New Playlist: December 2024

We’re slowly easing our way into 2025 here on Rosy Overdrive. I finished off the last couple of Pressing Concerns for 2024 last week and revealed the results of the 2024 Reader’s Poll. We’re still in 2024 today (for the most part), as this Monday brings the December 2024 playlist/wrap-up. There are a few songs from upcoming 2025 albums on here (which will start appearing in Pressing Concerns very soon!), some 2024, and some miscellaneous material. It’s all quality, though.

Dazy, Fuzzy, and Attract Mode all have multiple songs on this playlist.

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (BNDCMPR has been acting up; I’ll try to make the playlist on there again in a day or so). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

“Dribble Dribble”, Amy O
From Mirror, Reflect (2024, Winspear)

I put “Reveal” on a playlist when this album came out, but when I revisited Mirror, Reflect for year-end consideration (it made it, by the way), the one that blew me away was “Dribble Dribble”. It just sounds more brilliant every time I hear it. It’s a duet with Glenn Myers (who’s played with Diane Coffee and Mike Adams at His Honest Weight) and the two of them jump right into a slightly fuzzy, slightly twee mid-fi pop classic. All the verses are in the first half of the song, and the second half is just an endless refrain–first by Amy Oelsner on her own, then with Myers in tow. The drum machine and choppy guitar chords anchor the whole track, setting everything up for the perfect payoff: “Rumble rumble splat splat / Can’t make the earth flat / Wanna melt closer to the center of the collapse / And know that we’ll come back”.

“Easy”, Gold Connections
From Fortune (2024, Well Kept Secret)

I’d been waiting for a new Gold Connections album for a while now. As it turns out, bandleader Will Marsh ended up relocating from Virginia (where he started Gold Connections in college with contributions from, among others, Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo) to New Orleans and putting music on the backburner for a few years before finally reemerging with a new backing band and the first new Gold Connections full-length in six years, Fortune. Some of these songs have been kicking around a while (the reason that “Stick Figures” isn’t on this playlist is because I highlighted it when Marsh self-released it on a cassette EP four years ago), but stuff like “Easy” still sounds incredibly fresh. “Easy” opens the record with an anthem that does Gold Connections’ Bandcamp bio (“arena rock for the underground”) proud; Gold Connections channel the grandiosity of classic Killers singles with little more than chugging power chords and light 80s piano touches.

“‘Sure’”, Attract Mode
From The Art of Psychic Self-Defense (2024)

Chris McCrea is a Washington, D.C.-based musician who has a simple goal with his current project, Attract Mode: combine classic post-punk and darkwave of the 1980s with 60s pop rock/power pop hooks. From the insistent post-punk basslines to the punk-clip drumming to McCrea’s melancholic vocal melodies, everything about The Art of Psychic Self-Defense is whittled and sharpened down to exactly what they need to be maximally effective. Attract Mode is hardly the only modern indie rock band utilizing post-punk as a vehicle for pop music, but the juxtaposition between McCrea’s deep vocals and grey instrumentation with undeniable hooks is particularly stark. There are no down moments on The Art of Psychic Self-Defense, but the catchy, thrashing garage-post-punk of “‘Sure’” is worth singling out among the whirlwind. Read more about The Art of Psychic Self-Defense here.

“Friend of a Friend”, Cootie Catcher
From Shy at First (2025, Cooked Raw)

This song’s been hanging out on a playlist of mine for a while, although I kind of forgot anything about where it came from until finalizing this blog post. Turns out that Cootie Catcher are a twee-pop quartet from Toronto who’ve been around since at least 2021, and their next album is coming out in March of 2025. “Friend of a Friend” will be on the upcoming Shy at First; like the rest of the album, it was engineered and mixed by Rob McLay of Squiggly Lines and Westelaken, but the warm, fluffy indie pop of this song doesn’t quite match either of McLay’s projects. The bubbling synths throughout the song (provided by Sophia Chavez) are a key part of “Friend of a Friend”, as are the frequent comings and goings of the song’s various vocalists (Chavez, Anita Fowl, and Nolan Jakupovski all have vocal credits). I’ll be keeping an eye on this one!

“Lift”, Hunger Anthem
From Lift (2024, Cornelius Chapel)

My overall favorite moment on Lift, the latest from Athens power-pop-punk trio Hunger Anthem, is the title track–it doesn’t quite sound like anything else on the (still quite good) record, and the refrain is slowly pieced together rather than mercilessly flogged. “Lift” is a desperate-sounding track, with the guitar chords frantically bashed out; the bass does the melodic heavy lifting, which is the most “pop punk” thing about it. Or maybe it’s the two-person vocal trade-off that slowly takes shape over the course of the track, which only adds to the eventual catharsis. Most records like this don’t have something like “Lift” on them, but thankfully Hunger Anthem either don’t know that or don’t care. Read more about Lift here.

“The Year I Lived in Richmond”, Advance Base
From Horrible Occurrences (2024, Run for Cover/Orindal)

On Horrible Occurrences, Advance Base’s Owen Ashworth builds a set of characters and their stories, which largely take place in a fictional town called Richmond. As the title of the record hints at, Horrible Occurrences is dark more often than not–murder, grievous injury, abandonment, and the supernatural are among these “occurrences”. “The Year I Lived in Richmond” opens the album, and it’s one of Horrible Occurrences’ most dramatic moments (telling the tale of a killer on the loose and the woman who put an end to his reign), but Ashworth keeps things hushed and quiet in a way that reflects the stark, endlessly-reverberating qualities of major events in a small town. Ashworth’s lo-fi, low-key minimal electronic pop–which he’s stuck to since his days as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone–is the perfect vessel. Read more about Horrible Occurrences here.

“Memories”, The Sewerheads
From Despair Is a Heaven (2024, Tall Texan)

The Sewerheads are a new band made up of several Pittsburgh indie rock/post-punk/garage rock veterans, and their overwhelming first record is a mix of string-heavy electric garage rock tangles, prowling noir-rock, and burnt-out Rust Belt folk-punk (in a Poguesian sense). Despair Is a Heaven has many different modes and alleyways through which to pass, but if you’re looking for something (relatively) accessible, you can start with “Memories”. It’s the closest The Sewerheads get to straight-up “country punk”, with vocalists Shani Banerjee and Eli Kasan dueting over a spaghetti-Midwestern instrumental featuring a cacophony of horns and violins. Read more about Despair Is a Heaven here.

“I Am Ray’s Brain”, Sharna Pax
From The Way We Live Now (2024, Zone 4 Media/Wrong Donkey)

I have no fucking clue what this song is about. There’s no shortage of really rich headscratchers on the latest album from Cincinnati college rock/power pop group Sharna Pax (see the mandolin-laden closing track “Infants in Arms” or the noir-rock of “What Makes the World Go Round”), but “I Am Ray’s Brain” really takes the proverbial cake. It’s lethally catchy–lead vocalist Hallie Menkhaus’ performance is really wild, to be sure–and the lyrical mess of anatomical, neurological, and attention-deficient (“Last year we went to Florida, I saw a manatee” / “There’s a sale on shirts at Sears”) is…well, I can’t make much sense of it, myself. It’s like if your local bar band had some sort of rich inner mythology that only they themselves really understand (if even they do). Good stuff.

“Bird Sanctuary”, 22° Halo
From Lily of the Valley (2024, Tiny Library)

22° Halo is a band associated with a lot of artists I like–the bandleader, Will Kennedy, has played with 2nd Grade and Ylayali, and members of those projects have in turn contributed to 22° Halo’s records. Their most recent album, Lily of the Valley, landed pretty high on this year’s reader poll, so it seems like a good a time as any to finally check them out–and I’m glad I did, because now I have “Bird Sanctuary” in my life. Lily of the Valley’s opening track is my favorite (although “Cobwebs” and “Orioles at Dusk” are also very good)–it does remind me of the subtle-beauty bedroom pop of Ylayali, but it’s brighter, almost psychedelic in its technicolor glory. Kennedy’s wife Kate Schneider (whose cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment inform much of the album’s subject matter) duets on this track, a key part of a two minute guitar pop song that feels like much more.

“Get Out My Mind”, Dazy
From I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found) (2024, Lame-O)

Hey, look, Dazy’s back! I wrote about the three-song IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) EP a month and change ago, and it turns out that it was only the beginning, as another such EP called I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found) showed up in early December. This one’s just as good as IT’S ONLY A SECRET (I included them as a single unit on my Top EPs of 2024 list, since they’re both so short); if anything, the second EP might be even bigger in its ambitions. “Get Out My Mind” is another instant Dazy classic to kick things off–we’ve got alt-dance undercurrents, fuzzed-out guitars, slicing basslines, and a huge chorus. All in about ninety seconds, too.

“Flash Light”, Fuzzy
From Fuzzy (1994, Seed)

Fuzzy were a group of no-hit wonders who hailed from Boston and were part of a pop-forward alt-rock movement alongside more famous peers like The Lemonheads, Juliana Hatfield, Belly, and even Dinosaur Jr. Bandleader Hilken Mancini released a solid solo album a few months ago, which caused me to step thirty years back in time and give a proper listen to her most well-known band’s debut album. Fuzzy is great (ahem) fuzzy power pop music; just about every song has a strong hook, but nothing tops the swooping, triumphant opening track “Flash Light” in terms of pure, complete energy. Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, Rolling Stone named this song one of the “50 Best Songs of the Nineties”–so I clicked on the link, and it’s right there in the number 50 slot, behind The Offspring and a Britney Spears song that isn’t “…Baby One More Time”. Thank you, Rob Sheffield.

“Friend”, Comfy
From Goated & Forboded (2024)

Another album I would’ve loved to have written about before the end of 2024 if I’d only had more time is Comfy’s Goated & Forboded. I kind of covered them, as half the band also play in Big Nobody, whose latest album I did write about, but clearly there’s something happening in the world of Rochester, New York power pop/pop punk, because Goated & Forboded is just as good as the latest LP from their sister band, if not better. We’ll have to settle for appreciating the firecracker of an opening track, “Friend”, in this playlist–it’s catchy enough in its slightly jangly, slightly slacker rock-y opening salvo, but when that huge power pop chorus arrives, “Friend” really lights up.

“Broke Bay”, Snow Caps
From Notes (2024, Strange Mono)

The latest album from Philadelphia’s Andrew Keller and their longrunning Snow Caps project recalls offbeat pop rock from several decades past–The Beatles, XTC, The Cleaners from Venus, They Might Be Giants. There’s an Andy Partridge-like “pop music but falling off a melodic cliff” component to Keller’s writing throughout Notes, which is a somewhat mutated version of a lo-fi guitar pop album. The chorus of highlight “Broke Bay” has an “eerie carnival” vibe to it, wobbling and grinning uncertainly as Snow Caps stick the landing nonetheless. Keller’s layered vocals sounds like an entire choir singing modern new wave hymns, which is key to pulling this whole intricate, disconcerting circus thing off. Read more about Notes here.

“Palimpsest”, Schande
From Once Around (2024, Daydream Library)

Jen Chochinov (aka Jen Schande) is a thirty-year indie rock veteran at this point; not only has she played in bands like Shove and Boyskout, but she also toured with the Thurston Moore Guitar Ensemble (and when it came time for the first album from her current band, Schande, in twenty years, Moore’s Daydream Library imprint was the one who put it out). Once Around does indeed sound like the work of a band with ties to Sonic Youth, although Schande mostly keep their guitar-forward, rumbling version of noisy indie rock to brief two-to-three-minute bursts. The most obvious example of this in the record’s first half is “Palimpsest”, an excellent version of droning, electric pop music from the get-go featuring sharp indie rock songwriting and just-as-sharp interplay between the band’s three members. Read more about Once Around here.

“Voyager (ad astra)”, Stubai
From We Were Here (2024, Wombeyan)

Hey, don’t close the door on 2024 yet, I just heard another good Australian indie rock band for the first time! Coming in under the wire is Stubai, a Sydney-based act who just released their debut album, We Were Here, back in October. There’s a song from Swervedriver’s 99th Dream somewhere in this playlist, and that’s what my favorite song on We Were Here, “Voyager (ad astra)”, reminds me of. There’s certainly shoegaze influences in the sweeping, loud rock instrumental, but there’s a classic guitar pop bent to the track as well, with the wistfully melancholic lead vocals peaking out through the instruments quite prominently and cleanly. 

“Runway”, Pulsars
From Pulsars (1997/2024, Almo Sounds/Damaged Disco/Tiny Global Productions)

I put “Tunnel Song” on a playlist back when the reissued Pulsars album came out in September, but now that it’s streaming I might as well throw another highlight from the record on here–there’s no shortage of ‘em. I called the Pulsars a “technologically-minded new wave revival duo” in that review; they sing about robots, computers, and aliens in a way that somehow recalls both slacker and geek rock. “Runway” is about the latter of the three–in this one, the song’s extraterrestrial narrators deliver a memorable, spirited kiss-off to all of humanity in one of the record’s most propulsive tracks. “Our rocketship is fixed, so we’ll leave this ball of…” and Trumfio trails off; it’s just about the only punch that “Runway” pulls. Read more about Pulsars here.

“The Butterfly”, Loose Koozies
From Passing Through You (2024, Tall Texan)

Passing Through You might’ve taken Loose Koozies four years to put together, but the rollicking Detroit country rock quintet’s follow-up statement is a solid and thorough one. These fourteen songs are impeccably written and presented, sounding polished but loose and automatic but thoughtful. There are a few surprises to be found across the forty-odd minute LP, but for the most part the five Koozies lock in and play their parts to their best abilities, turning in a very smooth journey. My favorite track on the record, “The Butterfly”, is effectively a microcosm of Passing Through You–its foundation is an incredibly solid roots rocker, but there’s also ample space given to some surprising synth accents. Read more about Passing Through You here.

“Villain”, Soft on Crime
From Street Hardware (2024, Eats It)

Soft on Crime also sound looser and more streamlined on Street Hardware than they did on the madcap guitar pop extravaganza of last year’s New Suite. All in all, it’s a relatively low-key follow-up album, but the reduction in bells and whistles hasn’t weakened the power of Soft on Crime’s ability to crank out winning power pop; in fact, with some of the group’s more offbeat tendencies largely sidelined, this might be the trio’s smoothest ride yet. “Villain” comes in the second half of the brief record, and even though the stop-start mid-tempo pop song was one of the few tracks that wasn’t released as an advance single for Street Hardware, it might just be my favorite song on the album. Soft on Crime give the central guitar hook plenty of room, and it earns the space. Read more about Street Hardware here.

“Starduster”, Sleepyhead
From Starduster (1994, Homestead)

There’s always a playlist-worthy song on every Sleepyhead album I listen to, whether it’s their 2022 return New Alchemy, 1996’s memorably-titled Communist Love Songs, or this one, the thirty-year-old 1994 album Starduster. As one might expect from a band who put out albums on both Slumberland and Homestead, Sleepyhead straddles the line between “indie pop” and “indie rock”, honing in on both sloppiness and poppiness. The title track from Starduster is my favorite track on the album, and it rules–it’s a positively infectious power pop tune, a transcendent song that leaves behind the trappings of “lo-fi indie rock” for two and a half triumphant minutes. Can you believe that there are all kinds of songs like this out there, lying in wait for me or you to (re)discover? 

“Yellowhead’s Song”, Willie Dunn
From Son of the Sun (2004/2024, Trikont/Light in the Attic)

Thanks to Light in the Attic for making Son of the Sun available digitally twenty years after its initial release (and over forty years after some of these tracks were originally recorded). Although it’s not quite as expansive as 2021’s Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies, the hour-long Son of the Sun is a good a primer as any for the vital discography of the Mi’kmaq-Canadian folk singer Wille Dunn. Part of the strength of Son of the Sun is that we get multiple sides of Dunn on it; some of these recordings are stark guitar-and-vocals folk songs, but others–like “Yellowhead’s Song”–are fully-developed folk-country rockers, with percussion and slide guitar. The extra-band contributions are welcome, but Dunn’s deep but high-flying vocals stand tall right in the middle of the song nonetheless.

“Shovel Song”, Dialup Ghost
From May You Live Forever in Cowboy Heaven (2024)

This most recent album from Dialup Ghost is kind of a lot to take in–although I’m not sure what else I could have expect from an LP called May You Live Forever in Cowboy Heaven that dropped on Halloween and was made by a six-piece alt-country group from Nashville. There’s an absurdly long list of influences on the album’s Bandcamp page that includes Ween, Sparklehorse, The Dead Milkmen, Shel Silverstein, Jeffrey Lewis, Beck, and The Presidents of the United States of America, among others–alright, alright, we need to take a step back. Let’s listen to “Shovel Song”, one of the most immediate and accessible things on this record. It’s a breezy folk rock tune for the most part, but there’s also a garish, almost 8-bit-sounding keyboard part courtesy of Jack Holway. Some sharp writing from Russ Finn, too. Good one!

“Alone Tonight”, Skeet
From Simple Reality (2024, Efficient Space)

Like 22 Beaches, another band on this playlist, Skeet were also a first-wave British post-punk group with a minimal sound who came and went without ever officially releasing any music. This year, though, Australian label Efficient Space put together the eight-song Simple Reality (one of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite reissues/compilations of 2024!), and it holds up quite well! Skeet were a bit more jammy, but the Young Marble Giants comparison that the collection’s bio makes is pretty accurate. Opening track “Alone Tonight” takes its time getting to the point–it rides its simple rhythm section and some guitar flareups for nearly two minutes before the vocals kick in. There’s no reason to hurry through “Alone Tonight”, though. 

“Rocket”, Pet TV
From Terrarium (2024, à La Carte)

Eventually I ran out of time to write about new albums from 2024, but Pet TV’s Terrarium is one that I would’ve gotten to if the year had an extra month or so in it. Sometimes a good fuzz-punk slacker-rock album is just a good fuzz-punk slacker-rock album–fans of the Rozwell Kid/Sleeping Bag side of things will find a lot to like on this all-too-brief 25-minute album. The punchy title track is really strong, but the climax to “Rocket” is so good that I had to choose this one for the playlist. It’s a song that really lives up to its name–it starts off fine, sure, but nothing really prepares us for the launching off the song does when it reaches the first refrain. And while we’re somewhat prepared for Pet TV to blow things all sky-high by the time the chorus comes around for the second time, it’s still a knockout.

“Dream”, Dogwood Tales
From Sending (2024)

Harrisonburg, Virginia alt-country act Dogwood Tales put out a couple EPs on WarHen Records over the past couple of years; their latest, Sending, is an independent venture, but it’s about as good as 13 Summers and 13 Falls and Rodeo were, too. There’s plenty of low-key folk rock to be found on Sending; my favorite track is one of the quieter moments, a brief two-minute song called “Dream”. Built from little more than gentle but strong vocals and airy folk guitar, “Dream” is a world away from the opening country rock of “Driver’s Side Fantasy” or even the more substantial mid-tempo “Mt. Jackson”, but there’s something about this humble song about dreaming of death while still being very much alive that continues to stick with me.

“Aria”, Glyss
From Eternal Return (2025, Candlepin/Pleasure Tapes)

2025 will bring the debut record from Glyss, a Los Angeles-based “slowgaze” band who’ve linked up with Rosy Overdrive favorite Candlepin Records and Pleasure Tapes (Floral Print, Laybrum, Storm Clouds) to put out Eternal Return in late January. As best as I can tell, Glyss is the solo project of Sol Rosenthal, who also makes electronic music as Iris Ipsum–of the two Glyss singles available thus far, “Aria” is my favorite. There are the “ethereal” vocals and the fuzzed-out guitars, sure, but what really makes “Aria” stand out to me is its tough, prominent, somewhat woozy-sounding drumbeat, which gives it a bit of a danceable feel. Maybe that’s Rosenthal’s electronic background coming in–either way, it’s a potent combination and I look forward to hearing more from Glyss.

“Not Moving to Portland”, The Long Winters
From So Good at Waiting (Rarities 2000-2017) (2024, Barsuk)

“Not Moving to Portland” has been floating around for a while–I remember watching a video of Long Winters bandleader John Roderick playing the song on his own circa 2012 (with the still-unreleased fourth Long Winters album coming any day now, believe me). It never had a proper released of any kind until this year, when the So Good at Waiting rarities compilation showed up as part of a career-spanning Long Winters reissue series perpetrated by Barsuk. Now that it’s been a while, I can confidently say that “Not Moving to Portland” is one of Roderick/The Long Winters’ best songs–it needs little more than that wildly simple three-chord guitar progression and some nice piano accents to do what their proper records did with a headache-inducing amount of studio fuckery. Nobody wrote songs like this–you really need to be able to put yourself out there to pull off some of these lines which might read as “cringe” out of context.

“Spite As an Act of Affection”, Attract Mode
From The Art of Psychic Self-Defense (2024)

Attract Mode’s ability to keep the foot on the gas for so long without sacrificing anything else in their songs is the real hook of their debut album, The Art of Psychic Self-Defense. The noisy but focused “Spite As an Act of Affection” is the second track of the record, and it picks up the thread that the brisk post-punk of opening track “Vanish/Doom” left off. Bandleader Chris McCrea marries agitated verses in the trenches with a soaring, sweeping refrain that keeps the dark party going. I could’ve chosen just about anything from this record, as it’s built on one tight two minute pop song after another, but “Spite As an Act of Affection” (wasn’t that the name of an IDLES album?) has just a little something extra. Read more about The Art of Psychic Self-Defense here.

“Streetlights”, Golden Tiles
From The First EP (2024, Antiquated Future)

I’ve been fortunate enough to get acquainted with Portland’s Antiquated Future Records this year, who put out one of the best compilations of 2024 (a career-spanning retrospective from the great Rose Melberg) and one of the best collections of new music (the latest LP from Guidon Bear). Compared to those albums, a six-song debut cassette EP from a “basement indie-rock trio” might seem a little slight, but that’s no reason to dismiss an opening statement as strong as Golden Tiles’ The First EP. The band (led by singer/guitarist Oliver Stafford and featuring Antiquated Future labelhead Joshua James Amberson on bass) certainly sound like a “basement rock” group–the fairly lo-fi sound of the EP might be too much for people whose brains weren’t shaped by music of this kind, but the low-key pop music of highlights like “Streetlights” certainly shine through the distortion.

“Freakshow Train”, Circu5
From Clockwork Tulpa (2025)

We now enter the world of modern-day prog-pop. London’s Steve Tilling is one such practitioner, releasing an album under the name Circu5 back in 2017, but the past few years have found the musician playing a supporting role in a few XTC-related projects (Colin Moulding’s TC&I, Terry Chambers’ EXTC). “Freakshow Train” is the debut single from the long-in-the-making second Circu5 album, and “XTC” is a pretty good reference point for what this song sounds like. As I alluded to earlier, there’s more electric progressive rock to “Freakshow Train” than there is in XTC, but there’s a Partridge/Moulding-esque twisted pop melody sitting pretty right there in the center of the track (it seems notable that Moulding’s son, Lee, is on board as the band’s drummer for Clockwork Tulpa).

“Guns & Cameras”, Banned 37
From Banned 37 (2024, Primordial Void)

Oh, hey, Primordial Void released a compilation of the works of a forgotten college rock/power pop band from Athens, Georgia earlier this year. How come I didn’t hear about this earlier? Well, I’m hearing the first-ever officially-released music from Banned 37 (active between 1983 and 1986) now, and I’m quite into it. The Banned 37 compilation stands up nicely next to classic southern jangly guitar bands like The Windbreakers and The Primitons that have received a retrospective look in recent years, and the record’s bouncy, euphoric opening track “Guns & Cameras” would’ve fit nicely on that Strum & Thrum compilation from 2020 (I actually had to double check and make sure that Banned 37 weren’t on it).

“Dust”, 22 Beaches
From Dust: Recordings 1980-1984 (2024, Seated)

22 Beaches were a Scottish post-punk band from Stirling; during their four-year run in the early 1980s, the only songs they ever released were a couple of contributions to some various-artist cassettes. Dust: Recordings 1980-1984 is 22 Beaches’ first-ever album all to themselves, and the eight-song compilation reveals a band who found a home on the more rhythmic, dance-friendly end of the post-punk spectrum. Bits of disco and dub permeate these songs, including the opening title track, my personal favorite song from the album. For over five minutes, 22 Beaches build a mesmerizing, minimal foundation with a sturdy rhythm section and accent the song with commanding vocals, spindly guitars, and occasional interjections of other voices and instruments. 

“RJR Nabisco Takeover”, Yuasa-Exide
From Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring (2024, Round Bale/Ape Sanctuary)

From March 2022 to August of this year, Twin Cities musician Douglas Busson has (by my count) released seventeen full-lengths under the name Yuasa-Exide–and thanks to Round Bale Recordings, you can now purchase the two most recent of these albums together as one cassette. Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring is an invigorating collection of lo-fi pop, fuzzy basement indie rock, and a few noisy experiments. Throughout the hour of clanging, distorted underground indie rock, there are plenty of strong pop moments; “RJR Nabisco Takeover” originally appeared on the former of the two albums, and its shining Flying Nun-esque guitar lead cuts through the lo-fi trappings. I wish Yuasa-Exide the best on their impending hostile takeover of Nabisco. Read more about Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring here.

“Sports”, Fuzzy
From Fuzzy (1994, Seed)

Are the lyrics to “Sports” by Fuzzy kind of silly? Sure (“Something to find out, something to catch / If you can hit it then you’re on the list” / “It surrounds you like a little ball / But forget it, you can’t throw that far”, and many other ways of phrasing the song’s metaphor), but you know what else is kind of silly? Sports. And music, too. It’s all silly. And it doesn’t matter much what Hilken Mancini is singing about what the chorus of “Sports” hits, anyway. It must’ve taken a bunch of restraint for Fuzzy not to throw a bunch of even goofier backing vocals in the spaces in between the lead vocals in that chorus, but filling it with loud, catchy guitars works even better.

“These Times”, Swervedriver
From 99th Dream (1998/2024, Zero Hour/Outer Battery)

I revisited the fourth Swervedriver album, 1998’s 99th Dream, since it was reissued at the beginning of 2024 and I figured I was going to want to put it on the best reissues of 2024 list (it made it). This album sounds great and imagines a future for the band beyond the pummeling shoegaze of their earlier albums (even if that future had to wait for a nearly two-decade hiatus after its release before the band returned). “These Times” is an excellent piece of classic British guitar pop (if only there was a more succinct term for such music…), slightly psychedelic and slightly distorted but not enough in either direction to derail the song’s smooth catchiness.

“Bring Me Back 2 Life”, Jose Israel
From To Live in Brief Wonder (2024, 7 Songs)

Jose Israel is the lead singer in Chicago art rock/punk quartet Rotundos (who just put out a new album, incidentally), and his most recent solo album, To Live in Brief Wonder, reflects the adventurousness of his band. The record is a brief but electric collection of everything from polished-up indie rock to lo-fi garage punk to experimental, math-y guitar pop, among several other genres. To Live in Brief Wonder may traverse a lot of ground in a short amount of time, but Israel still takes pains to roll out the red carpet with the attention-grabbing, shined-up indie rock of “Bring Me Back 2 Life” at the start of the record (at least, the version I’ve been listening to–it seems like the streaming and Bandcamp versions of the album have different tracklists). Read more about To Live in Brief Wonder here.

“Roadkill”, Possum in My Room
From POSSUMGHOST (2024, Sad Marsupial)

Rockaway, New Jersey’s Ted Orbach has recently expanded their solo project Possum in My Room into a full band, and their first album together is October’s POSSUMGHOST. The resultant album is a full-band exploration of a dark Americana, influenced by slowcore and alt-country but without fitting neatly into either of those boxes. Orbach sounds like a biting folk rock singer possessed on some tracks, and smoothly fits on top of polished instrumentals on others. Opening track “Roadkill” is one of the more electric tracks on POSSUMGHOST, but it’s hardly a welcoming opening, as Orbach bitterly unspools a scene of chemicals, carrion, and vices over top of the agitated country-rock dagger of an instrumental. Read more about POSSUMGHOST here.

“I Get Lost”, Dazy
From I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found) (2024, Lame-O)

I’m still not entirely sure what James Goodson meant with “IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It)”, but “I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found)” resonated with me pretty much immediately. Have you ever tried to better yourself? Have you ever decided that you were going to do something good for once, god dammit, and you set out on a journey immediately met with labyrinthian bureaucracy, with “helpers” unable to do anything to live up to their names, with a machine that grinds your bones to dust to make a few bucks. Maybe that’s not what Goodson had in mind when he sang “Check some boxes, fill some squares / So obnoxious, no room for errors”, but it works for me. Some solid rave-power-pop either way.

“That’s Reanimation!”, The Chilling Alpine Adventure
From The Chilling Alpine Adventure (2024, Golden Arrows)

It’s a long and winding path that’s led us to The Chilling Alpine Adventure, the self-titled debut from a band led by Portland singer-songwriter Jessy Ribordy. It started back in the early 2000s with the rap-rock and electronic-tinged Christian rock group Falling Up, which got further and further from its roots before breaking up in 2016. The Chilling Alpine Adventure, which dropped on the last Friday of 2024, is an intriguing art rock album that is more or less a continuation of where Falling Up eventually ended up from my understanding–“That’s Reanimation!” is the song that’s stuck with me, an undeniably catchy track that’s a little bit emo, a little bit synthpop, a bit “art rock”.  

“Moving Song”, Comets Near Me
From Atmospheric River (2024, 131)

I keep getting “Cootie Catcher” and “Comets Near Me” confused–but there’s room for more than one twee-folk band whose name starts with “C” on this playlist. Especially when they’ve got songs as good as “Moving Song”, which is Comets Near Me’s entry. It’s actually the B-side from the San Jose duo’s latest single, but I’m giving it the nod over the more traditionally folky A-side “Symptoms & Obligations” because–well, because I like it more! The band’s two members (who are named Kyle and Maria; I don’t have any more information than that) sing “Moving Song” together over a laid-back folk-pop-rock instrumental, leaning on breezy acoustic guitar and an unobtrusive rhythm section. It all just works–it’s honing in on that intangible pop quality of the best “twee” songs.

“Life in the Factory”, Drive-By Truckers
From Southern Rock Opera (2001/2024, Soul Dump/Lost Highway/New West)

“Life in the Factory” isn’t my favorite song off Southern Rock Opera. I don’t even think it’d make the top five. But that’s the strength of a massive, career-defining double album; once I’ve worn out “Women Without Whiskey” or “Let There Be Rock” or “Zip City”, there’s always something else to rise from the towering three-guitar assault to sound like the most brilliant thing. “Life in the Factory” is Patterson Hood’s retelling of the Lynyrd Skynyrd story, the one that the Drive-By Truckers dip into and out of all throughout Southern Rock Opera. If they’d put it at the front of the record it’d be one of their most beloved songs, I’m sure, but it’s buried in the back half of the second disc, instead. In context, it becomes one last look back before the last three songs initiate the final comedown. I think people have written books on this record; it deserves it.