On October 18, 2017, Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip received more American-media attention in a single day than they had in their entire 30-year career. There was the front-page placement in The New York Times’ Arts section, an extended feature at Rolling Stone, and an essay on Vulture, to name a few. Sadly, the newsfeed blitz wasnt spurred by a new album release or some reissue that triggered an overdue reappraisal of the Hip’s back catalog—the band’s lead singer, Gord Downie, had passed away at age 53 from brain cancer, unleashing a tsunami-sized outpouring of tears across Canada that couldnt help but seep into newsrooms south of border.Of course, posthumous appreciation for unsung artists is a storied rock n roll tradition. But the sight of Downie’s photo in major U.S. publications was especially bittersweet, given that so much of the Hip’s history was tied up in their inability to translate their decades-long domination of Canadian rock radio into widespread stateside success. North of the border, the band are unimpeachable icons, with nine No. 1 albums, 16 Juno Awards, and six million records sold (in a country of 30 million people where sales of just 100,000 earns you a platinum disc). They’re the sort of band whose songs you know verbatim even if you’ve never owned one of their records—because when you grow up in Canada, an encyclopedic knowledge of The Tragically Hip catalog is just something you naturally acquire, like a regional accent, or an inferiority complex.Sure, their fist-pumped riffs made them the go-to band for backward-baseball-capped bros across the land, yet as Downie’s latent eccentricities came to the fore, he became a magnet for misfits as well. The Hips songs have been covered by pop stars and punk bands and name-checked in rap tracks; even the 6 God bows before the Gord. When Downie publicly revealed his cancer diagnosis in the spring of 2016, the Hip embarked on a final cross-Canada arena tour that summer, the final show of which—on August 20, in the band’s hometown of Kingston, Ontario—was broadcast live by national broadcaster the CBC, was attended by Prime Minister/super-fan Justin Trudeau, and sparked massive public-viewing tailgate parties from coast to coast. I half expect that date to eventually become a new statutory holiday up here.Trying to explain the Hip to Americans is something of a parlor game for Canadians, one whose goalposts have shifted over the years. Initially, they were sort of like Crazy Horse fronted by an extra-spastic Michael Stipe, or a Rolling Stones greased by Midnight Oil. Then they became more like a hoser Pearl Jam, and in their later years, a Canuck cousin to Wilco. (Lately, I’ve come to think of them as a proto-National.) And in terms of celebrity stature, Downie was effectively our Springsteen, but with the jean jacket and bandana replaced by a hockey jersey and toque. He was a rock star with blue-collar blood, whose intimate portraits of Canadian life could stir a patriotic fervor with a simple small-town namedrop.But Downie’s hyper-specific local references and invocations of obscure Canadian history were probably as impenetrable to casual American listeners as, say, Mike Skinner’s bloke-speak. The closest the Hip came to breaching the border was in 1995, when, at the insistence of host/fellow Ontarian Dan Aykroyd, the band appeared as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live—a performance watched with bated breath across the nation like parents at a child’s first piano recital. Alas, the Monday-morning sales spike wasn’t to be. Never quite angry and abrasive enough for the post-Nirvana age, but too cerebral for the Black Crowes blues-rock/jam-band set, the Hip would resign themselves to being the biggest band in Canada, and Canada only.It certainly didnt help that The Tragically Hip came up in a pre-internet age when being a Canadian musician made you tragically unhip, long before the web-boosted likes of Arcade Fire, Drake, Grimes, et al. cemented the countrys international cachet. But where that lack of American recognition always seemed to append the Hip’s considerable legacy with an asterisk, over the years, it’s become more a point of pride. In a country whose pop-cultural identity has historically been caught in a tug-of-war between our patronizing parents in the U.K. and our boorish big brother south of the border, the Hip’s contained domestic success affirmed that there is, in fact, an ineffable Canadian sensibility that exists independently of our superpower relations. And in Downie, we had a uniquely Canadian rock star—which is to say, someone too humble and self-effacing and peculiar to ever fully embrace the job.Downie always seemed uncomfortable with the flag-waving hysteria the Hip’s music inspired, and seemed eager to steer their music beyond the beer can–crushing bruisers of their early records. While his band epitomized mainstream Canadian rock, Downie had long sought solace among the country’s indie cognoscenti. He collaborated with Eric’s Trip alumnus Julie Doiron (among other Canadian avant-indie veterans) for a string of solo albums through the 2000s; cut an entire record with Toronto roots-rock rebels The Sadies; guested on hardcore dynamos Fucked Up’s 2014 album, Glass Boys; and tapped Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew and The Stills’ Dave Hamelin to apply their sound-collage aesthetic to the album that would become his Tragically Hip swan song, Man Machine Poem.But his desire to challenge audiences went beyond mere music. After spending the past three decades making his fans proud to be Canadian, Downie spent his last year forcing them to grapple with what that really means, and confront the fact that the romanticized version of Canada that people like to associate with The Tragically Hip is a construct built on shaky—read: stolen—ground. Mere days after the Hip’s final show last August, with Canada still abuzz in a national love-in, Downie forcefully redirected the spotlight that had been fixed upon him onto the country’s heinous historical mistreatment of its Indigenous people. He announced a new solo album/graphic-novel project, Secret Path (also produced by Drew and Hamelin), based on the true story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old First Nations boy who escaped the notoriously abusive residential-school system only to die trying to find his way home.The conception and recording of Secret Path actually predated Downie’s cancer diagnosis by a couple of years, but when the album finally surfaced last fall, it felt like a suitably elegiac send-off for an artist long defined by his sense of compassion and generosity. Amazingly, as his condition worsened over the past year, Downie threw himself into the most ambitious recording project of his career. Just a week after his death, we saw the release of his Drew-produced double-LP Introduce Yerself, and like David Bowie’s Blackstar and Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, it’s an album that will be inextricably intertwined with its creator’s passing. But its not the typically grim meditation on mortality we’ve come to expect from an ailing artist: Each of the record’s 23 songs were written about a specific person in his life. Its a suitably selfless final gesture from Downie, providing a portal into a personal life he had closely guarded.In the same spirit, here’s a playlist of 23 songs to introduce non-Canadian newcomers to Downies deep discography. While it includes some Hip hits, these aren’t necessarily the band’s most popular songs. Rather, they’re ones that mostly venture beyond the band’s bar-rock roots and don’t require an Encyclopedia Canadiana to decode. And they’re the ones that most directly communicate Downie’s singular combination of outsized passion, white-knuckled intensity, sly humor, absurdity… and grace, too.

The history of indie/alt-rock is essentially one of serial reassessments and revivals—whether its of unsung trailblazers or previously dismissed pop stars. Through the late 80s and early 90s, the influence of the Velvet Underground was all pervasive; by decades end, everyone was into Can and Neu. At the turn of the new millennium, the ghost of Ian Curtis haunted the landscape. A few years later, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon underwent the transition from dad-rock deities to indie godheads. Now, it seems everythings coming up McDonald.Tom Petty never really had such a moment—but then, he didnt really have to. More than a specific sound, Petty represented an elusive ideal: He was the model that generations of raucous rockers —be it Dave Grohl or Death From Above 1979—have turned to whenever they wanted to chill out without losing their cool. And maybe the reason why his widespread influence never fortified into a dominant trend is that his acolytes have had so many Pettys from so many eras to choose from.Theres the power-poptimist of "American Girl," which yielded the hopscotch backbeat and needlepoint jangle of The Strokes "Last Nite" and the anthemic, open-sunroof ardor of Japandroids "Evils Sway." Theres the streetwise soul-man of "The Waiting," whose warm glow is exquisitely recreated by Chicago garage combo Twin Peaks on "Cold Lips." Theres the asphalt-rippin rocker of "Runnin Down the Dream," which New York outfit The Men roughed up into the caustic roots-punk barn-burner "Without a Face." Theres the synth-smoothed surrealist of "Dont Come Around Here No More," which provides the pulsating, slow-dissolve backdrop for Phosphorescents "Song For Zula." Theres the luminous acoustic balladeer of Full Moon Fever, which opened up a rural route for urbane indie rockers like Pavement and Liz Phair to travel down. There was his busmans holiday with Traveling Wilburys, whose easy-going honky-pop echoes through the shimmering strums of Dan Auerbachs "Shine on Me." And theres the weed-dazed folkie of "You Dont Know How It Feels," which finds a spiritual sequel of sorts in Wilcos "Passenger Side" (a song that Petty couldve very well have written after rolling that other joint).Tom Petty was like oxygen—always there, all around us, if imperceptibly so. And its nigh impossible to comprehend a world without him. But while his songs will be heard on classic-rock radio and covered by new-country acts for eternity, the artists on this playlist have, over the past two decades, burrowed the seeds of his influence at a more subterranean level, where they continue to flourish. There may be more popular tunes that have overtly—or subconsciously—copped Pettys melodies, but these songs more eagerly carry his spirit into the great wide open.

Punks various origin stories have been documented ad infinitum, and through them, the movements myriad influences have been enshrined in a familiar proto-punk canon. It includes everything from the snotty 60s garage-rock bands compiled on Lenny Kayes Nuggets compilation to the metallic Motor City soul of the MC5 to the sleazy glam of the New York Dolls to the proletariat pub rock of Dr. Feelgood. But while theres no denying the impact these groups had on punks inaugural class-of-76, to 2018 ears, a lot of them can sound, well, a little tame. Sure, a Nuggets standard like The Standells "Dirty Water" oozes bratty attitude, but its really no more threatening than the average golden oldie. And while the brash swagger of the New York Dolls still resounds, they essentially sound like a more irreverent Rolling Stones.But in this playlist, we highlight the pre-punk songs that, to this day, sound every bit as violent and visceral as what followed. Certainly, theres some expected names: Iggy and the Stooges 1972 thrasher "I Got a Right" actually blows past punk completely to invent hardcore a good six years early. And the nastiest of Nuggets, like The Music Machines "Talk Talk," still hit like a leather-gloved fist to the face. But there also are a number of classic-rock icons here who, in their most unhinged and primordial states, rival anything punk coughed up——listen to John Lennon shred his throat into a bloody pulp on "Well Well Well," or Deep Purple fuse 50s hot-rod rock and 70s metal on "Speed King." Punk may have preached "no future," but these songs still blaze like theres no past.

Even if you dont take part in Christmas (whether its because of religious reasons, a disdain for the hyper-commercialized culture surrounding it, or youre just a miserable bastard), you can at least appreciate the fact that, if you only for a day, the world seems to slow down just a little. The streets are emptier, social-media notifications seem more infrequent, and the possibility of receiving work-related emails after-hours momentarily diminishes. And hey, in an age where our smartphones have all but genetically fused with our fingers, thats something even this Jew can all celebrate.In that spirit, weve put together a playlist of songs that may be (directly or tangentially) about Christmas, but theyre nobodys idea of a traditional Christmas song. Sure, some of them actually chronicle the birth of a certain future messiah, but in Big Stars "Jesus Christ," Alex Chilton announces his arrival with all the matter-of-fact nonchalance of a newspaper birth notice, while Lou Barlows beautifully blasphemous "Mary" posits that the whole immaculate-conception deal was concocted by JCs mom to disguise the fact she was knocked up by the man next door. (Neil Young goes one further by suggesting, "Maybe the star of Bethlehem/ Wasnt a star at all.")Other songs here delve into the dark side of the season, be it portraits of drug addicts with no capacity for holiday cheer (The Falls "No Xmas for John Quays"), or cautionary tales about beaten-up department-store Santas (The Kinks "Father Christmas). Or there are songs where Christmas is merely invoked as the fantastical backdrop to animal-liberation missions (The Flaming Lips "Christmas at the Zoo") or as an ironic counterpoint to scenes of everyday urban malaise (Run the Jewels "A Christmas Fucking Miracle"). And then are the abstract instrumentals (Mogwais "Xmas Steps" and Aphex Twins "XMAS_EVET10[120][thanaton3mix]) whose Christmas connection may not amount to anything more than a randomly applied song title, but nonetheless carry a palpable wintry chill.So if youre the sort of person who wouldnt be caught dead in a Santa hat, or you have a burning desire to tell the carollers outside to fa-la-la-la-fuck-off, heres a Christmas playlist for atheists and assholes alike.

Whenever you come across a list of the most influential rock bands of the ‘90s, you can easily predict the core names you’ll see on there: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and so on. Rarely will you see the name Better Than Ezra. Yet they’re arguably more emblematic of the era than any of the groups mentioned above. Because all those other bands never really went away—to this day, you still hear them regularly on the radio, you can still spot their names in headlines on major music sites, and you still see new generations of kids wearing their faux-vintage t-shirts. In that sense, they belong to 2002 and 2009 and 2018 as much as they do 1993. Better Than Ezra are likewise still a going concern—they released a new single in June—but to many people, they are a band inextricably tied to the year 1995, when their single “Good” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.“Good” is the entire ‘90s alt-rock narrative condensed into three minutes and five seconds. It’s the ultimate totem of an era when the major-label trawl for the next Nirvana was cast so far and wide, it swept up any DIY group with a distortion pedal and quirky name—even one that cut its teeth playing frat parties in the indie-rock desert of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But more significantly, it’s the song that effectively marks the end point of the ‘90s alt-rock revolution—the moment where the last remaining edges of an underground-spawned sound had been sanded off and polished into pop.With its strolling bassline triggering an earworm chorus caked in fuzz, “Good” dutifully followed the quiet/LOUD playbook established by the Pixies on their 1988 debut album, Surfer Rosa. That record’s violent mood swings were the natural sonic manifestation of a band trying to reconcile its formative loves of Peter, Paul and Mary and Hüsker Dü (the two influences that, according to legend, were listed in the classified ad that recruited bassist Kim Deal). But Surfer Rosa also represented a crucial evolutionary step beyond indie rock’s ‘80s hardcore roots, with its carnage unleashed in more controlled, strategic bursts, and Deal’s basslines serving as the cool counterpoint to Black Francis and Joey Santiago’s flesh-searing guitar onslaught. Before long, that poise-to-noise maneuver was being duplicated in all corners of the alterna-verse—most famously by Nirvana, whose frontman, Kurt Cobain, openly admitted to aping the Pixies.But if Nevermind set off the bomb that forever destroyed the barriers separating the underground and mainstream, what followed was an ongoing effort to clear the path and clean up the debris. In the hands of bands like Weezer and Bush, the spastic dynamic shifts mastered by the Pixies started to resemble carefully mapped peaks and valleys that you could see coming from a mile away. And though Better Than Ezra’s “Good”—and the album from which it hailed, Deluxe—was originally released independently in 1993, its mainstream-breaching major-label reissue in 1995 couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. By that point, the post-Pixies sound had become so familiar on alt-rock radio that Better Than Ezra could easily settle into their chart-topping position as if gliding into the ass groove on a vintage secondhand leather sofa. And while none of the band’s subsequent releases achieved the same level of zeitgeist-defining ubiquity, their less-heralded 21st-century catalog has attracted at least one famous fan, perhaps providing a clearer view of the band’s legacy: More than just the fleeting ‘90s alt-rock sensation of popular perception, Better Than Ezra are actually the missing link between Black Francis and Taylor Swift.

After the 1980 death of John Bonham brought Led Zeppelin to a crashing halt, Robert Plant honored his band’s legacy by letting go of it. After all, the ultimate way to respect what Zeppelin accomplished—and Bonham’s crucial, inimitable contributions to it—was to lay the band to rest, and make no attempts to recapture their uncommon alchemy and ungodly roar with some ringer. (And when you consider The Who’s middling post-Keith Moon albums from the early ‘80s, who could blame him.) So on his first couple of solo records, Plant remodeled himself for the ‘80s, the shirtless golden god of old reborn as a suave, tidily coiffed, synth-pop sophisticate, leaving the blooze-metal regurgitation to the Whitesnakes and Kingdom Comes of the world. But by 1987’s Now and Zen, the specter of Plant’s former band had become unavoidable—not only did Jimmy Page guest on the hot-rod-revving single “Tall Cool One,” the song climaxed with a barrage of Zeppelin samples. And through 1990’s Manic Nirvana and 1993’s Fate of Nations, Plant tried to put a modernist spin on Zeppelinesque bombast, before just saying “fuck it” and hooking up with Page for a reunion that yielded an MTV Unplugged special and an album of new originals, 1998’s Steve Albini-produced Walking Into Clarksdale.But while he spent the first two decades of his solo career running away from his musical legacy and then gradually inching back toward it, Plant has spent the 21st century establishing a new one. Starting with 2002’s Dreamland, Plant has seemed less like a solo artist fronting hired guns who are not Led Zeppelin, and more like a co-pilot taking direction from an amorphous cast of intriguing collaborators, including bluegrass queen Alison Krauss (his partner on 2007’s Grammy Award-winning Raising Sand) and folk-rock veteran Patti Griffin (with whom he communed—professionally and, for a time, romantically—on 2010’s Cajun-cooked Band of Joy). And then there’s his recurring backing band the Sensational Space Shifters (formerly Strange Sensation), an exploratory, stylistically dextrous ensemble centered around guitarists Justin Adams (who’s played with Jah Wobble and Brian Eno) and Liam Tyson (formerly of Britpop chancers Cast), bassist Bill Fuller (also of Geoff Barrow’s Krautrockin’ trio Beak), and a pair of Portishead associates, John Baggot (synths) and Clive Deamer (drums).Collectively, these musicians have encouraged Plant to dig deeper into Zeppelin’s roots—American blues, British folk, Middle Eastern textures—but instead of blowing them up to into a proto-metal pomp, they throw them into a frying pan and melt them down into a mercurial elixir that’s reformulated in fascinating ways. That’s not to say he doesn’t occasionally get the Led out—the 2005 track “Tin Pan Alley” may be steeped in eerie Radiohead-esque atmospherics, but it eventually explodes into a Viking wail that echoes back to “Immigrant Song.” However, for the most part, Plant is entirely at home in his lower register, turning in some of the most graceful, beautifully understated performances of his career on the piano ballad “A Stolen Kiss” and the jangle-pop gem “House of Love.” And we’ve seen greater evidence of the ravenous record collector who’s fond of chatting up his current musical obsessions in interviews. Plant’s post-millennial catalog is loaded with exceptional covers, from an apocalyptic interpretation of the traditional gospel spiritual “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” to the dreamy drift through Low’s “Silver Rider” to a reverential reading of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” that suggests Plant is well familiar with This Mortal Coil’s definitive version.The shadow of Led Zeppelin will forever loom large over Plant’s career, and so long as Plant, Page, and John Paul Jones are all still alive, murmurs of a reunion will refuse to die. But as Plant sets out for another voyage with the Sensational Space Shifters on his new album Carry Fire, let’s celebrate the 21st-century renaissance of an artist who should be regarded alongside Bowie, Peter Gabriel, and Neil Young as one of the most restlessly adventurous artists of his generation.

When we think of the truly transformative albums in pop history—those rare records that clearly mark a line between “before” and “after”—they tend to herald a seismic moment in musical innovation (Sgt. Pepper’s), generational upheaval (Nevermind), or social unrest (To Pimp a Butterfly). But in its own subtle, sophisticated way, Air’s 1998 Moon Safari belongs to this class of game-changing albums. Appearing at the tail end of the ‘90s alterna-boom, it signalled a 180-degree shift away from indie-rock’s lo-fi, thrift-store aesthetic into the sort of plush, expansive sound that demanded attentive listening in leather easy chairs and through expensive stereos. It was an album that made once-verboten guilty pleasures——’70s prog-rock, lush vocoderized disco, easy-listening exotica——innocent again, while firmly entrenching the seductive symphonic funk of Serge Gainbourg in the indie lexicon alongside rickety Velvet Underground rhythms and Sonic Youthian discord. And for better or worse, Moon Safari codified the concept of the bistro album, supplying the finest audio wallpaper to exposed-brick, Edison-bulbed eateries around the world. When you consider indie-rock’s transformation from scrappy, DIY artform to commerical sync-license gold in the 21st century, you can’t discount Moon Safari’s aspirational influence and affluence.This playlist hones in on its immediate moment of impact. In the wake of Moon Safari, guitar-oriented acts like Radiohead and The Flaming Lips refashioned themselves as studio scientists to pursue sounds both more elegant and experimental. Daft Punk’s heavy-duty house began exhibiting a more pronounced ‘70s soft-rock flavor. And you couldnt swing a rolled-up shag carpet without hitting an upstart downtempo duo like Röyksopp, Arling & Cameron, Lemon Jelly and Thievery Corporation. And in Zero 7, you had the more pop-oriented successor that took Air’s retro-futurist soundscapes into the mainstream. With Moon Safari turning 20 this month, let’s bask in its lunar eclipse.

In his 40-plus years fronting The Fall, Mark E. Smith did little to dispel his reputation as rock n rolls most cantankerous character. There was the routine sacking of bandmates, the onstage fisticuffs, the arrests, the infamous interview slag-fests, the take-no-prisoners autobiography, the seeming ambivalence to losing teeth. And this is to say nothing of the thirtysomething albums he released with The Fall, a fearsome, oft-impenetrable body of work overflowing with relentless rants and scathing social critique set against an ever-shifting avant-punk backdrop.That reputation now transcends from the realm of the anecdotal to the mythical with the news that Smith has stumbled off to the great pub in the sky, having passed away on January 24 at age 60 (after chronic respiratory issues led to a raft of gig cancellations over the course of 2017). But while Smiths notoriety is certainly justified, there are plenty of grass blades sprouting out of the cracks in The Falls cold-concrete terrain——songs where Smiths sardonic sense of humor comes to the fore ("15 Ways"), where his bark calms into a croon ("Popcorn Double Feature"), where he faithfully reinterprets 60s-rocks nuggets (The Moves "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," The Kinks "Victoria"), where he bends The Falls sound into something resembling synth-pop ("C.R.E.E.P."), where he steps onto the dance floor (with Mouse on Mars as Von Südenfed), where he gives reggae ("Kurious Oranj") and disco (Sister Sledges "Lost in Music") a go, and where he provides episode recaps of Gossip Girl ("Nate Will Not Return"). In the wonderful and frightening world of The Fall, these are the tracks that comprise the former.

While the internet has hurtled us light-speed into the future, its most pervasive effect (as noted by writer Simon Reynolds in his 2011 book Retromania) has been to make the past instantly accessible, reviving cultural artifacts and iconography long ago erased from our collective memory and stripping them of their context. The late-2000s indie-pop permutation known as chillwave was the sound of that process happening in real time. It was a virtual mood board of borrowed nostalgia for a half-remembered ‘80s, with old-school rap beats, electro synth bleeps, plush yacht-rock, Baeleric house, and 4AD dream-pop all blurring together like repurposed images in a rapidly scrolling Tumblr feed, and mutating and fading like the resolution on an overused VHS tape.Of course, like all genre buzzwords, nobody wanted to own it at the time, and both its key progenitors (Ariel Pink, Animal Collective) and early ambassadors (Toro y Moi, Washed Out) have since moved on to pursue more grandiose visions or pop-accessible paths. But like many easy-to-dismiss fads, chillwave’s sound has lingered to become a permanent component in the contemporary indie toolkit. Its DNA is present in the music of modern-day mavericks like Blood Orange and Tame Impala, and it’s had a soluble effect on the sound of latter-day Flaming Lips and Destroyer; even Nick Cave’s 2016 track “Rings of Saturn” bears its unlikely influence. A decade on from its emergence, chillwave very much remains the future sound of our ever-present past.

Note: This playlist follows a loose chronological structure reflecting when these songs were released during 2017—which I like to think provides a more accurate snapshot of the year as it was lived, as opposed to a ranked list based on totally unquantifiable criteria. The cruel irony of being a music critic in 2017 is that the very thing that makes the gig easier—i.e., plentiful, push-button access to practically the entire history of recorded sound—is also the very thing that threatens one’s sense of expertise. The truth is, the two cornerstones of the job description—a) being an authority in your field and b) staying current—are becoming mutually exclusive ideals, as your listening queue perpetually extends like an unchecked email account. Spending quality time with a given record means missing out on another 50 probably-amazing albums that came out this week. I’m at the point now where artists whose work I’ve loved for years, or even decades, will release a new record, and it takes me months to get around to giving it a cursory listen, if I don’t outright forget that it even exists. (Sorry, Liars!) These days, music writers essentially play the role of sommelier, giving records a momentary swish before spewing ’em out and moving onto the next one.It’s an especially pervasive condition in the perennially over-populated field we call indie rock—a term that now encompasses everyone from aspiring Bandcamp chancers to Grammy-winning arena acts. And in between those goalposts you have annual bumper crops of hotly tipped breakout artists, modestly successful mid-career acts still slogging it out, solo albums, side projects, and ‘90s veterans who decide to take a crack at the reunion circuit. And this is to say nothing of the stylistic variation that field covers. Forty years ago, you wouldnt deign to lump Bruce Springsteen, The Fall, William Onyeabor, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, and Hawkwind into the same genre category. Yet when you consider those artists contemporary spiritual offspring—Japandroids, Sleaford Mods, Pierre Kwenders, The Weather Station, Moses Sumney, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard—theyre all huddled under the umbrella of indie.As such, there is no narrative through-line or overarching theme that could possibly connect the songs on this collection of my favorite indie-rock songs of 2017. (Well, other than it was an exceptionally good year for Australia!) Certainly, in this never-ending shit-show of a year, there was a need for music that could help us navigate these tumultuous times, be it Priests emotionally fraught dream-punk (“Nothing Feels Natural”), Algiers palace-storming soul stomps (“The Underside of Power”), or Weaves freak-flag rallying cries (“Scream”). But then, 2017 was so fucked up and draining on so many levels, you could forgive America’s fiercest rabble-rousers—Philly DIY heroes Sheer Mag, pictured above—for wanting to take a momentary break from the brick-tossing and seek solace in the discotheque (“Need to Feel Your Love”).At a time when the very fate of humanity felt more perilous and unknowable than at any point in our lifetime, you take comfort in the little things. Sometimes all I wanted was to escape into a fully realized fantasy of Stevie Nicks making a Cure album (Louise Burns’ “Storms”) or King Krule going Krautrock (via Mount Kimbie’s “Blue Train Lines”) or The Go-Betweens being brought back to life (Rolling Blackouts C.F.’s “The French Press”). In some instances, it was an especially outrageous lyric that provided levity (from Alex Cameron and Angel Olsen’s misfit-romance anthem “Stranger’s Kiss”: “I got shat on by an eagle, baby/ now I’m king of the neighbourhod/ and I guess that I could/ just tear the gym pants off a single mother”); in others, I was transfixed by an extended instrumental build-up (Thurston Moore’s gong-crashing “Exalted”) or a perfectly messy guitar solo (The National’s “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” The War on Drugs’ “Up All Night”). It was a year of being taken by surprise by bands I had taken for granted (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s “Ambulance Chaser,” Guided by Voices’ “Nothing Gets You Real”), awestruck by long-dormant artists who seemingly reemerged from out of nowhere (be it Land of Talk with the intensely aching “Heartcore” or former Only Ones frontman Peter Perrett’s winsome “Troika”), and blindsided by artists I had never heard before (noise-punk powerhouse Dasher’s “Go Rambo,” Montreal sound collagist Joni Void’s “Cinema Without People,” art-pop phenom Jay Som’s magisterial “For Light”).Of course, there is also a regional bias at play here. Even as it’s become the province of national late-night talk shows and destination mega-festivals, indie rock is still nothing without its local scenes, and this playlist inevitably reflects my roots in the Southern Ontario corridor. This year, several under-the-radar acts I’ve been fortunate enough to see come into their own over the past few years—stoner-prog titans Biblical, avant-pop activist Petra Glynt, the Slim Twig/U.S. Girls-led fuzz-boogie supergroup Darlene Shrugg, industrial-electro trio Odonis Odonis—all released excellent albums that effectively bottled up their onstage energy for the world to see.But mostly what you get on this playlist is a lot of great, seasoned, chronically under-appreciated artists doing what they do and continuing to do it very well, from Chain and the Gang’s anti-capitalist garage-punk manifesto “Devitalize” to British Sea Power’s crestfallen “Don’t Let the Sun Get in the Way” to The Dears’ triumphant “1998” to Pavement co-founder Spiral Stairs’ sweetly slack “Angel Eyes” (a touching tribute to his late drummer, Darius Minwalla). There are few rewards for consistency in life, and especially not in the incessant, feed-refreshing world of indie rock. But in a time of insatiable suck-it-up-and-spit-it-out musical consumption, these songs handily passed the swish test, and demanded to be savored.P.S.: Ty Segall’s Drag City catalog isn’t available on Spotify, otherwise I would’ve included his gonzo 10-minute "Cant You Hear Me Knocking"-scaled tour de force, “Freedom (Warm Hands).” Ditto for Boss Hog’s ace comeback album, Brood X, which just goes to show that getting featured in Baby Driver wasn’t the only great thing to happen to Jon Spencer this year.