Stereogums weekly compilation of their favorite songs on the indie rock/pop/hip-hop spectrum.
Source: Hype MachineHype Machine Top 10; Listen for free at bop.fmBlog aggregator Hype Machines top 10 tracks. Updated weekly.
Source: Moses Wiener, Pigeons & PlanesThe Best New Mixes Streaming Right Now ; Listen for free at bop.fmHeres a different kind of list compiled on a weekly basis by Pigeons & Planes Moses Wiener. It encompasses some of the best mixes available on SoundCloud right now. Among the entrants: a blend of yacht rock by true school hip-hop vets People Under the Stairs, a Sonar Festival preview by the 2 Bears (featuring Joe Goddard of Hot Chip), an Essential Mix entry by tech-house star Scuba, and an intriguing melange of screwed rap-and-B by newcomer Drae Da Skimask.
Source: ComplexFor those of you not attuned to the fast-moving tastes of rap blogs, most of these names will ring unfamiliar to you. And to be frank, theres nothing wrong with that, since these up-and-comers are in their woodshedding phase. Boogies The Reach has drawn critical acclaim and a deal with Republic/Interscope, while fellow UMG signee Post Malone seems like the proverbial industry plant. Nef the Pharoahs "Big Tymin" has dominated the San Francisco Bay Area all summer; and D.R.A.M.s "Cha Cha" has inspired countless Vine memes and a thinly-veiled Drake homage. Good hunting.
What This Is: Mixmag is the preeminent British resource for electronic music and clubbing culture. They’ve been doing this since 1983, and they’ve traversed the various peaks and valleys of electronic music’s long journey since that time. What To Expect: The absolute best house music out today. Mixmag (generally) updates this every week, and their picks are (generally) unimpeachable.
What This Is: An ever-growing playlist featuring songs from NPRs revered radio show thats been running since 2000. This is your go-to source for discovering new music—especially in indie and pop—as well as the greatest influences behind that music. This may be unofficial, but its every bit comprehensive.
What To Expect: All Songs Considered not only spotlights "essential new songs," but also has special "Guest DJ" features, so the playlist is a bit scattered with new and old tracks. But while you may randomly hear some classic Dylan and Bowie, these oldies mostly weave in seamlessly with Bob Boilen and Robin Hiltons fresh picks, which lean heavily on quirky alt-pop purveyors (think: MGMT, alt-J, St. Vincent), raw singer-songwriters (Angel Olsen, Waxahatchee), indie folk vets (Fleet Foxes, TK, TK), indie rock phenoms (Courtney Barnett, Car Seat Headrest), and the occasional socially conscious rapper (Kendrick Lamar, Anderson.Paak).
What This Is: A British perspective on the hottest new music, according to BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac. The playlist compiles Macs daily selections into one ever-expanding mix.
What to Expect: According to Mac, youll get everything "from dance bangers to hip-hop and indie," but theres so much more. Her omnivorous tastes make for an intriguing listen, where sensitive singer-songwriters flow into woozy electronic, bubbly indie pop, sneering indie rock, smooth R&B, and sleazy mainstream hip-hop. Of course, English artists dominate much of the mi
It’s a great big world, and there’s a ton of new music being released into it each week. How to keep up? Lucky for you, the staff at The Dowsers is sifting through it all each week, every week, and so we figured we’d curate the fruits of that labor into a new playlist franchise we calling “The 40: Essential New Music.” Updated every Monday, “The 40” brings together the 40 best new tracks from across multiple genres. If it’s good, it’s in there. If it’s not, then you can probably skip it. Enjoy.
Check out Pitchforks pick for the best new tracks, updated weekly or as they arrive.
Billboards iconic top 100 chart, updated weekly. This is pulled from their Spotify account, which only includes 90 or so songs, oddly enough.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
