“Rewind” – Whimsical
Some very turn-of-the-millennium shoegaze from Northwest Indiana, of all places.
“Alive” – POLIÇA
Oh, damn! This song absolutely slays.
“Bones” – Rosali
After some shoegaze and electro-pop, let’s take things in a completely different direction. It sure seems like a whole lot of shreddy songs like this come out of Philly. I think Rosali has worked with The War on Drugs at some point.
“Saw You At The Eastern Beach” – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
RBCF’s new album took a little longer to connect than their last, which I thought was the best of the career. But in time a few songs bubbled up and have been getting a lot of spins. I like how this one is slightly unhinged and dissonant.
“Having An Average Weekend” – Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet
This popped up in my Discover Weekly playlist a month or two and absolutely delighted me. I don’t think I knew at the time that The Kids in the Hall were making a return. I spent the past week watching the new season. One of the smartest decisions was to keep their classic theme song, this wacky song from a wacky band. For some extra fun, go listen to the alternate version the band calls “Having An Average Weekend ’78.”
“Are You Experienced?” – Belly
I think Stereogum had a feature on Belly lead singer Tanya Donnelly a week or so back, which included this song. I had kind of forgotten about it, but used to think it was one of the best covers of its time, with the band taking the Hendrix original and ripping it up ’90s college rock style. In the article Donnelly also shared how she’s working to get her music pulled from Spotify. The band even uses the Delete Spotify logo as their band logo on Spotify. So I felt kind of bad for streaming two of their albums. I thought about sharing the video of the band performing this on The Tonight Show, but every version on YouTube is pretty rough. Worth a look to watch their bass player bounce around. She was about as ’90s alt rock as you could get.
“The House That Heaven Built” – Japandroids
I read the other day that the tenth anniversary of Japandroids’ classic ass kicker Celebration Rock is coming up. Turns out it’s two weeks away. That didn’t stop me from listening to it Thursday. It is one of the truly great albums of the 2010s. To refresh your memories, this was my favorite song of 2012 and my #12 song of the 2010s.