I’m back! I’d say I’m wandering in late with Starbucks, but I’m still boycotting and you should be too. (Try Second Cup, or Happy Goat if you got ’em nearby. Even better, just make your own.)

Two things: One, I’m realizing that the easiest way to do this for me is accepting that these take two weeks to a month to fairly curate. (And that way stuff that’s released late in the month gets fair play.) This time around I also got the flu twice in a fairly short span of time, so it took extra long.

Two… Hell’s bells December was BIG for music. Which seems counter-intuitive! You’d think it would be quiet! But no, part of why this is late is because whittling this list down was hard.

1. House of the Rising Sun – Rhiannon Paige

I love a good cover – but I already have a favourite version of House of the Rising Sun (Oceans of Slumber) so when this came up, I was a bit hesitant. But Rhiannon Paige has a hell of a voice — and I give kudos to ANYBODY who doesn’t change pronouns. There are actually two different versions of House of the Rising Sun, both about as old as each other, from a male and female perspective; so I respect the decision all the more. (It’s probably just that she’s explicitly covering the Animals version, but still.) It takes a powerful voice to pull off this kind of intensity, and Paige has the pipes and the heart for it. It won’t replace Oceans of Slumber for me but it’s damn close.

That’s all already given me respect for Paige. Finding out that she’s got this kind of voice after a childhood with 70% hearing loss? DAMN. (I’m deaf myself and face plenty of hurdles as a music lover.)

2. Disaster(er) Party – Bad Mary

And now for something completely different! Last roundup I had a couple riot-grrl pop-punkers. This group is ska-punk. Disaster(er) Party sounds like if Green Day had recorded Nimrod in 1979 and it’s amazing. Loud, cheerful, crunchy and with slightly raspy female vocals, this is just fun to listen to.

Even more fun is the band itself. Music history has all sorts of band configurations – real families, fake siblings, whatever the hell Fleetwood Mac was — but this one’s a first. Vocalist Amanda heads up the band, along with…her husband, her dad, and her professor? They’ve been going since 2013, and they make excellent music, so it’s clearly working!

3. Lâu Đài Cát by Thỏ Trauma

I love finding new international music, particularly outside the deeply exploitative industries of K-Pop and J-Pop. So I’m deeply pleased to have stumbled on Thỏ Trauma, a Vietnamese singer, composer and self-described metalhead. Her music isn’t metal exactly, but the influence is audible. And holy SHIT her voice. We often think of a ‘good female voice’ as having sweeping high notes, but Thỏ Trauma has the kind of alto that fills a room and keeps your attention. I’ve only heard a few of her songs so far and I’m already contemplating selling a kidney to hear her life. And this is as someone who doesn’t speak a lick of Vietnamese!

It is a tragedy, then, that her Western crossover status isn’t strong enough yet to find translations for any of these lyrics. I managed to translate a couple of the first lines through finding a transcription, enough to know that this is a love song, but beyond that I’m reliant only on the melody and the emotions in her voice. That’s enough for me to happily have this on repeat, though, and I raise a glass to Thỏ Trauma’s continued success.

4. Pink Poison – I Don’t Wear Pink

Pink Poison is the first single from I Don’t Wear Pink, an all-girl rock band from Mexico City formed in January 2023, singing in both English and Spanish. This is a fun mid-tempo pop-punk number, and between these folks and some of the new bands from the prior list (The Hex in particular) I have this urge to host a Lilith Fair for the new century. (If Coachella wasn’t run by fucking cowards–)

This is a really good first single, too. As far as I can tell — since I tragically don’t speak Spanish — these girls are completely independent, and I congratulate any band taking a shot at that in the hostile anti-art world of the 2020s but particularly when they’re doing it well. There’s room to experiment for following singles, so I’m curious to see what they do next — but the talent and the charisma is absolutely there.

5. Bekhauf (ft. Babymetal) – Bloodywood

Time for one of my patented genre whiplashes! ‘Bekhauf’ is a collaboration between two absolutely off-the-wall bands — Bloodywood, an Indian band that fuses Indian folk instruments, rap and nu-metal growling, and driving guitars, and Babymetal — the one and only kawaii-metal band. (There might be others now, but they’re always going to be the original.)

This is kryptonite to me on several levels. One, the song’s just fun as hell to listen to. Fantastic for writing fight scenes. Two, it is infuriatingly hard to get into non-Western music, particularly metal, if you’re not fluent in about 20 other languages, and even harder for non-Western bands to make much headway. It’s gotten easier (SO MUCH) with the rise of online distribution, but I still cheer every time there’s another breakthrough, and one that lasts. (I’m still so deeply pleased that The HU are still around and still popular in the West after Yuve Yuve Yu went viral.) And three… I’m a basic bitch. I love a collab. I love me some beauty and the beast vocals. I love the multilingual chaos happening here, I just love everything about it. Hindi, Japanese and English lyrics all at once (and, fun note, I mistakenly grabbed one of the Hindi/Japanese verses to try translate it and Google Translate thought it was Nepali. So that was interesting!).

And, oh, by the way: the music video looks like this. It’s by Goppo Animation – an Indian animation studio that’s been making waves, and no wonder. Look at that. LOOK at it. Gorgeous.

6. Every You Every Me – Megan McDuffee

I usually try not to have more than one cover per list, but this is a song I don’t think I’ve ever heard covered before; the original is by the band Placebo, and this is a stunning version that keeps the grunginess of the original while adding synthwave elements — and of course a completely different type of vocals. This is my first introduction to Megan McDuffee and I’m very curious to dive more into her work — she’s apparently primarily a composer which means that the arrangement of this is likely all her work. Fantastic.

7. La imitacion es inutil – Mica Hourbeigt, Jazzie Lock

I’ve been ending up with a lot of Spanish-English bilingual music on my radar! Hardly surprising given the amount of Spanish speaking folks in the world. This particular track by Mica Hourbeigt – an Argentinian composer and producer — is a jazzy, alt-hard-rock number featuring Brooklyn-based Jazzie Lock. The descending fill at the beginning in particular is really distinctive, and it’s nice to hear a song I’d recognize a mile away.

8. Time – To Die In Beauty

A German electronic duo founded in 2021, To Die In Beauty have a distinct gothic/darkwave bent, and this song feels like something from a cybergoth future. Maybe more relaxed than a lot of the standard takes on the idea, but that’s part of what I like it. I’m not sure if it’s a deliberate reference to the Pink Floyd song, but honestly, when it comes to The Dark Side Of The Moon, if you think it’s a reference, it probably is.

What surprises me is that these folks only have 230 monthly listeners on Spotify — but I’m trying to move away from Spotify away, so I’m happy to report that they have their own website! Not just for promo, either; you can buy their tracks directly from them.

9. Self-Explained (ROC) – LoveX, JeeRAWRXD

An electro/hyperpop collab between a self-described Swedish femboy (LoveX) and an “aurizztic femcel bitch” (JeeRAWRXD), this song feels like an artifact from another time. Not in a bad way; it gives me flashbacks to high school, but in a cathartic kind of way. It’s a blend of hyperpop and scene on a base of purely 2020s-era instrumentation, and good god it gets stuck in my head. It’s the perfect length, too — short, but if it was any longer I think it would overstay its welcome between the layers of distortion and deliberately-fuzzy vocals. As it is, though, it’s perfect – catchy, edgy, and somehow just sincere enough.

10. 5150 – Mommy Mommy

This song is hard-hitting for me personally — on top of just genuinely being really good. It’s similar to Self-Explained in the mix of Y2K throwback aesthetics and modern sound, but in this case, it’s a blend of 2000s indie-rock with the wild distortion of queercore and industrial. 5150 is a reference to California’s law permitting an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold, and the song starts off slow and mournful about “voices telling me I’m better off dead” before the dissonance clatters in like an uninvited guest. It’s some incredible songwriting from a self-described queer band and I’ll definitely be following their work. My one gripe is that I would love to read the lyrics in detail, but I can’t find them anywhere! Post your lyrics, people! Let me love you!

And that’s my December round-up! January and February are on their way — and if you’d like me to give something of yours a listen, hit me up through the contact page.

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