New Order - “Bizarre Love Triangle” - 1986, Last seen on the February 2023 playlist. This is one of their most popular songs, and if you are an 80s music fan, you should definitely recognize it.

Spang Sisters - “King Prawn the 1st” - 2019, Spang Sisters is a duo from Bristol that started in 2016. They play a cool R&B infused dusty indie rock that almost comes off as yacht rock-y at times. This song leans into the R&B though.

Christoph El Truento - “Numb” - 2023, Born Christopher Martin James, “Christoph El Truento” hails from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand). He has made music under various genres and monikers, but this new album is indie hip hop. The backing music definitely could fit into dub, psych, or modern jazz.

Emapea - “Good Old Days” - 2016, Emapea is a Polish lo-fi producer, who has been labeled as trip hop, acid jazz, or mushroom jazz.

G4SH - “Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso lofi (Your Lie in April)” - 2023, This is about as “indie” as it gets. G4SH is a lo-fi producer that self describes as anime-lofi. It is great for a relaxing playlist.

Raw Poetic & Damu the Fudgemunk - “Ease Side” - 2023, Raw Poetic is one of my favorite finds of this year. He is a super talented hip hop artist who also happens to play all of the instruments on his albums. He has been partnering up on his last few solo albums with producer, Damu the Fudgemunk. Inspired by Boom-Bap, Damu has taken the style in a more progressive direction to create incredible beats for the artists he works with.

Vagabon - “Carpenter” - 2023, Vagabon is the pseudonym for Cameroonian-American, Laetitia Tamko. She is a self-taught singer-songwriter, music producer, and multi-instrumentalist. She moved to the US at age 13 and began learning English, eventually graduating with an Engineering degree from Grove School of Engineering. At 17 she started teaching herself guitars, and started uploading her self-produced music to streaming services 5 years later.

Snoh Aalegra - “Find Someone Like You” - 2019, Snoh is a Persian-Swedish singer-songwriter that signed her first record deal at age 13 with Sony Music Sweden. She released music in the 2000s, but really got put on the map when she appeared as a feature on Common’s album Nobody’s Smiling. In 2014 she became a protégé of Prince, and studied under him until his death in 2016. This song is for my wife, the infamous Elin Gaines, on our 9th anniversary this year, but there is no way she reads these. Do any of you read these?

The Isley Brothers - “Sunshine (Go Away Today) - 1973, The Isley Brothers consist of O’Kelly Isley Jr, Rudolph Isley, and Ronald Isley, and have been one of the most influential American music groups spanning a career over 60 years. Their most popular song, made even more famous for future generations by the movie Animal House, is the song, “Shout”. They originally started their career as a gospel influenced doo-wop group, and expanded into R&B, soul, funk, rock and disco, or a blend thereof.

Orange Juice - “Rip It Up” - 1982, Orange Juice were a Scottish jangle pop band from Glasgow, starting under the name The Nu-Sonics, but changing their name to Orange Juice in 1979. They are considered one of the most important bands of the indie Scottish music scene in the post-punk era. You can still hear their influence in bands that are currently making music today, especially in the vocal stylings of the singer, Edwin Collins.

DOPE LEMON - “Marinade” - 2016, Last heard on the May 2023 playlist. DOPE LEMON is the solo project of Angus Stone, one half of the musical sibling duo, Angus & Julia Stone.

Rikki Ililonga - “The Nature of Man” - 1975, Rikki Ililonga was a Zamrock musician that got his start in the psychedelic band Musi-O-Tunya in his home country of Zambia. He later continued on with solo work which continued psych rock but also included much more folk influenced songs. The Nature of Man is one of these tunes, and speaks to the hardships of life in Zambia at the time.

Hiss Golden Messenger - “Nu-Grape” - 2023, Hiss Golden Messenger is pretty hard to label, but if I had to, I think it would fall into alternative-country. Really though, they are a melting pot of country, folk, soul, dub, jazz, R&B and pretty much anything and everything else that you can think of. The album that this song is included on is one of my favorite releases this year.

Good Looks - “Vision Boards” - 2022, Good looks was formed by friends from Texas, Tyler Jordan and Jake Ames, who first met at the Kerrville Folk Festival. They describe themselves as blue collar political indie-rock. They are a combination alt-country, rock n roll outfit that could fit in the red dirt scene just as easily as they could play rock clubs.

Unlucky Mammals - “Reduce Reuse Repent” - 2023, Unlucky Mammals just released their debut album at the end of October. They are an indie rock trio from Philadelphia. They remind me of jamming with friends in a garage, and I mean this in the best nostalgic way possible.

Neal Francis - “Can’t Stop the Rain” - 2022, Piano rock is just so hard to come by nowadays but Neal Francis is out there killing it. This song also features Derek Trucks on slide guitar, who is arguable one of the best guitarists of this generation.

JD Clayton - “Cotton Candy Clouds” - 2023, Some of my favorite music out there is what I would call “Country Adjacent” - too weird to be country, too country to be rock, too rock to be folk. This song falls right into that venn diagram. JD Clayton is, in my opinion, one of the best songwriters out there doing it right now.

The Secret Sisters - “You Don’t Own Me Anymore” - 2017, The Secret Sisters are sisters Laura Rogers, and Lydia Slagle (née Rogers). They sing a more traditional style of country and harmonize only as sisters could.

Emily McLoud - “So They Say” - 2022, Claim to fame - Emily and I grew up playing the violin together through middle and highschool, and she was featured on a couple of songs from the Emory Quinn “Live at Gruene Hall” album. She is a great singer-songwriter out of Austin, Tx, as well as an incredible violinist.

Shadow Basket - “Farewell Molina” - 2021, Shadow Basket is a indie-folk or as they call it “Dog Rock” band from San Juan Island, WA. This song was written in tribute to the late Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Company and Songs: Ohia.

Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell - “Waiting on June” - 2005, Caitlin Cary first made a name for herself as the violinist and vocalist for the band Whiskeytown (Ryan Adams’ band before he went solo). This album was recorded with singer-songwriter Thad Cockrell who has had a successful solo career in his own right.

Logan Ledger - “I Don’t Dream Anymore” - 2020, Logan is a Nashville singer-songwriter and another one of my favorite finds of this year. His voice calls back to Roy Orbison (or more recently, Orville Peck, without the theatrics). This is off of his last album, produced by T Bone Burnett, however he also just released an album in 2023, produced by Shooter Jennings.

Shakey Graves (feat. Sierra Ferrell) - “Ready or Not” - 2023, Shakey Graves started in his hometown of Austin, Tx, as a solo artist, carrying around a suitcase that he converted into a kick drum, and essentially being Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Now he is well on his way to being one of the more successful musicians out of Texas. He collabs on this song with Sierra Ferrell who has also absolutely skyrocketed in the last two years, going from YouTube underground fame to headlining Red Rocks this year.

The Pogues - “Fairytale of New York” - 1988, This was actually a last minute add. I had a Christmas song from Margo Guryan first, but in the past few days, the lead singer of the Pogues, Shane McGowan, passed away, and it reminded me of this song. This is one of the best Christmas songs of all time - maybe even an anti-Christmas song, because it is about a couple that falls on hard times during the holidays. The story behind the song, is Elvis Costello wagered Shane that he couldn’t write a duet Christmas song to sing with Pogues bassist (and Costello’s future wife), Cait O’Riordan. Shane obviously won the bet.

Norah Jones & Laufey - “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” - 2023, Classic Christmas song by my favorite female vocalist this year, Laufey, and an all time favorite of our generation, Norah Jones. This collaboration started off of a Laufey tweet saying she wanted to do something with Norah Jones only a few months ago. Norah was into it, and here we are with this masterpiece.