Gorillaz - don't get lost in heaven, 2005

"Don't Get Lost In Heaven", the first part of "Demon Days" ending statement, started out as a weird experimental country and bluegrass piece involving James Dring's simple drumming, Jason Cox's bouncing distorted bass guitar and Damon Albarn playing a diverse range of banjos, synthesizers and acoustic guitars. The original lead vocal was done by Damon Albarn in what I can assume is him doing a cross of both Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan accompanied by happier sounding harmonies meant to invoke the other members of The Beach Boys."

Youth Lagoon - afternoon live, 2011

"July", the first song we heard from Youth Lagoon bandleader Trevor Powers' debut The Year of Hibernation, was filled with emotional surges, a seemingly modest tune that made a small racket with a big-hearted finish. "Afternoon" from Year also builds gradually, but right from the opening whistled riff, it's obvious that the stakes aren't as high. Which is not a bad thing: "Afternoon" bounces and stomps along, Powers' wavering, occasionally wordless vocals constantly present throughout. It's not always easy to make out his lyrics, but that's okay-- the feeling in his music is easy to find."

Monsters of Folk - dear god, 2009

"Terrible name, super group. Monsters of Folk are a US indie dreamteam comprised of Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and Matt "M. Ward" Ward. It's enough to make you grow a beard with excitement."

The Jesus And Mary Chain - head on, 1989

"Head On" is one of those joyous, fist-pumping pop songs that's weirdly juxtaposed with a dark lyric about inertia; it's taken from the Jesus and Mary Chain's Automatic (1989). Could the singer simply want to muster the courage to talk to a girl, or is it a paralysis-making decision about whether to cop some drugs? No matter, the lyric is craftily universal/ambiguous. With its poppy, lightweight beat, "Head On" falls into the revved-up/amped-up Beach Boys-style song the Mary Chain made (they also specialized in Spector-ish Wall of Sound and pure noise). There's an incessant new wave snare beat, a snarling, teenage vocal, and a drum and bass breakdown. It is blueprint post-punk in the tradition of Joy Division/New Order; around the time of its modern rock radio popularity in the early '90s, alternative band of the moment, the Pixies, were already covering it."

Bonnie Prince Billy - i see a darkness live, 2012

"Oldham exploits a salty freedom and an epicurean brio; on this album, his least "country," he was a bulimic Falstaff milking medieval dread/mirth. Sung sans-warble, these non-sequiturial folk anthems, seasoned with Robotussin Skynyrd licks, confirmed that Oldham is indie's detached and brilliant DeNiro."

Gang Of Four - paper thin, 2019

"It’s this combination of electronics and the jagged guitar lines pursuing 21st century grooves that achieves a striking balance between the band’s fundamental sound and its restless embrace of the now and the new. Exemplified by the first single – the pulsating 6 Music championed ‘Paper Thin’ - the result is a body of anthemic songs of modern confusion, and ‘Happy Now’ a record for our times."

Editors - smokers outside the hospital doors live, 2018

"singer Tom Smith tempers his constant anxiety with flashes of optimism, his brittle nihilism with gooey sentiment"

Wim Mertens - often a bird, nature by numbers, 2010

"Often a bird - Wim Mertens - I'm absolutely in love with the piano in this piece."

Devine And Statton - bizarre love triangle cover, 1989

"Cardiff-born singer Alison Statton’s first group, Young Marble Giants, lit and carried a bright torch for the lo-fi indie scene that would flourish in the ’90s. Her subsequent group, the coolly jazz-inflected Weekend, anticipated the suave cocktail pop that Everything but the Girl, Sade and others would popularize. After the end of Weekend, Statton went back to university, but re-emerged near the end of the ’80s in a duo with Manchester guitarist/songwriter Ian Devine (ex-Ludus). The pair made two albums of spare, Celtic-flecked folk-pop, covering tunes by New Order (“Bizarre Love Triangle” on The Prince of Wales) and Crystal Gayle (“Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” on Cardiffians) in the process."

Such a great song!

Lankum - the young people, 2019

"The chorus of ‘The Young People’ first appeared as a kind of Scottish singalong in Daragh’s head one morning as he woke up, and not sure whether it was a traditional song he’d heard before, a composite of folk songs and melodies from his subconscious, or a completely original piece, he sang it into a dictaphone before it disappeared, like so many before it."

Everything Everything - r u happy, 2024

"Lead vocalist Jonathan Higgs explained that the album revolves around a simple concept, taking place in a fictional world "wherein all of society is consumed with the building of a giant mountain". However, the twist in the story is that the people would have to dig a deep hole and live in it in order to build the mountain."

Hamilton Leithauser And Rostam - a thousand times, 2016

"The musical partnership between Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam Batmanglij began, as so many do, by disturbing the parental peace. The former lead singer for the Walkmen and the now-former multi-instrumentalist for Vampire Weekend are both originally from Washington, D.C., and they’d meet up when they went home for the holidays. “Two years in a row at Thanksgiving and Christmas we would be up in Rostam’s high school bedroom,” Leithauser recalls to Pitchfork now. “The first time we were out there, I was just wailing away and singing so loud, and then you heard this voice from the bottom of the stairs, and it’s Rostam’s dad. He’s yelling from downstairs, like, ‘Rostam, are you OK?’ It was like we were teenagers up there.”

Michael Stipe - old man cover live, 2015

"Stipe has laid low in recent years and grown a boss beard, but couple years ago took Neil Young’s “Old Man” out for a spin."

The New Pornographers - you'll need a new backseat driver, 2019

“There are so many songs like ‘the something of love’—you know, there’s ‘The Book of Love,’ ‘The Freeway of Love’.... Then I thought of ‘falling down the stairs of your love,’ and I thought, that kind of works. I think it has that element of how do you deal with the ideas of love and happiness in this world right now? When current events are stressful, that makes a stress on people’s relationships, and you’re trying to figure out how to be happy in this loving relationship in this world that seems ugly at every turn.”

Trying to be a less shit parent to your own kids than your parents were to you

"But that’s what parenting is about, isn’t it? Trying to be a less shit parent to your own kids than your parents were to you."

Tall Ships - meditations on loss, 2016

"No time for reflection, no space to clear heads, it’s full steam ahead into the great unknown."

Luke Sital-Singh - hunger, 2017

"Essential, once more we're subject to unfeigned lyricism and intricate guitar melodies as its thundering percussion rumbles beneath."

Cemeteries - sodus, 2015

"The first time I listened to Sodus by Cemeteries, I knew it was going to be one of those songs I wouldn’t be able to shake off my soul. Okay, I know what you’re thinking, is it really that dramatic? The truth is in the tune! It’s in the lyrics and melodies. It paints a picture of a summer night you spent as a teenager wondering when your life was going to turn into something spectacular. I’m sure we’ve all had some kind of revelation like this. If I was to collect all these fantasies of mine and turn them into some tangible form of expression, it would be through this song. All the places I’ve never been to. All the people I haven’t met. All the good and bad experiences that I cannot call my own, but have a longing to understand. I have an everlasting nostalgia for things I’ve never grasped in physical form, sprouting from a genuine admiration of the things in life that are the most raw and passionate, thriving off of possibility for a world of new doors to open."

Morrissey - everyday is like sunday, 1988

"The song's lyrics, which commemorate the dreariness of a seaside town in the off-season, were reportedly inspired by Nevil Shute's On the Beach, a novel about a group of people waiting for nuclear devastation in Melbourne, Australia. Of the song's lyrics, Morrissey commented, "The British holiday resort is just like a symbol of Britain's absurdity really. The idea of a resort in Britain doesn't seem natural."

Peter Bjorn And John - one for the team, 2018

"Peter Bjorn and John are a Swedish indie pop/rock band formed in Stockholm in 1999, named after the first names of the band's members: Peter Morén (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Björn Yttling (bass, keyboards, vocals) and John Eriksson, known in his solo work as Hortlax Cobra (drums, percussion, vocals). Yttling also worked as producer for the band's first four albums."