| 1 | Lonesome_Blue | "Blue Like Sapphire (The Flower Of Hope)" | Second To None | The last couple weeks of the year are traditionally a lull in the music-release calendar. |
| 2 | PassCode | "Clouds Across The Moon" | REVERBERATE ep. 4 | The word "traditionally" is your cue to look up and think about whose entrenched power-structures are being reinforced by asserted habit, |
| 3 | LOVEBITES | "Judgement Day" | single | and in which arbitrary contexts. |
| 4 | LIV MOON | "Addiction" | OUR STORIES | Meanwhile, people keep making songs and "releasing" them from their own interior monologues, |
| 5 | Eir Aoi | "ANSWER" | single | and the kinds of Japanese bands I like seem, collectively, particularly disinclined to regard calendar-year days as a resource to be budgeted. |
| 6 | Magistina Saga | "eclipse" | Abyss Grey Heron 6 | Or else my curiosity expands to fill any nominal void, and I am aesthetically defenseless against young Japanese women in short skirts, |
| 7 | ELFENSJóN | "ECLIPSE" | single | or cartoons wearing gloves, |
| 8 | HoLDERLINS | "the sun rises again" | single | or bandnames with just one letter in lowercase, |
| 9 | Underbeasty | "beast" | single | or headless guitars or idol groups playing their own instruments |
| 10 | Finally | "WINNERS" | single | or not playing their own instruments or I have no idea who is playing the instruments because usually I don't |
| 11 | My Criminal Lovers' | "ANTHEM." | single | nor which things are instruments or effigies or metaphors. |
| 12 | MOSHIMO | "shogyoumujou destiny" | single | We could spend the rest of any year, almost concluded or barely begun, |
| 13 | Yasuharu Takanashi | "Reincarnated as a Sword" | 「転生したら剣でした」オリジナルサウンドトラック | making lists of distinctions at once interesting and immaterial. |
| 14 | 結束バンド | "転がる岩、君に朝が降る" | 結束バンド | Maybe in our next lives we will be more ruthless, keener, already sure of our purpose by high school, |
| 15 | KANKAKU PIERO | "the light" | single | or while we are still flat and more purely imagined. |
| 16 | On the treat Super Season | "Cyber Dive" | single | One of the countless ways that music is better than sports is that without zero-sum competition there is no need for an off-season. |
| 17 | paradeeq | "Lovethief" | Love thief 4 | Not that you can't have a heart attack in the middle of a song, |
| 18 | ano | "ンーィテンブセ" | single | but your heart is implicated regardless, whichever way you run, |
| 19 | Seiko Oomori | "ムゲンライセ" | ムゲンライセ +1 | and it sometimes sounds or feels like a source of pain |
| 20 | MiiS | "等身大のアイドル回想録 (Toushintai no Idol Kaisouroku)" | single | because that's what we mean by pain, and by cause: |
| 21 | Schrödinger's dog | "D.T.F" | single | a creature that we lock in a box with a Geiger counter for a random eternity, and when we open the box it's still thrilled to see us. |
| 22 | JILLASTED | "GET BACK" | single | It's not that there is no J-pop underground, |
| 23 | Shihatsu-machi Underground | "hikare" | single | it's just that it is part of the city we don't have to pretend to have lost so long ago |
| 24 | あたらよ | "雪冴ゆる" | single | that it can be rediscovered as if a part of history unselfconsciously revealed. |
| 25 | Lonesome_Blue | "Mine" | Second To None | These blue lakes of fire are part of a methodical irrigation of joy, |
| 26 | Nanase Aikawa | "むすんでひらいて" | single | a cogent implementation of fame as a deliberate cultural resource |
| 27 | Hitsujibungaku | "生活" | single | instead of a reluctant burden, |
| 28 | Alice Wonder | "Yo Quisiera" | single | and thus of art as an always-willing performance |
| 29 | Irene-Louise Van Wyk | "Ek Sê So" | single | rather than a private catharsis leaked into in the air |
| 30 | Mister the Kid | "Make You Dance" | Make You Dance +1 | in a performatively deferred dream of vanishing over imminent time. |
| 31 | MindaRyn | "Another world" | My Journey | All journeys are like this, witnessed |
| 32 | ハルカミライ | "Symbol 2" | Symbol 2 5 | in an observational orthography |
| 33 | cinema staff | "Riku no Koto" | single | by anybody willing to participate, or unwilling to render themselves exempt, |
| 34 | HIKAGE | "Before Sunrise" | single | or unable to keep desperately transient darkness from quietly exploding. |
| 35 | ELLEGARDEN | "Breathing" | The End of Yesterday | The year is ending, or it's beginning, and either way you should be dancing: |
| 36 | Rides In ReVellion | "FALLING STAR" | single | in the light of old orbits decaying, |
| 37 | 616 | "Cathedral of Scars" | single | in the temples of what we believe we have lost |
| 38 | Lord Of The Lost | "Blood & Glitter" | Blood & Glitter | but aren't sure whether to celebrate or mourn, |
| 39 | Arogya | "Desire" | Desire +1 | in temperance or abandon. |
| 40 | Atrocity | "Malicious Sukkubus" | Malicious Sukkubus +3 | The opportunity to have your name written in chrome |
| 41 | Dead Wasteland | "Ocean Song" | single | is also an invitation to prepare yourself for tarnish |
| 42 | GhostSeeker | "Who We Are" | single | and the other graceful corrosions of the same elements that sustain us. |
| 43 | Besna | "Neha" | single | I am not appreciably more defenseful against ambiguously-aged Slovakian dudes lurking dubiously behind trees. |
| 44 | Noumena | "Murhenäytelmä" | Murhenäytelmä +1 | We write uplifting stories about misery, |
| 45 | Elyose | "L'Assemblée" | single | or essays about fear and potential, |
| 46 | Anchor Thought | "Built To Bow" | single | or lists of what we found inside arbitrary boundaries, |
| 47 | Seas on the Moon | "The Rule Of 21" | single | because all we know to expect on new worlds are the things we loved in the old lives |
| 48 | Existenter | "Memento Mori" | single | we lived before we reached them. |
| 49 | The Big Deal | "Intuition" | single | And then we arrive, and realize we have crossed the universe in generation ships only to step onto a new planet humming songs we loved in middle school. |
| 50 | Diagnóstico Binario | "La nueva era" | single | The new eras will be made of old memories |
| 51 | LAVIDA | "Mira el reloj" | single | aligned erratically with new moments. |
| 52 | Jupiter Jones | "Wenn's nicht weh tut" | Die Sonne ist ein Zwergstern | Your billowing world has been our faint guiding overhead light, |
| 53 | ENGST | "Scheiss Liebeslieder" | Scheiss Liebeslieder +2 | or vice versa. |
| 54 | Velvet Sighs | "Underwater" | single | We measure the distance from our eyes to our shoes with water at our waists. |
| 55 | Fall On Thursday | "Take You Home" | New Beginning | We find new homes by becoming new selves. |
| 56 | Arkaeo | "waste." | single | Meanwhile, people keep singing already broken songs. |
| 57 | INKAZIMULO YABANGCWELE INDUMEZULU GOSPEL GROUP | "Amabandla" | BENGIKWETHEMBA | How else will we fix them? |
| 58 | Mjolisi | "Akalele (R.I.P Shimora)" | single | You wake up and ask "Who won the game?" and somebody has to tell you that nobody had the heart to play the rest of it without you, |
| 59 | Mzukulu | "Bafana baseNkandla" | Eyokuza 4 | but that people kept making and listening to songs and you've missed them, |
| 60 | S'gcawu | "Zimele Khono Lami" | NGAKE NGAZENZA | but they all say the same thing anyway: |
| 61 | Son of Africa | "Mveliso (Ityala)" | single | You are still among us, still one of us, still chosen whatever changes next about your fate. |
| 62 | David Jones David | "Amen (Forgiveness)" | single | It's not that there is nothing waiting for us in death, |
| 63 | Rocket Pengwin | "Anti-Hero" | single | it's that there is no waiting. You can't wait. You get older through every midnight, every afternoon, |
| 64 | Lord Of The Lost | "The Look (feat. Blümchen)" | Blood & Glitter | but never wiser, never less ridiculous, never less perfect. |