Stereogums weekly compilation of their favorite songs on the indie rock/pop/hip-hop spectrum.
Ambrosia For Heads was launched in 2010 and focuses on the more head-nodding, true-skool side of the hip-hop and R&B spectrum. Their playlist updates every week or so, and features the best new tracks from that corner of the world.
Billboards iconic top 100 chart, updated weekly. This is pulled from their Spotify account, which only includes 90 or so songs, oddly enough.
New media entertainment conglomerate The Fader has been at the forefront of music culture for nearly 20 years. Each week, they capture that week’s top new releases for their “Songs You Need in Your Life” playlist.
Pigeons & Planes is a music site that focuses on hip-hop, R&B, and indie. (Since 2011, theyve been owned by Complex.) Their P&P Weekly is a great resource for keeping track of modern urban music. It’s updated every week (or so).
Check out Pitchforks pick for the best new tracks, updated weekly or as they arrive.
The best new music from across all pop genres, brought to you by the curation team at Spotify.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
