| 1 | A R I Z O N A | "Cross My Mind" | single | Dear everybody, if you can write winning Bastille-esque pop songs, it is totally not necessary to put spaces between the letters of your name. |
| 2 | Rebel | "One Of Us" | single | Anodyne dance remixes of old novelty hits are an industry we could probably eliminate if mild austerity measures were called for, but while we have them it's interesting to see how far particular songs can be simplified while remaining immediately recognizable. |
| 3 | Iris | "Coming in Like the Rain" | Between Dreaming and Daylight, Pt. 2 | This "Iris" is a Melbourne writer of graceful, ebullient indie-ish folk-pop. |
| 4 | The Tide | "Click My Fingers" | single | Horrifyingly effective secret-lab cross-breeding of One Direction and Justin Bieber. |
| 5 | Pallbearer | "Fear & Fury" | Fear & Fury EP 3 | It hadn't occurred to me before now that you could get from Jethro Tull to Low with only one intervening step. |
| 6 | Winterfylleth | "Ensigns Of Victory" | single | I would like to believe that this whole wing of cathartic epic-atmophseric semi-pagan black metal somehow derives as much from Big Country's "Porrohman" as from anything by Bathory. |
| 7 | Sonata Arctica | "Closer to an Animal" | single | I wish Everon would make more neo-progressive-metal records, but this sentimental power-metal is similarly minded. |
| 8 | Damian Wilson | "Thrill Me" | single | Damian Wilson has sung in Threshold and Landmarq and apparently every miscellaneous progressive-rock side-project. A host of other players supposedly returns these favors here, but not without spoiling the song's awkward charm. |
| 9 | Bad Veins | "Arrow" | single | Cincinnati pop indietronica wants you to shut up and dance. |
| 10 | Shapes & Colors | "Drifting" | single | Detroit isn't that far from Cincinnati, either. |
| 11 | Desperate Journalist | "A Phase" | single | Gazing at your shoes with X-ray specs. |
| 12 | Kindling | "Coma" | Everywhere Else | I saw Belly, this week, on their first tour in 23 years. Extrapolate from Belly's densest moments towards popgaze blur and you might be able to get something like Kindling. |
| 13 | The Agonist | "The Chain" | single | Maybe the Agonist can be to Madder Mortem what Epica are to Nightwish. |
| 14 | Allegaeon | "Proponent for Sentience III - The Extermination" | single | Relentlessly melodic progressive metal with a crunchy death-metal core, like a metal band designed by Ben and Jerry's. |
| 15 | Delain | "Fire With Fire" | single | Maybe Delain can be to Epica what Epica are to Nightwish. |
| 16 | Equilibrium | "Erwachen" | Armageddon | Melodic pagan folk symphonic power-battle anthem metal. |
| 17 | Lacrimas Profundere | "The Worship Of Counting Down" | Hope Is Here | Dense gothic-melancholy metal, like taking the HIM concept back to the Sentenced blueprints and replaying its evolution without the love-metal glamour. |
| 18 | Meshiaak | "At The Edge Of The World" | single | Sometimes, maybe usually, displays of power are attempts to stave off hopelessness. |
| 19 | Noctura | "Ave Verum" | Requiem | That sinking feeling when you realize, on the second or third pass, that you're jousting against a ghoul whole stole your schedule opponent's armor without removing him from it first. |
| 20 | A Tribe Called Red | "Sila" | single | That sense of renewed hope when you realize that humanity has Tanya Tagaq on our side. |
| 21 | Hurula | "Ny drog" | single | Snarly Brit-rock that happens to be Swedish. |
| 22 | Annalisa | "Used to you / Potrei abituarmi" | single | Lene Lovich's life might have been very different if she'd come around in the arena-pop era. |
| 23 | Au5 | "Any Longer (feat. Q'aila)" | Any Longer / Hit Rewind (feat. Q'aila) 2 | Progressive uplifting pop whateverstep. |
| 24 | Pablo Alborán | "Dónde está el amor (feat. Tiê)" | single | Ocean-jumping Latin-power-ballad adaptation into Brazilian soap-opera duet. |
| 25 | Tommy Torres | "Lo Que Siento Por Ti" | single | Puerto Rican stomp-and-holler is not burdened by hipster self-consciousness. |
| 26 | Blood On The Dance Floor | "Scissors" | single | Emolectronica. |
| 27 | Miracle Of Sound | "The Path" | single | One-man-band epicore folk metal. |
| 28 | Jeremiah Pena | "Adrift on the Edge of Interstellar Clouds" | An Ancient Sky | Textural elegiac morning-after-apocalypse epicore. |
| 29 | These Hidden Hands | "Glasir" | Vicarious Memories | This is what I mean by "fluxwork": menacing evasive liquid complexity. |
| 30 | Deantoni Parks | "In 711 A.D." | Deanthoven 3 | Or a field of shattered glass in which the fragments keep self-re-organizing into different portraits of why shattering was necessary. |
| 31 | Justin Moore | "Hell On A Highway" | Kinda Don't Care | And this is the opposite of that, panderingly oversimplified lovesick twang. But I'm not sure it's actually any less elemental, despite itself. |
| 32 | Drake White | "Back To Free" | single | There's something these songs are yearning for, and it's not just racist complacency, or at least it doesn't have to be. |
| 33 | Pete Cottrell | "Fuego" | single | What if Buckethead had grown up with YouTube? |
| 34 | Sundara Karma | "A Young Understanding" | single | Striving for the non-lazy post-emo perfection. |
| 35 | All Tvvins | "Thank You" | llVV | A Lucy Show for the new New Wave. |
| 36 | Landmarks | "Translucent" | In Spite of It All 5 | Kind of sounds like Brits imitating the way Green Day imitated Brits. |
| 37 | Shmu | "Armor & Orchids" | Oooze | Bleary shoegaze solipsism. |
| 38 | Beshken | "Dream Tracking (feat. Halima)" | single | Grime/fluxwork/vapor-soul. |
| 39 | Lonely The Brave | "Dust & Bones" | Dust & Bones +3 | Guitar fucking rock music. |
| 40 | Dinosaur Pile-Up | "Nothing Personal" | single | What could Nirvana have been? |
| 41 | Fantasies | "Ngalabi" | Ngalabi | Not exactly new, and maybe that's not even their right name, but holy-shit world-conquering Ugandan dance-pop. |
| 42 | Waterstrider | "Nowhere Now" | Nowhere Now | Not that you can't make Afro-pop-inflected indie rock in Oakland. |
| 43 | Mylko | "Contrast" | single | Or post-robotic dreamscapes by taking apart Lego Elves house music and putting it back together with Escher instruction books. |
| 44 | I Prevail | "Stuck In Your Head" | single | Is anything more emo than rejection anthems? |
| 45 | The Gospel Youth | "Quiver" | single | I think possibly not. |
| 46 | A Brilliant Lie | "You're Not That Broken, Darling" | Threads: Spinner 5 | But then again. |
| 47 | Lauris Reiniks | "Gali Būt" | single | Latvian year-round Eurovision. |
| 48 | Adrian Modiggård | "I alla regnbågens färger" | single | If Europe goes down, it isn't going to be from a lack of earnestness in the vision. |
| 49 | Mavi | "Dişi Kuş" | single | "I'm wrapped tightly in a black-hearted, I did okay extension slot". All it takes is machine translation and an open mind to find reservoirs of joy that have been withheld from you. |
| 50 | Social Ambitions | "Dragon" | Sa Ism 2 3 | Melancholy theme music for walking the lonely, serene, empty Pokémon landscape. |
| 51 | Michael Kiessou | "BenTrap" | single | Or for replacing the dog-fighting with dance battles. |
| 52 | Bosshafte Beats | "Feier wo ich jetzt bin" | single | Or for just standing there in the twilight, imagining that you are the only unevolved creature remaining. |
| 53 | Kay One | "Mile High Club" | single | Drum-trap can be the German grime. |
| 54 | Sphinx | "Bad Girl" | single | It's not actually so easy to make shimmer synth-pop sound earnestly amateurish. |
| 55 | Danny Vera | "Hiding" | single | Dutch Americana somehow comes out sounding like orch-pop Elvis. |
| 56 | Kuervos del Sur | "Los cometas" | El vuelo del Pillán | And Andes alt-rock like arena-folk-ska. |
| 57 | Amarionette | "Bombs Away" | Repeating History | Maybe if gambling doesn't pan out, Las Vegas can be the new font of ethereal pop-djent. |
| 58 | Kaya Stewart | "Free Fall" | Kaya Stewart | The next P!nk is 16 years old. |