It's the sort of song that I didn't really like the first time I heard it but enjoyed more and more as I listened to it. More importantly, I kept thinking about it. The effect is both electronic and shamanistic and I enjoy how it feels to have these phrases repeated at me in a way and methodology that shouldn't be musical, yet somehow only becomes more musical the more you hear it, with the phrases eventually blending perfectly and becoming their own strange but beautiful instrument.

I think it is truly wild what music we can make with the tools that computers give us that still feel incredibly human, reflecting some deep unalienable thing within us that, like in this case, make "water being cut at the bow of a boat" repeated over and over with the right tone and music perfectly create the picture of that very thing in one's head.

It is insane to me to read about the shitty AI music people are making, there are all these wonderful tools on our computer that could make amazing music even without ever having to learn an instrument or even sing. Tools that can maintain every inch of our humanity focused through the music. But people would choose to leverage a weird soulless imitator?

I stumbled on AI music on Spotify for the first time (I think) yesterday and as I was listening to it, I was wondering "is this AI music?" and sure enough AI music, AI singer, AI all the way down. There is this entire layer of creativity and ... wonder that is lost when you tell a machine a few sentences and just take whatever slop it spits back. I'm sure there are some uses for AI in music that do make sense, but giving away your entire creative process to poke at a glob you have no real control over? That just isn't it.

I love this song because it is so simple and yet it leverages that simplicity to connect with our humanity, and so much of it comes from the use of these computerized sounds and voices.

"There are the children who have not yet lost their sense of wonder"

Indeed.

Another really great song along these lines from the same album and artist.

There is this great sequence around each chorus where she runs from high to low pitched and then into a great drum line.

I love the way this song jumps around. Dixon's lyrics say it:

My thoughts just roll around like loose change up in my head My thoughts run, run

and a lesser artist might just speak the words, but what catches my attention is how closely the song's music feels exactly like that. Her thoughts run like loose change, and so does the music.

I haven't clicked as well with some of the other albums, but 2025's Tales of a Knight is a definitely a recommend from me. All the songs are great on there, but Renaissance and Guts--both tracks on the album--are absolute bangers, I've listened to them quite a few times and they're always fun to have on my playlist. This track and the full album has her skills on display, with all these wonderful little time changes and big shifts in tone and chord. It makes all her music on Tales of a Knight so much fun to listen to. I've liked a number of her other songs too, but I really need to make a focused effort to listen more.

I've listened to a few songs in the past by KABEAUSHÉ but this one made me really pay attention and loop back to the artist and start listening more in depth. The EP this is off of "LIFE'S WAAAAAAAY TOO FLEEEEETEEN'" is a three track banger. It's stuffed full of fascinating attention grabbing choices with a mix of drum beats, brassy sequences, pop sounds, and little classical beats all combined in an electronic music framework.

I had to find out more, which is how I can tell you that though KABEAUSHÉ is Kenyan, they work with a Ugandan music collective Nyege Nyege, which seems to be focused mostly on electronic music. I listened to a few peers in that space and they're all interesting, with maybe HHY & The Kampala Unit providing a close feel. I am looking forward to listening to more in the space and finding out more about it in the near future.

But while I'm on my way there, I'm listening to this track. There's something particularly special in this song, which is the first single off an upcoming album I'm not very much looking forward to. The combination of these classical sequences bridging the singing, the contrast with a more bit-tune musical sequence and the way that voice is used in a glitchy instrumental way makes the track incredibly engaging. It picks up fast and takes you along for a ride.

There's the feeling here of almost three, maybe even four songs, all overlapping, synced up with different starts and ends and combining into a glorious overture for KABEAUSHÉ short bursts of song. The end result is just an incredibly fun and straight-up addictive listen. Highly recommend this track, the EP, and more by the artist.

I find that, though it isn't a bad thing at all, a lot of the plunderphonics tracks can come out as a meshing of distinct parts. These can be a lot of fun to listen to, sometimes partially to try and pick up the parts. They can also occasionally be a little distracting, where the shift between parts becomes noticeable. Some DJs/artists may even be doing that intentionally. That's not the case here. The saxophone motif runs in the background while the beat speeds up and slows down in concert with layers of mixed in sound. Fragments of voice tracks are used like instruments to parallel various layers of music in an effect that makes the feeling of listening to this conversational, light, airy and not at all distracting.

There's these wonderful 90s sounds that fit the theme that feel nostalgic but also brand new, at the 56 second mark there's this use of voices and sound right before the beat speeds up that feels somehow like a memory of watching 90s music videos manufactured new, and also a perfect transition into the new rhythm. A feat repeated at the bridge from 2:20 to 2:55 as well, with an impressive mix of voices taking the forefront in a way that barely sounds vocal at all.

I really enjoy the fundamental feel of this song, the mix of throw-back and modern approaches, and the creativity of the mix. I recommend the whole album, and this is a great start.

This is typical for the Pinc Louds whose unique vocalist Claudi caught my attention immediately when they were one of the acts at a Sofar around 5 years ago. The speakeasy space behind a clothing store is gone, the clothing store is gone, the block it was on, right near Brooklyn Bowl, has significantly gentrified. But the song the Pinc Louds opened with has remained in my playlist since. As have others they've put out since.

This Hate Hurts really kicks up the production however, and while this song (the third single off their new album "You Can't Eat the Moon and Be a Werewolf Too" set to drop this month) no doubt benefits from being mixed and produced by Gordon Raphael who produced The Strokes, you can't mistake that marimba sound cutting through the crashing synths. The combination makes the track unmistakably Pinc Louds.

It's a hell of a track too, dense, thick with the feelings described in the lyrics. I immediately wanted to move, nod, yell and listen to it again. When it all comes cascading down towards the end I knew I had to make it my obsession for this week.

The last few years have really swung my musical preferences towards denser and denser tracks and I'm often in the mood for something a but more crunchier than the Pinc Louds first album, so to have them drop this track now where it fits in perfectly with my preferences lately is a real joy. I've got the track on repeat and you should try giving it more than one listen too.

A perfect track for the present moment. I can't want for the full album to drop!

Since then I've been coming back to it and other songs by Franco-Malian music collective Lamomali. Lamomali came about through the combination of French singer-songwriter Matthieu Chedid, griot Toumani Diabaté, and diva Fatoumata Diawara.

The song, from what I can tell by reading the translated-from-French sources is focused on the idea of a griot: a word for a West African storyteller, holder of oral traditions and wandering musician and poet. The collective utopian-pop group includes Diabaté, who is apparently a very renown Kora player.

The song talks about being a griot from a family of griots, how one learns, and the question of the totem, an object that provides a source of inspiration, or--the lyrics ask--is the inspiration from within? 'Am I the totem of myself?'

The song switches around from what sounds like spoken parts by Diabaté, strongly sung parts by individuals and by the group during the chorus, and a whispery tone during some other parts.

I love how the music just moves. It isn't just foot-tapping, it has an acceleration that the beat and mix use to propel me forward.

I'm sure I'm getting some, if not all, wrong about the origin and nature of the song. I'm just trying to scrape together auto-translated texts to understand what's going on. But the music is unmistakably good. The lightweight strings of the kora and the guitar work blend together to make a sound that I keep thinking about after the song ends. Thee are a few great guitar riffs from Chedid that really pop out in successive listens. I really recommend watching their live performance at France Inter Studio 104 to see it all come together! It's wild to see this collection of artists, including featured artist Yamê, also do some truly impressive things with their voices too.

I can't recommend the whole album enough, I've been listening to more and more of this group's music and it's all great, but this song keeps me coming back.

I think there's so much fun new and really invigorating and different experiences out there for me as someone who only speaks English and doesn't get exposed to a lot of non-American music without trying to find it. New instruments, new styles, different topics and ideas, I love encountering these by trying to listen to music outside my normal comfort zone, this track is a great example of why to do that work. As the translation of one line says "It's not AI, it's art."

I've found the playlist-based recommendations in Spotify a little chancy lately, which is a shame because it was the best feature of using the platform. However, I suspect that French electropop is so well established that it's able to do recommendations a little more effectively than in some more obscure genres.

This song is a lot of fun, one of those where it comes on and you don't even notice as you start moving around to the music. The sound mix reminds me a lot of Sorry by GATC, another great song.

It is a surprisingly bright song considering that, according to the translations I could find at least, it is about falling out of love with someone. I think you can sort of hear it in the deeper more discordant notes that run under the whole song. The chorus is a hell of a lot of fun though, as is the synth work.

There's something about that brassy chorus that makes this sone irresistible to me, and gives the whole track a sort of bounding energy, like the singer is not just falling out of love but already on the rebound.

I've tried out a few more tracks by Voyou and while many of them are pretty good, few hit me and make me move like this one. I just want more energy out of these types of tracks than in most of Voyou's other work. That said, I'm going to dig into this album and their back catalog for sure, along with expanding out my French electropop playlist.

I have been diving in and filling out a playlist of matched music but this song is what really set me off. There's something that dances in it that is both gorgeous nature and clashing human machinery drawing my attention when it comes on and setting a tear in my eye.

I think I'll likely have another obsession to pull in from this genre soon, but there's something special here that feels like a key to better appreciate Let's Eat Grandma and a whole swath of artists who are playing in a similar space.

When I connected with From the Morning it led me back to a bunch of other songs and artists that I had heard years before, appreciated as technically competent, but just couldn't get in to.

This song is a take on a Nick Drake track apparently, but that shouldn't be taken to imply anything negative the rest of their song writing. I've selected Let's Eat Grandma as an obsession before after having first encountered them as the authors of the soundtrack to The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself, which I really enjoyed (the soundtrack a little more than the show, but the show was good too).

Another strong entry in the obsession list as a song that straight up takes over my brain. This track is gorgeous.

I love how the song is paced, I love that it has a pick up instead of a drop and the lyrical flow is fantastic. I think there are some extremely choice rhymes here that just elevate the whole operation to make this song nearly addictive.

There's a lot of fun little couplets that pop out irresistibly. Especially the chorus. The way it ends with an 'Oh no'. I love it. The whole thing feels like an extremely modern version of CAKE's "Short Skirt/Long Jacket", the immense sense of sarcasm that winds through both songs joins their together spiritually.

Also, cannot lie, I love the background screaming under "I chose to believe them". What a sound! What a choice! Love it.

This song is the peak, with sweet 80s saxophones, somewhat silly lyrics, but a whole lot of fun and heart. It feels distinctively like the film in a way that I'm not sure I've encountered outside of well... other 80s films. I just love the song, it feels tactilely good. It recommends itself and the film effectively.

"Somewhere out there I've been hearing this love song"

It also feels like McCreary and his brother are tapping into their own nostalgia and a bit of their own schmaltz on this song. Like the film, it feels like a creation that someone had fun putting together. I feel like that is an undervalued quality these days, and one that seems rarer all the time.

I don't really know the artist very well, this came out of a algorithmic recommendation on my Hyper Emo Noise playlist which is mostly music that Spotify calls '5th wave emo', whatever that means. It doesn't fit on that playlist though, it's far too relaxed. I find the lyrics are more interested in musicality than sense, which is fun and interesting. I also really like how hard to square into a single genre it is, not just because it feels like 2, maybe 3, songs, especially at about 3:10 where it briefly dives into what is almost a completely different song.

The soothing sound of the chorus is itself almost from a different piece of music, with a smoothness and unexpectedly organized sound that almost feels like it is coming straight from a Sufjan Stevens song.

Overall, a song that is hard to describe but feels like it is actively doing something strange but highly enjoyable to my brain every time I hear it. It feels, perhaps intentionally, like a getting pleasantly high. The lyrics make it sound almost like you are sitting on a couch in college with your friendly neighborhood dealer talking nonsense also while you're both pleasantly high. I'm going to bet this song isn't for everyone, but it's really my jam right now.

Also I enjoy that this song feels like a round (even if it isn't). I sort of want to play it on a loop three different times at three different start points and see how it goes.

This is the titular track off their latest album. I recommend the whole album and it was hard to pick a favorite track. The sliding genres of classical, dark cabaret, rock opera, rock and punk are a surprisingly great combination and also quite a demonstration of Jhariah's skill as an artist. The ending, which almost comes off like a cinematic theme or a march, is particularly memorable.

Jhariah clearly have a toe in pop punk as well, not just in this track but through their collaboration with modern-pop-punk band Pinkshift, one of my favorites new entrants that have been reviving the genre.

Interestingly, Spotify's primary classification of Jhariah is "POV: Indie". I have no idea what that means and it is one of the genres in Spotify that doesn't seem to have the normal playlist that describes it. It's not a perfect fit with the other songs that get classed that way. I've tried to put together a playlist of similar music, but it is thus far a mere 10 songs.

Anyway, I've really been enjoying their work, it's got such a unique sound at times that it really catches my ear, but the various tones, genres and instrumental styles are blended so well I can listen to it while I work.

I really enjoyed all the music but ended up picking this one for being pretty great, having a nice lead-in, and demonstrating how Ugly (UK) is capable of building these well-blended layers of sound.

That said, you should absolutely check out the full album.

I'm not sure how to describe exactly what this song does that feels so viscerally satisfying, but every time it comes on it really just lifts my spirits.

This band, LOOP POOL, is Japanese and self-classifies as Jazz Fusion, which is pretty broad. It's interesting to see a lot of people categorize them as Math Rock or Instrumental Math rock, it is complex enough that makes sense, but the improvisational feel, for this track at least, has me filing it under Progressive Jazz Rock in my own playlists.

I also really have actually enjoyed her stuff the most when she leans into that country music inspiration, so this album is a treat for me.

As time has gone on, I've become more and more appreciative of how Miley Cyrus's fairly unique voice. It doesn't work for everything, but when used in the right place it's amazing. This is definitely one of those places that uses her to her maximum potential.

It sounds great! I love the way the two voices work together and the way the song is structured. It's a great track.

Judging by his Last.fm page, this short song, a mere 2:25, isn't the most preferred track from his work or This Is How We Get Better. I'm hardly alone in liking it, but it's not the most popular. I find that I like it more consistently than most of his other songs. Each song is good in its own way but they tend to work in such a way that I only think of them or really want to listen at specific times or moods. The album feels personal and the songs about very specific things, so I think that makes sense. the Pattern however is great to listen to at any time. The hum of his repeating voice in the background, the way the pitch of the foreground vocals contrasts against it, the lyrics, they all combine into this particularly stand-out tune.

I particularly like how it opens and closes like the song is part of a loop and you've just got this particular slice of it at this particular moment. It's very effective at supporting the narrative of the lyrics.

One of my favorite ways to listen to this song is to queue it up twice. Hearing the song loop back into itself somehow feels extremely appropriate.

One day I will rise up
Light from lack of baggage
Fresh to meet the sunrise

Whatever you want to call it, the tune is great and the rhythm feels like it's moving your feet for you. It was immediately running in the back of my head. The song also manages to walk that careful balance between catchy and melancholy that makes this particular flavor of country music so good.

I also really enjoy the specific image it conjures, the recent unexpected Texas snow and the power outage that resulted is very clearly the inspiration behind the lines:

But now it's cold in Amarillo

Getting cold in Amarillo

Now the city's lost its power

With the frost and snow

And I'm just counting down the hours

It's wonderful to actively feel the match between the powerless cold frozen-over Amarillo and the person he let go. I love it.

Reviewing Levenson's stuff on Spotify it looks like he's entirely done singles over the past few years and while none of the ones I've listened to hit me like this song does, they're all pretty good. I hope he does an album some time soon, it would be interesting to see how he takes on a larger project.

Jepsen has always been bright in her music but this track in particular is just so much fun and I like the lyrics. We all have felt this way, impatient to get through the slow, the boring, the hard, just wanting to cut to that feeling.

Found this song through Todd in the Shadows end of the year review which highlighted the equally great, though more popular single with Post Malone. I dove right into the album and instantly loved the whole thing.

Apparently this isn't my first encounter with Noah Kahan though, back in 2019 I was deep in... let's call it the 'sad girl with a ukelele' genre. I listened to a lot of mxmtoon, who is my break-away away favorite of all the musicians I explored at the time. I even saw her live, which was a little weird, that's likely the largest the age difference average has ever been between me and the majority of concertgoers at a show. Apparently they did a duet called Pride together that is pretty great and that is the first time I listened to anything having to do with Noah Kahan, it hit well for the tail end of Big COVID Times.

Todd made the point that this falls into a particular class of stomp and clap music like Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers that he called "hat music" in the sense that usually the singer or band is wearing some sort of americana-esque hat. I like that. I don't think I can listen to that style of music all the time, but I enjoy the hell out of the highlights.

The song itself is great, and I recommend the full album. It's such an eclectic sound, with the wide variety of electronica that is typical of hyperpop but also a lot of music and style from all over the map. I almost feel like this album was made for me, drawing specifically on a variety of influences that I've been getting into as well. This track is, perhaps, the most conventional--though that isn't really the right word for it, but it catches just as well and showcases their creativity in production as much and inspirations. Here you can hear their interest in Japanese instrumentation, synthpop, an almost vaporwave gloss over the top, and a slight nod toward modern pop.

It's a shame I wasn't more engaged with this band earlier, but I promise I'll be listening to them a lot more actively and often in the near future.

The strong, emotional, vocals that grabbed my attention and the flip between simple--almost lullaby-like--and complex production, and then back again, holds that attention. I don't know if I want a ton of songs like this; it is a little sparse compared to her most of her work, which tends toward a higher density of sound that I like. In this song, that sparse darker feeling is her intention. On her site Päter notes:

"Everything has its opposite, and Moonshine is the underside to songs like Nicotine Hallelujah or Dam, Damn. It's when you’ve laughed it off and stayed in motion the best you can, but suddenly everything becomes heavy. I wanted to sit with that volatile stillness we all fall into sometimes."

With that in mind I think the track really accomplishes the effect it sets out for. Not only that, but I found that, even with the substantially different sound, this track really captured me and the artist manages to keep the vibe from going so dark as to turn me off. I'm glad to see Päter exploring their capabilities and including yet another genre in their repertoire.

This song is the latest single off her upcoming album, and the others are worth checking out as well. I'm looking forward to hearing the full album when it drops.

You can hear that in his instrument choices here and even in the way the music references through instrumentation choices both the fantasy setting and gives a lot of information about the character themselves.

This isn't the first time Slavov has shown up on this list, nor is it the first of his vocal-focused tracks. However, this is a fun one. Like "Sing for Me", it is a character in the game vocalizing their own music in character, but here it's sort of a campy, almost operatic track. I guess I should note that if you're playing the game, or planning to, it has some spoilers in it.

I know that this is a particularly nerdy pick for the site, but I've been listening to and enjoying it a lot. I don't know if it has the same impact without the context of having played the game but hopefully anyone can get some joy out of it.

There's a fun interview with the vocalist who is the voice actor behind the character which I recommend. It's just one little slice of how much has gone into Baldur's Gate 3, which I've been playing a lot of. It's great!

Triana has a wide genre range, along with a gorgeous voice which fits well in all of them. A lot of her work overlaps with soul, R&B, pop and jazz. A few folks identify her as "soul pop". She has a bunch of tracks that fit well within a genre I call "clang pop" but this is the one that sits most firmly among other clang pop tracks. I'm not sure clang pop is a genre term anyone else uses, but I find it makes a good unifier for songs with pop inclinations who distinguish themselves with a strong use of percussion, bells, brassy sounds, chimes, and other more rhythm-section elements, along with non-standard electronic distortion-style sounds, all of which are in here. I tend to especially think of a song as clang pop when the rhythmic elements are used off the main beat in a way that gives the songs a little big of discord and disorder.

The off-beat pop sound has clearly worked for her as, if you don't live in the UK, there's a good chance you may have heard her work in a commercial or TV show, where they seem to get used frequently. It's attention grabbing music, so I can see why.

I enjoy the variety of Triana's work. At some point, according to Wikipedia, she seems to have been performing with the group Jungle, which is also a sort of pop/soul/something-else group and seems like a good fit. (I like their music quite a bit, but I'm seeing I've never had them on my obsessions list, something to fix soon.) I encourage checking her other work out and, if you like this sound, maybe look at some of the other clang pop songs I've selected in the past.

Spotify classified her as neoclassical, and that's a good word for her work, but I pulled it into a genre I've seen called Brainjazz. Music in these works tend to combine pop and dance structures with jazz, electronic and classical sounds in some pretty interesting ways that often fall, in the way jazz can, outside of a hard structure. The genre is sort of porous, with intersection with "IDM" or "Intelligent Dance Music", neoclassical and progressive jazz.

Pen, who is based in the Netherlands, is a saxophonist and composer. She also does producing. A lot of her work leans into classical music and structures but almost all seem to include electronica-style sounds, and they're all bursting with energy and creativity. Start here and check out the rest of Pen's work.

I don't know much about Party Favor. I'll have to look into their music a little more, but he's layed down a pretty great beat here. The lyrics hit on some of the themes Flay has proven a particularly adept lyricist on: how to handle our own flaws, how to live in a world that isn't always fair, and how to deal with her limits. I find it particularly effective with her relatively light touch of a delivery here.

I suspect the themes of this track hit a little closer to home for Flay now. Her most recent album MONO follows up on an announcement that she lost her hearing in one ear. A song about the way we can hit our limits both for better and worse feels close to what she's dealing with. Even more remarkable that this manages to hit me right in the feels while still being catchy as hell. That chorus just hits right every time.

In either case I really like how the cover plays with the ideas that are common to Rob Zombie's work while being very distinct from it. The horror-film piano opening is great, especially in-context with the show and it feels almost like the sort of choice Zombie might make (though with a lot more heavy sound) and the electronic distorted vocals are a particularly cyberpunk-esque touch on the type of less-distinguishable vocals that Zombie often uses.

I'm not a big White Zombie or Rob Zombie fan though he's a leader of his genre for sure. That type of music just isn't in my usual rotation. But this fits my tastes well.

Kara's Theme, in this remix, is all high energy movement, full power 80s synth, and particularly epic. There's some fun complexities that keep it continually listenable, like the brief higher-key bridge at the two minute mark, and the change up right after that. The layering at the 3 minute mark really brings you towards the conclusion. There's just so much going on in this one track. It is also gives you the vibe of the game, which is all about speed, precision, and action.

Sadly, I'm not very good at the game, though I still have fun with it, and the excellent soundtrack really helps. I recommend listening to the whole thing, it's all great.

That said, I've particularly liked the vietnamese take on pop punk and the bands have continually been on my listening list, with one or two occasionally popping up on repeat. I've listened to them often enough that the Spotify algorithm has learned to recommend them to me in some contexts. That said, this comes of Tran's playlist and is a recommendation for all the rest that she put on there. It's just so much fun in the way pop punk should be.

You should listen to the whole album and also, you should play the game. I understand that not many people played through, but it is absolutely worth it.

Visager now performs as Josie Brechner

Damn, the mix on this is so good.

This uses the embed-able YouTube, but it is even more fun to see the one that samples visuals from the show.

Audio file provided under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DEED license from State Shirt. If you like it, buy it from their Bandcamp page.

Mix tape: https://web.archive.org/web/20090309003652/http://www.illinoize.biz/

Find it on Bandcamp - https://schafferthedarklord.bandcamp.com/track/publishing-rights-feat-schaffer-the-darklord

See: https://soundcloud.com/craigmire/1-on-1-round-1

Also can hear it at https://www.reverbnation.com/capitalroad/song/499576-the-bongo-song

Remixed by Party Ben.

Remixed by Party Ben.