| 1 | BUMP OF CHICKEN | "窓の中から" | SOUVENIR 3 | I used to think BUMP OF CHICKEN represented a unique combination of musical wonder and lexigraphic absurdity. |
| 2 | Xmas Eileen | "VIRTUAL HEAVEN" | single | This was not correct. The hilariousness of their shouty and inane name is only fractionally above the Japanese median. |
| 3 | THE MADNA | "sweet dream" | sweet dream +3 | I have a vastly better understanding of that in the streaming era than I did |
| 4 | tacica | "canary" | single | when I encountered Japanese bands at the speed of trans-Pacific freight. |
| 5 | Homecomings | "Us" | New Neighbors 5 | I was right that they're great, and assigning medians to greatness is the kind of thing |
| 6 | Regal Lily | "ハイキ" | single | that makes people think they hate statistics, with justification, |
| 7 | peanut butters | "ハルのテーマ" | single | but greatness in music is not scarce. |
| 8 | Fennel | "life on the run" | Mixed up 6 | You can find it anywhere you're willing to spend the time to listen. |
| 9 | cosmicdust | "Star-crossed lovers - Radio Edit" | single | There used to be other factors than willingness and time, |
| 10 | Wednesday | "Quarry" | Rat Saw God | which conspired to simulate scarcity, |
| 11 | Lanterns on the Lake | "String Theory" | single | and if you grew up that way you could easily and forgivably have developed the misapprehension that joy is a reward earned by a dedication to obscurity. |
| 12 | swim school | "don't leave me behind" | don't leave me behind +2 | If you frown at streaming and miss Other Music, |
| 13 | Letting Up Despite Great Faults | "The Do-Over" | Crumble 4 | you have confused labor and exclusivity with openness and shared joy. |
| 14 | Fire-Toolz | "Everything & Everywhere Is A Divine Mirror" | I am upset because I see something that is not there. | You are upset because you used to hear things other people didn't know were there, |
| 15 | The Hawkins Kid | "Summer of You" | single | and you thought that made you special, |
| 16 | Shit Present | "Unravelling" | Unravelling +3 | and that being individually special was our somehow unshared goal. |
| 17 | Ang Dating Don Juan | "kahit hangin ako sayo" | single | Life is too short for this kind of abject, self-defeating hoarding. |
| 18 | BiSH | "innocent arrogance" | single | The joys I have found can be yours, too, if you want them, |
| 19 | LYSM | "No time to die!!!!" | single | if you don't already feel breathless that we are alive now. |
| 20 | FATE GEAR | "Romancer feat.KOKOMI" | single | I am a strange guide to anything Japanese, |
| 21 | JILLASTED | "Drama" | single | but only if guidance, too, is scarce and competitive. |
| 22 | NANALAND | "七色の絵の具で" | 七色の絵の具で / なんじゃこりゃ / コ・ナ・オ・ト・シ / もう一度僕と恋愛してくれませんか? 4 | My talent is for falling in love, |
| 23 | lateral arc | "Saisatsu" | single | and if there is a median for this, too, I am trying to pull us all across it. |
| 24 | Unveil Raze | "Pay You Back" | single | "There has to be somebody below average" you snort, |
| 25 | UNDEAD CORPORATION | "Fear Me" | single | but there doesn't. We can all be immeasurably perfect. |
| 26 | Tulip | "Near Death" | single | We can be just barely immortal for 5:01 at a time. |
| 27 | Nereids | "Dark Storm" | single | There may be notes that Geraldine Jeannot of Nereids can sing, and you cannot, |
| 28 | Liliumdust | "Compliant Masks" | Our Deepest Hollows | but they're well within the range of human hearing. |
| 29 | RAVDINA | "Иди за мной" | single | Singing is a mode of sharing, but so is listening. |
| 30 | Doll Skin | "Melancholia" | single | You don't need to be sad. |
| 31 | Reasons Behind | "Heart Begins to Break" | single | I'm not saying you don't have reasons, |
| 32 | Sicksense | "Fools Tomorrow" | single | I'm saying that reasons, like songs, do not have to be collected or owned. |
| 33 | Healthyliving | "Until" | Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief | Grief and joy are both abundant, |
| 34 | Penumbra | "Inferno" | Eden | but so too are nitrogen and the scent of kouign-amann. |
| 35 | Dol Ammad | "Ghost in the Shell: Reincarnation" | single | We do not calculate our happiness by the magnitude of our immersion. |
| 36 | Gloryhammer | "Keeper of the Celestial Flame of Abernethy" | single | The unicorns came out of the river, and we turned them back. |
| 37 | Battle Born | "Dragon Heart" | single | Our myths imagined us as our own foes, |
| 38 | Feuerschwanz | "Bastard von Asgard (feat. Fabienne Erni)" | single | and we kept the costumes in a box we come across occasionally while we're looking for something else, |
| 39 | Ulvedharr | "Wasteland" | single | or pretending to, |
| 40 | Powerwolf | "Wolves Of War" | Interludium | and quietly remember those dreams. |
| 41 | Ray Alder | "This Hollow Shell" | single | Armored fantasies do not depend on ever fighting another war. |
| 42 | Winger | "It All Comes Back Around" | single | The riders we idolized, and then ridiculed, |
| 43 | Aisles | "Megalomania" | Beyond Drama | took advantage of the distraction to get another degree. |
| 44 | Kyros | "The End in Mind" | single | The ubiquity of joy doesn't mean there aren't techniques you can learn, |
| 45 | Hawkwind | "Rama (The Prophecy)" | single | persistences you can extend, |
| 46 | Karfagen | "Birds of Passage and the Enchanted Forest (Expanded Version)" | Passage to the Forest of Mysterious | elongations you can inhabit. |
| 47 | Ruadh | "Sack of Berwick" | 1296 | You can carry a grudge |
| 48 | Septicflesh | "Salvation" | Reconstruction 3 | to a show-and-tell. |
| 49 | Raat | "She Walks In Beauty" | single | Tell us its history, the stories of the lives that it united and separated, |
| 50 | Bacchus | "II.II" | II | the ways it made people feel heroic when they thought the only alternative was hopelessness. |
| 51 | Mournful Congregation | "The Forbidden Abysm" | single | In this way remember that we are trying to shake these binary choices out of our world: |
| 52 | Vananidr | "In Absence" | Beneath the Mold (Deluxe Version) | by furious vibration |
| 53 | Graywave | "Blur Into One" | single | or monolithium, |
| 54 | Shamir | "Camouflage" | Hope | so that only the fragile, hidden things are left. |
| 55 | Petite Noir | "Play" | Play 5 | Our demons are characters in a game |
| 56 | Fyfe Dangerfield | "The Zebra Wind" | single | with gossamer and elusive rules. |
| 57 | ryster | "loose change" | single | I am an indifferent and partial witness to autotuned melodic rap |
| 58 | Ruston Kelly | "Breakdown" | The Weakness | and twangy Americana |
| 59 | Camiches | "Todo Puede Estar Peor" | single | and the teeming places I have never been, |
| 60 | Zartbitter | "1000 KM" | Hier und jetzt | but walk a thousand of anything and you're somewhere. |
| 61 | Marathonmann | "Du bist die Nacht" | Du bist die Nacht / Tie Fighter 2 | Now this nitrogen and sunlight is yours, too. |
| 62 | Deon Groot | "Die Een" | single | You may fall in love with things that have been there forever, |
| 63 | Silbermond | "Lieber lauf ich davon" | Lieber lauf ich davon 5 | or were left behind when the people who started here also went to see the world. |
| 64 | Juli | "Wolke" | Wolke 5 | We do not take turns, we coexist: |
| 65 | Bestrack | "Chrome Veins" | single | with each other, with our uncertainties, with our dissatisfactions, |
| 66 | Emma Hewitt | "RAINDROP" | single | with their profound resolutions. |
| 67 | Aline Happ | "Join Me" | single | I might be an expert witness on the solo projects of female singers of metal bands, |
| 68 | Josefine | "Lay Down Our Guns" | single | but the difference between expertise and ignorance is volitional and small, |
| 69 | Savannah Sgro | "Never Get Married" | single | and the things you don't know are only scary if you take the time you could have spent learning them |
| 70 | Melanie Martinez | "POWDER" | PORTALS | and spend it on unconvincing effigies of worry. |
| 71 | Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys | "Auditorium" | Heaving | Fear is a performance |
| 72 | Forever May Fall | "Afterglow" | single | in which you stand facing the world and pretend there's a wall between you that nobody else can see. |
| 73 | Overcoats | "Want You Back" | Winner | We attend until we can no longer bear to watch you in an imaginary trap. |
| 74 | whenyoung | "Home Movie" | Paragon Songs | Songs about pain are not an argument for pain. |
| 75 | UDlubheke | "Buhle" | Icishe Yahlangana | You have confused curiosity with escape. |
| 76 | DR BUSELAPHI | "Amabomvu" | Intshukantshukane | Happy songs do not become happy by reminding you of happiness you already had. |
| 77 | uMkhathazi | "Isidalwa" | INkobongela-uyaziphinda umlando | You may fall in love with things you do not understand in the way that they understand themselves, |
| 78 | MORGAN THE LEGEND KHUZWAYO | "AmaZulu NamaMpondo" | single | but this is true of humans and so of course true of human songs. |
| 79 | Ozungezwayo | "Ngidlal' inkumbulo" | single | Listening is not a form of imitation, |
| 80 | Ezrah | "Ntshware Ka Letheka" | Ntshware Ka Letheka | it is an invitation to a wedding between people you can't be sure aren't you. |
| 81 | Skhalo | "Txoma Sehlare Moloi" | Txoma Sehlare Moloi +3 | I am the least likely witness to Sepedi tavern music except for everybody who, like me, |
| 82 | Karyendasoul | "Waves Of Mercy" | We Live 4 Our Music | didn't know what that was until last week, except one week behind. |
| 83 | Bongeziwe Mabandla | "ndikhale" | single | Love is not a hereditary peerage you weren't born into, |
| 84 | Lady Du | "Oyini" | single | it is a dance distinguished by whatever you do next. |
| 85 | Colin Stetson | "When we were that what wept for the sea" | single | We cry for the sea even as it reaches for us, because swallowing our cities would not give it their notes. |
| 86 | Liliumdust | "A Morn Overhauled" | Our Deepest Hollows | The tide retreats without ever feeling renewal. |
| 87 | SMR LVE | "Heart Of Mine" | Heart Of Mine +1 | Kinetic tranquility doesn't have to be complicated or ambivalent. |
| 88 | Giuseppe Ottaviani | "To The Stars (A Dreamstate Anthem)" | single | You don't have to be unsure of obvious things |
| 89 | Emma Hewitt | "RAINDROP" | RAINDROP +1 | to trick them into coming before you again in brighter clothes but darker light. |
| 90 | Tenchio | "A Thousand Miles" | single | Walk a thousand of anything and you'll miss a hundred things you passed, |
| 91 | fox capture plan | "WELCOME TO THE BLACK PARADE" | single | but be unbroken and undefeated. |