| 1 | Close the Hatch | "Enjoy the Silence" | single | Sometimes it takes 20 years for a song to find its true self. I always thought even the Depeche Mode original of "Enjoy the Silence" had an implied "all I ever wanted is [lying dead] here in my arms", and covers by Tori Amos and Lacuna Coil seemed at least emotionally compatible with this notion, but Dayton post-doom band Close the Hatch finally render it in perfectly gloriously morose blacklight. |
| 2 | Sirenia | "Downwards Spiral" | Riddles, Ruins & Revelations | Silence and darkness can be anthemic and bright, of course. |
| 3 | Issa | "The Way Out" | single | Sometimes the way out is down and through the core, |
| 4 | Imperia | "Starlight" | single | clear into the occluded night underfoot. |
| 5 | Nocean | "The Phantom" | single | Sometimes the ghosts are the only ones who return a particular touch, |
| 6 | Война Осколков | "Владыки Пустошей" | single | whispering in a language that sounds backwards because you are insisting on only listening to it in the direction you were already going. |
| 7 | Pale Waves | "Tomorrow" | Who Am I? | Can we find our true selves faster, sooner, tomorrow? |
| 8 | For Tracy Hyde | "Just Like Fireflies" | single | We walk surrounded in stars, |
| 9 | Fawning | "Wait" | Illusions of Control | holding up illusory patience with sorcerers' poses, |
| 10 | Winter | "Violet Blue" | single | trying to collect more hope than snow, |
| 11 | sui sui | "MYWAY" | MYWAY +1 | trying to recognize ourselves in our specific movements |
| 12 | 斉藤 朱夏 | "止まらないで" | セカイノハテ 4 | and the cinematic settings of other people's oblivious autobiographies and self-portraits. |
| 13 | PARADISES | "PARADISES RETURN" | single | Of course we come from better worlds |
| 14 | Yabai T-Shirts Yasan | "くそ現代っ子ごみかす20代" | こうえんデビュー 4 | we will never accurately remember, |
| 15 | PEDRO | "東京" | 東京 +1 | but this is no more an argument for retreat |
| 16 | AIBECK | "AISola" | single | than artificial inertia is a replacement for changing your own mind. |
| 17 | 激情リフレイン | "Rinkai sensation" | single | Sometimes it takes 4 seconds for a song to reach the center of your heart, |
| 18 | I to U $CREAMing!! | "If" | Gloire 6 | and then you act surprised when your radiologist turns from the readout and says |
| 19 | miscast | "kyoumei Syndrome" | single | "so many songs..." |
| 20 | BiS | "COLD CAKE" | single | We are 60% borrowed water and 60% other people's catharses, |
| 21 | the cibo | "BEHIND" | breaching e.p 4 | on a serenly futile quest to let go of enough to become merely whole. |
| 22 | Unknöwn Kun | "ASPD Stalker" | single | The snow seems like it's falling, |
| 23 | BUMP OF CHICKEN | "Flare" | single | or are we rising into it, |
| 24 | Taylor Swift | "Love Story (Taylor’s Version)" | single | about to plough through the clouds and unfold latent wings? |
| 25 | Craig Cardiff | "All This Time Running" | single | The fortunate get to make their own reversions of their own songs, |
| 26 | Kip Moore | "Midnight Slow Dance" | Wild World | but most of us get to sing them each just once. |
| 27 | Emmit Fenn | "Until We Leave the Ground" | single | Courage is singing a chorus you know you may never get to repeat, |
| 28 | P!nk | "Cover Me In Sunshine" | single | hearing yourself joined by other voices in your head, in your dreams, |
| 29 | katie MAC | "Miss Each Other" | single | knowing you can't always choose which voices join yours, |
| 30 | Maydenfield | "Way Too Deep (feat. XAI)" | Way Too Deep (feat. XAI) +1 | or even which ones come out of you when you're brave enough to open your heart. |
| 31 | LAU | "Always On My Mind" | Believer 'Deluxe' | But we love what we love, |
| 32 | Fear Of Tigers | "Tiger Blood" | Tiger Blood +1 | and dance in whatever ridiculous way we thought was cool when we were 15, |
| 33 | Carina Dahl | "Toppen av Norge" | single | and when we are noble we see this helpless quality in others |
| 34 | Irina | "Nosta mut ilmaan" | Haluun olla yksin | before we despair of it in ourselves. |
| 35 | Kudai | "Llévame" | Revuelo | Set down your fear. |
| 36 | Mint Julep | "A Rising Sun" | A Rising Sun +1 | Everything is ridiculous in bright enough light, |
| 37 | LAYNE | "Dumb Girl" | single | and unintelligible otherwise. |
| 38 | Potty Mouth | "Let Go" | single | If you love something, it is you yourself you need to let go, first, |
| 39 | NOVACUB | "Fantasies" | single | in order to learn how to let go of anything or anybody else. |
| 40 | The Foxies | "Timothée Chalamet" | single | This is why we have heroes |
| 41 | Big Freedia | "Platinum" | single | and methods for performative heroism |
| 42 | TeZATalks | "Waves of Grace" | single | and miscontrue pain as an obstacle. |
| 43 | Stanley Odd | "The Invisible Woman" | single | This is why we fall in love with accents and haircuts, |
| 44 | Mimi Barks | "[KILL]BILLY" | single | and then recoil at our instinctive majestic superficiality. |
| 45 | Tony Njoku | "KILLTONY - feat. New World Ray" | KILLTONY EP 4 | This is why we walk like we walk, |
| 46 | slowthai | "45 SMOKE" | TYRON | and thus how we become somebody we don't recognize when the weather demands special boots, |
| 47 | P Money | "Trouble" | single | but thus also why we can shop for pieces of replacement identity. |
| 48 | Bob Vylan | "I Heard You Want Your Country Back" | We Live Here (Deluxe) | Who are you killing in the name of, and what? |
| 49 | GIRLI | "What a Shame!" | Ex Talk 5 | Each layer you pull onto yourself broadcasts a brand |
| 50 | Danny L Harle | "Interlocked" | single | into the deadspace between stations |
| 51 | Ethel Cain | "Michelle Pfeiffer (feat. lil aaron)" | single | that makes up most of everything. |
| 52 | Ouse | "Why Did You Tell Me That You Loved Me?" | single | Sometimes we engineer elaborate bridges over fathomless currents, |
| 53 | Wstdyth | "Miyashita" | GUILDMAG3 | and sometimes we just jump. |
| 54 | POPSTARBILLS | "WOAH" | single | I guess I like anything that invites us into a journey through the air. |
| 55 | blackwinterwells | "HEARSE" | single | Glitchcore is basically the emotional impulses of Sarah Records indie-pop |
| 56 | Senses | "take my #smile" | single | rendered in laptop hip-hop |
| 57 | i9bonsai | "bandage ##" | single | with ruefully no flow. |
| 58 | lieu | "i could never like u" | single | This time I'm here from the start, and the scarcity equations are different |
| 59 | tropes | "Bemidji" | single | but that won't necessarily save us from needing some equivalent of eBay and postal orders to reconstruct this ten years from now. |
| 60 | nothing,nowhere. | "upside down" | upside down | Courage is attaching your soul to a song that might disappear again before it even ends, |
| 61 | Wstdyth | "Flowers n Perfume" | GUILDMAG3 | believing in the hypothetical long future of an 18-year-old kid who could get bored of GarageBand before they ever write their masterpiece. |
| 62 | Crossfaith | "Dead or Alive" | single | But this headlong anti-gravity forward listening |
| 63 | Bloodred Hourglass | "Drag Me the Rain" | single | allows greatness to gush out of nothing |
| 64 | Wesenwille | "A Material God" | single | in part as a way to assert the possibility of momentary improvisational greatness |
| 65 | Aara | "Nimmermehr" | single | for love of moments, |
| 66 | Paysage D'Hiver | "Bluet" | single | and of course in part to avoid acknowledging that every look backwards in time |
| 67 | Emptiness | "Le mal est chez lui" | Vide | implies an equal and opposite and thus potentially untenable look into the glaring future. |
| 68 | Altarage | "Magno Evento" | single | The optimist thinks the past is scarier, |
| 69 | Mork | "Svartmalt" | single | or wants to. |
| 70 | Crown | "Illumination" | single | I am an optimist: |
| 71 | Neverland | "DILEMMA" | LOST CHILD | the past is definitionally scarier because it's so difficult to change |
| 72 | The Micro Head 4N's | "LiaR" | The Unfinished Story | unless we can understand it as a connected extension of the future, |
| 73 | NETH PRIERE CAIN | "Nemesis -Judgment Shisha-" | God punishment for salvation. 3 | as a history of mistakes we have not finished making. |
| 74 | Forlorn Hope | "To the Bitter End" | single | This is why we hear our dead heroes in surviving guitar solos, |
| 75 | Durbin | "Into the Flames" | The Beast Awakens | and how we contrive to unfear the reaper by hearing his songs in our own. |
| 76 | The Pretty Reckless | "My Bones" | Death By Rock And Roll | We will leave skeletal traces |
| 77 | Chez Kane | "Rocket on the Radio" | single | of ideas only materialized in muscle and skin. |
| 78 | Arc Of Life | "Life Has a Way" | Arc of Life | We will try to say "yes" to everything, |
| 79 | 3.2 | "Top of the World" | Third Impression | until the devil at a crossroads smugly plies us with a tired riddle |
| 80 | Varang Nord | "Cīņis Gors" | single | and we recall the legions of the damned to tear up the cursed roads and restore |
| 81 | Salduie | "Descarnatio" | single | our ancestral right to wander. |
| 82 | Green Lads | "Irish Dubstep" | Celtitude | Our ancestors dance in the ridiculous way they thought was cool when they were 15, even when they think they're imitating us. |
| 83 | Nifrost | "Eit siste Ynskje" | single | Roads are paths plus bureaucracy, |
| 84 | IOTUNN | "The Tower of Cosmic Nihility" | single | in the same way that astronomy is astrology plus telescopes -- |
| 85 | Rise to the Sky | "Let Me Drown With You" | single | or minus, because the problem with superstition is too much elaboration |
| 86 | Long Distance Calling | "Fever" | single | on too little basis, either of which would be merciful and holy in themselves. |
| 87 | God Is An Astronaut | "Adrift" | Ghost Tapes #10 | Elaboration is what we mean by art, |
| 88 | Aborym | "The Pursuit of Happiness" | Hostile | and accepting how little we know for sure is how we allow ourselves to make it. |
| 89 | Reeper | "Still Alive" | single | We write glossaries of substition |
| 90 | LÜT | "INDIÄ" | Mersmak | by saying mundane true things aloud, just in case. |
| 91 | Object Blue | "Opened Close" | single | Our lockdown restlessnesses fund online galleries of images of heaven for sale, |
| 92 | Ready Steady Steroids | "Sanity" | single | where we alternately fill and abandon carts. |
| 93 | Luca Brasi | "Never the Right Time" | Everything is Tenuous | Maybe tomorrow we will pay. |
| 94 | Umdumazi | "Valentine's day" | single | Maybe tomorrow they will tell us this is the special day when people all pay. |
| 95 | Prince Kaybee | "Ebabayo" | single | It is not, all of these days are equally special and buying images of heaven is an investment in nothing. |
| 96 | Dj Obza | "Idlozi Lami" | single | Already, by entertaining dubious decisions, we have felt what it would be like to make them. |
| 97 | Balam Acab | "up3dayz" | single | We have been our ghosts a million times long before we die. |
| 98 | Nous Alpha | "Fibonacci Failure" | single | These patterns don't fail us, they just end where we ran out of bricks |
| 99 | Norse Gael | "Tar Éis an Cath" | Óðr | before we ran out of love or remorse. |
| 100 | Sirenia | "Into Infinity" | Riddles, Ruins & Revelations | Courage is taking the next step when the road crumbles back into a path. |
| 101 | Ricardo Arjona | "Mojado (feat. Marc Cohn) - Versión Acústica" | Covers, Demos y Otras Travesuras de Blanco | We are not from Memphis or Neptune, trust us, not yet, |
| 102 | Don Vedda | "A Thousand Miles" | single | but both are closer than the maps sternly claim. |
| 103 | Halocene | "Drivers License" | single | We build machines to not change our problems, |
| 104 | Judith Mateo | "Invierno de Vivaldi, 1º Movimiento" | Invierno de Vivaldi 2 | but sometimes, by not saving us, they force us to save ourselves. |