Miike Snow: “Heart is Full”
Miike Snow’s first track since 2012 is quite a transformation from past albums. Comparing “Heart is Full” to tracks like “Animal” or “Paddling Out,” you would think this is a completely different group. The up-...
Boulevards: “Got to Go”
Boulevards is from Raleigh, North Carolina and maybe the past, too. His fashion sense screams throwback (something he attributes to his father), while his music sounds like something Bootsy Collins kicked off P...
Inheaven: “Bitter Town”
When I hear the natural gallop of Inheaven’s “Bitter Town,” I’m immediately reminded of last summer. During those days, working my soul-sucking seasonal job as a custodian, I found a sense of buoyancy in a sele...
Best Songs of 2015
Our writers and editors chime in with their personal favorites from the past year.
Andrew Brandt
2015 was the year Josh Tillman came to everyone’s apartment, through headphones, laptop speakers and think piec...
Lontalius: “All I Wanna Say”
Read the artist name “Lontalius” and your first image probably isn’t a scrawny 18-year-old kid in a sweater and skinny jeans. It’s probably not what you first see when you hear his rich, compelling baritone eit...
Christine and the Queens feat. Perfume Genius: “Jonathan”
Christine (real name Héloïse Letissier) and the Queens (her drag queen backing band) are a French band that have made a stand in indie freak pop. Héloïse, who now regularly goes by Christine, began this project...
Elohim: “Bridge and the Wall”
When Elohim was first pitched to me, the term used to describe the L.A.-based elctro-popper was “CHVRCHES-y.” Being a proud member of the FANCLVB, I was immediately intrigued. Listening to “Bridge and the Wall,...
Julien Baker: “Brittle Boned”
“Waiting, it’s tired of me.”
Four words later and Julien Baker is holding my stomach in her fist in a strong yet comforting grip. This is the effect of her recent single, “Brittle Boned,” a powerful pop land...
Violet Swells: “Gravity Wins Again”
I lived in a world detached from the world of Violet Swells. Psychedelia was a dead art in my Wisconsin town, a musical form surviving only in the Doors and Beatles CDs we’d snag from five-dollar bins and the l...
Pity Sex: “What Might Soothe You?”
Emo seems to be in the middle of another moment. 2015 has seen bands like Hop Along and Title Fight drop stellar albums and rightly become critical darlings. They represent a generation of bands who grew up on ...
Arca: “Soichiro”
In anticipation of his upcoming album, Mutant, Arca released the album’s second single, “Soichiro,” which holds true to his trip-hop form. It’s titled after the middle name of his friend and frequent collaborat...
Great Good Fine Ok: “Take It or Leave It”
All right, time to get up and get moving — after listening to Great Good Fine Ok’s “Take It or Leave It,” you probably won’t have a choice. The single just exudes the energy most of us look for desperately in o...