I’ve been a fan for that long–I just can’t (and don’t) buy every single album whenever I want it. Some records get prioritized, and others remain on the wantlist until the mood strikes. Since Cindy Lee was relatively niche and their records were always around the $20 mark, I figured I had all the time in the world. Then, the worst thing possible happened–critical acclaim.

Now, I am fine that Cindy Lee is finally getting some money, and I’m more than happy that Cindy Lee is gaining new fans–I’m not that kind of hipster. What sucks, for me, is the vinyl record economy and how Pitchfork inadvertently affects the market.

240% increase of Cindy Lee’s 2020 record.

On April 12, 2024, I went to Pitchfork dot com to see the glowing 9.1 Diamond Jubilee “Best New Music” review for Cindy Lee’s 3xLP opus. And because I am a nerd, I immediately went to my Discogs wantlist to snatch up copies of Cindy Lee albums I had wanted yet neglected to buy for years. The flipping had already begun. What were once $20 records had already doubled in price by 2023. Now that Diamond Jubilee was deemed worthy of everyone’s attention, the prices of Cindy Lee’s previous albums had doubled again. As the months went by, the cost of Act of Tenderness just kept rising–recently selling for $112 in November.

“I hate you, Discogs record flippers. You suck the joy out of my favorite hobby. You don’t deserve my money at all!” I say as my cursor hovers over the Add to Cart button. Click.

Russ Finn – @dialup_ghost

You’ve been homogenized.

PICTURED: The recommended songs for the playlist exercise outlined below. Is this exploring?

Log into Spotify right now. Make a new playlist. Go ahead and add a couple of songs you love most. The ones you feel epitomize you and your taste. The kind of song you only hear once in a lifetime. For me, it was these. When you’re done (nine or ten is all you should really need), scroll to the bottom of the page and peek at the recommended songs section. What do you see?

Now for the interesting part. Take a screenshot, send this column to a friend, and have them repeat the exercise. If their taste is anything like yours, compare notes. What do you see?

The same fucking songs. Every goddamn time. No matter the vibe or the current content of the playlist– it could be entirely The Shaggs, and the algorithm would still serve up “Waiting Room” or “Grave Architecture” in an effort to serve some binary command such as “SATISFY CUSTOMER.” It makes a mockery of the discovery process, the magic of digging through stacks of fanzines or flipping through the “alternative” section of your local record store and finding something worth more than solid gold. It removes the chance of real connection beyond the surface level–that feeling of true resonance when the right song plays on the college radio station, on the bar’s jukebox, in your friend’s kitchen at midnight, at the show with five touring bands.

What’s worse than the automation of emotion is the automation of industry. Records are a novelty, and the stores that sell them rarely have the funds to invest in selling local bands’ records or lesser-known national bands. What they do have in abundance is sixteen crates full of Taylor Swift and Charli xcx, the canonized indies’ 30th-anniversary box sets, and some secondhand Stax albums ignored in a corner. People are losing their jobs in vinyl pressing plants, record labels, stores, venues, and even talent scouting to the encroaching online music industry. It’s all been relegated to social media campaigning, Ticketmaster queues, Christmastime Amazon orders, massive overseas factories dedicated to replicating Brat green–and even to a recommended section dedicated to homogenizing your taste.

Face it, we don’t explore the way we used to musically. Our society has accepted the idea of algorithmic control part and parcel, making the jobs of money-grubbing executives easier every day. As consumers lose their say in the music industry, we’ll be left with absolutely nothing. We’ll be living in a cultural desert, completely surrounded by inflatable dolls of pop stars gushing water–and there will be nowhere else to drink.

I hope Daniel Ek is next.

Michaela Doorjamb – no applicable Twitter

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Pictured: racks on racks on racks OR my crush fund

When Pity Sex’s first set in New York since 2016 back in August ended, I clapped for approximately one second before sticking my arm straight out, begging for a setlist. The band handed out two of their three setlists and walked off. I left my arm stretched as their crew came out when some college kid got on stage and grabbed the remaining setlist. At that moment, I felt shame for the sport.

The thrill of getting a setlist is in being chosen by the crew or the band to get this coveted piece of paper. The joy of showing one off comes from the fact you may not have gotten it. My most beloved setlist is from the first time I saw Crush Fund because I asked for it, and it spawned a deep relationship with the band. By getting on stage to grab a setlist, you cheated not only the setlist, but yourself.

At the secret Jeff Rosenstock show at Baby’s All Right last year, a friend grabbed one off the stage for me while John DeDomenici was reaching for it to give away, and I got embarrassed. Embarrassed enough to give it to the person next to me who didn’t mantel the stage? Not a chance in hell.

If you’re getting on stage, it should be to jump off IMMEDIATELY (when there are enough people to land on), not to cherry-pick the setlist.

Lillian Weber – @Lilymweber

December 16, 2024

Swim Into The Sound's 2024 Song Showdown

December 16, 2024/ The Swim Team

(Editor’s Note: for maximum impact, please read this introduction in your best wrestling announcer voice)

Folks, it’s been a long, emotional year, but it’s all been building to this: Swim Into The Sound’s 2024 Song Showdown. This is a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle brawl for the title of 2024’s best song. Many a hope and dream will be shattered today as only a single, shining beacon of collective agreement can be awarded the fame, the fortune, and the title of Swim Into The Sound’s 2024 Song Showdown Champion.

36 songs enter, only one leaves. These tracks are ready to hop in the ring to see who comes out on top. It’s a royal rumble of epic proportions, and we’re getting the privilege of watching it unfold live right here, right now. So grab your popcorn, listen along, and enjoy as the greatest artists of the year go head-to-head for your entertainment.

36 | Linkin Park – The Emptiness Machine

Coming back from your lead singer’s death is a challenge that few bands have undertaken without alienating their audience. As such, Linkin Park’s first single with new vocalist Emily Armstrong, “The Emptiness Machine,” had a lot to prove. Cleverly, this one starts with bandleader Mike Shinoda taking vocals, reminding fans that this is still the Linkin Park they know and love before Armstrong comes in half a minute later to make her first impression. It’s an introduction that works for me; impactful as if to say that, although things will be different now, it’s all being done in honor of the legacy that’s been established. Throughout the song, you can feel that it was written eight years ago, intended for the late Chester Bennington, and it lands as a reminder that death need not be the end of all things good.
- Noëlle Midnight

35 | HiTech – SPANK!

I’ve mostly listened to NTS Radio this year and have fallen in love with it. I’ve had a lot of fun learning about house, techno, and all the subtle subgenres. “SPANK!” is the ghettotech hit of 2024 and represents all of what I’ve been listening to most of my days this past year. It is sticky, manic, and, above all, a perfect embodiment of modern electronic music.
- Kirby Kluth

34 | Charli xcx – Girl, so confusing featuring Lorde

Easily one of the most noteworthy collabs of the year, Charli xcx and Lorde linked up to work it out on the remix of this mid-album BRAT cut, and things were never the same again. Perhaps it was hearing Lorde over a synth-pop beat for the first time in years, perhaps it was hearing these two speak honestly about the way society pits women against each other, perhaps it’s just a humanizing look at two of my generation’s greatest popstars, but “Girl, so confusing featuring Lorde” made me weepy, and I think that’s beautiful.
- Taylor Grimes

33 | Katie Gavin – Inconsolable

MUNA’s frontwoman takes a breather from windows-down, upbeat, synthed-out queer anthems to deliver a tender and thoughtful 90’s-ified solo effort. Among the many highlights, “Inconsolable” elevates Gavin’s unshakeable vocals (and violin playing) on a cloud. “We’re from a long line of people we’d describe as inconsolable. We don’t know how to be helped. We’re from a whole huddle of households full of beds where nobody cuddled. We don’t know how to be held” has lived in the front of my brain since the moment I heard it.
- Caleb Doyle

32 | Charli xcx – 360

The conceit of Charli xcx’s “360” is simple: everywhere you turn, there she is. For an entire season of 2024, that was true. BRAT achieved an omnipresence seemingly unachievable in our fractured cultural landscape, and outside of all the post-post-irony and the chartreuse low-bit memes and the wilted coconut trees, its success came from the fact that it’s very first track is just that good. Impeccably produced (by A.G. Cook, Cirkut, and Easyfun) and tonally potent, its synthetic bounce and infectious melodic pattern - so sugary, so sour - destined it to be stuck in the heads of seemingly everyone with a pulse. It makes you wish pop weren’t so damn ephemeral, but I guess that’s also what makes it so Julia.
- Rob Moura

31 | Magdalena Bay – That’s My Floor

We all know it’s been a year for Mag Bay: a TikTok explosion, a Grimes feature, a Jimmy Kimmel spot. They seem to be getting a whiff of the Tame Impala treatment as far as psychedelic rock-meets-hyperpop is concerned. While “Image” is the single getting all the attention, I’d argue the song of the year is tucked away on the Imaginal Disk B-side. Equal parts prog rock grit, psych jam, and pure electronic soundscape, “That’s My Floor” brings together everything wonderful about Magdalena Bay and ties it all up in three and a half iconic minutes. It’s a song that can soundtrack everything from the first day of grad school to the ride home from a tougher-than-usual therapy appointment (confirmed through personal experience). Also, for what it’s worth, Album Cover of the Year.
- Cassidy Sollazzo

30 | Kabin Crew – The Spark

The last quarter of this year has been so abysmal and apocalyptic that some people may have forgotten that a group of Irish schoolchildren composed one of the most joyous and uplifting grime rap songs of 2024. Created as part of the Rhyme Island Initiative, celebrating the National Day of Youth Creativity, “The Spark” is a two-and-a-half minute b a n g e r, with several kids getting a few bars each that could go toe to toe with any underground posse cut this year. Lines like “If you’re proud of who you are and what you do, shout it” and “I create my own way of feeling super slay” feel like evergreen mantras we could all use in our lives these days.
- Logan Archer Mounts

29 | Foxing – Hell 99

Few moments in music this year have been as electrifying as the first ten seconds of “Hell 99” by Foxing. The track is a downright hardcore rager from the St. Louis indie rockers, a bone-jolting pivot that they pull off beautifully as the members excavate all their pain and frustration with the current millennia. Ultimately, nothing captures that cocktail of dread and dismay better than screaming along, “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!”
- Taylor Grimes

28 | Rosali – Rewind

In its best moments, love erases every regret, worry, stressor, and annoyance. It feels like you can time travel through your life and off into the infinite unknown. For five minutes, Rosali captures that very feeling on “Rewind” with high-flying vocals and a beautiful chorus that encases love in amber and traps it in the groove of a vinyl record.
- Taylor Grimes

27 | Superchunk - Everybody Dies

"Everybody Dies" dropped all the way back in January, and after a year of listening to great new releases, I still haven't found a better-sounding chorus. It's a track that shows Superchunk aren't just relevant for their influence; they're still right in the thick of things, consistently proving themselves to be one of the best guitar bands going. Julio Franco-type longevity. Long live Superchunk.
- Josh Ejnes

26 | Blood Incantation – The Message

If you’ve participated in any online music community in the last five years, or you’re just a big old nerd like me, you’re at least tangentially aware of Blood Incantation. If not in name, then at least by their now iconic unreadable logo, one of the best of the modern death metal era. The Denver progressive death metal band seems to turn more heads with every new release, and their latest Absolute Elsewhere is no different. Anchored by two 20+ minute, album-side-length, multi-movement tracks, Blood Incantation cements their place as master purveyors of their craft. Absolute Elsewhere’s second half, “The Message,” has everything you want, from blistering metal passages to David Gilmour-inspired swells, and it’s all topped off with a collaboration with Tangerine Dream’s current lineup. You can listen to it broken up into three chunks, but I guarantee once Part I begins, you’ll be convinced to finish the whole piece.
- Logan Archer Mounts

25 | Ok Cowgirl – Larry David

Ok Cowgirl start this song with the couplet “Everything is fucked / To the left to the right,” and that’s a phrase I found myself coming back to time and time again throughout the back half of the year. With production from Alex Fararr and a video that sees the band members donning gray-haired bald caps, “Larry David” spins everyday frustration into something more good-natured because if we can’t laugh, what else is there?
- Taylor Grimes

24 | Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us

From the over-the-top costumes to trash talk, hip-hop and wrestling go hand in hand. The great rap war of 2024, Kendrick vs. Drake, ignited an unbridled jolt of electricity to the genre. Sparking one of the most celebrated diss song finishing moves of all time in “Not Like Us.” Kendrick, with sharpshooter-like precision, lyrically assaulted the biggest brand name in hip-hop with a vicious anthem that made his opponent tap out almost instantly from humiliation. The cultural impact, plus the overall entertainment of the song, became sweet chin music to my ears.
- David Williams

23 | Combat – Stay Golden

Maybe I just live close to Baltimore. Maybe my keys are on a Text Me When You Get Back keychain. Maybe I am biased because I reviewed the damn album, but for the love of god, how many times do I have to say it? Broken-hearted kids don’t party like their parents did in the 90s!!!!! Combat utterly tore out of the gates with the titular single off their album, Stay Golden. This is a cartoon tornado of a song, a total jangly rush that feels like space and time are ripping apart around me. It’s an immediate anthem for jaded Gen Zers like yours truly and an absolute barnstormer at any live gig (this is me telling you that you have to see Combat live). And if you don’t listen to me, that hurts, but at least I still got my Black Flag t-shirt.
- Caro Alt

22 | Truman Finnell – Palm of Thorns

I love all forms of weird, vaguely unsettling media, from Wes Anderson’s films to Ray Bradbury’s short stories, and “Palm of Thorns” by Portland artist Truman Finnell fits neatly into that niche. The song paints a visceral image of meeting someone in an orchard, highlighting the rotten fruit on the ground “writhing with larvae” as it starts to “move on its own.” The music is a skillfully woven blend of delicate acoustic guitar, field recordings, and elements of genres such as ambient, folk, and skramz. Each listen reveals another layer of the strange, fantastic, and eerie world of Truman Finnell - and I simply can’t get enough.
- Britta Joseph

21 | Merce Lemon – Will You Do Me A Kindness

Suspiciously left off Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, Merce Lemon released “Will You Do Me A Kindness” as a standalone single early on in the year, perhaps because she knew the six-minute track was a meal all its own. This song signaled an immediate level-up from Merce’s previous work, a naturalistic indie rock update, complete with a guitar solo that incinerates me every time I hear it. Point the sun right into my flesh, baby.
- Taylor Grimes

20 | Merce Lemon – Backyard Lover

To a dude like me, the backyard is a holy place. I spent most of the summer back at my parent’s house in Oregon. I’d get off work, sit in a big, red Adirondack chair, crack a book, stare at the clouds, and enjoy a smoke or a beer while listening to Merce Lemon’s singles. It was a calming way to unplug from work, center myself, and reflect on the day. The slow-simmering build and searing guitarwork of “Backyard Lover” proved to be an utterly transfixing way to score these moments of internal peace. The backyard is abundant, and so is the world.
- Taylor Grimes

19 | Geordie Greep – Holy, Holy

On August 10th of this year, Geordie Greep announced the split of black midi with an unceremonious series of comments on an Instagram livestream: “No more black midi / It’s over / Over.” Ten days later, he released “Holy, Holy.” Recorded in Sao Paulo with an impressive cast of Brazilian musicians, Greep’s narrator puts on the guise of a swaggering womanizer. He’s a confident man! He’s a regular here, but he’s well-traveled and debonair! He fucks more than he breathes, and the whole world knows it, too! And then, over the jazz-rock, salsa-inflected, horn-dense instrumental, he draws back the curtain in a litany of instructions and entreaties to his unnamed partner. Can you kneel down all night so I look taller? Would that be all right? Can you meet me in the bathroom, he pleads, can you put your hand on my knee? “How much will that cost? How much will that cost?”
- John Dietz

18 | Lily Seabird – Waste

Blessed with an Adrianne Lenker-like timbre and the heft of a shoegaze superstar, Lily Seabird taps into some immortal melody with “Waste,” crafting a colossal and crushing track that never fails to mystify me no matter how many times I listen to it—a lament for the ages.
- Taylor Grimes

17 | Jimmy Montague – Here Today (Without You Tomorrow)

Jimmy Montague’s effortlessly complex and effusive arrangements rarely sound as cool as they do on “Here Today (Without You Tomorrow).” With a propulsive piano pushing it forward, the song feels like running through an endless series of hallways, sure that each new door will lead to some sort of resolution. Like Royal Scam-era Steely Dan, this yacht rocker takes on an ominous tone as Mr. Montague chases – or runs from – a long-distance breakup. This song is so good that I don’t even mind that it has a wah-wah guitar solo – and I fucking hate wah-wah.
- Joshua Sullivan

16 | The Civil War in France – Maybe Next Time…

Chiptune isn’t nostalgic for me. I have no memories of Pokemon Silver's soundtrack, despite it being my first video game, because the volume on my Gameboy was always off out of fear my dad would tell me to shut it down. Today, when I want to play Halo, I ask my girlfriend if it’s okay because I don’t want to make her put in headphones, deprive her of access to the TV, or make her go to the other room. I have never wanted to be in the way of someone else’s desires, even if it deprived me of what I wanted or needed. It’s why I relate to Evangelion’s Shinji and why “Maybe next time…” from The Civil War in France’s There You Are ! is one of my favorite songs of the year. When Eva Hammersla screams, “So maybe I’ll try harder to be a better person / so maybe then I’ll be, I’ll be happy with me,” I want to turn back time and raise the volume slider for little Lillian. Maybe then she’d advocate for herself.
- Lillian Weber

15 | Jeff’s World – Someday

You ever spend a day scrolling through the digital morass, watching the soulless husks that run the planet bloviate, fuck things up, rinse and repeat? You ever feel that gnawing feeling you’re powerless to stop it all? Appetite waning, thoughts racing, not enough beer in the world to drown the endless flurry of sounds and images fighting for your attention? Sometimes, the only solution is to let it all out, and on “Someday,” Jeff’s World offer up three minutes of primal scream therapy. For what it’s worth, I hope the Kool-Aid served at the end of the world is blue.
- Jason Sloan

14 | Carpool – Thom Yorke New City

“That’s why I try to keep the bottle half full” is a perfect summation of Carpool’s mixture of sad-sack neuroticism and unabashed sentimentality. “Thom Yorke New City” rounds out their excellent LP My Life In Subtitles, wraps up everything you know about Carpool so far, and hints at the shape of ‘pool to come with its dime-turn structure. Extra points for the blissed-out post-rock bridge, reprising the opening track to give a sense of distance traveled. It also just rocks real hard.
- Joshua Sullivan

13 | Florist – Riding Around In The Dark

“Riding Around In The Dark” effortlessly arrives partway through I Saw the TV Glow, rising like the moonglow reflected off neon pink chalk caked on the driveway. Emily Sprague and company summon the brief apocalypse of twilight, faces coming and going, burbling electronics shrouding gentle strums. There’s a glum mundanity to the way they sing of the world’s end, blushing with awe and fear. Without changing up their familiar naturalism, Florist still conjure vibrant, nostalgic sounds.
- aly eleanor

12 | MJ Lenderman – Pianos

Listen Here (Can't Embed 😕)

“Pianos” might be the saddest song MJ Lenderman has ever written. The track was included as one of the 136 that make up Cardinals At The Window, a benefit compilation whose proceeds go to Hurricane Helene relief in Western NC. Released just a month after Manning Fireworks, it’s unlikely that Lenderman planned to release this song so soon, but truth be told, I’d take “Pianos” over just about any song on that album’s B-side. Sonically, it’s a somber, slow-walking reflection that builds to a searching, meditative guitar solo. Structurally, the song’s 8-minute runtime harkens back to the laid-back ramble of Lenderman’s self-titled album. Essentially, he gives the listener enough time to ponder, wander, freak out, have an epiphany, cry, and then gently return to earth with a newfound direction.
- Taylor Grimes

11 | Fontaines DC – Favourite

Did you know I could claim the dreamer from the dream? Hot off the panting, Korn-inspired, anxiety attack that is “Starburster,” Fontaines DC released “Favourite,” another experimental single off their new album, Romance. This time, instead of capturing a new sound, Ireland’s hottest rock band tried to capture a new feeling. Originally 12 verses but cut back to 4, “Favourite” is an attempt at a truly endless love song. It’s trancey, it’s circular, and it’s as desperate as it is sentimental. They swear up and down that they didn’t want to create the next “Champagne Supernova,” but would it be so bad if they did? I’ve listened to it like 200 times, according to last.fm.
- Caro Alt

10 | Ther – a wish

I have a sincere hope that godzilla isn’t the final album from Philadalephia’s Heather Jones. Their faith-damaged introspections and gorgeous wordplay find a noisier yet no less ornate home on “a wish,” the first track and lead single. It’s a pristine encapsulation of a wandering mind, hopeful and determined to field whatever the dawn may throw at us.
- aly eleanor

9 | This Is Lorelei – Dancing In The Club

I love songs about dancing. I love songs with inventive instrumentation. I love Nate Amos, better known as This Is Lorelei. “Dancing In The Club” was the first single released for the first genuine This Is Lorelei album, and I can’t think of a better introduction to the project. A song about fucking up, being a loser, and giving all your diamonds away. Infinitely relatable.
- Taylor Grimes

8 | SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – 1/500

I was hooked on SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s “1/500” immediately upon hearing the opening notes – a looping intro that segues into hypnotic layers of guitar and pulsing drums. Compared to the rest of their catalog, “1/500” is a fairly straightforward indie pop song, but many of the band’s signature touches are present and help the track stand out. The often-anxious delivery of vocalist Zack Schwartz and abrupt starts and stops from the rhythm section are contrasted with loud, catchy melodies. There’s an almost sinister tension underlying the music, and at times it pierces through the traditional elements with dissonance or the sudden absence of noise. I believe one of the marks of a great band is the ability to write accessible pop songs while staying true to their sound, and SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE does that and more here.
- Nick Miller

7 | bonus – Lose

I checked out “Lose” back in February because of a tweet claiming that Bonus sounded like an emo version of Liquid Mike. I was initially dubious of the claim (despite the poster’s clarification that he wasn’t on some bullshit), but it was very accurate. I’ve had “Cuz I’ve been waiting for so long for you to let go” playing repeatedly in my head ever since. I think the term “rips” has been a bit overused lately, and propose that this song be put in the dictionary as the prime example of what rippage really means. Going to make a supercut of skate clips and Pavel Datsyuk highlights set to it, which I assume will make my phone explode. Just thinking about the guitar sound gets me so hyped. Great song.
- Josh Ejnes

6 | Cheem – Charm Bracelet

The monarchs of Nu-Pop Cheem came out swinging with their second single of the year, “Charm Bracelet.” Equal parts bubbly fun and heavy-hitting hooks, I can't think of another song from this year that pulls me in quite like this one. Every time I hear the buttery production and seemingly endless sonic layers, I find myself smashing the replay button before the song is even finished playing. Cheem has this natural ability to meld together the warm feelings of nostalgia with the effortlessly cool swagger of the cutting edge, and “Charm Bracelet” is the shiniest example of that marriage. Running short of even two minutes, “Charm Bracelet” proves you don't need a lengthy song to make a lasting impact.
- Ciara Rhiannon

5 | MJ Lenderman – She’s Leaving You

“It falls apart. We all got work to do.” Brother, ain’t that the truth. The lead single to MJ Lenderman’s breakthrough record isn’t just great because of the humanity that hides at its center; it’s great because it delivers that revelation in one of the best choruses I’ve heard all year and then tags it with a rockin’ guitar solo for good measure. Its story is a universal cautionary tale of selfishness and love gone wrong, the exact type of thing that goes down easier when it’s delivered in a Trojan Horse of 90s-influenced slacker rock.
- Taylor Grimes

4 | Ethel Cain – For Sure

If you were to look at me, round glasses, black jeans, and corduroy button-up, you’d probably guess (correctly) that American Football’s self-titled record really did a number on me in high school. It’s clear the same can be said for Hayden Anhedönia, better known as Ethel Cain, who transforms “For Sure” into a transcendental 10-minute slowcore sprawl that allows even more beauty to seep through the cracks. While that sounds like a far walk for a simple Midwest Emo song, it recontextualizes the work of both artists, exalting a tale of uncertain love into a territory that’s more holy than it has any right to be.
- Taylor Grimes

3 | One Step Closer - Leap Years

One does not simply drop a song on February 29th just to let it drift away in the winds of time, especially when “Leap Years” is about just that. One Step Closer brings a whirlwind of throttling instrumentation fit for a mosh pit and passionate lyrics with a special co-writing credit from the legendary Mat Kerekes, complete with a fantastic tempo shift during the outro to take the song home. There’s really nobody crushing the melodic hardcore game like One Step Closer.
- Samuel Leon

2 | Braino – Unkind

Who doesn’t love an underdog story? “Unkind” is one of six total songs this LA group has ever made in their short, sporadic life, and it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in 2024. It is a beautifully gentle composition of uncomplicated piano and guitar, coupled with soft percussion and layered vocals—A.K.A., indie as all hell. The song is a constant internal monologue, with unhelpful thoughts taking up space and the feeling of losing ground after a positive change. I think we want to believe that we can wake up one day and be different, but the reality is it takes months or years to train ourselves to be more like our ideal selves. This song is a gorgeous lullaby to rock yourself to sleep to, placed somewhere on your journey after a backslide into nasty habits and just before a brave step forward.
- Braden Allmond

1 | Waxahatchee – Right Back To It

“Right Back To It” is timeless. Featuring a spellbinding banjo, classically confessional Crutchfield lyrics, and complete with an MJ Lenderman feature that frames the song as a loving (possibly treacherous) duet, it already feels like this melody has been in my life for decades. The music video is just as serene as we watch the two alt-country superstars float down the river in a pontoon boat, serenading the world as it passes by. This is the type of song that makes me happy to be alive, the type of chorus I’ll be singing for as long as I’m kicking around, the kind of art other musicians spend their entire lives working towards. “Right Back To It” is four and a half minutes that will live for eternity.
- Taylor Grimes

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