Alternative

You read that right: This is 90s "alt-pop," not "alt-rock." If alt-rock represented the commercialization of 80s indie-rock, then these artists represented the commercialization of alt-rock. These are the diluted descendants of Nirvana, Green Day, Beck, and other legit underground-to-mainstream crossovers, artists who didnt have to worry about selling out, because, with few exceptions, they had no indie cred to begin with. They were "alternative" only by virtue of existing in the 90s, when any rock act that wasnt Aerosmith was ostensibly "alternative." Theyre the artists who made Kurt Cobain roll over in his grave more vigorously than most.But if each of these songs represented a nail in the coffin of the freak-scene utopia that Neverminds success briefly promised, today they function as a portal to an equally distant and inaccessible realm: i.e., a more innocent pre-9/11 era, before our hearts were perpetually filled with despair over the state of the world, before social media was clogging our brains with a 24/7 dose of aggravation. Lets go back to a world where our sunshine never got stolen.

The most maligned woman in rock history, Evelyn McDonnell called her, and it’s not hyperbole. Yet for studiocraft, Fly, Feeling the Space, and especially Approximately Infinite Universe deserve the scrutiny that her husband’s desultory Nixon-era albums get from Beatlephiles (she pushes her husband to new heights as a lead guitarist, too). Toss in Season of Glass and Rising and I had to stop noting the number of excellent songs written by Yoko Ono. Her influence is profound: from Alex Chilton’s pilfering the melody of “Mrs. Lennon” for “Holocaust” to the B-52’s and Sleater-Kinney. Walking on Thin Ice, a distillation of the Rykodisc Onobox, is one of the great accidental purchases of my life — at a Best Buy in summer ’96!Eight years younger than my grandmother, Yoko is still recording: I wish I’d heard Take Me to the Land of Hell, and she enjoys a thriving second life as the object of okay to excellent remixes of older material that have taken her to the top of the American dance charts.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Captain Beefheart was a man, but also an idea, and to write a straightforward piece about him here seems antithetical to his essence. He had a mustache sometimes and other times he had a goatee; sometimes he wore a fedora and other times he wore a cowboy or top hat. Despite having no musical training, he played numerous instruments. Occasionally, he composed at the piano, which he did not know how to play. He was friends with Frank Zappa, who produced Trout Mask Replica. His music is indisputably its own strange amalgamation, but it was still as directly tied to the confusion of the ‘60s as any music ever was, fusing blues, beat poetry, jazz, rock ‘n roll, psychedelic, noise, and avant-garde. His voice was almost magical and he could shift between gravelly falsetto and rumbling baritone at the drop of a harmonica. To try to make sense of Captain Beefheart is pointless, and furthermore, it goes against his very being. Sure, he can be understood as a social phenomenon, but this playlist isn’t about that. It’s called “Captain Beefheart Insanity.” Just go with it.

In May 2005, the Illinois quartet Fall Out Boy were just starting to get known outside of Midwestern emo circles when they took a candid backstage pic with two unlikely supporters: JAY Z and Beyoncé. Jay, then an executive at the Island Def Jam conglomerate that had just released the band’s latest album, was probably just schmoozing as a businessman. But that photo-op foreshadowed Fall Out Boy’s ambitions to reach outside of pop-punk, and mix rap, R&B, dance music, and classic rock into a sound that could provide a little something for everyone.Fall Out Boy’s early forays into hip-hop were self consciously awkward. Their next album, 2007’s Infinity On High, featured a cameo appearance by JAY Z, but he just blandly played hypeman on the opening track, “Thriller.” The video for the lead single, “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race,” mockingly depicts the culture clash of Fall Out Boy recording with a hip-hop producer, and being “thrown out the hood” after they break someone’s 40 ounce. Kanye West appeared on a remix of the song, but he mostly just shrugged that he didn’t know what the song was about and riffed on the band’s tight jeans. But Infinity On High showed signs that the group wasn’t just clowning on their own tenuous grasp of black music: The Babyface-produced “I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off” was an early glimpse of Patrick Stump’s chops as an R&B crooner.Over the next few years, Fall Out Boy would work hip-hop into their sound more fluidly, utilizing Lil Wayne and Pharrell Williams to great effect on 2008’s Folie à Deux. But they also demonstrated that their taste in rock ranged far outside pop-punk and emo, seeking out Elvis Costello, Elton John, and Courtney Love for collaborations. They wrote their own cheeky Christmas song, “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out,” and their cover sources ranged from Michael Jackson to Disney’s The Jungle Book.During an extended hiatus in the early 2010s, the members of Fall Out Boy moved onto side projects that illustrated their far-ranging influences. Patrick Stump’s 2011 solo album, Soul Punk, was full of lo-fi homages to Prince; bassist Pete Wentz united with future pop star Bebe Rexha for the dancey duo Black Cards; and guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley formed the metal band The Damned Things with members of Anthrax and Volbeat.Since reconvening in 2013, Fall Out Boy have put even more of a pop polish on their albums and have continued to stir together genres, making an entire rap remix album (2015’s Make America Psycho Again) and working with everyone from Demi Lovato to Missy Elliott. They even dashed off an EP of breakneck punk anthems produced by Ryan Adams, 2013’s PAX AM Days, just to prove they hadn’t abandoned their roots. Their seventh album, Mania, is set to continue diversifying Fall Out Boy’s résumé through collaborations with pop superstar Sia, folk singer Audra Mae, R&B producer Illangelo, and Afrobeat star Burna Boy. And it was preceded by a single, “Young And Menace,” that put the band’s sound in an EDM blender even while the lyrics nodded to Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx—yet another defiant statement that Fall Out Boy will never stay in their lane.

Described by Guitar Girl Magazine as "a Latin artist who combines hypnotic, electronic funk with alternative and psychedelic styles," DeAnza recently released her concept EP Cosmic Dream on June 29. The collection of tracks and interludes designed to take you on a sonic journey through the various sleep cycles. To continue celebrating that release and her subsequent tour, we asked her to make us a playlist thats as eclectic as her style. Listen here.Says DeAnza: "I went through several playlist ideas in my head before deciding to create a list that’s as eclectic as the music I listen to. Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music – good and bad. I created a list that consists of what I believe to be good music, regardless of the genre or era. All of these artists have inspired me in some form or another."What you’ll get: Some classics, witchy women who I idolize, singers who blow my mind, couple deep cuts and some Latin spice for those who want to hear something that isn’t Despacito."

In 2017, synth-punk pioneer Gary Numan released his 21st album, Savage (Songs From a Broken World), a dystopian concept album that hit No. 2 on the UK album charts. On this playlist he created specially for The Dowsers, Numan reveals the eclectic influences that have kept him on the vanguard of electronic rock for four decades. “The playlist is based on inspiration. All of these songs have inspired me in various ways—some small, as in discovering an interesting sound or lyric; some major, as in encouraging a complete rethink and change in my own musical direction. But they all played a part in shaping the music Ive made over the last 40 years.”—Gary Numan

As Miley Cyrus gears up to release her sixth studio album, Younger Now, she appears to have come full circle: from nepotistic wholesome country actress to culturally appropriating twerking pop star to experimental absurdist performer and back again. It seems like just yesterday Miley was apologizing for disappointing her fans because she took a bong rip of “salvia” on camera, the first in a string of rebellious acts that disintegrated Cyrus’s family-friendly image one TMZ headline at a time. Now Cyrus is engaged to her longtime on-and-off again celebrity partner Liam Hemsworth, and she’s infamously shed much of the “bad girl” image that defined her for the past several years.Miley’s look and sound have changed so much that it’s easy to forget her last album, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, was a strange collaboration with Wayne Coyne that featured Big Sean, Phantogram, and Ariel Pink. Miley released the album, which had no pop singles, online for free. The project represented the culmination of Miley’s personal and artistic experimentation, the depths of the “weird phase” from which she seems to have emerged unscathed.About a year before that album came out, Miley spoke to Rolling Stone about her relationship with The Flaming Lips. She claimed she had been listening to that band exclusively, as the two had been teaming up in the studio to record some Beatles covers. Miley’s work with Coyne and the rest of The Flaming Lips undoubtedly influenced her music and performance style during the buildup to Dead Petz, but it’s surprising to revisit just how strong her relationship with the band became.This playlist, which consists of the 10 songs Miley listed to Rolling Stone in that May 2014 feature, contains some unlikely choices. Miley doesn’t mention “Do You Realize?>” “She Don’t Use Jelly,” “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song,” or any of the Lips’ more widely recognizable songs. Miley lists “Try to Explain,” from 2013’s The Terror, as her No. 1 choice, an understandably contemporary pick for a young fan. Yet she also digs deeper, citing Zaireeka’s “Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair” and Soft Bulletin cuts like “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” and “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” among her favorites. She also includes the rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Money” that The Flaming Lips did with Henry Rollins for their 2009 Dark Side of the Moon cover album.Miley displayed a thorough knowledge of The Flaming Lips’ discography in her Rolling Stone interview, and the songs she picked span various eras of the band’s work. The Flaming Lips have maintained an unusually lengthy musical career, due in large part to a constantly evolving sound and a consistently entertaining, always absurd onstage presence. Even if Miley’s sound shifts back from the strange turn it once took, the singer could learn a thing or two about longevity from her former collaborators. Either way, The Flaming Lips have obviously impacted Miley’s life in a significant manner, and all of us could benefit from having our pop stars be fans of one of the best experimental psychedelic bands of all time. And besides, listening to 10 good Flaming Lips songs has to be better than listening to Miley’s new album, right?

Whats This Playlist All About? The venerable music site ranks the chillest, haziest, and, of course dreamiest indie albums of all time—or at least those with a vague sense of "atmosphere, intimacy, and a light coating of psychedelia."

What You Get: An airy assortment of breathy, often angelic vocals, floating atop sumptuous layers of soporific sound. As its name implies, "dream pop" doesnt have any sort of concrete meaning or even unifying song structure, a truth even Pitchfork owns up to. Still, something intangible, ethereal, maybe even mystical, links these artists together, from the undisputed originators Cocteau Twins, who easily take the No. 1 spot with Heaven or Las Vegas, to their respected disciples Beach House (who also nab two spots). In between, the mood subtly shifts; the dark noir of Julee Cruise slips into the colorful pop of Atlas Sound, while the ambient melancholy of Grouper gives way to the euphoric nostalgia of M83 and the sultry twang of Mazzy Star and Mojave 3.

Best Surprise: The inclusion of Brightblack Morning Light, especially their featured track—the slinky, druggy doozy "Everybody Daylight”—which has always managed to slip under the radar.

What Did They Miss? Their "conscious decision to not include records that wound up on our Best Shoegaze Albums list—even though shoegaze and dream pop have, at times, been used interchangeably,” kind of messes with the playlist listening experience. Thing is, we dont care whats on the shoegaze list when were listening to the dream pop one, so to not include certain "shoegaze" standards like, say, MBV or Slowdive or bands like Pale Saints and Seefeel, feels slightly off. Theres also plenty of people noting the absence of Cocteau Twins Treasure.

Still flying high on their 2016 release, Strange Little Birds, and their summer 2017 tour with Blondie, alt-rock icons Garbage also recently released a coffee-table book chronicling their two-decade history, titled This Is the Noise That Keeps Me Awake. But on this playlist she created specially for The Dowsers, frontwoman Shirley Manson reveals the songs she turns to when she wants to cry herself to sleep. “The Winner Takes It All,” ABBA: The first slow dance I ever shared with a boy was to this song. I didn’t know at the time that it was a song about divorce, but I do now. Pop brilliance at its finest.“I’m a Fool to Want You,” Billie Holiday: I have nothing but love and gratitude for Billie Holliday and her artistry. True love forever.“Don’t Smoke in Bed,” Peggy Lee: The first time I realized that a song didn’t need to be catchy or feel good. It could tell a story—and a great, heartbreaking one at that.“So in Love,” Ella Fitzgerald: I associate Ella Fitzgerald with my mum because she played her so regularly in our household. This song is killer.“Wild Is the Wind,” Nina Simone: Nina Simone is without doubt the greatest voice I have ever heard in my life. And this song is blissful agony to listen to from start to finish. Utter perfection.“Anyone Who Had a Heart,” Dusty Springfield: After listening to this song, I always feel like I just got gutted like a fish.“Troy,” Sinéad O’Connor: One of my most favorite singers of all time. Sinead has the voice of a creature sent from the heavens. We must strive harder to cherish her whilst she still walks amongst us.“Revenge,” Patti Smith: Patti is everything to me. She is a god. She is a light. She is my go-to when everything gets dark.“You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” The Supremes: One of the first songs I can remember singing along to into the handle of my hairbrush at the top of my lungs. Diana Ross remains, to this day. one of my most beloved stars.“Why Dya Do it,” Marianne Faithfull: This song is perfect. I wish I’d written it. A woman destroyed is a woman not to be trifled with.“Winter Kills,” Yazoo: Fucking love how twisted and dark this still sounds.“Save Me,” Joan Armatrading: I love how unique and rich Joan Armatrading’s voice is. A criminally underrated, and unsung talent.“Oh Daddy,” Fleetwood Mac: I participated in a recording of this song during music class at school. It was the first time I’d ever been inside a recording studio. My music class was very inspired by Fleetwood Mac at the time, and I remain so.“You’re Not the Only One I Know,” The Sundays: I love how deliciously cavalier this song sounds. So easy and breezy and bitchy.“I Go to Sleep,” Pretenders: I have cried myself to sleep over and over to this song. Chrissie Hynde slays me every time.“Here You Come Again,” Dolly Parton: The most brilliant and sunny angel on earth.“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” Ike & Tina Turner: The vocal is completely sick.“Talking in Your Sleep,” Crystal Gayle: This song is so fucking sad! I first heard it listening to a tiny radio my grannie gave to me for my ninth birthday. I didn’t really understand what it meant at the time, but I could tell it didn’t mean anything good.“Cry Me a River,” Julie London: Such a nasty little song disguised in such silky and satin sounds.“I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor: Favorite rebound song of all time. Game over. Mic drop.NOTE: Shortly after this list was published, Shirley Tweeted us the following request, which we have honored, of course:

🖤Can you add in Amy Winehouse Back to Black? I don’t understand why I forgot to add this song. The voice of a generation.🖤

— Garbage (@garbage) November 10, 2017

Photo Credit: Joseph CulticeSaveSave

For the past three years, I’ve been impressing people—hell, impressing myself—with the fact that I’ve been to Tom Petty’s house. I’d gone to Malibu to interview him for UNCUT magazine about Hypnotic Eye. Admirably raucous and rancorous, it proved to be his final studio album with the Heartbreakers, the band that he fronted for the better part of 40 years. So that album’s mostly what we talked about in a room next to his studio, which he’d built next to the rambling, Spanish-style, and thoroughly unpretentious home he bought after an arsonist set fire to his place in Encino in 1987. This one nearly burned down too, thanks to the massive wildfires in the area in 2007—as we chatted before sitting down, he pointed out the window to the spot a little higher up the hill where the fires stopped short of his property and the Pacific Coast Highway just below. The house is where he was found unconscious and not breathing after his cardiac arrest early Monday morning. I remember the room in the studio as homey—I could imagine Bob Dylan here with his boots up on the sofa, checking out the tasteful black-and-white framed photos on the walls. (Tom was onstage with his hero Roger McGuinn in one; with his fellow Wilbury Roy Orbison in another.) Petty served us coffee from a big stainless steel urn into oversized southwestern-style mugs that I imagined he washed himself because he didn’t want the pottery to get fucked up in the dishwasher. Throughout the interview, he puffed on a vape pen before rewarding himself at the end with a genuine smoke from a pack of American Spirit. Sporting a big bushy beard along with his usual straggly blond hair, Petty had the tanned and weathered face of an old Florida beach bum, but his bright blue eyes made him look younger by 15 years. He was friendly and a little crotchety—in other words, he was as cool as you could’ve hoped. We were supposed to have an hour but he gave me two. Then he walked me back to the front of the house and got on with his day.So that’s the scene I’ve been replaying in my head since I heard the news. Somehow, our afternoon together—and its complete lack of the audience-with-a-rock-star bullshit you might expect—speaks to the Everyguy/no-bullshit/scrappy-kid-from-Gainesville thing that Petty always exuded. He was a man of the people in a way that Dylan and Springsteen couldn’t be, because they just seemed too oversized, too mythic, too huge from the get-go. Like the characters he tended to write about, Petty was always somewhere between underdog and self-made outcast. Yet the chip on his shoulder was the rare and beautiful kind that seemed to make him more empathetic to people rather than less so. Anyway, that’s what I hear in the songs that I go back to most—some are hits and others are deeper in albums that didn’t quite get as much love as they should’ve (like the Heartbreakers’ final two albums, Mojo and Hypnotic Eye). Petty’s pair of albums with the reconstituted version of his proto-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch proved that the man never lost his songwriting chops even if the snarling, punk-ass Petty of 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It and 1979’s sublime Dawn the Torpedoes was always gonna be hard to outdo.When we spoke, Petty talked about his plans to do an expanded version of his Rick Rubin-produced solo masterpiece Wildflowers from 1994. He didn’t get a chance to realize that ambition but in 2015, he did a preview of sorts by putting out a previously unreleased song from the sessions called “Somewhere Under Heaven.” A deceptively simple vignette that movingly portrays the bond between a “working-man” dad and the daughter who’s too young to know how bad the world can be, it’s arguably as fine as anything he ever wrote. In the last verse, the father has this to say to his little girl: “One day you’re gonna fall in love/ One day you’re gonna pay the rent/ Hold on to what love you find/ You’re gonna need all you can get.” Feels like good advice right now for all kinds of reasons.