| 1 | FiDZ | "Before You Light Up" | -GOUEN- | "Before You Light Up" could easily end up being my favorite song of the year, even if it barely exists. |
| 2 | Kemu | "花呼ぶ声" | 花呼ぶ声 +1 | The Japanese band FiDZ, such as it is, consists of some unclear number of singers between 2 and 5, |
| 3 | LOVEBITES | "Dissonance" | single | and an anonymous backing band that must have existed in a studio for at least an hour, |
| 4 | ReoNa | "VITA" | single | but maybe no longer than that. |
| 5 | Regal Lily | "60W" | single | The players performed their tasks with cogent fervor, but no particularly enduring distinction. |
| 6 | Fennel | "confess" | single | The song is perfect, a spray of ecstatic minor mania, but not complicated. |
| 7 | JIEMEI | "Mew" | single | The girls seem to take their jobs as idols seriously, but available video suggests that they're better singers than dancers, |
| 8 | MAZE | "SUPERSONIC" | single | and available audio demonstrates that they aren't especially good singers. |
| 9 | may in film | "Esora" | single | This is their debut album, just out, but 6 of its 8 actual songs were released months ago on two different singles, |
| 10 | FaM | "Live the dream" | single | and as of this writing they have accumulated 129 monthly listeners on Spotify. |
| 11 | Xandria | "Two Worlds" | The Wonders Still Awaiting | I assume there is some other aspect of the Japanese idol economy they participate in, |
| 12 | Manigance | "All Your Excesses" | single | but maybe there isn't, and they don't. Maybe this is it. |
| 13 | REXORIA | "Paradigm" | Imperial Dawn | The German symphonic metal band Xandria falls, or at least circles around, the other end of a spectrum of ambition, |
| 14 | Frozen Crown | "Black Heart" | single | at least ostensibly. They have existed in some form for 8 studio albums over almost 30 years, |
| 15 | Nereids | "Sail to Hades" | single | making music that sounds like it probably requires a small kingdom's worth of infrastructure to produce. |
| 16 | ShadoWhisperS | "Däischter Gedanken" | single | "Two Worlds" could also easily end up being my favorite song of the year, |
| 17 | Rave The Reqviem | "Anti-Savior" | Anti-Savior +2 | especially if it comes down to "Before You Light Up" and "Two Worlds" engaging in some form of ritual combat. |
| 18 | Phantom Elite | "Skin of My Teeth" | single | Not all perfect songs are invincible. |
| 19 | RedHook | "Off With Your Head" | Off With Your Head 5 | Not that all invincible songs are perfect, either, or even invincible for long. |
| 20 | Divina PH | "Burn the Bridge" | single | Xandria have gone through 22 members in their time, with several full cycles of everybody other than Marco Heubaum. |
| 21 | SÄÄDÖT | "Emännätön talo" | single | The songs are real; |
| 22 | Dream State | "Chain Reactions" | Untethered 3 | the implied continuum they form is an illusion sustained at least partially by graphic design. |
| 23 | Stand Atlantic | "kill[h]er" | single | We create these notional, confectionary joys, |
| 24 | Vigil Of War | "Domino" | single | and then they outlive our expedient unions, |
| 25 | Enigmatic Entrance | "Out of Time" | Out of Time +1 | and maybe ultimately also our intransigent bodies. |
| 26 | Saint Deamon | "At Break of Dawn" | single | It is fair to ask how the music industry supports the noble labor |
| 27 | Magnus Karlsson’s Free Fall | "Hunt the Flame" | single | that it clearly requires, |
| 28 | Seventh Crystal | "Wonderland" | single | but maybe only fair in the way that it is "fair" to explain the shimmer of wishable stars |
| 29 | Volver Al Origen | "Heridas" | Initium Vulnera 4 | in erratic trajectories of photons through not-quite-empty emptiness. |
| 30 | JJ Mist | "Night Queen" | single | Labor differs from undeserving action by exerting monotony: |
| 31 | Xandria | "Mirror of Time" | The Wonders Still Awaiting | the large rocks broken into smaller rocks do not spontaneously reform, |
| 32 | Creye | "One Step Away" | single | or do, but at a respectful geological pace. |
| 33 | L.A. Guns | "You Betray" | single | Music does not have these properties. |
| 34 | Hanging Garden | "The Fireside" | The Fireside +1 | The large songs and the small songs are the same size. |
| 35 | Pyramaze | "Broken Arrow" | single | Perfection may be reached through methodical engineering |
| 36 | Klone | "Apnea" | Apnea +2 | or sudden whim, |
| 37 | Unscaled Seven | "Emergency Bliss" | single | but these are courses of approach, |
| 38 | The Enigma Division | "Kaleidoscope" | The Enigma Division | not prerequisite assemblies. |
| 39 | Falaise | "A Dream Of Relief" | After All This Time | It is cynical, but logical, to hire the victims of economic imbalance to perform work |
| 40 | Déhà | "Everything Is Going to Be Okay" | A Fleur de Peau - V - At The Poles of Everything | that the more-enfranchised are content to recognize as repugnant, |
| 41 | Austere | "Sullen" | single | at least as long as the work remains necessary at all: |
| 42 | Spirit Possession | "Second Possession" | single | mitigation of toxicity into wet and dry goods, |
| 43 | Depravation | "Im Schatten" | single | the breeding of defenseless food, |
| 44 | GARAKUTA | "haraguchi" | Haraguchi family 4 | the tedious removal of its tiny bones. |
| 45 | ノウルシ | "supernova remnant" | single | But this is not how art is made. |
| 46 | Base Ball Bear | "SEVENTEEN" | Umi ni Naritai part.3 2 | Generative AI, although it may end up devouring our souls in front of us for idle spectacle, |
| 47 | kanon | "kanon" | single | makes this visceral point visceral by explaining it without any viscera at all: |
| 48 | Xmas Eileen | "DON'T JUST EXIST" | single | perfection waits in infinite variety in omniextensive potential space. |
| 49 | tarareva | "LOSTCOLOR" | single | The tiny perfect songs and the majestic perfect epics |
| 50 | Huecco | "Culpable" | single | are both perfect. |
| 51 | Mœnia | "Fotonovela" | single | You cannot demand a moral minimum wage for hours |
| 52 | Marathonmann | "Diamant" | single | you choose to spend according to your own mythology. |
| 53 | Rodrigo Venegas | "No Puede Ser Amor" | single | This doesn't dictate that artistic work should go uncompensated, |
| 54 | daine | "portal" | single | nor that the absence of labor implies absences of work or time, |
| 55 | Internet Girl | "i don't reply" | parasocial interaction 5 | but it means that meat packers and teamsters and songwriters |
| 56 | María Escarmiento | "CREO QUE HOY NO ME APETECE QUERERME MORIR" | ☆ COSAS DE BRUJAS ☆ | will not form a uniform union. |
| 57 | Nehl Aelin | "I Wanna Run" | single | You might be present at the discovery of a perfect song, |
| 58 | NOVA ONE | "dangerous" | single | and then long gone before daylight. |
| 59 | Eloisa | "Tara" | single | You can bemoan precarity |
| 60 | Carlie Hanson | "Blueberry Pancakes" | single | until the morning the crew shows up to install guardrails and post warnings, |
| 61 | ROSIE | "Startover" | single | and you find out what you really value about your view |
| 62 | Allie Dunn | "Karley From Carolina" | single | and your solitude. |
| 63 | Annie DiRusso | "Emerson" | Emerson +1 | I have been, in my other life where I am not an oblique marginalist, |
| 64 | Meg Myers | "ME" | ME +3 | paid comfortably to make things, albeit idea-things in abstract space, |
| 65 | Nisa | "Inrush" | single | that individually vary from being used by millions all the way to being used by nobody, yet, |
| 66 | Shania Twain | "Brand New" | Queen Of Me | and who knows when. |
| 67 | Monica Naranjo | "Diva" | single | The societies that have hosted me, although we don't yet acknowledge the social nature of companies in our meta-laws of governance, |
| 68 | Mireya Bravo | "Indestructible" | single | assume the collective responsibility to profit, qualitatively, from my work. |
| 69 | Susana Cala | "No Eras Para Tanto" | single | It is not the idol's job to be a better singer than they are. |
| 70 | Ela Taubert | "¿Qué Hubiera Pasado?" | single | It is not Heubaum's job to write simpler songs. |
| 71 | Alison Darwin | "Desde Cero" | single | In a better world, these are not jobs, |
| 72 | Caroline Polachek | "Blood And Butter" | Blood And Butter 5 | and modular societies do not depend on markets any more than |
| 73 | IOLITE | "Drift" | single | their members are employed at will. |
| 74 | Derivakat | "Let Me Let You Go" | single | In a better world, we are free to form undistinguished bands |
| 75 | HVDES | "Catacomb" | single | not because there are great bands, |
| 76 | ANOHNI | "Rapture" | single | but because love is not measured by its harnessability; |
| 77 | Fatima Al Qadiri | "Mojik (Your Waves)" | single | we do not need to unionize to negotiate with the management of love, |
| 78 | Deena Abdelwahed | "Fête" | Flagranti 4 | because its dynamics are unmanageable and unmanaged, |
| 79 | BIG|BRAVE | "the fable of subjugation" | single | and its only reporting structure is our awareness of self; |
| 80 | Laboratorium Pieśni | "Hé oyáte" | single | we do not compete with our echoes. |
| 81 | Weljar | "O wiedźmach" | single | We go home to Carolina, not in defeat, |
| 82 | Nicolae Rollin | "Hringsverd" | Hringsverd +1 | not to be taken back with petty pity, |
| 83 | DR BUSELAPHI | "Gabi Gabi" | single | but in gloriously ritual triumph, |
| 84 | 071 NELLY THE MASTER BEAT | "Motseyeng" | single | with our dream and joys and pain all shattered intact. |
| 85 | Methuli Mlungwana | "Ngaphambuka endleleni" | NGAPHAMBUKA ENDLELENI BY MPILO MBATHA 3 | We are only brand new once, in life, |
| 86 | Slikback | "CHIMERA" | K E S S E K I | but over and over again in stories. |
| 87 | Wande Coal | "Kpe Paso" | single | We do not buy moments to hoard, |
| 88 | Sho Madjozi | "Chale" | single | remembering timelessness. |
| 89 | YONAKA | "PANIC" | single | There is only loving homage and its scattered reflections. |
| 90 | Gethin Fon a Glesni Fflur | "Jerry" | single | There are only languages as long as we use them to say something familiar and new. |
| 91 | Deportees | "Run for That Feeling" | single | There are only roads because we keep going from Umeå to Philadelphia to Edenburgh to Vindeln and then we're tired and don't want to walk the last 50km back to Umeå, |
| 92 | Hamish Hawk | "Once Upon an Acid Glance" | Angel Numbers | but then we remember that we have earbuds |
| 93 | Young Fathers | "Drum" | Heavy Heavy | and new songs to play |
| 94 | Hamish Hawk | "Elvis Look-alike Shadows" | Angel Numbers | and jobs to do whether we're particularly good at them yet or not. |
| 95 | Young Fathers | "Sink Or Swim" | Heavy Heavy | Perfection is a way of falling in love with what exists, |
| 96 | Hamish Hawk | "Dog-eared August" | Angel Numbers | so that the next thing we say will be made of love, not into it. |
| 97 | Young Fathers | "Holy Moly" | Heavy Heavy | We are not invincible, but neither are our institutions |
| 98 | Petite Noir | "Blurry" | Blurry +2 | or their predicaments |
| 99 | GEL | "Attainable" | single | or our allegiances. |
| 100 | nothing,nowhere. | "THIRST4VIOLENCE (feat. Freddie Dredd & Silverstein)" | THIRST4VIOLENCE (feat. Freddie Dredd & Silverstein) +3 | We should not aspire to wage, |
| 101 | Becko | "REB00T MYSELF (feat. Tired Violence)" | REB00T MYSELF (feat. Tired Violence) | should not demand justice as if it can be meted or our demands unmet, |
| 102 | Crashing Past Midnight | "Vagabonds" | Crashing Past Midnight | should not dream of arbitraging between approximations. |
| 103 | Parannoul | "Arrival" | After the Magic | Do not suit yourself for labor, |
| 104 | Orbital | "Are You Alive?" | Are You Alive? +3 | write a song. |
| 105 | Rachel Nusbaumer | "Walking towards the Sunset" | single | Write it in your head as you do whatever small, useful thing you find for yourself today, |
| 106 | Andrea Krux | "Carthage" | single | and then sing it in your head twice as you start to walk home, |
| 107 | Hoshimachi Suisei | "先駆者" | 先駆者 +1 | and then let the rest of the music sweep you back in amongst it, |
| 108 | DJ Kuroneko | "hidden" | shadows collide 5 | into the machine of people moving forward in all directions, |
| 109 | Lollia | "Playground - from Arcane by League of Legends" | single | into the system we form by not quite colliding while we do. |
| 110 | La Mosca Tse-Tse | "Blinding Lights" | single | Not so cold now; not so empty any more. |
| 111 | Powerwolf | "Poison" | single | Not all idol-lines wear eye-liner. |
| 112 | Betty Who | "RUNNING UP THAT HILL" | single | Not all loves hurt, but sometimes you have to sing them a lot of ways |
| 113 | The Accidentals | "Heart of Glass" | single | before they sound painless. |