My brain got so blurbed to oblivion this year that I was about to skip doing a proper year end list, but this in-between week has given me a little moment to breathe. I know some outlets and/or individuals feel the need to present consistency—if they rate an album highly early in the year, it must show up on their end of year list etc. But my mind is basically a governmental body composed of 23 subcommittees and 191 capricious mini-music critics all going in opposite directions. I don’t GAF. Life’s about fleeting thrills.

MARKED SAFE FROM: Geese, EsDeeKid

50. Ship Sket - “Mimikyu”

49. мс улыбочка - “снежок”

48. Klein - “great guilt”

47. cootie catcher - “Friend of a friend”

46. deathtoricky - “motives”

45. Zsá Zsá, Replay Okay - “bad bunnies”

44. .cutspace, Moh Baretta, xxhang - “Rank”

43. prettifun - “Idk Wtf”

42. La Obsesion, Yeyo, Nevato El Flow, Viglezz - “Chichabeba”

41. Syzy - “Industry Corporate Freak”

40. nate sib - “secret” / 2hollis - “style”

39. Horse Vision, Tiffi M - “Chemicals”

38. quinn - “lowlife (they think i’m crazy)”

37. Effie - “CAN I SIP 담배”

36. MASSI - “tiny robot, big city: the day in the life of a friendly android”

35. Crucify April - “Thrillz x3”

34. Mechatok, Isabella Lovestory - “She’s A Director”

33. Oli XL, Chanel Beads - “LOVE & POP”

32. ayowitty, bunii - “dotsong”

31. holottacheese - “ALEXA DEMIE”

30. northernscence - “wake up”

29. skaiwater - “pop”

28. Lucy Bedroque - “2010 Justin Bieber”

27. MOLlY, Silent Addy, Skillibeng, Shenseea - “Shake It To The Max (FLY)”

26. Addison Rae - “Headphones On”

25. PLUTO, YKNIECE - “WHIM WHAMIEE”

24. Tracey - “Sex Life”

23. PinkPantheress - “Noises” / “Illegal”

22. deer park - “Fess Up”

21. JT - “Girls Gone Wild”

20. Fine - “Portal”

19. Elxnce - “Desire”

18. 2slimey - “Pop alot”

17. EQ - “B.S.A.S.”

16. underscores - “Music”

15. Feng - “Princess” / “Who do u wanna be”

14. The Hellp - “Here I Am”

13. leroy - “...LIKE WATCHING A ZOMBIE TURN”

12. Playboi Carti - “OPM BABI”

11. feeble little horse - “This Is Real”

10. Smerz - “You got time and I got money”

9. meat computer - “440 khz maximum exposure” / (HMs: “haha swag” / “severe mental illness”)

8. Ninajirachi - “Fuck My Computer”

7. fakemink - “Music and Me”

6. che - “DIOR LEOPARD”

5. ocelot - “everyday is the same shit” / “one two three”

4. Jane Remover - “TWICE REMOVED”

3. SOPHIE - “OOH” / “GET HIGHER”

2. OsamaSon - “Ref” (HMs: “Get Away,” “New Tune”)

1. Bassvictim - “Final Song”

Albums

2slimey - High Anxiety

300SkullsAndCounting - This Is My Zombie Killing Album

Addison Rae - Addison

Bassvictim - Forever / Basspunk 2

bleood - pain

che - REST IN BASS

Cowgirl Clue - Total Freedom

Crucify April - Spellbook, Vol. 1

Curren - Cutest In Ur <3

deer park - Terra Infirma

Effie - pullup to busan 4 morE hypEr summEr it’s gonna bE a fuckin moviE

ezmehfw - que chido mi puta vida

Feng - What The Feng

Jane Remover - Revengeseekerz / <3

kimj - KOREAN AMERICAN

La Obsesión - LA OBSESIÓN, VOL. 1

Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka

Lucy Bedroque - Unmusique

Malibu - Vanities

Maria Somerville - Luster

meat computer - new world disorder

Nick León - A Tropical Entropy

Ninajirachi - I Love My Computer

Niontay - Fada<3of$

Oklou - choke enough

Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer

OsamaSon - JumpOut / Psykotic

PinkPantheress - Fancy That

Playboi Carti - MUSIC

Six Sex - X-sex

Skrillex - F*CK U SKRILLEX U THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3

Smerz - Big city life

Stickerbush, heavensouls - Darkskin Niggas with Lightskin Problems

weed420 - Amor de encava

Vylet Pony - Love & Ponystep

xaviersobased - once more

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds

zayok - In elsewhere

Fave films new & old but first time seeing

10. Babygirl

9. Sorry, Baby

8. Caught by the Tides

7. The Mastermind

6. Eddington

5. Virgin Suicides

4. Left Handed Girl

3. Sentimental Value

2. Love & Pop

1. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

The countdown is over.

Inside you’ll find Temu phonk, zooted regalia opulence, scrappy digicore rock, Charli fan-fic, and some “real” genres…. welcome 2 the abyss

Spotify playlist

Honorable Mentions

d.silvestre - Bolhas Makiavélicas

Best song that feels like a tractor is rolling over your brain. It’s a cranial unnerve examination.

DJ JL3 & DA ZN - Automotivo Magia Terrorífica

Phonk was once a genuinely intriguing sound; it’s a term coined by SpaceGhostPurpp with origins in 90s Memphis rap. Then it became globalized and amorphous—Russian drift phonk, Brazilian funk-phonk—and now it’s being soullessly puked out by TikTok clout-chasers and Spotify grifters thirsty for a quick buck. Call it Temu phonk. I’m astounded by how many streams this music gets—you can find dozens of barely distinguishable steroid-swollen phonk beats with hundreds of millions of plays. The Barstool bros and AI coders and content farmers must be blasting this 25/7.

The wasteland of worthlessness has rightly scared critics away, but there are a few scraps of excitement worth excavating from the muck. There’s a sickly thrill to “Automotivo Magia Terrorífica,” which sounds less like music than an accordion being abused. The drop spasms between abyssal black and heavenly white, like you’re flashing across life and death.

EVILLAIRE - “B*TCH MADE” prod. RODEOGLO

Am I crazy or did RODEOGLO lift three seconds of the Big Time Rush aaa-ah-ah intro, reverse it, and loop it as the eerily sweet backdrop for this diabolical beat? Nothing screams “internet rap hex” like TV-pop rewinded so it sounds like a devilish curse. (Duck CEO Jameson, h/t for this heater, “performed experiments” and reached the verdict that he is “skeptical this is a Big Time Rush sample although it does have a sonically similar texture,” adding that he can’t conclusively “rule out the possibility.” The case is open, researchers.)

HEXXING AIN’T DEAD. Try blasting this while smashing the accelerator.

fakemink - “Shih Tzu” ft. xaviersobased prod. blickyhomeboy / “Crush” prod. OK

There’s a shortage of genuine joy these days, that feeling when you’re not thinking about anything—you’re 12 years old, no anxiety on the brain, bent over in a fit of laughter so fierce that when you see your friend’s face and it makes you laugh even more, you nearly pee yourself. There’s something about fakemink’s prettiest songs like “Shih Tzu” and “Crush” that restores this feeling, the breathless rush of being present. His voice blows against your ears like the gentlest blizzard, transporting you to an impossibly white field covered in little whizzing sparrows. It has a kind of faded poignancy but also an infectious nowness. Maybe it hits harder because it’s a British dude riffing on an American sound, and its halcyon halo makes me feel like I’m a kid again visiting London and feeling dumb-kid-excited about the future.

femtanyl - “ATTACKING VERTICAL”

It’s bizarre that femtanyl’s music provokes such visceral hate; it’s not egregiously derivative or shitposty zoomer skibidi-bait. The music is like a cursed pastiche of golden era rave, dialling the clattery clutter up to max mutant for the kids who grew up spamming Jeff the Killer jumpscares. This song, a highlight from her recent EP, is simultaneously dreamy and deranged—imagine Donkey Kong Country’s “Aquatic Ambience” on damaging amounts of Adderall.

Her New Knife - “purepurepure” / nightcore+++

Outside of a few real innovators, I’ve found a lot of this new generation of shoe- and grungegaze to be pretty MOR so far—a tornado of TikTok revivalists, MBV cosplayers, and young producers simulating the full-band arena sprawl with DAWs who I wish I enjoyed more. There’s something about Her New Knife’s sharpest songs that transcends the horde. Whereas their Julia’s War labelmates feeble little horse juxtapose the noisy blur with twee cuteness, HNK’s “purepurepure” burbles with industrial unease: a baleful metallic plink, foghorns from the nether realm, screams that rip like XXXTentacion war cries.

nightcore+++ thrills not because of any particular song but its hyperockist approach. It reaches the angelic incoherence of Cocteau Twins and MBV bliss by accelerating everything until the vocals shriek like giddy opossums and the noise shrouds you like chilly mist in a glacial Amazon forest. 2025: we need less labels making sped-up everything detritus and more speedgaze.

Ja66 - “shareyourspirit” / “drag sesh”

There’s a couple of tics that recur across so many of Ja66’s tracks: a deep, taut ah! and a clipped vocal that sounds like he’s cut off before he can finish: esh. These shards of syllable makes songs that would otherwise hit like a serene breeze turn icily askew. The fidgety sleekness is mirrored by the manic yet manicured lyrics—Ja swerves between sipping beer at a frat house and fighting demons in the mirror, speaking “fluent Overdosenese” and flaming Shein. He should win a prize for “All these niggas dorks, make that choppa sing like Bjork.”

jackzebra - “你怎么知道” / “认真你就输了”

When I first listened to jackzebra after seeing him on an AVYSS EOY list in 2021, I was startled he had no fanbase. I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but his delivery felt fresh—the way he smeared his voice so it blotched across the mix and every melody came out curved, illusive, swirly like an expressionist painting.

His rise has been fun to witness; I’m sad I couldn’t see him perform at 2 a.m. at The Broadway this past month. The “Chinese Bladee” meme was doofy and shallow but maybe that’s what the masses needed to be onboarded, and the zooted opulence of his regalia beats have made Anglophones fill in the comprehension gap thinking his lyrics must be genius. It turns out his lyrics do include meaningful references to 1700s literature and reflections on things like Chinese class divides. Dreamy plugg’n’b might be our twenty-first century Tower of Babble.

Magdalena Bay - “Image”

I like Mag Bay well enough, but the adulation around Imaginal Disk was exhausting: Oh my Gilgamesh, best album ever! Two geniuses from Mars! For a certain faction of TikTok pundits and RYM fiends, Imaginal Disk became the magda opus of the 2020s, the art-pop masterpiece for synth nerds who worship JPEGMAFIA. Blame some of this on the streaming era’s shortage of finely sculpted concept albums, and the resulting tendency to praise anything remotely intricate and operatic as next-level godly. There’s also just not much competition in the “hyperpop x synthpop x Tame Impala x galaxy-brain themes” lane.

All that said, I love the curtsying waltz of “Image.” Mica Tenenbaum overuses her feathery-frail register but here it really fits, tendrilling around the warm drum and piano like a lavender perfume. The word “pirouette” pretty much always scans as pretentious in music writing, but this is one of the only songs with such a delicate glide that it feels deserved. All those angelic, barely-there words: coiling, billowing, swishing, translucent. She’s a whirling sprite, thin as air.

mica levi - “slob air”

The artist’s first release with Hyperdub zeroes in on the swooning climax of a shoegaze song and stretches it out for 12 minutes, til your dopamine-receptors are aching. Keys hover in a feverish glissando, like they’re supposed to make a decision but daydreaming distractedly, while a drum clangs blurrily. If mica levi ever decides to go full Praxis mode and architect a 10,000-population state in the middle of the Mediterranean that blasts “slob air” as its national anthem on a never-ending propaganda-loudspeaker loop, count me the hell in.

MJ Lenderman - “Wristwatch”

I’ve been into Wednesday for ages but it took me a while to give in to the hype around their guitarist’s solo music. “Wristwatch” is undeniable: The cresting slam-dunk of the main riff, the campfire loghouse warmth, the begrimed ache of his pathetic pleas. The himbo dome, baby.

Nettspend - “Shut Up” / “Skipping Class” / “Cha Ching” w/ Osamason

You could print a zine of the cheesiest Nettspend insults:

His voice is so off rhythm it’s like the beat friendzoned him!

This is counterculture for Roblox gooners!

Walmart Bladee!

Xavierso-not-based!

To Pimp A Butterfly for iPad kids!

Yeah, it’s reduced-calorie moshpit music. But his best bars and vocal chains, filtered through the mega-cluttered, hyperkinetic production, sound hysterically alive. Let’s Create Art <3

thatcherblackwood - “basalt”

Hit play for the six minutes of haunted rock (RIYL: digicore with strings that make you feel like you’re in a forest, a claustrophobic chorus of cries that for some reason makes me think of Tim Burton, mathy acoustic licks). Stay for the insanity that comes next: A color bass explosion so warped it makes my stomach drop like I’m parachuting out of a plane.

twikipedia - “room for one”

I remember hearing this the day I landed in Granada, stuffed on a small bed in a tiny Airbnb so close to a bustling plaza that cheers and chatter filled our room all day. The dusty scrappiness of “room for one” really resonated in the moment. It’s nothing like the digicore pioneer’s earliest experiments, but it’s got that same knack for melody and feeling. It’s the soundtrack for the spring of your life, a three-minute bildungsroman that makes you want to get up and live.

vyrval - “✻H+3+ЯД✻7luCJIo0T6...”

10 months after this song spread, I still have no idea who vyrval is, where they’re from, what the title’s supposed to mean, and how it came about. This was the first song the mysterious producer ever released, and it has over 100 million Spotify streams. Earlier this year, it became a bizarre anthem in the wake of the Crocus City Hall massacre, in which 145 concertgoers in Moscow were killed by alleged terrorists. YouTube uploads of the track were inundated with Russians commenting “RIP” with flower emotes. It feels less like a piece of programmed music than a field recording from a Death Star demolition zone. It’s the most electrifying sonic nightmare from what I call cursed jumpstyle, a sallow, sickly 2020s version of the gabber subgenre that buries its distinctive spongy kicks in apocalyptic synths.

There are so many freaky iterations on this new style — creepily languid slumpstyle, Yabujin’s angelic spells. You could file vyrval’s song under jumpbile. It’s a toxic waste cesspool of kicks, breakbeats, and screwy synth chaos that’s nauseating yet irresistible.

BONUS: Ceri ASMR - THE BREATHIEST FAST AND AGGRESSIVE ASMR WITH STUTTERS

ASMR is going psycho these days… this is basically the “Stop Breathing” of whispering videos, borderline glitchcore pop. Her voice quivers so frantically she’s practically hyperventilating—she even said she can’t do the effect for too long because it makes her nauseous and headache-y. But everyone in the comments is like, “you’re the best ASMRtist ever.” One person even wrote that their brain memorized every relaxation trigger timestamp so they “can’t tingle the next time.”

The Top 15

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

Dearest Deacon of Fraggersville,

I write with an urgent entreaty. Thou must listen to “fragged aht” by wokeups. It arrived in my eardrums like a messenger on horseback, a carrier pigeon in the night.

There, betwixt the percussive shards and voluptuous synth line, thou shall behold a pillar of vocal matter so luminous it shatters my conception of the real, the human — and verily I am a humanist but its sheer majesty surpasses all that my mortal mind is capable of envisaging. None of my feeble transcription services were able to convey its meaning in lyric form. I tasked my scrivener, Spongluss, with deciphering the message. His result: GUOOOGOOOEGOOAAAH. Upon the instant I heard its gleaming GUOOG, I felt myself o’ercome with a sense of rapture — a glorious surrender it twas indeed in the way it vouchsafed beatified brain-bliss. Heretofore I had never experienced such an emptying of my ego. It makes the plebeian bards in the town square busking “Medieval Rap Type Beats” with their costcutter woodsmiths’ mandolins resemble mere Shakespearean fan-clubbers.

Prithee take heed of my heart’s petition: thou must persuade Pope SoundCloudius XIVX to deploy this sonic blessing as a potential antidote for those suffering from the Streambait Plague. My dearest, thou know I have been gravely afflicted by illnesses such as Long Covid. I must say, the singular beam of radiance that is “fragged aht” cured me of all my sundry ailments — grippe, quinsy, vent gleet, dropsy, the French pox.

Ensconced in the celestial swath of synthesizers and regal Auto-Tune wizardry, I have become a healed and holy man. Rather than litter gravestones with flowers and “RIP” text, I propose we protect our dead with wokeups’ lyrical fragments. I just went to the cemetery and inscribed “Ho got hella coke, she finna blow her nose galore (galore)” on my grandnan’s tomb.

Yours fondly,

K

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

Maybe my favorite musical moment of the year erupts at the end of “crush,” when the yearning ballad breaks into a shotgun spree of kick drums. It pumpfakes the popstar pomp, the Top 40 hooky chorus, before degenerating into rawstyle, a form of hardstyle that’s an even more serrated and downright disgusting form of an already electric subgenre. “crush” is ostensibly a romantic song, an ode to an unnamed cutie. Instead, the tune makes me feel like my face has completely melted off, cheeks and eyebrows incinerated.

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

REPORT: ‘Symphony of Shrill’ Strains the Bounds of Listenability In Paradigm-Shifting Survey

Abstract: This experiment seeks to determine the material health consequences of the human ear canal, or the external auditory meatus (E.A.M. Triplin), when breached by music at the outer reaches of listenability. Patients were subjected to two symphonies of shrill, bleood’s “ooo” and yuke’s “ian goin,” produced by zai and karakuli, respectively. The former has been described by award-winning music journalists as a “tantalizing orgy-orchestra of bleeps, tweeps, and shrieks,” while the latter has been called the “logical excruciating endpoint of the ‘terror plugg’ style,” in which the 808s “cry like feral lemurs.” By forcing the subjects to listen to these songs on repeat while they are under captivity in remote observation, we hoped to see a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest evolution take place in live-time.

Lack of data on the subject has led this paper to be named a Fulbright Scholar “Pioneering Study” of 2024.

General Enjoyability

‘Absolutely gas!’ 11% of respondents

‘Texturally intriguing but not replayable’ 39% of respondents

‘No opinion one way or the other’ 1% of respondents

‘Failed to make an agreeable impression’ 29% of respondents

‘Total dog diarrhea’ 20% of respondents

Hearing Damage

No loss detected: 28% of respondents

-0.1-1.0dB loss: 51% of respondents

1.1-dB+ loss: 25% of respondents

Complete deafness: 6% of respondents

Free Response Section (select, anonymous answers shown)

“There’s something delightfully Proustian about the crinkly, mutilated bird-cries of bleood’s beat.”

“im like not trinyng to draw sympathy, but ‘ian goin’ brought me bac to a terrible time in my life when i got run over by a tractor and my ruptured ears were bleedin and shit, so im gonna sue u”

“I’m Mainly Filling This Out Because They Said I’d Get A Free Amazon Prime Gift Card”

“This stuff is cool, Im gonna show my son when he gets back from Mormon camp!”

Our survey was conducted with 564 humans and 1 snow camel on September 13, 2024, in Yakutsk City Hall, as part of an effort to warm up those cold Siberians. The methodology included base weighting for percentages of telephone numbers and Discord handles sampled in the stratum. More research is needed to accurately determine the effects of music.

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod. dj ess

Bass so fat it’s like your mind is in a microwave, like a 50-pound bowling ball’s been dropped on your face, like you’re kissing the sun, like your brain’s a hot air balloon, like eating a Phaal curry, like the 808s got a BBL and their ass is clapping up an earthquake, like a sandstorm, like hellfire, like riding Kingda Ka and the wind’s stretching your mouth wide. I have no clue what the title is referencing—the football game? A massive bowl of weed? All I can think of is a 14-year-old standing in the eye of a dust bowl, commanding the grimy gale like an airbender.

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

Everything is too fast nowadays, too stimuli-fucked sludge-content nightcore hysteria MrBeast retention-roided corecore psychoscrolling. What about some radiant lethargy? Where are the moments of contented stillness, the absent-minded daydreams, the hours that dilate and stretch out like an endless school period? I’ve spent a lot of my life running, trying to break PRs and sprint a mile in four minutes. Now I want to coast. I want to hit the top of the mountain and let gravity guide me down the crest. I want to lose myself in the leathery swirl of “Coasting.” There’s no accordion in the song, but it makes me imagine falling into a bed-size version of the instrument, sleeping between the bellows in its soft folds, drifting off while being lightly tossed to and fro.

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

I’ve been a nasty girl, I whisper to my therapist as I join our weekly video call.

“Hmm, okay!” they reply in the Zoom chat (their camera is always off because they lack self-confidence). “I’m glad you’ve overcome the dry streak you kept talking about.”

Will you match my freak? I ask, coquettishly.

“Ha Ha, I don’t think that’s super professional,” they type, with a “:P” emoji at the end.

Pillow talking got my throat raspy, I continue.

“Maybe you need a softer fill!” they say.

I got stamina, they say I’m an athlete.

“Oh, you’re running again? That’s a great way to stave off seasonal depression.”

If you do it too good, I’m gonna get attached.

“Ah yes, the scientific term for that is transference, we can’t—”

‘Cause it feels like heaven when it hurts so bad.

They type for a second. Pause. Type again.

…

“Hey, Stockholm syndrome is real. You’re valid! If there’s something painful going on in your life, the patient-therapist confidentiality agreement doesn’t cover that, and you need to tell me.”

No, you DUMBASS, I snort, I’m just reciting the lyrics to Tinashe’s hit single “Nasty,” a sultry slow-glide of a tune that revels in the heady glow of abandoning your inhibitions. Even more electric is Jane Remover’s “Match My Tweak” remix, which sounds more suited for bopping uncontrollably than sensual grinding. My God, I’m listening to it right now—you can’t hear it because I’m wearing tiny AirPods—and I think it’s solved my depression! Bye!!!!!!!

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

There was a whole lot of sexy drill this year that’s sweet, sensual, seductive—stuff you’d sing in the shower thinking about your crush or blast out of the car as you’re swaggering downtown. Nonchalant dudes humming about drowning in pussy. What attracted me most was “Rump Punch,” a Cash Cobain hit so sparse and subdued it’s borderline melancholic. There’s the lightest lick of percussion, and synths so blue it’s as if you’re staring into the Mariana Trench. Then you have Cash with a typically raunchy, horndog hook that sounds so weird in this woeful context: “Girl, you got the fatty, wanna be callin' me daddy/Top-five nasty, you ain't even gotta ask me.” He says a woman tastes like rump punch and scolds guys who can’t make their girl come once, when he can do it twice. But with this overcast sky, it’s like, are you munching or mourning? Are you getting a nut off or going nuts yourself, dissociating in the punch?

#8 - Jane Remover - “Flash in the Pan”

Jane’s catalog is an exquisite corpse, emphasis on exquisite. Her witches brew of sounds is almost always intoxicating, from dariacore to digital shoegaze to drum’n’breakdowns. “Flash in the Pan” breaks down and rewires sonic particles like she’s trying to reveal a new chemical element. There’s angelic K-pop melodies, sexy drill’s tickling percussion; everything crests into a 1000-degree alt-rock blaze. What elevates it beyond just a stew of sounds is how she sprinkles it with concrete storytelling. It’s a tale of delirious yearning filtered through a trip on the NJ Transit, from 30th Street through Newark Penn Station, with a piercing image of her “laying on the tracks at Metropark Station, waiting on you to come save my life.” And unlike so much so-called “genre-fusing” music in Spotify’s “Anti-Pop” playlists, the hook is anthemic yet endearingly original, a playful producer-brained taunt: “P-pretty boy said I was just a flash in the pan… I could take her flow if I can't take her man.” The Periodic Table of Jane keeps expanding with unknown gems and new precious minerals.

#7 - EQ, Estratosfera, Qiri - “Boytoy”

Yes yes believe me I’m sick too of the endless tedious indie sleaze discourse — but forgive me this final paragraph on the subject. The output from this new wave has largely been uninventive and insipid, like The Dare’s poser prurience, or only offers fleeting thrills like Snow Strippers’ overclocked electroflash. ‘Indie sleaze’ was always a dogwater algorithm-bait framework anyway—musicians have made sleazy-sounding hyperactive tunes for ages. It’s suddenly a “moment” because a famous photographer is taking pics of hot girls in clubs, and publications need new trends, new cultural epochs to cover.

Finally, after all these false prophets, “Boytoy” hits like a little revelation. Here’s something genuinely sexy, charming, sonically jolting. Estratosfera sings sweetly about a man she’s been going out with for months, how she styles him and watches him throw ass at a gay bar, how “he’s so innocent,” and “I guess I’m so corrupted.” They’re in a liminal space where everything is oozy and lovely, the relationship limits haven’t yet been set. “Babe, with me you can be you, and, babe, with you I can be me,” she coos with a slight quiver, like a watt of electricity is tingling through her vocal cords. “It's just our modern love story.” Rather than light up the dancefloor with a fierce hook or cavernous lowend, EQ makes mesmerizing use of negative space: pom-poms of synth bass clap together, garbled vox pop and shiver like tickly whispers. There’s enough room to imagine the possibilities, to fill the void with furtive glances and blushing smiles. Estratosfera switches to Spanish, drawing syllables out seductively like she’s clawing at your neck. “I'm feeling so cheeky with you,” she teases. By the end, sentence structures have lost control and she’s just repeating boy, toy,boy, toy, geeked out on the infantilizing rush of desire.

#6 - xaviersobased - “Need Me” (prod. him and reklus1ve)

So much of the most electrifying new rap music feels like it lives in a liminal realm between teenage bedrooms and Discord channels. It’s easy to forget about all the real-world events that give lore and shape to these artists’ mythologies, like Nettspend’s “shine n peace” throwdown at Market Hotel, the clip of LAZER DIM 700 bobbing his head goofily at a listening party in Bed-Stuy, Drain Gang’s post-pandemic coronation luring every non-binary Brooklynite to Knockdown Center.

There’s a lot to like about the xav and reklus1ve-produced “Need Me”: the angel-yawn synths and dream-of-consciousness flow; the blurry slurry of lyrics about Asics and Yeezys and his collective 1c inexplicably being broadcasted on a TV. But what really gives it a distinct essence are the intro and outro, which splice in clips from an interview Xavier did with DJ Rennessy where they recall a show at the Bushwick venue The End (formerly Heaven) in late 2022. “That's legendary, bro,” DJ Rennessy brags in the song. “I'm telling you right now: We gon' pass, like, five-ten years from now, bro, and people gon' look at that show, I'm telling you.”

It was indeed a sweet night. All my usual misgivings about the venue (tight; hot; spatially vexing) evaporated. The lineup captured three of the most exciting new strains of the genre—evilgiane and eera’s cosmic ambience with Surf Gang, xaviersobased’s warped jerk, the addictive fever of Certified Trapper’s Milwaukee rap. Add DJ Rennessy and Drain Gang associate Woesum too. The young crowd was thronged with cups and joints, collaborators and friends, people who’d likely only known each other on Twitter before and traveled hours to get there. The highlight was Xavier, swaggering in the middle of a hulking mob, shirtless, hurling out a grabbag of bangers from his back catalog. The dancefloor became a juddering wormhole.

Listening to “Need Me” now with all that in mind feels like floating in the afterlife, a panorama of memories flashing in my brain. And putting myself in Xavier’s shoes, it’s like an eagle-eye glide above the scene he helped spark and the musicians in his wake. It doesn’t feel arrogant partly because Xavier still hasn’t gotten his flowers, with others riffing on his style and surging above him. It was clearly one of those pivotal nights, where every drip of sweat that hit me on the crammed dancefloor felt like a little bead of creative energy.

#5 - Syzy - “Take my energy!” / “Can you keep up?”

The first music genre I seriously got into as a tween was gloriously gaudy EDM trap. YouTube Minecraft PVP montages put me on to Flosstradamus, RL Grime’s bombastic “Love Sosa” remix, TNGHT; from there I found Flume, What So Not, Mr. Carmack, SOPHIE (it’s funny how “MSMSMSM” was a fixture of this scene before she expanded her sound). I became a diehard in high school, religiously tapping in with r/trap (remember r/xtrill?) and making frenetic mixes inspired by RL Grime’s Halloween series and Ekali. At a certain point, I fell out of love with it—after G Jones, Boombox Cartel etc. pushed the hybrid bass sound to its breaking point, it felt like the scene self-destructed and stopped innovating. The lurid bangers lost their luster.

Weight of the world is the most electrifying EDM trap album (riddim? Future bass? Hyper-dubstep? I could never get a handle of these subgenre tags) I’ve heard since 2019’s Hi This Is Flume. It could be the Glass Swords of the 2020s, a treasure trove of next-level drops and scalpel-incisive sound design that’s as indebted to dariacore and digicore as much as PC Music and EPROM. Every song unravels like an archeological site on a distant planet, packed to the brim with crumbs of crystal debris, crinkly lightning zaps, and AI mukbang mouth sounds. I can’t remember the last time an album felt so much like its own new, addictive world.

#4 - Bassvictim - “Air on a G String”

Bach was GOATed but his G strings don’t have shit on Bassvictim. It’s been a while since I’ve heard a song exude such an overt sense of fun—the kind of effortlessly playful that makes me forget I’m a music critic. Instead of immediately identifying what genre it is, the scene it’s riffing on, the layers of sounds and effects, my brain starts hula-hooping with glee: SCHOOL’S OUT! Time to dash through the beach in my underwear and bolt into the sea.

The duo said they recorded the song in one day, the day after they formed a band, which feels both serendipitous and sensible. Any more time spent laboring over the electroclash beat probably would’ve extinguished its winky spark. Even the synths sound like they’re off their tits, wriggling and spinning across the mix with the impish mischief of a troublemaking toddler. After a certain point, the storytelling falls away and Maria Manow just starts giggling. “My underwear is showing. I'm showing MY underwear! I don't even care, don't you dare tell me that's wrong.” It hits like some bizarre scene out of an R-rated Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. It’s horny and hot on the surface but really just silly and primal: I'm running around and I'm getting wild.

#3 - Charli xcx - BRAT but it’s an EOY blurb, or something

I tried pitching this story to a dozen places, but nobody wanted it. What the hell, this would’ve gone crazy on the pageview charts! Anyway, here’s the story of how I discovered a secret challenge at the Charli xcx Storm King Brat Album But It’s An Experience™ experience.

The other week, myself and a few hundred VIPs—other journalists, local stans, TikTok pundits—were invited to take the Metro-North upstate for a private Charli xcx concert at the outdoor Storm King sculpture garden. It was organized to celebrate the release of her remix album. This random Thursday felt late-term-pregnant with potential: Would there be free food? How would the remix album sound? Would I fall in bratty love with another Angel? What if Charli did a bump off a sculpture?

Upon arrival, the vibes were chill sesh. They shepherded us along a tree-flanked path, past immense sculptures and little creeks. We milled in a clearing, munching on BRAT-green hamburgers and pork buns stamped with Charli winking prepared by food carts. There was a lot of waiting; Charli was supposed to perform at 3pm, but she was late. Time yawned on and we grew restless—the tone of the collective conversation morphed from feverish glee to acidic confusion. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a glow stick waving in the distance, deep inside the tree-covered forest. It looked like a crossing guard with reflective gear at night.

I’m a journalist, so I knew I had to explore. Just when I started motioning toward the light, a plume of rapturous cheers exploded: Charli’s limousine was pulling up the hill, crushing all the vegetation underfoot, toward the giant BRAT sculpture erected in her honor. I had to make a split-second decision: report on the show, which I was supposed to do, or get freaky with it?

So I began sprinting toward the glow—which was starting to fade, just as Charli’s music was rising in volume. I fearlessly scrambled into the forest, nearly dropping my tote bag containing my new Uniqlo thermal gloves, and found the woman holding the colored stick.

“Welcome young Brat-awan,” she bowed. “You made it just in time. This is the Charli xcx Storm King Brat Album But It’s An Experience™ Pre-show Challenge Opportunity. Follow the signs.”

I realized that she was standing above a stairwell. Summoning up all my courage, which wasn’t much because I’m generally known as a pretty feckless and pathetic person, I descended. Festooned on the dank walls were portraits of Charli in various poses and points of her career. The stairwell speaker seemed to be blasting every song Charli has ever released at once, so it came out as a cacophonous, metallic onslaught, an omni-choir of pure 100% Charli potency.

At the bottom, it was revealed that I was about to enter a Gauntlet of the Angels. I would face a series of tasks and if I completed it, which no one had yet managed to do, I’d win prizes.

Round One involved mediating a conversation between two frenemies in what was a simulated “Girl, so confusing” situation. I sat down with them for hours, carefully teasing out their vitriol and reaching a point where both parties realized they liked each other. When I completed the challenge, Lorde came out of a secret hole in the wall and gave me a New Zealand-style hug.

Round Two was already insane: I needed to survive in a panopticonic GITMO-esque cell where I was bombarded with a relentless barrage of Addison Rae’s scream from the “Von dutch” remix. Each round, the pitch surged up and the volume became even more piercing, pushing me to the brink. As excruciating as it became—her cries are still ringing in my mind—I never quit.

For Round Three, they had built a mini-studio underground. Sitting inside was New York rapper Wiki. They gave me a brief and said I had to collaborate with Wiki and Charli xcx AI tools (I was to perform Charli’s vocals) to produce Bratking, a new album that tells the story of ambitious city dwellers striving to overthrow the tyranny of Dimes Square. The template record image showed an ouroboros of cocaine, symbolizing a ratking of debauchery. Despite my minor experience in music production (I had a brief stint as an emo rapper when I was 14), Wiki and I cooked up something thrilling enough to get a Brat New Music review by Witchfork writer A.G. Cook.

The staff member who let me in, who was giving me instructions over the loudspeakers, told me I made it farther than any other contestant today. I was briefly jubilant. But then she said I was about to face the toughest challenge of them all. The Final Round: The Brat Obstacle Course.

It began with a hall of swinging knives, which each had “sympathy” written on them; the final knife was wielded by featured artist Ariana Grande herself. Next I had to keep my wits about me as I swerved through a maze of funhouse mirrors; Bladee’s voice drifted out of every corner, offering nihilistic adages and anhedonic maxims to get me to lose faith and give up. I finally made it through and came upon a gargantuan body of cave water. To pass, I had to climb aboard and maneuver my way through the PC Music farewell tour boat, while Umru distracted me with a live DJ set. It was also midway sinking, in a 2020s hyperpop recreation of the Titanic.

Finally, the last stage—I needed to ascend a tall underground mountain while staff members wearing the costumes of every single featured artist pelted me with apples. They tore me up, bruising my forehead and shoulders and hands. “I hope you’re free bleeding!” the Caroline Polachek lookalike warbled angelically. When a staff member wearing a badly stitched Julian Casablancas getup smashed me right in the mouth, I nearly lost balance and tumbled back to the bottom. But luckily, I had equipped my Uniqlo thermal gloves, which gave me the grip to hold on.

“Congratulations,” the original staff woman grinned after I reached the summit. “You are the platonic brat, with an insatiable desire to be tamed.”

When I finished, they rewarded me with a chartreuse-green cocktail, a booklet with a guide on how to register to vote for Kamala Harris, a poorly manufactured tote bag, and a t-shirt that said “Art” in the BRAT font. I flipped the t-shirt on Grailed for $6 million. I’m now living on my own private island with a live-in Michelin star chef and a private farm with alpacas.

#2 - LAZER DIM 700 - “TAKE U OUT” / “SPEED DRIVE” (prod. KRXXK)

These are easily the hardest beats LAZER has ever rapped over. The beat for “TAKE U OUT,” 69 seconds of wicked adrenaline, is so whacked-out that Lazer uses the first few lines to process its weirdness—“Different beat, this a different sound,” he marvels. His fawks sync up perfectly with those evil tremors, and his relentless rattle makes him sound like a video game supervillain amid KRXXK’s cosmic hellscape. This is music for an arena show in the Distortion World, that indigo-black parallel Pokemon universe ruled by the winged beast Giratina. I can see LAZER floating in the sky, maniacally cooking up on BandLab while sending an army of fans into a seismic moshpit below. It’s tragic that he and KRXXK haven’t linked up again since.

#1 - st47ic - “*WGOKYS* GENRE KILLER”

st47ic should be one of the most celebrated of this generation, but I selfishly hope he stays underground so he’ll keep dropping hellspawn bass and writing titles so long they’re like evil haikus. “*WGOKYS* GENRE KILLER” is fucking mental, a final deathmatch of a beat that stutters like one long, malfunctioning producer tag. Sobs and samples flash in like bright faces in a scary fog: I reckon if this keeps up, I'm gonna die. Shards of scorn fly across the mix: Nerves; the worst; I put you in the dirt; you better fucking learn; pu-pu-put your shit back, ssshh- www- hhhh. Witch gang or kill yourself. By the end, st47ic has completely lost his face in the crazed churn, his voice chopped up in the musical meat grinder. “Witch gang or kill yourself,” he spasms repeatedly, every line punctuated with a command: KILL HIM!

Life in 2024 has become something like a perpetual jumpscare. Obviously, this song has nothing to do with any of that and isn’t trying to be deep—it’s basically just a 90-second ad for his collective, Witch Gang, telling you to kill yourself if you’re not part of the crew. But something about its sheer madness—those cold snares, the plaintive wails, the asphyxiating synths—feels distinctly of this sick moment.

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These are easily the hardest beats LAZER has ever rapped over. The beat for “TAKE U OUT,” 69 seconds of wicked adrenaline, is so whacked-out that Lazer uses the first few lines to process its weirdness—“Different beat, this a different sound,” he marvels. His fawks sync up perfectly with those evil tremors, and his relentless rattle makes him sound like a video game supervillain amid KRXXK’s cosmic hellscape. This is music for an arena show in the Distortion World, that indigo-black parallel Pokemon universe ruled by the winged beast Giratina. I can see LAZER floating in the sky, maniacally cooking up on BandLab while sending an army of fans into a seismic moshpit below. It’s tragic that he and KRXXK haven’t linked up again since.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

#8 - Jane Remover - “Flash in the Pan”

#7 - EQ - “Boytoy”

#6 - xaviersobased - “Need Me”

#5 - Syzy - “Take my energy!” / “Can you keep up?”

#4 - Bassvictim - “Air on a G String”

#3 - Charli xcx - BRAT but it’s an EOY blurb, or something

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I tried pitching this story to a dozen places, but nobody wanted it. What the hell, this would’ve gone crazy on the pageview charts! Anyway, here’s the story of how I discovered a secret challenge at the Charli xcx Storm King Brat Album But It’s An Experience™ experience.

The other week, myself and a few hundred VIPs—other journalists, local stans, TikTok pundits—were invited to take the Metro-North upstate for a private Charli xcx concert at the outdoor Storm King sculpture garden. It was organized to celebrate the release of her remix album. This random Thursday felt late-term-pregnant with potential: Would there be free food? How would the remix album sound? Would I fall in bratty love with another Angel? What if Charli did a bump off a sculpture?

Upon arrival, the vibes were chill sesh. They shepherded us along a tree-flanked path, past immense sculptures and little creeks. We milled in a clearing, munching on BRAT-green hamburgers and pork buns stamped with Charli winking prepared by food carts. There was a lot of waiting; Charli was supposed to perform at 3pm, but she was late. Time yawned on and we grew restless—the tone of the collective conversation morphed from feverish glee to acidic confusion. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a glow stick waving in the distance, deep inside the tree-covered forest. It looked like a crossing guard with reflective gear at night.

I’m a journalist, so I knew I had to explore. Just when I started motioning toward the light, a plume of rapturous cheers exploded: Charli’s limousine was pulling up the hill, crushing all the vegetation underfoot, toward the giant BRAT sculpture erected in her honor. I had to make a split-second decision: report on the show, which I was supposed to do, or get freaky with it?

So I began sprinting toward the glow—which was starting to fade, just as Charli’s music was rising in volume. I fearlessly scrambled into the forest, nearly dropping my tote bag containing my new Uniqlo thermal gloves, and found the woman holding the colored stick.

“Welcome young Brat-awan,” she bowed. “You made it just in time. This is the Charli xcx Storm King Brat Album But It’s An Experience™ Pre-show Challenge Opportunity. Follow the signs.”

I realized that she was standing above a stairwell. Summoning up all my courage, which wasn’t much because I’m generally known as a pretty feckless and pathetic person, I descended. Festooned on the dank walls were portraits of Charli in various poses and points of her career. The stairwell speaker seemed to be blasting every song Charli has ever released at once, so it came out as a cacophonous, metallic onslaught, an omni-choir of pure 100% Charli potency.

At the bottom, it was revealed that I was about to enter a Gauntlet of the Angels. I would face a series of tasks and if I completed it, which no one had yet managed to do, I’d win prizes.

Round One involved mediating a conversation between two frenemies in what was a simulated “Girl, so confusing” situation. I sat down with them for hours, carefully teasing out their vitriol and reaching a point where both parties realized they liked each other. When I completed the challenge, Lorde came out of a secret hole in the wall and gave me a New Zealand-style hug.

Round Two was already insane: I needed to survive in a panopticonic GITMO-esque cell where I was bombarded with a relentless barrage of Addison Rae’s scream from the “Von dutch” remix. Each round, the pitch surged up and the volume became even more piercing, pushing me to the brink. As excruciating as it became—her cries are still ringing in my mind—I never quit.

For Round Three, they had built a mini-studio underground. Sitting inside was New York rapper Wiki. They gave me a brief and said I had to collaborate with Wiki and Charli xcx AI tools (I was to perform Charli’s vocals) to produce Bratking, a new album that tells the story of ambitious city dwellers striving to overthrow the tyranny of Dimes Square. The template record image showed an ouroboros of cocaine, symbolizing a ratking of debauchery. Despite my minor experience in music production (I had a brief stint as an emo rapper when I was 14), Wiki and I cooked up something thrilling enough to get a Brat New Music review by Witchfork writer A.G. Cook.

The staff member who let me in, who was giving me instructions over the loudspeakers, told me I made it farther than any other contestant today. I was briefly jubilant. But then she said I was about to face the toughest challenge of them all. The Final Round: The Brat Obstacle Course.

It began with a hall of swinging knives, which each had “sympathy” written on them; the final knife was wielded by featured artist Ariana Grande herself. Next I had to keep my wits about me as I swerved through a maze of funhouse mirrors; Bladee’s voice drifted out of every corner, offering nihilistic adages and anhedonic maxims to get me to lose faith and give up. I finally made it through and came upon a gargantuan body of cave water. To pass, I had to climb aboard and maneuver my way through the PC Music farewell tour boat, while Umru distracted me with a live DJ set. It was also midway sinking, in a 2020s hyperpop recreation of the Titanic.

Finally, the last stage—I needed to ascend a tall underground mountain while staff members wearing the costumes of every single featured artist pelted me with apples. They tore me up, bruising my forehead and shoulders and hands. “I hope you’re free bleeding!” the Caroline Polachek lookalike warbled angelically. When a staff member wearing a badly stitched Julian Casablancas getup smashed me right in the mouth, I nearly lost balance and tumbled back to the bottom. But luckily, I had equipped my Uniqlo thermal gloves, which gave me the grip to hold on.

“Congratulations,” the original staff woman grinned after I reached the summit. “You are the platonic brat, with an insatiable desire to be tamed.”

When I finished, they rewarded me with a chartreuse-green cocktail, a booklet with a guide on how to register to vote for Kamala Harris, a poorly manufactured tote bag, and a t-shirt that said “Art” in the BRAT font. I flipped the t-shirt on Grailed for $6 million. I’m now living on my own private island with a live-in Michelin star chef and a private farm with alpacas.

Top 10 BRAT Ranking

10. “Rewind” remix with Bladee

9. “Sympathy is a knife”

8. “365” remix with Shygirl

7. “Apple”

6. “360”

5. “Girl, so confusing” remix with Lorde

4. “Everything Is Romantic” remix with Caroline Polachek

3. “So I” remix with A.G. Cook

2. “Von dutch” remix with Addison Rae

1. “365”

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Bach was GOATed but his G strings don’t have shit on Bassvictim. It’s been a while since I’ve heard a song exude such an overt sense of fun—the kind of effortlessly playful that makes me forget I’m a music critic. Instead of immediately identifying what genre it is, the scene it’s riffing on, the layers of sounds and effects, my brain starts hula-hooping with glee: SCHOOL’S OUT! Time to dash through the beach in my underwear and bolt into the sea.

The duo said they recorded the song in one day, the day after they formed a band, which feels both serendipitous and sensible. Any more time spent laboring over the electroclash beat probably would’ve extinguished its winky spark. Even the synths sound like they’re off their tits, wriggling and spinning across the mix with the impish mischief of a troublemaking toddler. After a certain point, the storytelling falls away and Maria Manow just starts giggling. “My underwear is showing. I'm showing MY underwear! I don't even care, don't you dare tell me that's wrong.” It hits like some bizarre scene out of an R-rated Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. It’s horny and hot on the surface but really just silly and primal: I'm running around and I'm getting wild.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

#8 - Jane Remover - “Flash in the Pan”

#7 - EQ - “Boytoy”

#6 - xaviersobased - “Need Me”

#5 - Syzy - “Take my energy!” / “Can you keep up?”

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The first music genre I seriously got into as a tween was gloriously gaudy EDM trap. YouTube Minecraft PVP montages put me on to Flosstradamus, RL Grime’s bombastic “Love Sosa” remix, TNGHT; from there I found Flume, What So Not, Mr. Carmack, SOPHIE (it’s funny how “MSMSMSM” was a fixture of this scene before she expanded her sound). I became a diehard in high school, religiously tapping in with r/trap (remember r/xtrill?) and making frenetic mixes inspired by RL Grime’s Halloween series and Ekali. At a certain point, I fell out of love with it—after G Jones, Boombox Cartel etc. pushed the hybrid bass sound to its breaking point, it felt like the scene self-destructed and stopped innovating. The lurid bangers lost their luster.

Weight of the world is the most electrifying EDM trap album (riddim? Future bass? Hyper-dubstep? I could never get a handle of these subgenre tags) I’ve heard since 2019’s Hi This Is Flume. It could be the Glass Swords of the 2020s, a treasure trove of next-level drops and scalpel-incisive sound design that’s as indebted to dariacore and digicore as much as PC Music and EPROM. Every song unravels like an archeological site on a distant planet, packed to the brim with crumbs of crystal debris, crinkly lightning zaps, and AI mukbang mouth sounds. I can’t remember the last time an album felt so much like its own new, addictive world.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

#8 - Jane Remover - “Flash in the Pan”

#7 - EQ - “Boytoy”

#6 - xaviersobased - “Need Me”

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So much of the most electrifying new rap music feels like it lives in a liminal realm between teenage bedrooms and Discord channels. It’s easy to forget about all the real-world events that give lore and shape to these artists’ mythologies, like Nettspend’s “shine n peace” throwdown at Market Hotel, the clip of LAZER DIM 700 bobbing his head goofily at a listening party in Bed-Stuy, Drain Gang’s post-pandemic coronation luring every non-binary Brooklynite to Knockdown Center.

There’s a lot to like about the xav and reklus1ve-produced “Need Me”: the angel-yawn synths and dream-of-consciousness flow; the blurry slurry of lyrics about Asics and Yeezys and his collective 1c inexplicably being broadcasted on a TV. But what really gives it a distinct essence are the intro and outro, which splice in clips from an interview Xavier did with DJ Rennessy where they recall a show at the Bushwick venue The End (formerly Heaven) in late 2022. “That's legendary, bro,” DJ Rennessy brags in the song. “I'm telling you right now: We gon' pass, like, five-ten years from now, bro, and people gon' look at that show, I'm telling you.”

It was indeed a sweet night. All my usual misgivings about the venue (tight; hot; spatially vexing) evaporated. The lineup captured three of the most exciting new strains of the genre—evilgiane and eera’s cosmic ambience with Surf Gang, xaviersobased’s warped jerk, the addictive fever of Certified Trapper’s Milwaukee rap. Add DJ Rennessy and Drain Gang associate Woesum too. The young crowd was thronged with cups and joints, collaborators and friends, people who’d likely only known each other on Twitter before and traveled hours to get there. The highlight was Xavier, swaggering in the middle of a hulking mob, shirtless, hurling out a grabbag of bangers from his back catalog. The dancefloor became a juddering wormhole.

Listening to “Need Me” now with all that in mind feels like floating in the afterlife, a panorama of memories flashing in my brain. And putting myself in Xavier’s shoes, it’s like an eagle-eye glide above the scene he helped spark and the musicians in his wake. It doesn’t feel arrogant partly because Xavier still hasn’t gotten his flowers, with others riffing on his style and surging above him. It was clearly one of those pivotal nights, where every drip of sweat that hit me on the crammed dancefloor felt like a little bead of creative energy.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

#8 - Jane Remover - “Flash in the Pan”

#7 - EQ - “Boytoy”

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Yes yes believe me I’m sick too of the endless tedious indie sleaze discourse — but forgive me this final paragraph on the subject. The output from this new wave has largely been uninventive and insipid, like The Dare’s poser prurience, or only offers fleeting thrills like Snow Strippers’ overclocked electroflash. ‘Indie sleaze’ was always a dogwater algorithm-bait framework anyway—musicians have made sleazy-sounding hyperactive tunes for ages. It’s suddenly a “moment” because a famous photographer is taking pics of hot girls in clubs, and publications need new trends, new cultural epochs to cover.

Finally, after all these false prophets, “Boytoy” hits like a little revelation. Here’s something genuinely sexy, charming, sonically jolting. Estratosfera sings sweetly about a man she’s been going out with for months, how she styles him and watches him throw ass at a gay bar, how “he’s so innocent,” and “I guess I’m so corrupted.” They’re in a liminal space where everything is oozy and lovely, the relationship limits haven’t yet been set. “Babe, with me you can be you, and, babe, with you I can be me,” she coos with a slight quiver, like a watt of electricity is tingling through her vocal cords. “It's just our modern love story.” Rather than light up the dancefloor with a fierce hook or cavernous lowend, EQ makes mesmerizing use of negative space: pom-poms of synth bass clap together, garbled vox pop and shiver like tickly whispers. There’s enough room to imagine the possibilities, to fill the void with furtive glances and blushing smiles. Estratosfera switches to Spanish, drawing syllables out seductively like she’s clawing at your neck. “I'm feeling so cheeky with you,” she teases. By the end, sentence structures have lost control and she’s just repeating boy, toy,boy, toy, geeked out on the infantilizing rush of desire.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

#8 - Jane Remover - “Flash in the Pan”

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Jane’s catalog is an exquisite corpse, emphasis on exquisite. Her witches brew of sounds is almost always intoxicating, from dariacore to digital shoegaze to drum’n’breakdowns. “Flash in the Pan” breaks down and rewires sonic particles like she’s trying to reveal a new chemical element. There’s angelic K-pop melodies, sexy drill’s tickling percussion; everything crests into a 1000-degree alt-rock blaze. What elevates it beyond just a stew of sounds is how she sprinkles it with concrete storytelling. It’s a tale of delirious yearning filtered through a trip on the NJ Transit, from 30th Street through Newark Penn Station, with a piercing image of her “laying on the tracks at Metropark Station, waiting on you to come save my life.” And unlike so much so-called “genre-fusing” music in Spotify’s “Anti-Pop” playlists, the hook is anthemic yet endearingly original, a playful producer-brained taunt: “P-pretty boy said I was just a flash in the pan… I could take her flow if I can't take her man.” The Periodic Table of Jane keeps expanding with unknown gems and new precious minerals.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

#9 - Cash Cobain - “Rump Punch”

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There was a whole lot of sexy drill this year that’s sweet, sensual, seductive—stuff you’d sing in the shower thinking about your crush or blast out of the car as you’re swaggering downtown. Nonchalant dudes humming about drowning in pussy. What attracted me most was “Rump Punch,” a Cash Cobain hit so sparse and subdued it’s borderline melancholic. There’s the lightest lick of percussion, and synths so blue it’s as if you’re staring into the Mariana Trench. Then you have Cash with a typically raunchy, horndog hook that sounds so weird in this woeful context: “Girl, you got the fatty, wanna be callin' me daddy/Top-five nasty, you ain't even gotta ask me.” He says a woman tastes like rump punch and scolds guys who can’t make their girl come once, when he can do it twice. But with this overcast sky, it’s like, are you munching or mourning? Are you getting a nut off or going nuts yourself, dissociating in the punch?

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

#10 - Tinashe - “Nasty”

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“Hmm, okay!” they reply in the Zoom chat (their camera is always off because they lack self-confidence). “I’m glad you’ve overcome the dry streak you kept talking about.”

Will you match my freak? I ask, coquettishly.

“Ha Ha, I don’t think that’s super professional,” they type, with a “:P” emoji at the end.

Pillow talking got my throat raspy, I continue.

“Maybe you need a softer fill!” they say.

I got stamina, they say I’m an athlete.

“Oh, you’re running again? That’s a great way to stave off seasonal depression.”

If you do it too good, I’m gonna get attached.

“Ah yes, the scientific term for that is transference, we can’t—”

‘Cause it feels like heaven when it hurts so bad.

They type for a second. Pause. Type again.

…

“Hey, Stockholm syndrome is real. You’re valid! If there’s something painful going on in your life, the patient-therapist confidentiality agreement doesn’t cover that, and you need to tell me.”

No, you DUMBASS, I snort, I’m just reciting the lyrics to Tinashe’s hit single “Nasty,” a sultry slow-glide of a tune that revels in the heady glow of abandoning your inhibitions. Even more electric is Jane Remover’s “Match My Tweak” remix, which sounds more suited for bopping uncontrollably than sensual grinding. My God, I’m listening to it right now—you can’t hear it because I’m wearing tiny AirPods—and I think it’s solved my depression! Bye!!!!!!!

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

#11 - Fine - “Coasting”

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Everything is too fast nowadays, too stimuli-fucked sludge-content nightcore hysteria MrBeast retention-roided corecore psychoscrolling. What about some radiant lethargy? Where are the moments of contented stillness, the absent-minded daydreams, the hours that dilate and stretch out like an endless school period? I’ve spent a lot of my life running, trying to break PRs and sprint a mile in four minutes. Now I want to coast. I want to hit the top of the mountain and let gravity guide me down the crest. I want to lose myself in the leathery swirl of “Coasting.” There’s no accordion in the song, but it makes me imagine falling into a bed-size version of the instrument, sleeping between the bellows in its soft folds, drifting off while being lightly tossed to and fro.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

#12 - anarchy - “superbowl” prod dj ess

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The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

#13 - bleood - “ooo” / yuke - “ian goin”

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Abstract: This experiment seeks to determine the material health consequences of the human ear canal, or the external auditory meatus (E.A.M. Triplin), when breached by music at the outer reaches of listenability. Patients were subjected to two symphonies of shrill, bleood’s “ooo” and yuke’s “ian goin,” produced by zai and karakuli, respectively. The former has been described by award-winning music journalists as a “tantalizing orgy-orchestra of bleeps, tweeps, and shrieks,” while the latter has been called the “logical excruciating endpoint of the ‘terror plugg’ style,” in which the 808s “cry like feral lemurs.” By forcing the subjects to listen to these songs on repeat while they are under captivity in remote observation, we hoped to see a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest evolution take place in live-time.

Lack of data on the subject has led this paper to be named a Fulbright Scholar “Pioneering Study” of 2024.

General Enjoyability

‘Absolutely gas!’ 11% of respondents

‘Texturally intriguing but not replayable’ 39% of respondents

‘No opinion one way or the other’ 1% of respondents

‘Failed to make an agreeable impression’ 29% of respondents

‘Total dog diarrhea’ 20% of respondents

Hearing Damage

No loss detected: 28% of respondents

-0.1-1.0dB loss: 51% of respondents

1.1-dB+ loss: 25% of respondents

Complete deafness: 6% of respondents

Free Response Section (select, anonymous answers shown)

“There’s something delightfully Proustian about the crinkly, mutilated bird-cries of bleood’s beat.”

“im like not trinyng to draw sympathy, but ‘ian goin’ brought me bac to a terrible time in my life when i got run over by a tractor and my ruptured ears were bleedin and shit, so im gonna sue u”

“I’m Mainly Filling This Out Because They Said I’d Get A Free Amazon Prime Gift Card”

“This stuff is cool, Im gonna show my son when he gets back from Mormon camp!”

Our survey was conducted with 564 humans and 1 snow camel on September 13, 2024, in Yakutsk City Hall, as part of an effort to warm up those cold Siberians. The methodology included base weighting for percentages of telephone numbers and Discord handles sampled in the stratum. More research is needed to accurately determine the effects of music.

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

#14 - 2hollis - “crush”

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Further reading

The list:

#15 - wokeups - “fragged aht”

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I write with an urgent entreaty. Thou must listen to “fragged aht” by wokeups. It arrived in my eardrums like a messenger on horseback, a carrier pigeon in the night.

There, betwixt the percussive shards and voluptuous synth line, thou shall behold a pillar of vocal matter so luminous it shatters my conception of the real, the human — and verily I am a humanist but its sheer majesty surpasses all that my mortal mind is capable of envisaging. None of my feeble transcription services were able to convey its meaning in lyric form. I tasked my scrivener, Spongluss, with deciphering the message. His result: GUOOOGOOOEGOOAAAH. Upon the instant I heard its gleaming GUOOG, I felt myself o’ercome with a sense of rapture — a glorious surrender it twas indeed in the way it vouchsafed beatified brain-bliss. Heretofore I had never experienced such an emptying of my ego. It makes the plebeian bards in the town square busking “Medieval Rap Type Beats” with their costcutter woodsmiths’ mandolins resemble mere Shakespearean fan-clubbers.

Prithee take heed of my heart’s petition: thou must persuade Pope SoundCloudius XIVX to deploy this sonic blessing as a potential antidote for those suffering from the Streambait Plague. My dearest, thou know I have been gravely afflicted by illnesses such as Long Covid. I must say, the singular beam of radiance that is “fragged aht” cured me of all my sundry ailments — grippe, quinsy, vent gleet, dropsy, the French pox.

Ensconced in the celestial swath of synthesizers and regal Auto-Tune wizardry, I have become a healed and holy man. Rather than litter gravestones with flowers and “RIP” text, I propose we protect our dead with wokeups’ lyrical fragments. I just went to the cemetery and inscribed “Ho got hella coke, she finna blow her nose galore (galore)” on my grandnan’s tomb.

Yours fondly,

K

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Playlist for easy access:

Honorable mentions (alphabetical)

100 gecs - “Dumbest Girl Alive”

One of the most startlingly fun samples of the year—not the THX audio-logo intro, but the way they rewire the garish “Sicko Mode” bass into a mind-bursting barrage of bouncy low end. After spending every day writing 1,000+ words for work, sorting out household chores, maintaining communication with friends and family, and preparing meals in the never-ending one-person relay race that is adult life, it’s exhilarating to relinquish control and get silly, if only for two minutes and 17 seconds of hyperactive havoc. I love cosplaying as the dumbest girl alive.

BBPUTIN - “I KNOW WHAT I LIKE” prod. Rainsdeaf

Lil Yachty’s quivering vibrato hit peak palatability on “Poland”—at once smooth and innovative enough to get spotlight on the radio and praising op-eds by music critics. “I KNOW WHAT I LIKE” is the polar opposite—a spasming nightmare of whacked-out warbling. BBPUTIN sounds like he’s desperately holding on to consciousness before he slips into a babbling breakdown. “Sex and Prada, I want what I say, I want what I say,” he drunkenly pleads, before every word starts to turn incoherent and the beat drowns him in noisy fuzz.

Chanel Beads - “Police Scanner”

I’m so deep in the NYC music scene surrounding Eldia, Mi Sabor Cafe, and DIY Bushwick (Grimes Square, Slimes Square, Dimes Square), I’ve been missing the non-fried, more straight-ahead indie music. “Police Scanner” could be a campfire tune for cyborgs, or the welcoming anthem humans broadcast to aliens as their platinum saucers descend onto Brooklyn soil. This song, which fuses digital and real instruments into a graceful tapestry of pixels and plucks, suggests an alternative to the current terminally tacky online hell of NFTs and overcharged AI timelines. Instead, it’s a gentle and tender technoworld, where Effective Accelerationism is replaced by True Altruism and our devices don’t make us feel so awful.

Chuquimamani-Condori - “Breathing”

A traffic jam in heaven.

Enzo Avitabile - “Ognuno p’a via soja”

More TV shows need quirkily unnerving soundtracks like Italian saxophonist Enzo Avitabile’s “Ognuno p”a via soja” for The Lying Life of Adults. I can’t remember what the scene was but I recall being happily jarred by its gassy bass and shivering synth twitches. The four-minute odyssey could soundtrack a journey through Naples’ underground tunnels, fusing harrowing glitches and spoken-word to watery sax runs and an expanse of ambient ocean breeze.

Harto Falión, NOLANBEROLLIN - “S.0.T.Y”

CUCKOO: the antiquated sound effect beckons you like a raggedy doll hand into Harto and Nolan’s Caroline imitation of cloud rap. Dissonance hides under every fold of eerily upbeat synth; Harto seems always on the verge of dissolving into a defeated sigh as he says that most of life sucks and floats eyes shut through the glittering hellworld of New York City. Nolan comes in slurring like a broken, forgotten robot, as if groaning in a low tone from a cold factory floor. Countless artists rap and sing about being emotionally drained despite the riches and clout they’ve accrued, but few have captured the feeling with such gleaming resignation. “I've been on the grind, prolly could have won S.O.T.Y,” Harto raps—he came close, but the failure fits the theme.

Hi-C ft. xaviersobased - “GupP1”

So much internet music tries to sound video game-y or hyperdigital but what strikes me about this song is how postapocalyptic it feels, an anarchic mass of raw electricity unleashed into the fields after the power grid goes down. Sophitia’s beat makes me imagine a surge of shifting electrons so densely imbricated they form a wave of pixels, wobbling and teetering but never unchaining from the drums, like Jell-O nearly spilling over a plate.

Kurffew - “i dont wna cry (haste)”

I have no clue who kurffew is, but this music makes me think of a high schooler crumpled over a desk, thick jets of snot oozing from the nostrils, his face a sticky mess of tears and tissues. It’s a winsome whinge-athon of treacly teen melodrama, a masterclass in sounding like the bleary-eyed 14-year-old who writes a dejected letter to his crush after he gets rejected. The original retains some dignity, but the sped-up “haste” version sounds almost cartoonishly upset.

Lil Big Stack - “Skibidi Toilet”

Imagine an army of colorful Pikmins raving their tiny little hearts out. (AND FASTER)

p9jm - “somebody-call-me-up”

The most devious post-dariacore song to date. leroy’s FR3D Figglehorn soundbite was always my favorite dariacore sample use—til I heard p9jm splice the doofy “Mitt Romney vs Barack Obama” Epic Rap Battles of History episode into this whirling massacre of techno and hardstyle. I never could’ve dreamed my ears would be greeted by the bootleg Obama’s “Republicans need a puppet and you fit, got their hands so far up your rear, call you Mitt” diss thrown over breakbeats. (h/t Tony Lashley)

Sexyy Red - “SkeeYee” / DJ Ess’ Cyberspeed Mix

Press play and prepare to be utterly uninhibited — arms throttling and head smashing the air like a deranged prayer dance. The hymn: SKEE-YEE. It’s an addictive ad-lib, a catchy snatch of slang, and perhaps a fleeting moment of transcendent glossolalia. Drop this in an ancient church and watch DJ Ess’ blistering bass shatter all the stained glass.

Snow Strippers - “Sick”

Snow Strippers’ albums pummel with such incessant ferocity they can seem a little like Groundhog Night, as if the duo stopped the clock at the peak hour of a party. Rather than listening in a continuous blast, I prefer skipping through individual songs like “Under Your Spell” and “Just Your Doll” and giving my ears a chance to relax and reset after the onslaught. “Sick” might be the craziest, most frenetic of the laser-displays: its quivering synth beams make it feel vaguely festive, like a Christmas jamboree held on Earth’s last day.

Spaidez - “3rd & Concordia”

Only heard this Milwaukee cut recently (s/o Olivier) but its wavy hula-hooping synth line and frolicking raps have danced their way deep into my brain. The mundane yet outrageous video enhances everything: Spaidez and Maz G wag their tongues and perform ridiculous arm cranks on a street corner while a woman throws ass, and the mic hangs like strange spaghetti from a lamp above.

Survivor: Kellie Blindside theme

Someday I’ll write a full essay on why Survivor’s Tribal Council music scratches a bizarre itch in my brain. There’s something very satisfying about the way it’s like a mosaic of audiovisual symmetry: the ratcheting intensity as everyone goes to vote, the dramatic rings that land as each parchment is read, the collage of both repulsed and exultant faces. There are so many little micro-noises—a ding to express an alarmed reaction, a quick gust timed in sync with someone’s eyes darting, pockets of eerie ambience to heighten the tension. Its imitation/appropriation of “tribal” music motifs puts it dangerously close to feeling tacky and tasteless, but it transcends kitsch for me. It functions similar to video game music, which is often jammed with tweeps and bleeps and constantly interacts with visual elements. 

My favorite this season was the music for Kellie’s blindside, which was such a shocking move she said she blacked out after it happened. It begins by luring you into a curious calm—it seems like another player, the bumbling Charlie Brown-esque Jake, is about to be unanimously booted. But then a “Kellie” vote appears and the music drops out completely. A low drumbeat starts churning, and with every vote, she looks increasingly panicked. You know her fate is sealed.

Travis Scott ft. Future, SZA - “Telekinesis”

Apparently this was supposed to be a gospel track for Donda, which makes sense, since it sounds like human spirits ascending from their corporeal forms. Auto-Tune turns Travis and Future into translucent sprites, and SZA warps into the fold like a glittering goddess. Yet as much as Travis flexes like he’s a god auguring a glorious future of eternal successes, a shade of sadness lurks under every ripple of reverb, as if he knows the fame is only temporary.

Water From Your Eyes - “Barley”

It feels ironic and almost pathetic listening to this song in New York City, where there are no mountains in the horizon to count, only eyesore skyscrapers and patches of light pollution. Back home in South Pasadena, gazing at the distant, cloud-cloaked ridges of the Angeles National Forest, its unruly rhythm and rugged guitar seem to make the landscape come alive.

Universe, removeface - “Mile Away”

So much music around the sigilkore scene is gnarly, distorted, baleful. It’s refreshing to hear artists deploy this microgenre’s palette of slithery gray vocals and glitches to make a love song. The cover art captures the vibe — it’s like the Illuminati has gone soft and sweet in the throes of yearning: a giant heart-shaped eye circled by fluttering butterflies and a vast purple galaxy.

Yhapojj - “SSupporting That”

Yhapojj’s recent tape is the sonic incarnation of the sigma male alpha wolf meme, where terminally online men cosplay as lonely wolves riding a motorcycle out into a twilight horizon. The music is so on the nose it’s basically camp: awwwoooo sound effects, boasting about telling “ya baby girl” that he’s a wolf, yearning to put his fangs into a woman’s flesh, not to mention the stupidly silly line “I got my dick sucked, while sippin' lemonade.” Furry rap has never hit harder.

YOHEI ft. sharkdrug - “상어 용병_*3333*_sinn”

This is like the drum n bass equivalent of doomsday corecore edits: a hellscape of diabolical breaks and a cardiac arrest-inducing hardstyle climax. It feels like you’re plugged into a Mega-Matrix, your brain being DDoSed with millions of packets of data every millisecond. The video stitches a flurry of frantic visuals: people jumpstyle dancing, cars driving in video games and, at one point, a demonic avatar urging you to buy an FL Studio license legally.

Yuno Miles - “Hong Kong” (prod. Vinxia)

Haters say Yuno Miles is beyond the realm of the guilty pleasure, but this isn’t typical viral comedy rap revolving around puerile gamer humor or shock gags. Miles’ ostrich squeals are genuinely addictive, like watching a pole vaulter clear a 15 foot jump back to back in a continuous sprint.

Honorable Honorable Mentions (10 more)

• Playboi Carti - "2024" (prod. ojivolta, earlonthebeat, Kanye)

• Caroline Polachek - “Pretty In Possible”

• OLTH - “sOng fOr jOrdan”

• underscores ft. Jane Remover - “Uncanny Long Arms”

• Addison Rae ft. Charli XCX - “2 die 4”

• Osamason - “Summer Sixteen”

• kuru - “09” (prod. feardorian)

• kulaphantasy ft. egobreak, lostrushi, sonicreations, kumosai - “nonsense” (prod. egobreak)

• iokera ft. Jedwill - "vines" (prod. histarkey, iji)

• Nia Archives - “Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall”

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The top 10

#10 - bar italia - "Missus Morality" / "maddington" (tie)

I spent a lot of time listening to bar italia this year without really learning anything about the band or its songs. Some of that is by design—the vocals are often mumbled or buried in the brooding alt-rock mudslide, the themes orbit vague feelings and slices of slices of life. But I don’t need a Pitchfork interview or a Genius lyric analysis to grasp the spirit of this music. It hits with such potent feeling despite and because of its murky color and melted pulse. It’s a symphony of the sallow, a tour de force in shy melodies and gently beating, entrancing grooves. The way the three members rotate their vocals, sometimes harmonizing in contrasting tones like a human shadowed by a gloomy second self, makes me imagine friends rendezvousing on a dark street corner, trading stories and comforting each other after a peculiar night out. Sometimes when I listen to bar italia riding the bus late or walking across the bridge in the rain, the songs lodge themselves so deeply in the rhythm of my thoughts I almost forget I’m listening to music.

After teasing you with tepid chords, “Missus Morality” wigs out into a whirling freefall. Nina Cristante exhorts you to “give up your dreams and come this way,” and it feels less like a command to be jaded than an invitation to enter into a lovely private secret. The equally cathartic “maddington” weaves sparkling violin into the attic-dusty instrumentation. It sounds like a long-enervated sad sack discovering happiness again, a gray existence letting light spill in.

#9 - Ken Carson - "Lose It" / "Me N My Kup" (tie)

A Great Chaos really electrified me for the first time when I played it on a run. The five-miler took more than 35 minutes but it seemed like so much less—my blood spiked to a volcanic boil, my shoes sparked the ground with every step, my breath synced up with Ken’s giddy giggles. I initially passed the tape off as another Opium damp squib, but it’s one of the most amped fireworks of the year. True to the implied command in its title, the obscenely bass-broken “Lose It” sends me into a bruising cyclone of head-mashing. Yet there’s something so delicious and almost ASMR about its oceanic low-end—as with Carti’s best music, it shatters my cognitive function: Time for himbo mode, I want my brain to be ping-ponged by two giant pillars of steel. 

“Me N My Kup” has a similar effect but it’s like being gripped by two mega pincers that are sliding back and forth in a demented forced waltz a la dismemberment by horses. Instead of brutal pain, it feels glorious, as though the mad beat is pulling the chains off my mortal body.

#8 - a.s.o. - "Go On"

In 2023, you can find a perfect pastiche of basically every genre. There’s Snow Strippers doing witchy vocal electronica that oscillates between “poor cover of 2011 trance-pop” and blackout-wasted hardstyle. The Dare’s doing his best debauched electroclash cosplay for the horny and clout-hungry post-pandemic city kids. Nia Archives is the poster woman of the jungle revival, and there’s a throng of DJs making some 2020s update of UK garage. Shoegaze was already having a renaissance last year and now it’s accelerating even more. While countless copycats are content to pump out rote replays of dusty old styles, there are as many artists retooling the sounds in captivating ways, or making music with such skill it’s irresistible. 

Trip-hop heads had it great this year, especially with a.s.o.’s “Go On,” a reverie of languorous drums and subtly baleful synth-ripples that could’ve been produced by The Focus Group. Alia Seror-O’Neill’s slow-motion musings have been the perfect soundtrack to some of my late-night strolls, either walking in a daze back from the club or ambling meaninglessly across the city. The way her reverb-laden words dissolve into the foghorns of echoing synth remind me of the Manhattan horizon at night: the slow dimming of brightness as every apartment goes to sleep.

I remember my friends and I driving back from Montauk earlier this year, listening to “Go On” in aggressively hazy conditions that obscured the trees and turned the ocean into purple nothingness. Thing is, I’m absolutely sure we didn’t actually listen to the song during the ride. But the song is so potently atmospheric I’m haunted by this phantom memory.

#7 - saya - "blood school" / sprinks - "Paradox"

You know you’re getting to the good stuff when you hit the realm of SoundCloud users with hieroglyphic text in their names. The mysterious bubble around saya — aka “saya #cc ᏲᎥᎴᎿᏫᏒᎥᎯႶ akaꔫSayako ☆ﾟelfaction” — and the groups they’re affiliated with (canteen collective, #elfaction, MAGENTADREAMLAND?) feels like a parallel society where cloud rap was the first genre ever invented and the pop charts thrum with video game soundtracks and kitschy elevator music. Their prolific catalog brings to mind a tropical resort in the year 2039: cyborg butlers swiftly ferrying trays of frozen margaritas to jacuzzis floating in the clouds; unnaturally healthy trees flanking trails that light up with every step. The vocals radiate elation in a smushed incoherent way that feels like dystopian ad fodder; the instrumentals belong in a coming-of-age anime. 

“blood school” could be the tragic fall of this futuretopia: saya’s melodies spin out into a gleaming meltdown of Auto-Tuned regrets. One of the coolest things about niche internet music is the intertextuality - it’s like the outside world of rock and pop doesn’t exist to these artists: Dariacore DJs pluck samples from digicore singers; hexD remixers morph mutant rap into shoegaze fuzz. They have their own insular canon. On “blood school,” saya flipped a piano piece from a tiny account with 200 followers into a poignant intro that tees up the song’s chaotic turn.

Fellow deep-web denizen sprinks stepped outside the internet music canon for a more daring sample trick on “Paradox.” It rewires Mareux’s eerie coldwave megahit “The Perfect Girl,” which is itself a cover of The Cure’s 1987 song of the same name. In sprinks’ edit, all the seductive slowness has been excised in favor of apocalyptic synth-strobes. I wish they made a video for the track; their clips are like if Voldemort made skater edits, spasming with witchy flashes and disorienting angles.

A bonus: I can’t tell if 7Nightz’ “Nightz_ᏕᏂᏋ ᏝᏋᏖ ᎧᏬᏖ Ꮧ ᏝᏗᏬᎶᏂ ᏗᏕ ᎥᎥᎥ ᎧᏉᏋᏒᎴᎧᏕᏋᎴ, ᏕᏂᏋ ᏠᏬᏕᏖ ᏕᏖᎧᎧᎴ ᏖᏂᏋᏒᏋ”—someone boot up the Venutian translator—is goofy or genius. It’s one of the most bizarrely entrancing things I’ve heard in a year of extremely madcap music. After submerging you in a dreamily washed-out 80s beat, 7Nightz begins moaning with heavy reverb and a chorus of sampled background moans (“this hentai so gud,” someone wrote). Then he starts crying about feeling like he can never be himself. Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” cuts in behind him and its yearning nostalgia sounds weirdly perfect. The effect is like a kind of demented mural, a composite of timelines collapsing into a montage of clumsy sadness. It’s the last song 7Nightz posted before they disappeared seven months ago.

#6 - lostrushi - "HYDROXYCUT" / "USE YOUR WINGS"

Two years ago, lostrushi was part of a microgenre called “maplekore” with kaystrueno, who coined the term after staring at pixelated scenery in the old-school Korean MMORPG MapleStory. The two released brief singles built around impressionistic, dreamy sounds. Then kaystrueno went mysteriously absent, and almost like a prophecy, lostrushi picked up the mantle. He exploded and evolved the maplekore palette on his first album SISTERHOOD, a retrofuturist universe of holographic confetti and digi-dazzle.

“HYDROXYCUT” and “USE YOUR WINGS” are the night and day of this fantasy world. The former is shiveringly fitful, erupting like a motherboard spasming under hot goo, while “USE YOUR WINGS” gallivants with the gentle grace of a dancer stretching out on a wide open plateau. Despite the claustrophobic mixing, which gives tracks the gauzy distance of a vignette unfolding on a TV screen, the sounds expand and saturate like a 5D panorama. It’s a whole new language of fairie textures: swooning cheeps, somnambulant grunts, multi-stereo glitches, effervescent gurgles.

Today’s underground is dominated by flashy singles and experimental one-offs, and whenever a bedroom rapper with 5,000 SoundCloud followers releases a full-length record it’s usually half-baked. So the instinctual response to someone announcing an album is skepticism: They can’t pull it off. And in a streaming environment that rewards data dumps packed with copy-paste filler, there’s not much incentive for rising artists to spend months or years fleshing out a project and risk it flopping anyway. lostrushi’s SISTERHOOD shatters all that cynicism. There are zero features and lostrushi sculpted every inch of production. It’s probably the best “internet” rap album of the year. No artist from this amorphous SoundCloud generation has carried an LP with such an insular yet compelling sound-palette since quannnic’s Kenopsia.

#5 - Tirzah - "2 D I C U V"

Enough with the proclamations about how hyperpop, digicore, and other cyber-brained artists like yeule capture the experience of being terminally online like nothing else. That’s old news. I can only enjoy so much anxious introspection conveyed with glitchy Auto-Tune vocals and metallic snares. What intrigues me now is less music reacting to online life than stuff that feels realer, more brilliant and expansive than the limitless 4K portal of the internet. I am jaded and numb to the pleasures—I don’t want to log off, I want a stronger drug. One answer this year was trip9love…?, ML Buch’s Suntub, and certain Smerz tracks like “No harm,” all of which you could roughly sort into an unofficial micro-style of hysterical hyperrealism. Not “hysterical” in the James Wood sense of cluttered prose and overelaborate plots, but music that sounds super-sharp and radiantly bright and also makes me feel hysterically, unnaturally alive. Brakence and the cutspace/xang strain of IDM SoundCloud rap fits into this category. It’s music that sounds too high-definition, like you’re wearing glasses with lenses that make everything agonizingly crisp. 

“2 D I C U V” emits such an aura I can almost feel lights glow and floorboards quiver around me. It’s like ripping apart the body of a guitar to find a radiant crystal inside. I want to live in a land that looks like this sound, where the sky is a neon pink streak, the river rushes in an always-sparkling blue torrent, and twisting green trees rise taller than the bleach-white stars.

#4 - xaviersobased - "u dk how 2 hoop" / Nettspend ft. Osamason - "Wake up" (tie)

xaviersobased and Nettspend are burning the underground up right now. When Nettspend blew up this fall, I didn’t understand what drew everyone to the 16-year-old like a magnet; his music seemed like a glossy, radio-clean version of the hyperactive jerk sound xaviersobased was toying with. Listen again and it’s clear this kid has a Michelin star taste for stylishly freaky beats—there isn’t a single speck of forgettable dust or wasted space in his music. He’ll open with jarring exclamations (“yooo,” “like like like like,” “Waaaah”) and stretch out Auto-Tuned syllables like a lisping robot. Some of my favorite tracks have no intro and just drown you in a flood of elegant chaos—an instrumental style I like to think of as hyperclutter. Songs like “Wake up” and “Model Sex,” Ken Carson’s “Me N My Kup,” Osamason’s “Lil O,” where seemingly 18 different layers of synth, keys, drums, and gurgles convulse tightly against each other. 

Even deeper in the blaze of delirium, the beat for “u dk how 2 hoop” practically feasts upon xaviersobased’s voice, deforming and destroying his brags in the humongous low end. The bass is cranked up so high it should come with a hearing loss warning. I can only imagine this is what it feels like to stick your head in lava and melt your brain until your pain receptors are gone and your vision becomes a hallucinatory blur. Xavier is the arch nemesis of libraries.

#3 - Lil Yachty - "Strike" / "prETTy"

“Poland” broke the internet, but it was just pretty good—a snippet-turned-megahit that came about because Yachty was fucking around in the studio and went berserk with the vibrato, rapping like a little assistant was madly tapping his neck like a xylophone. Then he returned with “prETTy,” evolving the gag into a fully-fledged technique—splayed across layers of deeper vocals and a woman’s sighs, his neon quivers express an overwhelming surge of desire. The bliss radiates so brightly it’s almost unbearable, like gazing directly into a solar eclipse of pleasure. 

With less longing and more languor, Yachty fine-tuned the slapstick style on “Strike (Holster),” saving his gale of frail flutters for the final verse and just several words. The lyrics span a few topics—he offers a slew of definitions for the word “strike” and talks about getting geeked and tweaked on drugs—but his voice starts billowing at the line “perky got her stuck like a holster.” In the context of this glacial beat, the line morphs into a tragic image, and a perfect distillation of how his inventive yet inane vibrato method sounds: it’s like your words are lagging and you’re sleepwalking through reality, living in a percocet-induced slow-down. Intentionally or unconsciously, Yachty’s tremulous studio trickery captures our moment of stunted growth—a feeling of perpetual unease as twenty-somethings waver between jobs, adrift in a doomscrolling nightmare. The ‘60s had Phil Spector’s wall of sound, how about Yachty’s wailing warbles?

#2 - feeble little horse - "Freak"

The most electrifying album opener of the year, “Freak” functions like an instant hit of frisson. A fuzzy guitar spins you around and buries you under sheets of aluminum, and then Lydia Slocum’s airy yet potent voice reaches in like a hand pulling you from the rubble: I know you want me freak.

And then she delivers my favorite line of the year: “How can you be satisfied? She’s 5 foot 1, you’re 6 foot 5.” It’s funny, but I love it mostly because of the ridiculous way Slocum throws her pitch up at the end like a gawky giraffe neck shooting into the sky. Gives me a dumb grin every time. 

For a couple of months I listened to Girl With Fish nonstop, and I couldn’t pinpoint what made it so addictive. It’s not shockingly innovative, but there’s a kind of spectral charm to Slocum’s voice and the way it cheekily glides above the clanging instruments. It feels like everyday life with a touch of the surreal, a magic town where the squirrels can fly and the pavement smiles up at you.

#1 - Olivia Rodrigo - “bad idea right?”

This year I cut the prefix out of hyperpoptimist and became a full-on poptimist: Or at least I loved “bad idea right?” ever since I heard it for the first time in a London hotel. The dry post-punky bounce, the deadpan Wet Leggy narration, the delicious internal monologues that begin with denial and end with Rodrigo revealing her true carnal desires... everything smacks. My favorite bit is how she uses gibberish singing (ahhhhh, blah, blah, blah) to convey a mind short-circuited by the attraction she feels, the blinding head-rush of a hot crush. I’m usually allergic to anything that seems industry-crafted or overly curated, but the combo of the raw yet anthemic instrumentation and Rodrigo’s quirky charisma pierced through all my misgivings.

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The most electrifying album opener of the year, “Freak” functions like an instant hit of frisson. A fuzzy guitar spins you around and buries you under sheets of aluminum, and then Lydia Slocum’s airy yet potent voice reaches in like a hand pulling you from the rubble: I know you want me freak.

And then she delivers my favorite line of the year: “How can you be satisfied? She’s 5 foot 1, you’re 6 foot 5.” It’s funny, but I love it mostly because of the ridiculous way Slocum throws her pitch up at the end like a gawky giraffe neck shooting into the sky. Gives me a dumb grin every time. 

For a couple of months I listened to Girl With Fish nonstop, and I couldn’t pinpoint what made it so addictive. It’s not shockingly innovative, but there’s a kind of spectral charm to Slocum’s voice and the way it cheekily glides above the clanging instruments. It feels like everyday life with a touch of the surreal, a magic town where the squirrels can fly and the pavement smiles up at you.

The list:

#10 - bar italia - "Missus Morality" / "maddington" (tie)

#9 - Ken Carson - “Lose It” / “Me N My Kup” (tie)

#8 - a.s.o. - “Go On”

#7 - saya - “blood school” / sprinks - “Paradox” (tie)

#6 - lostrushi - “HYDROXYCUT” / “USE YOUR WINGS”

#5 - Tirzah - “2 D I C U V”

#4 - xaviersobased - "u dk how 2 hoop" / Nettspend ft. Osamason - "Wake up" (tie)

#3 - Lil Yachty - “Strike” / “prETTy”

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“Poland” broke the internet, but it was just pretty good—a snippet-turned-megahit that came about because Yachty was fucking around in the studio and went berserk with the vibrato, rapping like a little assistant was madly tapping his neck like a xylophone. Then he returned with “prETTy,” evolving the gag into a fully-fledged technique—splayed across layers of deeper vocals and a woman’s sighs, his neon quivers express an overwhelming surge of desire. The bliss radiates so brightly it’s almost unbearable, like gazing directly into a solar eclipse of pleasure. 

With less longing and more languor, Yachty fine-tuned the slapstick style on “Strike (Holster),” saving his gale of frail flutters for the final verse and just several words. The lyrics span a few topics—he offers a slew of definitions for the word “strike” and talks about getting geeked and tweaked on drugs—but his voice starts billowing at the line “perky got her stuck like a holster.” In the context of this glacial beat, the line morphs into a tragic image, and a perfect distillation of how his inventive yet inane vibrato method sounds: it’s like your words are lagging and you’re sleepwalking through reality, living in a percocet-induced slow-down. Intentionally or unconsciously, Yachty’s tremulous studio trickery captures our moment of stunted growth—a feeling of perpetual unease as twenty-somethings waver between jobs, adrift in a doomscrolling nightmare. The ‘60s had Phil Spector’s wall of sound, how about Yachty’s wailing warbles?

The list:

#10 - bar italia - "Missus Morality" / "maddington" (tie)

#9 - Ken Carson - “Lose It” / “Me N My Kup” (tie)

#8 - a.s.o. - “Go On”

#7 - saya - “blood school” / sprinks - “Paradox” (tie)

#6 - lostrushi - “HYDROXYCUT” / “USE YOUR WINGS”

#5 - Tirzah - “2 D I C U V”

#4 - xaviersobased - "u dk how 2 hoop" / Nettspend ft. Osamason - "Wake up" (tie)

xaviersobased and Nettspend are burning the underground up right now. When Nettspend blew up this fall, I didn’t understand what drew everyone to the 16-year-old like a magnet; his music seemed like a glossy, radio-clean version of the hyperactive jerk sound xaviersobased was toying with. Listen again and it’s clear this kid has a Michelin star taste for stylishly freaky beats—there isn’t a single speck of forgettable dust or wasted space in his music. He’ll open with jarring exclamations (“yooo,” “like like like like,” “Waaaah”) and stretch out Auto-Tuned syllables like a lisping robot. Some of my favorite tracks have no intro and just drown you in a flood of elegant chaos—an instrumental style I like to think of as hyperclutter. Songs like “Wake up” and “Model Sex,” Ken Carson’s “Me N My Kup,” Osamason’s “Lil O,” where seemingly 18 different layers of synth, keys, drums, and gurgles convulse tightly against each other. 

Even deeper in the blaze of delirium, the beat for “u dk how 2 hoop” practically feasts upon xaviersobased’s voice, deforming and destroying his brags in the humongous low end. The bass is cranked up so high it should come with a hearing loss warning. I can only imagine this is what it feels like to stick your head in lava and melt your brain until your pain receptors are gone and your vision becomes a hallucinatory blur. Xavier is the arch nemesis of libraries.

The list:

#10 - bar italia - "Missus Morality" / "maddington" (tie)

#9 - Ken Carson - “Lose It” / “Me N My Kup” (tie)

#8 - a.s.o. - “Go On”

#7 - saya - “blood school” / sprinks - “Paradox” (tie)

#6 - lostrushi - “HYDROXYCUT” / “USE YOUR WINGS”

#5 - Tirzah - “2 D I C U V”

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