This week I’m giving my grumblings about US and Anglosphere pop a break to go back to the heady days of 1988, which I’ve been exploring for an upcoming album tournament.

1988 was a year that I found even harder to slog through in a Discogs dive than 1989 was, and with no Jane Child jumping out as a rosetta stone for my music tastes.

But given that this year I’ve been consciously ratcheting up my listening to Caribbean dancehall styles, especially bouyon and shatta, it’s serendiptous that I found a gem that fits into the current Caribbean pop landscape in a similar way that Jane Child fit into the alt-rock-goes-teenager turn.

That album is Las Palé by the group Feeling Kréyol—three Guadeloupean singers who were plucked out of obscurity to front the quickie cash-in songs of producer Darius Denon trying to ride the burgeoning zouk wave. The three singers were strangers selected in an informal audition process who were shuttled into a studio and taught the songs quickly with little attention paid to the finer details of their performances, like completing a mix or synchronizing their vocals perfectly to the tracks. They ultimately only recorded six songs that by Denon’s own estimation were cost-cutting approximations of Zouk Machine or Kassav.

The result, seemingly by accident, is a loose, ramshackle, and joyous record that feels like an early glimpse of the feel of more contemporary Caribbean pop—“cutting corners” becomes provocative minimalism, “unfinished mix” becomes textured (or at least un-smooth) sonic interest, “not synchronized vocals” becomes a more distinct sense of vocal grain.

My other two big ‘88 finds are both by women doing rap with a harder edge than some of the other albums that appear in various tiers of my provisional ‘88 album list: L’Trimm, The Real Roxanne, Sweet Tee, J.J. Fad, Salt N Pepa.

Anquette’s Respect is only a few degrees tougher than their peers, with the trio siccing then-State Attorney for Dade County Florida Janet Reno on deadbeats who don’t pay child support (“Janet Reno”), and then making their own “Night of the Living Baseheads,” but enlisting the Monkees instead of the J.B.’s for the hook (“Mary Mary”).

Far more bracing is Manhandler by Cassidine, which is as explicit as anything I’ve heard from this period and achieved a shock value that I’ve never really experienced in macho counterparts like N.W.A. I felt like I gasped at something on every track.

Other observations: Japanese pop seemed to be back in ferment (if it ever left—my guess is no) as the avant-garde, new wave, and hairspray-pop all hit regularly in the albums I tested. Favorites included Yasuaki Shimizu’s alternately nervous and smooth new wave Dementos; After Dinner’s experimental hodgepodge collection Souvenir Cassette; and knowing 80s cheeseball pop sampler Miho Nakayama’s Mind Game.

A few other finds that made waves in my otherwise indie-pedigree-approved list (Spirit of Eden, Surfer Rosa, Nation of Millions, Daydream Nation, check, and in about descending order): Cardiacs’ A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window; Scrawl’s He’s Drunk; Joe Smooth’s Promised Land; and Billy and the Boingers from Bloom County themselves, dorky hardcore band Mucky Pup with their album Can’t You Take a Joke? Much of what I’d call wiseguy post-hardcore tickled me—lots of authentic sneers on guys who you nonetheless doubt would really beat anyone up.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. LIA LIA: Boogiepop Blitzkrieg Blob
Germany

The moth is back!!!! It has now been four years without a proper Lia Lia album — I sort of like her this way, in little bite-sized dopamine spikes every couple of months. But it is the year of all of my favorites putting out amazing LPs, so it looks like she is joining the fray. New album is apparently called (or at least teased with the title) Music, Money, Sex, Fame, Love, Love, [rest of title obscured by cigarette ash].

2. Nia Archives: Boys in Blue
Jamaica-UK

Nia Archives’ album is out in about a month, and seems like it continues her trend of living a double life as impish mad genius DJ by night and ragtag alt-pop star by day. I will try not to spend too much of the next few weeks worth of these mixes telling you that a song is better than anything on the Olivia Rodrigo album (though it will happen at least once and maybe twice next week), but this is better than anything on the Olivia Rodrigo album. And please don’t use this as a Streisand Effect-style opportunity to talk about the Olivia Rodrigo album here!!

3. Alewya: Maktoub
Saudi Arabia-Ethiopia-Egypt-UK

Kicking myself that I didn’t find Alewya (born in Saudi Arabia to Ethiopian and Egyptian parents and then raised in South London) before the Pop World Cup. This song wasn’t out yet and her connection to Saudi Arabia is somewhat tentative, but the M.I.A.-minus-M.I.A. sound might have appealed to the electorate. Golden Beatology of the week.

4. Fyore: Afrokeb
Haiti-Canada

Second appearance from Fyore in the same month suggests she’s one to watch more intently. (Album soon??) She got through to me this time sounding very little like what she sounded like last time, too, still Caribbean-oriented but gradually accelerates to a near-avant breakneck.

5. Tinashe: Too Easy
US

Really didn’t expect a successful meme to push Tinashe into chasing the high with a string of novelty dance singles, but I suppose I can’t complain. It’s not what I liked or expected from her—which was a canny navigation of slightly weird but not off-putting minimal R&B—but her issue has always been relative facelessness in a crowded field so I see the appeal finding any possible way to elbow through, and this certainly has elbows.

6. Wezza Montaser f. Btates El 7up, Aka El Arab, Tayer
Egypt

7. TUL8TE, Saint Levant: Nano
Egypt/Palestine-Jordan-France

Recent past and future of Egyptian pop represented: first Wezza Montaser, whose hits mostly date from five to seven years ago, especially in collaboration with Wegz; then TUL8TE, a white-knit-masked rapper on the MDLBEAST label (home of my favorite Saudi Arabian pop find, Asayel) collaborating with Palestinian artist Saint Levant on a track whose video, if you had any doubt was supposed to be fun, opens in a toy store on a bubblegum dispenser and the artist portrayed as a Barbie doll.

8. SHINee: Atmos
South Korea

SHINee is a second-gen K-pop boyband I never really hooked into at the time despite their stature in the scene, but maybe time has made the heart grow fonder, or maybe I’m more sympathetic to boybands now that there seem to be fewer of them reaching my radar screen, or maybe they just have some top-shelf material this time out. Whatever it is, the relentless electropulse against the vocal sheen really stood out.

9. Sébastian Tellier, Juliette Armanet: Attraction
France

This one stood out by…not standing out? I thought it sounded like the original version of a song that no one has remixed into some hypothetical better version I’m obsessed with, but it turns out it is a remix of sorts: the French version of “Thrill of the Night,” which appears on Tellier’s 2026 album with Slayyyter singing. Her replacement with Juliette Armanet is like a controlled experiment in A-pop that just barely passes measures of significance, but whose results probably shouldn’t be overstated as they would not survive replication.

10. C6ix: Wakaru6
Ghana-Japan

The rare rapper that gets by on vocal grain alone, with almost nothing else to recommend the track. He seems interesting beyond that—Ghanaian artist based in Tokyo, with lots of videos online about what he likes most about Japan, which is where I learned (if I understood the video correctly) that he likes Perfume. Me too!

11. Katarzia, Robin Galia: Pozvi ma, neprídem
Slovakia/Czechia

Two from Czechia this week — first one has a propulsive piano bass line that made me think of Kate NV, but at about the halfway mark they go half-speed and speak-sing, diluting the impact a bit and dooming them to the middle of the mix. I really liked the lyrics that I translated, though, including the song’s (and newsletter’s) title.

12. Sosyete ‘25: Yan
Turkey/UK

Bongo Joe knocks it out of the park again with a psych/funk group with Turkish singer and UK rhythm section.

13. Michael Boothman’s Family Tree: Tabu [1972]
Trinidad

An Afrorock jam from Soundway’s compilation Kaiso Power: Sound Revolution in Trinidad 1970-1980. Big drums, clanging keys, and a flute line in the lead, it all gels.

14. Mexican Institute of Sound, Meridian Brothers: Ritmo Babilonia
Mexico/Colombia

Have featured both of these artists separately, neither seems as weird or interesting together as they did in isolation, but if the standard is a median Santana song I guess they still bring a bit of irreverence to the table.

15. Constança Quinteiro: 1 e 1
Portugal

Portuguese, but with a lovely Afrobeats sound, reminds me a little of Tems’s “Love Me JeJe.”

16. Sasuke Haraguchi: Isan
Japan

A smoother sound than I’m used to from pop and Vocaloid producer Sasuke Haraguchi, though perhaps more characteristic of his solo releases than his work as a producer. This is the title track from a somewhat daunting hourlong, 31-track album I haven’t listened to in full yet.

17. Helena Gao: Lao Shi
China-Denmark

Danish-Chinese bedroom pop up-and-comer from the renowned Danish Rhythmic Music Conservatory, the same school that Erika De Casier and Smerz attended (among others) and which seems to have shaped a decent chunk of the alt-pop of the last few years.

18. Mess: Fckme
Czechia

Second one from Czechia this week. At first glance it’s your standard wall-of-sound hyperpop miscategorized as “shoegaze” but you can hear a catchy indie rock song happening somewhere under all the fuzz and fuckery.

19. Slippers: Wants for Everyone
US

There’s the Amerindie jangle quota satisfied even before we hit Wheatus drone.

20. Friday Night Plans: Fight and Loving
Japan

4-track (or approximate) guitar loop and ASMR-pop vocals from a Japanese artist who seems to be on an awful lot of playlists to help people “chill out” and “focus.” Have I discussed before how I absolutely cannot have music on in the background for any other task? I don’t even really like to hear music in restaurants; it’s very distracting! But even if I could listen to music while doing something else, I definitely would not play this.

21. Vines f. Wheatus: Teenage Dirtbag
US

Mark Sinker famously (well, famous to me, anyway) was ambushed by unexpected emotion when he encountered the part of “Teenage Dirtbag” where the singer goes falsetto to take on the perspective of the crush. Vines have made sure you couldn’t be ambushed by anything, the whole thing stretched out into mush, but in a way I find more interesting than a somber reimagining of a pop song for a movie trailer—it’s more like Justin Bieber 800% Slower. (This is probably closer to 50%.)

That’s it! Until next time, let me know what albums from 1988 I’ve missed.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Katarzia, Robin Galia: Pozvi ma, neprídem (“pozvi ma, neprídem”)

After one thinkpiece too many about the state of pop music in 2026 that only named US and Anglosphere artists when discussing the present and future of pop (it was this one), I jokingly started referring to the dominant names in pop conversations as CAPDY, which stands for Charli XCX, Ariana Grande, Kim Petras, Disney expats (Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter), and slaYYYter.

CAPDY is a music critic inside joke on top of another inside joke, a play on Christopher Weingarten’s acronym GAPDY that he coined in 2009, when he predicted that the critic polls of that year would converge around five indie bands: Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Phoenix, Dirty Projectors, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. All of them appeared in the top 10 of the Pazz and Jop critics’ poll that year, with only Neko Case breaking up the top 5.

I argued in my third A-pop installment that this seeming convergence was a symptom of a larger phenomenon, not only of indie music getting bigger but of the rest of the music industry shrinking in the years before streaming took off. GAPDY was a funny shorthand gesturing to several interrelated ideas about the state of both music and music criticism, some of which Chuck Eddy wrote about in his essay in Pazz and Jop that year:

The indie domination at the top of the album list is a harder nut to crack, but a few factors seem worth pondering. For one thing, the poll’s electorate has changed—freelance dollars aren’t flowing like the old days, and with dailies and weeklies chopping arts positions, newsprint dinosaurs have departed the vocation, voluntarily and involuntarily, in droves. Meanwhile, way younger bloggers and Tweeters who make even less money reviewing music have stepped in. Some vote, and plenty see eye-to-eye with Pitchfork.

Also, this is big: Used to be, when you filled out your P&J ballot, you hadn’t seen very many other Top 10 lists. Now, with websites pretending the year is over well before Thanksgiving and surviving print mags falling in step with their own premature year-end countdowns, it’s hard to avoid peering over your neighbor’s shoulder. A story snowballs through the year, so by December, critics who don’t hear many releases and the ones who’ve heard too many to sort through—enough Pazz & Joppers to pass as a consensus—have had the words “Animal Collective” pounded into their heads so incessantly that boarding the bandwagon seems like a no-brainer.

Probably also didn’t hurt that a few critically approved indie albums actually did OK commercially, at least in relation to stuff that did worse—Veckatimest and Embryonic both hit Billboard’s Top 10 in slow weeks; Phoenix and Yeah Yeah Yeahs have SoundScanned in the 200,000-unit range. The latter two even wound up listed among the “Top Billboard 200 Albums” of 2009, albeit at a modest #177 and #192, respectively; no other P&J Top Tenner made the list. Especially given the industry’s continued double-digit retail nosedive, that’s not saying much. It’s certainly not Susan Boyle or Taylor Swift. But it’s something.

There was a vague sense among critics who used the phrase “GAPDY” that these five albums were, if not bad, at least boring. (For what it’s worth, I loved one of them, hated one of them, and liked the others OK.) From what I remember, there was not a corresponding sense that some other specific albums should obviously take their place; it was just that there were so many other albums out there, many of them more interesting, adventurous, or whatever else. This wide field of alternatives was, in part, what helped those albums to do so well in 2009 to begin with—votes split across lots of different artists, genres, and scenes, with a small indie rock caucus rising to the top, but by very narrow margins.1

Despite the tenor of these GAPDY conversations and the title of Chuck’s essay—“The Year of Too Much Consensus” (which, to be clear, he did not choose and didn’t reflect what his piece was about; you can read a more recent essay of his on 2009 here)—when you look at the trajectory of the Pazz and Jop polls as a proxy for critical alignment or lack thereof, the story of the 2000s that culminates in the year of GAPDY was not a period of “too much consensus” but of eroding consensus.

Many years ago, I calculated critical convergence in Village Voice Pazz and Jop polls—that is, the percentage of the electorate voting for the #1 and #2 albums of the year. Throughout the 1990s, the #1 ranked album regularly got votes from at least a third of the electorate. (The high point was 1996, when Odelay by Beck appeared on 47% of all ballots.) In the 2000s, these convergence numbers drop, technically bottoming out during the controversial 2006 poll (19% voted for the winner), when many critics boycotted after the Village Voice was bought by New Times and gutted the music section. If you exclude that year, the least critical agreement on a #1 album in the aughts happened in 2009, the year of GAPDY, when only 22% of critics voted for the #1 album, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion.2

This trend mostly reversed in the 2010s, with more voters voting for the #1 albums at the same time the trend for #1 albums shifted from indie rock to critically acclaimed hip-hop and R&B. In 2010, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West was on 38% of ballots; in 2012, Channel Orange by Frank Ocean was on 35%; in 2013, Kanye had 35% with Yeezus; in 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly appeared on 44% of ballots; and in 2016, Blackstar by David Bowie appeared on 38% of ballots.3

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems possible that both the indie surge in the late aughts and the accompanying decline in the number of critics listing those albums were part of the same blip. I’m hoping that what I see as too much attention paid to a frustratingly thin bench of US and Anglosphere pop music is also a blip, because it really is a banner year for international not-in-English pop music—and by that I don’t even mean different forms of popular music that I happen to like more than pop as “genre.” Pop music outside the US and Anglosphere is regularly beating the CAPDY artists at their own game.

In 2026, it’s the US and Anglosphere capital-P pop albums that seem weak and safe to me, clustering in conversations while being far less interesting than those conversations would lead you to believe—though it’s too early to say if any of this will correspond to year-end lists. It’s not that there’s nothing to recommend any of the albums. Just like with GAPDY, I like some of them just fine, and dislike others. It’s more that the focus on these albums seems to ignore all of the other places where the action really is.

Look no further than Six Sex’s Ultra, which feels like an exorcism of this year’s comparatively drab Anglosphere pop (to be fair: everything seems drab in contrast to Six Sex’s Ultra). I haven’t heard an album with such combined ruthlessness and playfulness in a long time. Recommended if you like Peaches, Nadia Oh, Fannypack, L’Trimm, and, in places, M.I.A.’s Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape (both albums have songs that share the bass line to “Murder She Wrote” by Chaka Demus & Pliers).

The album is outwardly filthy but reveals itself to be smarter and stranger than just filth. It reminds me of Courtney Pauroso’s Vanessa5000, where Pauroso portrays a glitchy A.I.-powered sex robot grappling with technical and existential meltdowns over the course of a show that constantly undercuts itself without weakening the bravura performance in the center. Ultra is a tough one to beat for album of the year, maybe the decade; it’s currently the best pop album in the world.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. LISA, Anitta, Rema: Goals (FIFA World Cup 2026™)
South Korea/Brazil/Nigeria

Should I use the official FIFA soundtrack to assess the state of A-pop theory? If so, LISA and Anitta and Rema are the powerhouse, Future and Tyla would be lagging behind them, Jelly Roll and Carin León would not be competitive, and Brazil’s phonk hit not included on the soundtrack would lap all of them from the sidelines. Which seems more or less right. But to be honest, all of these songs (aside from that phonk jam) are pretty sweaty. My favorite thing in “Goals” is that only one superstar deigned to appear with a ball in the video (Anitta), which makes you wonder whether it is an honor or if she drew the short straw.

2. aespa: Roll
South Korea

3. @onefive: M1X5R
Japan

LISA is now big enough for transnational pop events, but below the monsterverse level you can get away with nursery-rhyme-pop in South Korea and Japan. aespa annoy with “Row Row Row Your Boat” and @onefive dazzle (and annoy) with “Turkey in the Straw.”

4. Ako: Earl Gray
Japan

Or if you want to split the difference between FIFA and nursery rhymes, maybe try Ako, whose vocals I described last week like Addison Rae, sloshing around in the mix, and on this one sound like a mix of Vocaloid and millennial French house. A new idea for an A-Trak mash-up album?

5. LYSA: Crush Crush Crush
Italy

Someday I will recognize the Italian language in the wild—more pop ferment outside the Anglosphere.

6. Esa Williams: Kwanini
South Africa-UK

7. Konono N°1: Volta
Angola-DRC

8. Toya Delazy, Auka, Neekeetone: Amamenemene
South Africa-UK/Russia-Montenegro

Cosmo-pop suite! African diasporic music from South African-born and London-based Esa Williams, a reconstituted Konono N°1 which I think is in its third generation, and some dnb-heavy Afrohouse.

9. Abitemi: Do normal
Ghana

Can’t count out Afrobeats yet, I suppose, although I was surprised to find that this is from Ghana and not Nigeria.

10. SAGE FWI, DJ Digital: Whyne Nstick [2025]
Martinique

11. Bad Bitch, Natoxie: Discipline [2025]
Martinique

12. Says’z, Mikado: Tic [2025]
Martinique

This is the beginning of a long stretch of Caribbean dancehall and shatta songs. Occasionally as I look for new playlists, I’ll find one that, unbeknownst to me, has thrown a whole year’s worth of songs up as a “refresh” (i.e. to make it look like they’ve added a bunch of new music by copying and pasting the same tracks). So I ended up with about a dozen strong shatta songs mostly from 2025. I decided to keep three of these “oldies,” only one of them from an artist I haven’t featured before (the first one, SAGE FWI).

13. Tera Kòrá, FS Green, Freezy: Controlla
Netherlands

14. K-Rosif, BIGDA, LMG: Les Chabines
Réunion

15. Malcolm, Krys: Chalè
France/Guadeloupe

The next three songs are all likely from that same playlist, hard to tell, but every song is from this calendar year. First, the B-side of previously-featured “Get Busy” by a trio of Dutch artists, then bouyon from Réunion artist K-Rosif and a dancehall pop hit from Malcolm and Krys.

16. Dj Tk, DJ Rafinha, Mc Gw f. CCAU CHUU: Vai Começa a Sequência
Brazil

Some Brazilian phonk to transition out of the shatta suite, from a DJ who has annoyingly named himself “TK,” thus flagging this post as a draft not ready to be published.

17. m tú, Liu Grace: Nói Em Điên
Vietnam

One thing I didn’t really go into in my essay on pop melody the other week is the idea that some strong pop melodies may now code as various kinds of Asian pop—K-pop most obviously in terms of direct competition with US pop. This Vietnamese rock song has the sort of melody construction you used to get all the time during the US teen confessional era in the mid-aughts. It’s not even a particularly strong example of it, but it is a sort of pop-rock melodicism that seems somewhat out of fashion in the US.

18. Hamina: Hattarataivas
Finland

Kings-of-Convenience-core from Finland!

19. Ed O’Brien: Obrigado
UK

The George Harrison (I guess?) of Radiohead puts out a George sort of album, competent enough, stuck in the shadow of his bandmates but also less in-your-face about those bandmates’ style, far too long and indulgent and woo-woo. A very long and meandering Pink Floyd-ish jam takes up a majority of the ludicrous nine-minute runtime, but I had time for it this week even if you decide that you do not.

20. Kruder & Dorfmeister: Black Baby [1996]
Austria

Ending with a track from the 30-year anniversary of Kruder & Dorfmeister’s DJ-Kicks, the fourth ever in the series. Three minutes shorter than Ed O’Brien and feels about ten minutes shorter.

That’s it! Until next time, listen to the Six Sex album Ultra at least once and maybe ten times if you’re so inclined.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from aespa: Roll

Who needs another long essay about melody in contemporary pop music when you have a best-of-the-month installment to write! I’ve added a section for the monthly roundups on the main page, too.

This was a really strong month for Albums I Have Heard and Liked — a new #1 of the year to date and a bunch of good ones just below it.

11 Songs I Heard in May (unranked)

• Ana Lua Caiano: Uma Vida A Menos

• Cannelle: Stereo

• Champuru Makhenzo, Audio Addicts, Buzzi Lee, Amaza: 444

• Güner Künier: Kes

• Khun Narin: Poet Wong Pt. 1

• Les Poissons: Nature Boy

• Lurinha Costa, Dj Cabello, Dj Tchouzen: Six Seven

• Malcrida x NIÑOS GÓTICOS: Six Seven

• NASAAN f. That Mexican OT: Luke Combs

• Octo Octa: Survival Groove

• Starjunk 95: Error 4 on the Floor

10 Albums I Heard in May (lightly ranked)

• Myaap: Pixie Dust
  Think this one might just be a masterpiece in miniature—Myaap huffs and puffs through a thicket of avant bounce beats like an underdog against an imagined reigning champ, more floats like butterfly than stings like bee but she gets plenty of sharp ones in, Little Mac KOing Tyson in a flurry of punches and punchlines.

• North West: N0rth4evr EP
  Sorry not sorry, this thing is absolutely stunning and would maybe be in the top slot if it were long enough to satisfy the Beatles Second Album rule: at least 11 songs in at least 26:25 minutes.1 (Myaap stuck “Fairy” on as a bonus track to beat the clock by exactly forty seconds.) Patrick St. Michel has a good post on the incorporation of Vocaloid on the EP—I can attest that preteens these days are extremely into Hatsune Miku; not all of those preteens are capable of making this album, but who knows, maybe they would be if they had the right opportunities and resources.

• Robounoishi (路傍の石): Album 13

  A recommendation from Ryo Miyauchi, who described this only as “indie rock / Vocaloid,” a combination I haven’t run across before and sounds so good in this particular formulation that I may have to rethink my whole approach to music-making (mostly because I can’t sing to save my life).

• JayJayy: Detour

  If you find yourself totally lost keeping up with any of my musings on South African dance music and amapiano, this album is a decent sampler to dive in—JayJayy has threaded a needle between spotlight and texture as a vocalist in a texture-heavy genre so there’s a bit more to hang on to if you’re looking for pop hooks, but it’s also just got a huge roster of many of the best amapiano producers all doing great work with her.

• LinLin: Disco Inferno

  French pop heatseeker LinLin is playing fast and loose with the Beatles Second Album Rule—12 songs in 29 minutes, but padded with a bunch of atmosphere and interstitials to stretch it out. It’s not a terrible strategy, CD-era album bloat for streaming-friendly maxi-singles.

• Tayna: Genesis
  Need to give this one another listen—on first pass it takes on the Whatever, Just Be Rihanna project more successfully than most attempts at this, but it still feels a little anonymous. I prefer it when it’s doing more formalist South African crossover stuff even though I’m glad that the album expands beyond that.

• La Joaqui: Electra
  Less electrifying than it needs to be, but strong qua album as neo-reggaeton goes, mostly Gusty dj productions.

• 63OG: 63PROBLÈMES
  No better way for me to pay attention to your album than to remove it temporarily from streaming while I’m trying to put a newsletter together! I would say this one doesn’t really hold together across its indulgent hourlong/23-song runtime but it’s an interesting grab-bag of styles: hypertrap, coupé decalé, Afrobeats, and more, but too much ho-hum trap beat filler.

• Uncle Waffles: 4 Da Streets! EP
  Dependable collection from Uncle Waffles in collaboration with Royal MusiQ. Satisfies only one of the Beatles Second Album criteria (over 26 minutes but under 10 tracks, plus it calls itself an EP) and is most promising for a few of its singer pairings—JayJayy, Zee Nxumalo, Cowboii, and new-to-me rappers BarbieSZN and BXKS.

• Ako: Lovely Moments
  My first thought was “huh, J-pop Addison Rae,” but this really only refers to Ako’s vocals, which sound like they’re sloshing around in the mix in a similar way, i.e. not going for a recessive sound but using a recessive strategy. I like the effect overall, but the album is hit-or-miss with actual songs.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Ana Lua Caiano: Uma Vida A Menos
Portugal

Portuguese artist who combines folk elements with electro-pop, though here she seems to throw in plenty more besides—bagpipes, a classical piano middle 8, flamenco handclaps, hiccuping vocal loops, and cows (just in the video and not on the soundtrack that I can tell).

2. Fyore: Fyore
Togo-Canada

It’s “Fyore” by Fyore from the album Fyore! Unfortunately the “album” is just the name of the single; fingers crossed the whole album is also called that so that she can join the ranks of “Imarhan” by Imarhan from the album Imarhan. Francophone pop is on fire in all corners of the world this year—this one’s from Montreal.

3. Daniya Kanwal: Banwari Basanti
Pakistan

Have been waiting for a recently-added Pakistani music playlist to yield a few mix inclusions and this week I got two—one closes the mix and this one nearly opened it, catchy sitar and reggaeton fusion from a Karachi artist who puts “influencer, content creator, choreographer, and actress” before music, as is the style I suppose.

4. Shams: علم قلبي [Ealam Qalbi]
Syria

Originally thought that Shams was a Saudi artist, which would be funny because one of the Saudi artists in the Pop World Cup (recently completed—Saudi Arabia was knocked out in round 4, but Other Dave Fave “Darbuka” by Eftalya Yagci got second place!) had a song named “Shams.” But no—the Saudi Shams is a different Shams. This one is a Syrian artist based in Cairo.

5. Nando Garcia f. Chini.png: Perros
Chile

One of my favorite artists from last year, Chilean indie-rocker Chini.png, teams up with a less-exciting Chilean indie rocker who nonetheless meets her in the middle on the highlight from his otherwise somewhat dreary album.

6. Thee Sinseers: Did Ya Know?
US

Incredibly, this band is not on Daptone, but they do use the “Thee” styling and have rented a vintage car that probably accounts for 80% of the budget of their video, which got me googling them one last time before publishing this to confirm (it turns out they have a single out on Daptone, but it’s not their main label).

7. Dear Tommie: The Rough
Australia

You know, I really don’t mean to keep unintentionally affirming A-pop theory by discovering that the one country song I’ve selected in several weeks is from an Australian. My kid asked me in the car what genre this was, and when I said “country,” they replied “but it sounds like something else, though” and indeed it does, and I didn’t have a good answer!

8. Daughn Gibson: Bala Cynwood
US

I really like Daughn Gibson, haven’t kept up with him as much as I should since All Hell. I guess this must be the best song ever written about Bala Cynwyd by default? He had a great interview about his least favorite song he has ever written with Matt Korvette of Pissed Jeans in the Yellow Green Red newsletter. His pan of his own track made me want to hear it: “At the end of it, we added so much horseshit to that damned chorus, just to get it to keep up with a snare drum that was already leaving the song bereft of dynamics in the verses. Chasing around a Sasquatch when I had something menacingly delicate in the first half hour of the song’s life.” (It’s a good song, I like the stuck-together feel of all of the stray elements scrambling around the vocal, maybe more Katamari than Sasquatch; if I were more Eno-ish I’d say something annoying and cryptic: “keep piling until it breaks” / “what’s left?” / etc.)

9. Yangın: Zenginleri Ye
Turkey

10. Lil Jolie: Passaporti e Caramelle
Italy

11. MUGRE: Calle Miramar
Spain

A quick tour of international indie — guitar, bass, drums, what more do you need, really. (Preferably a singer, but not a dealbreaker.)

12. Kuzco: Ha Ha Ha
Australia

Spacey, silly electro that mutters and laughs to itself, walks around nervously in little circles.

13. Masal, Emma Anderson: Pause the Rain (Xylitol Remix)
UK

I really liked the Xylitol album from this year, which I referred to as “gentle jungle?” and don’t really have a phrase or question to beat it. This is like that, plus little arpeggiated harp-like figures that do sound a little bit like rain.

14. Mashudu, Wesley Keys f. Cnethemba Gonelo, Frank Mabeat: Ngiphuma Khona
South Africa

Some amapiano of the slow crescendo dream piano variety, from a group of artists whose names didn’t ring a bell, but apparently I have featured Mashudu twice in the before, both times on a Kabza De Small song (including his epic “Kabza Chant”).

15. Fuyuni Wakarete: A Whisper of the Wind
Japan

This one reminded me of something specific, maybe Elephant6-adjacent? Though features ethereal harmonized coos that are a bit softer than whatever referent I’m half-thinking of.

16. LAÏ, Liliane Chlela: Msh Akeed
Lebanon

Lebanese trip-hop that maybe doesn’t quite earn its extended half-speed denouement but doesn’t drag on as long as you might think.

17. Alejandro Falcón: Tambores En Colores
Cuba

18. Upupayāma: Mystic Chords of Memory
Italy

19. Pablo Lapidusas: Lágio Marinho
Argentina-Brazil

Classy cool down time: a nice if “world”-ish Cuban jazz ensemble—more info at Bandcamp—a nice if cosmo-ish Italian psych band—more info at Bandcamp—and a nice, if sketchy, Rhodes and piano piece by an Argentine artist based in Brazil that is not even available on Bandcamp as far as I can tell.

20. Zaw Ali: Aarzu
Pakistan

Ending with a lovely if soppy (not sappy) Pakistani pop ballad that mucks around in Mixolydian to lightly hypnotic effect.

That’s it! Until next time, maybe try the Myaap album?

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Kuzco: Ha Ha Ha

I saw an interesting video the other day on the spread of a specific melody line that a YouTuber refers to as “the gen alpha melody” — a melodic motif in a minor key that builds its melody around consistent intervals: from the minor sixth down to the second, up to the fifth, and then back down to the root.

Two older songs that the YouTuber points to as precursors are Anastacia’s “Left Outside Alone” (“ALL my life I’ve been WAITin’ for you to bring a FAIRY tale my WAY”) and the Beatles’ “It’s Only Love” (“it’s only LOVE and that is ALL, why should I FEEL the way I DO?”) To me the most obvious referent is Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”—the intro and post-chorus phrase “ohhhh…caught in a bad romance”—though that melody phrase technically lands on a different note because it ends in the relative major chord.1

The melodic anchors themselves are pretty common, and there are lots of ways to hit them without directly copying a specific melody. I also don’t love the phrase “gen alpha melody,” as it doesn’t describe the melody itself and precludes the possibility of identifying other common melodic motifs. I can’t resist a counter-neologism, so how about the “tritone swoon,” which focuses on the most notable part of the melody, going from the minor sixth down to the second.

Despite this melodic phrase being used in dozens of songs, to my ears none of the contemporary examples have great melodies outside of the motif. The motif itself almost feels like a placeholder, a pretty phrase that signifies melancholy before moving on to some other point of interest in the song—and rarely further melodic interest. One clear example is its use in ROSÉ’s “APT.,” where the melody features in a pre-chorus to provide some texture before the song’s real hook: the “ah-puh-ta-puh-tuh” chant.

This got me thinking about melody in contemporary chart pop more generally. There are a lot of weak melodies in pop hits, though there has been a recent resurgence of smaller songwriting teams re-centering traditional pop structure in the long aftermath of the EDM boom. By weak melody, I mean the melody doesn’t really develop or conclude; it’s often distinctively undistinctive, impossible to remember, a kind of anti-earworm. There are exceptions that show up on the US charts: Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, “Golden” from KPOP Demon Hunters.2 But more often I almost wish it were easier to get popular songs stuck in my head.

I’ve written before about structural changes to pop melody that have happened in the past 15 or so years. In the ‘10s, rappers introduced restrictive melody patterns into their music in a way that opened up possibilities for mildly improvisatory melodies. In some sense these melodies are “weak,” but in another sense they are just doing something different from what melody does in other forms of songwriting. I wrote a long piece about Taylor Swift’s melody strategies along these lines a few years ago, suggesting that something similar has happened in a lot of other pop music.

However, I don’t include rap and R&B melodies like that here, and think “minimal” might be a better framework for the impact of this style rather than “weak.”

I should also note that (1) there have always been weak melodies in pop music (the bigger point I’d make is that right now there are just not a lot of strong melodies to compare to the weak ones) and that (2) having a “weak melody” doesn’t mean the song is bad, while there are many songs with strong melodies I really dislike—including that allegedly foundational Anastacia song. Lots of artists have a mix of songs with strong melodies and weak ones, used for different purposes in different places.

So just think of this as a bit of a riff on some melodic moves I notice in chart pop right now. Some of my examples I don’t like, and some I do. Every example has plenty of historical antecedents, versions of it that work really well, etc.

• Phrasal battering: one of the most common melody strategies, this is where a half of a melody line (or less) just gets repeated over and over again without any resolution. “Ordinary” by Alex Warren is an example.

• Fleetwood suspension: A very close and cyclical chord progression—between two chords formed on the same bass note or maybe a note apart—allows the singer to meander around a few notes in a pleasing way that is in no hurry to go anywhere. Here it’s the chords, not the melody itself, that never seem to resolve, so there’s always some tension in the melody without the melody itself having to do much work. This move works in lots of songs (I once wrote a long essay on The-Dream’s “I Luv Your Girl,” one of my favorite songs ever, which uses a pattern like this). But I think it’s hard to really knock you out with a melody at the same time—that’s something Fleetwood Mac was good at (like in “Dreams”), balancing the sway and the knockout. Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” and Lola Young’s “Messy” are good examples of it working with perfunctory melodies.

• Timbre swap: This is where a change in octave, performance, or vocal timbre obscures how little melody is actually happening in the song. Olivia Rodrigo does this a lot, changing her vocal sound or rhythm, jumping up an octave, or going back and forth from speak-sing without actually changing up her melody very much.3 Taylor Swift is the queen of timbre swap, which I’ve written about a lot (maybe too much?). This is a place where I’d be interested to think through the direct influence of hip-hop more.

• Genre illusion: The use of a traditionally melodic genre—piano ballad, American songbook standard, country music—to suggest that you will be met with a memorable melody, but no such melody arrives. This describes a lot of Laufey’s songs, all of the Sienna Spiro songs I’ve heard, and…probably “Choosin’ Texas.”

• Half-borrowed melody: This is where one melody vaguely recalls a different melody without really adding anything new to it, but not always as an interpolation or reference. This has always been a feature of pop music, and I only include it here because it particularly stands out when there aren’t lots of other contemporary melodies to compare it to. Chappell Roan half-borrows a lot—I think one reason “Pink Pony Club” has some of the endurance it does is because it feels unborrowed. Ed Sheeran does it all the time.4 “Half-borrowed” results aren’t always bad—in some cases the result might be better than the original—but the melody scans as an imitation of something else.

• The good-enough hum-along: Honestly, the most common problem I hear in pop melodies right now is a lack of interest in crafting melody at all, a feeling that melodies are a bit of an afterthought to atmospherics, as if someone were humming a melody somewhat randomly around the production. I was really struck by an interesting new album by Eli that does explicit Max Martin Y2K cosplay, but it sounds like someone making up melodies around all of the old hits, or maybe singing the harmony parts. PinkPantheress has a more conscious melodic strategy around this, making it part of noticing samples and allusions in her songs.

I think the “gen alpha melody” slots into these strategies because it is a way to tip one’s hat to the idea of having a strong melody in your song without bothering to actually come up with one. Unlike the YouTuber, I don’t believe there is an obvious source; I think it’s more broadly memetic, drawn from lots of sources of contemporary inspiration because it signifies a strong melody quickly in a minor key. It’s like ticking something off of a checklist so that you can return to what you really want to be doing, which is (seemingly) anything else.

This is a fairly long-term trend, if you trust the results of a recent study on melodic complexity on the charts that Tom Breihan wrote about skeptically in the Guardian in 2024. The short story is that over time, there are more words conveyed in pop songs within a more restricted range of notes, which seems plausible to me.5

I love strong melodies, but plenty of the music I love doesn’t need a strong melody to win me over, and not all strong melodies make for good songs. There are a few US and Anglophone artists who do seem to have a consistent gift for putting strong melodies in good songs, including Billie Eilish, Debbii Dawson, Willow, and <checks notes> huh, sombr, whattaya know.

If I had to guess, I would say that the previous era of Strong Melodies in US chart pop are connected to EDM and more broadly what I’ve called “pop mirage,” which had a mercenary and oddly detached approach to melody-writing, often farmed out to a top-liner who had no reason to connect a strong melody to the rest of the song.

The ‘20s has seen a resurgence of songs with fewer noticeable sutures, and are probably better overall, melody strength notwithstanding. I think the blunt-force melodic approach of the previous decade generally had much worse results than the weak but holistic melodies we get in US chart pop in the ‘20s, and the idea of a Sia-style unholy melody graft has rightfully become unfashionable. But I do think we should find a few more new stars out there who are in tune with the spirit world, who wake up with a melody in their head along with all those pesky words.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Cannelle: Stereo
France

Can you believe how many great pop stars there are out in the world right now that do not get write-ups in aggressively myopic Guardian thinkpieces about “trash pop”?? This isn’t even my favorite pop song from this year! It might not even be the best pop song I heard this month! (Hm…it probably is, though.) I am pleased to find that I wrote about Cannelle after I heard her for the first time (at the end of 2024) that she could remain nobody forever or could be the hugest star in the world by 2026. Not a nobody, not yet the hugest star in the world. Fingers crossed!

2. Ibibio Sound Machine: Return to Sender
Nigeria-UK/UK

My yearly-ish Ibibio Sound Machine banger, I guess? It’s good!

3. Natasha Kay: Entasi
Greece

I don’t hear enough Greek pop to know if this is Marina Satti-fication or just a random attempt to keep up with electro trends. Gonna continue to tell my kids that [literally anything that’s not Charli XCX] is Charli XCX. I’d hate to admit to liking Dad Rock.

4. Zuchu: Aye
Tanzania

Zuchu is back—last year’s “Amanda” was a bongo flava barnstormer, with poor Amanda trapped inside the barn, while this one merely…uh, singes a silo? But sparks still fly.

5. QINGA: Do Rana
Poland

Euro-thump juiced with extra accordion, very much up my street. You will probably know within the first five seconds whether it is up your street.

6. Joalin: Toke
Finland-Mexico

Finnish-Mexican reggaeton-pop is exactly as light (and brief) as it needs to be to get the job done. Cursory research revealed her participation in Simon Fuller’s Now United, a global girl group scheme I should probably look into more even if just for morbid curiosity’s sake.

7. MilliMax: Instagram
South Korea

8. Dean Turnley: Actin’ Tough
Australia

Two trifles before the six-seven sequence. First, the closest you can get to hypertrap elevator music from South Korea, and then a particularly grim grinding down of a load-bearing vocal sample, from an Australian producer who probably should have capped the length at 2:00.

9. Laurinha Costa, Dj Cabello, Dj Tchouzen: Six Seven
Brazil

10. Malcriada, NIÑOS GÓTICOS: Six Seven
Mexico

My kids inform me that the “six seven” trend is now horribly dated (school years are still useful hype cycle limiters), but don’t tell Latin America, where a viral Brazilian funk hit and a viral-ish goth-pop hit with the aptly named all caps NIÑOS GÓTICOS have found new stores of energy in a seemingly passé meme. Fad frackers!

11. DJ JEJEDAZS, Malu Silmon, DANNA, MC Kenny RP: Rock Perverso
Brazil

Get your double-digit YouTube view funk on one of my mixes with this one weird trick: add a guitar.

12. Trim: Coconut Water
US

Yes, we are in a golden age of Joyful Rap by Women, and yes, even the minor stuff sounds great, and yes, the Myaap album is probably my album of the year, more on that next week.

13. Minyo Crusaders, Frente Cumbiero: Hanagasa Ondo
Japan/Colombia

Interesting project where a Japanese group mixes Japanese folk with international styles and collaborators, emphasizing Latin and Caribbean pop forms. Took me ages to find the right placement for this thing on a mix but glad I found a spot for it.

14. Vlntna B: A Mi Manera
Chile

That’s Valentina B, dreamy if somewhat insubstantial Chilean reggaeton-pop.

15. Jenevieve f. Freddie Gibbs, SALIMATA: Flight Risqué
Cuba-US/US

16. Paco Moreno: Enamorado de ti
Spain

17. Güneş Özgeç: Üzdü
Turkey

Three very different varieties of ultrasmooth, or maybe I’m just calling that the common thread to save email space. First, boom-bap like butter and strong rap features help give substance to Jenevieve’s post-SZA wispiness, which I think works in contrast here, but I haven’t checked out the rest of her album. Then some Spanish indie pop with little flecks of AM gold, and finally Turkish indie pop that, whattaya know, has a perfectly lovely little melody, not too weak, not too strong.

18. Uncle Waffles, Royal MusiQ f. Zee Nxumalo, Shakes & Les, Shoes Meister: imission
South Africa

A holdover amapiano collaboration I didn’t have room for last week but am happy to feature here—not sure how often Uncle Waffles has worked with Zee Nxumalo, but I haven’t heard them paired together before.

19. Dames Brown, Amp Fiddler: Take Me As I Am (Moodymann Remix)
US

20. goat (JP): Orin - Ricardo Villalobos Variation
Japan/Chile-Germany

21. Octo Octa: Survival Groove
US

Not much space for any more words this week, but plenty of time on the mix for three long dance tracks from reliable house virtuosos—Job de Wit clued me in to this great Moodymann remix with Dame Brown, Ricardo Villalobos works his minimalist magic, and Octo Octa makes the dorkiest synth sounds seem cool as hell.

That’s it! Until next time, try to keep your melodies strong but your ideas stronger.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Cannelle: Stereo

A non-US/Anglosphere mix this week, partly the result of having three mixes to arrange simultaneously. It has me thinking about the state of various regional music scenes. I wrote last year that I couldn’t figure out what was happening to Afrobeats, which seemed to have disappeared from global charts compared to its heyday from the late ‘10s into the early ‘20s:

So…any idea what’s happened to Nigerian pop this year? Has its devil’s bargain with amapiano short-circuited its own development? It is approximately nowhere on the global charts, and the Nigerian charts seem to have pulled away a bit, too, a few breakthroughs like Shallipopi notwithstanding. But I could be totally wrong here, might need to do a regional dive soon to see what I’ve been missing.

So I was glad to see an article about this in the Guardian (h/t Collin Smith at No Chambers).

I think there are some important observations here. One, there is a sort of double-edged sword to what I’ve been writing about as the post-A-pop era of regional competitors: regions rise and fall according to the social dynamics of the globalized monsterverse. From artist Joeboy: “Afrobeats’ global rise has made the world interested in not just our music but our culture, our fashion, our swag.” But this “world interest” can be fickle.

Two, although the piece is neutral about how Afrobeats has adapted its sound to incorporate South African dance music (including amapiano’s log drums and now 3-step, see Zinoleesky’s new one below), I think that this has been a serious trap for the scene and it’s put itself in a position of always sounding a step behind what it’s borrowing from.1 But maybe it’s the other way around, and interest started to decline first — a marketing manager in the piece says, “Amapiano no longer seems to be working. In fact, nobody knows what works and that’s causing a lot of panic.”

And finally, there’s a compelling theory put forward in the piece that part of what drove the Afrobeats ascent was a pandemic bubble where people were exploring new music at the same time the world was also experiencing an acute “brain drain” episode, especially from west Africa to the UK.

Whether these diagnoses are correct or not I’m not qualified to say, but I do wonder about them. They all seem plausible but also somehow insufficient to describe the global pop environment, where the erosion of gatekeepers belies the piece’s repeated invocation of industry decision-makers. (I don’t doubt that these decision-makers still play a huge role, but they don’t play the only role in popularity.)

There’s one section of the piece that bothered me, and it’s how Afrobeats’ perception in the United States is framed: “Industry experts also worry that the rise of conservative politics and ethno-nationalism in the west has contributed to Afrobeats’ dwindling popularity.” The article’s author connects this to one interviewee’s comment on the success of country music on the Billboard Hot 100: “The resurgence of country music and other traditionally white genres, he argues, gestures at the kinds of budgets being approved.” This seems like a specious correlation to me: if there was a resurgence of country music on the US Hot 100, it happened at the same time that Afrobeats and rap music also ascended between 2019 and 2021. So the question isn’t whether country has risen at the expense of other music like Afrobeats or rap but whether resources are being pulled from Afrobeats but not from other places, and then whether this actually has anything to do with ethnonationalism or a conservative political turn.

I think a more compelling frame here would be to think of regionalization as a phenomenon that also affects the US, where country music and to a lesser extent R&B function as regional styles that don’t tend to translate globally at the same scale they hit in the US.2

A regionalization perspective suggests that regions will cyclically come in and out of fashion in unpredictable ways. The main thrust of the A-pop series was that the US itself has to be thought of now as one of many regional competitors, and that US pop music specifically doesn’t have a history of being framed in this way. But the flip side is that different regional styles will also rise and fall, and that it’s hard to know when and why precisely because the global landscape has changed so much so quickly.

One thing to look out for, and something that my own somewhat haphazard listening methods sometimes help me get an intuitive sense of, is how different regions’ music is faring internationally. From the vantage of my listening (just my impressions), Caribbean rhythmic genres like shatta and especially bouyon seem globally ascendant in a way that Naija pop and Afrobeats was at the end of the ‘10s. Southeast Asian regional pop forms loosely based on K-pop and J-pop seem to be developing quickly, while K-pop struggles with a complicated role as a center of gravity without the benefit of more robust US-style cultural dominance, and J-pop continues to operate in a more stable parallel universe.

Japan’s longstanding pop industry might be a better model to understand what’s been happening in, e.g., South Africa and Brazil, two areas seem to have stable and adaptable scenes, both with fairly open-ended templates (Brazilian funk and South African house music) that have never quite broken through with a specific transnational megastar, but also continually inspire absorption and copying in other regions.3

I am equal parts curious and ambivalent around how music spreads now, and just-so narratives don’t capture the fundamental shift in global listening to omnidirectionality and unpredictability. Structural patterns can be clear in hindsight without always having obvious causes (which is not the same as saying that there’s no cause, just that you can only determine them after the fact in ways that are basically unrepeatable). I find this very exciting as a listener, but for artists and business interests, not to mention journalists, it’s maybe a different story.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. LinLin: +
France

2. Fallon: Bisous
Martinique-Guadeloupe-France

As promised and/or previewed in my April roundup, here are two Caribbean-pop-indebted French pop stars to watch: LinLin’s “+” sounds like a superstar in the making charging out of the gate, while Fallon doesn’t grab as hard but demonstrates an insinuating adaptability to her surroundings that reminds me of someone like Cassie, avoiding making an obvious mark in any given moment but lingering with you afterward as having indelibly stamped herself into the material.

3. Dj Glad, N’Ken, Bilouki: Chaud (3X)
Martinique

Shatta and bouyon are both traveling well to new regions, but their respective scenes are still full speed ahead; I’m not fielding a weekly deluge of content like in funk or amapiano, but there’s more than enough to specialize if you were so inclined.

4. Zinoleesky: Nostalgia
Nigeria

I’ve come a long way with my pharmacy that only plays Nigerian music, and correctly ID’ed a Zinoleesky song when I walked in the other day (I kept this information to myself).4 He is still one of my favorite Nigerian vocalists, but I am struck by how sweaty the surroundings are, a lot of effort for what should be a more effortless 3-step sound.

5. Champuru Makhenzo, Audio Addicts, Buxzi Lee, Amaza: 444
South Africa

6. JayJayy, Mordecai: Mngani Wami (Jaydecai)
South Africa

Meanwhile South African house music itself seems to have no such crisis. As I said up top, I think the various dance subgenres have demonstrated a resiliency that many other scenes don’t have. The one that to my ears sounds like a global crossover smash (3-step blend, a hook in English) has not really taken off, while the fantastic debut album from an up-and-coming amapiano singer, JayJayy, brings many of amapiano’s best producers together and they all sound great without really making compromises for amapiano outsiders. (JayJayy is a find from the ILM Rolling Afrohouse thread.)

7. Maandy: Hainaga Mambo
Kenya

My inability to get a bead on Kenyan pop, as does my enjoyment of Maandy, who never seems to put out the same sort of song twice. This time out she opts for dancehall.

8. 15 15: Take Off Late
Tahiti-France

Interesting project from the Tahitian-heritage Paris-based group that imagines a mythical Polynesian island where the tide is always right for surfing and the beats follow suit in rolling waves, can’t seem stay still for more than a minute at a time.

9. Tayna: Vena
Kosovo-Albania

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Tayna’s album since liking her amapiano-indebted pop—like LokpoLokpo, I assumed this would be something like my “Rihanna needs to make an amapiano album” dream from 2023. It includes bits of that but is more expansive and genre-ambivalent. This song, though, is pretty much exactly what I’ve wanted, and I’m surprised more people haven’t cracked it, give or take a few Tyla songs.

10. DJ Jeeh FDC, Mc Gw, Yuri Redicopa: Ritmada Do MJ2
Brazil

One I’d slotted into my Brazilian holdover list until Frank Kogan put it in his ongoing 2026 singles list, at which point I kicked myself for missing the “Earth Song” sample. (I know I glossed over this at the time because there’s a zero percent chance I would have kept it off of a mix if I’d really noticed.) Consider it harm reduction for the Michael soundtrack—are these sorts of huge samples in Brazilian funk authorized and paid for? I hope not!

11. DJ Danilinho Beat, MC Rafa 22: Medley pro DJ Danilinho Beat #3
Brazil

No idea why this song in particular jumped out to me, but it does provide a good example of what I once referred to as “melody literacy” in Brazilian funk. I was thinking about the role of melody in funk on the 20-year anniversary of Girl Talk’s Night Ripper, which I’ve come to really dislike over the years for its cavalier approach to every element of a song that isn’t the BPM. I wrote over on Bluesky: “There are times when he will let songs [in keys] that are one or two steps away from each other just play for a minute (worst ever offender might be ‘Rude Boy’ and ‘Waiting Room’)—even the most extreme Brazilian funk DJs don’t do this because it’s not ‘abrasive,’ it just sucks.”

There’s a smooth match in this song between melodic quality in the rap and the key of the song—I couldn’t tell you whether this is done intuitively by the MC or more deliberately by the DJ afterward (I imagine in different songs, either option might be in play). I think the abrasion and jaggedness in funk wouldn’t work if it was totally artless—the songs start with a kernel of something beautiful and will then bury it to see if you can still sense it underneath, like the princess and the pea. (This particular song sticks the pea on top of the mattress, though.)

12. 63OG, Minz: La tourelle
Cameroon-France/Nigeria

Interesting blend of coupe-decale with a plainer rap vocal. Should note that as I write this, the song and its accompanying album, 63Problemes, seem to have been taken off of YouTube and streaming. [Note: the song is back up just before this is scheduled to publish, hooray! But I don’t have anything else to say about it at the moment.]

13. Eizzyboi: Ninu Eko
Nigeria

Can’t quite place this—it struck me as having some of the frenetic motion of Nigerian cruise music, with log drum providing some thrown elbows. This is refreshing after the log drum sound has generally mellowed in a lot of post-amapiano production. Eizzyboi’s other music is a combination of upbeat Afrobeats and more straightforward hip-hop, so not sure exactly what this is or where it came from.

14. cKovi: Kora Kora
Mexico

Mexican…acid-kawaii? (My attempt to figure out how to define the “weaponized cuteness” that has broken containment from J-pop and started to show up all over the world.) It’s interesting in how it models itself after J-pop consciously, or self-consciously, but ends up sounding like a lot of other Latin American pop finding the same weapons from different directions.

15. Torfi: Ásdís Rán
Iceland

We need as many songs with the “Wearing My Rolex” synths as possible.

16. Mandyspie: Last Dance
Canada-France

French-Canadian hypertrap that sounds ready made for some hypothetical mall of the future, sounds great.

17. Tshegue: Psycho
DRC/France

Tshegue is one of the rare acts that I now give multiple listens to on principle. This one was a grower, so I’m glad I slowed down for it. Unfortunately you need to build up a lot of goodwill before I can do this, so I will continue to skip right past dozens of good songs each week. Sorry!

18. Viviane Chidid f. Bakhaw Dioum: C’est dieu qui decide
Senegal

19. Xduppy, Angekebabuye Mc f. Focalistic, Benzoo, DJ Maphorisa, Uncle Waffles, Mluusician: Lwetse 2.0
South Africa

Two leads from Lokpo—the rolling Senegal YouTube chart playlist hits predictable polyrhythmic paydirt from Viviane Chidid (I should really have an alert out for her releases). Then an update of a song I already had kicking around in my South African house holdover list brings in an all-star cast to join its already pretty all-starry cast.

20. Colkaze, Mbuxx f. Loony Q, Pablo Eddie: Wehh Mbuxx
South Africa

Another amapiano song I’m finding hard to describe—it strikes me as somewhat unfashionable and outdated. If amapiano development is like dog years, then four years’ nostalgia feels like ten. This particular song secured its status as a mix closer by doing that annoying thing where the song sputters to a close with several false endings, fade-outs, and silences, in a way that sounds like it might have been an editing mistake. Check your waveforms before you upload these things!

That’s it! Until next time, please try not to make any mash-ups with two songs in different keys.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Tshegue: Psycho (“Même dans la dérive, j’reste une diva”)

Do I dare wade into recent online conversations about the “quintessential millennial song?” It combines two things that I find annoying—first, imagining that being born at a particular time imparts obvious and universal features to a very broad cohort of people (the conversation almost immediately broke down even among Bluesky spitballers between British and American respondents). And second, projecting one’s individual taste onto how a diverse group “hear” something. I mean, just imagine— casting yourself as the voice of a whole generation! Er…don’t google that.

All that said, I resist waving away generational discourse altogether. I think that there are probably important effects of generation size, and of the aging of what is currently the largest generation in US history (sorry Boomers, we’re number one now!). I just don’t think this is necessarily related to how particular songs from the past might operate socially now. Most of the examples cited online appeal to multiple generations, and the ones that don’t often weren’t (and still aren’t) very popular within any particular generation according to the imperfect measures of popularity we have (lots of indie rock).1

The importance of there being a “millennial music generation” to my mind has mostly to do with how the size of this age cohort interacted with changing norms in marketing and distribution as they/we grew up. These are ideas I’ve been kicking around in a stubborn draft of the Disney series that won’t seem to get itself together enough to publish: more kids meant more consumers, specifically in a time when consumer targeting by narrow demographic characteristics exploded. The rise of cable television in particular provided a way to organize lots of young consumers without needing to appeal to broader (that is, older) demographics.

In doing some research on the millennial teenpop boom—where music marketing crashed into cohort size—I was interested in how the term “teenpop” evolved over time in the press, using NYT’s archives to get a sense of its use in that publication. Here’s what I have sitting in my draft folder:

The person who used it the most frequently in the 1970s was New York Times columnist John Rockwell (styled “teen-pop”) to describe a wide range of contemporary artists—David Essex, Paul McCartney, Bootsy Collins—usually in comparison to some more “mature” counterpoint. His use of the term was part of a larger grappling with the shifting tastes of aging Baby Boomers outgrowing the tastes of their childhoods. In 1977, he captured the point at which this generation was growing too old for childish things and into a maturity that record labels would need to address:

“Americans are getting older, and after 25 they don’t seem to hit as many records as they do when they’re younger. Though the record industry has been able to grow steadily without worrying unduly about how to attract the adult buyer, one of these years the moguls are going to have to sit down and retool their promotional effort. But given the stakes and the fact that a good deal of present‐day popular music is a lot more mature than teen‐pop used to be, one doesn’t feel too concerned.”

Discourse about music “for millennials” is similarly grappling with a large aging cohort, and there are probably some interesting things to say about this. I think the jury’s out on how the age cohort of US millennials will make their generational size felt in a music industry that has changed in ways that I think are bigger than US demography no matter how you slice it.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Lavalove: Go Go Boots
US

Anything that reminds me of the Dollyrots will probably make a mix at some point, and this is no exception.

2. Güner Künier: Kes
Turkey-Germany

Are there any US artists that make their sequencers throb and thrust like this? Seems like a waste of one of the great affordances of the technology to make it sound so damn soft all the time.

3. Tallandskiinny: I Wanna Dance
Canada

Montreal artist is inspired by Jersey club but to my ears gets closer to the tamborzão of classic Brazilian funk. Had never really thought about the possible connection between the two (which probably runs through Miami bass?).

4. Juana Rozas, Six Sex: Splash
Argentina

Have enjoyed all of the team-ups I’ve heard between Juana Rozas, my artist of the year last year, and Six Sex, potentially my artist of the year this year. (Their collab “I’m a Star” from 2024 is currently in the second round of the Pop World Cup and it’s up against my team.) There is supposedly a Six Sex full-length album in the works, which would immediately shift the balance of power in the Other Dave Moore Yearly List of Albums I Enjoyed Universe.

5. IRENE: Don’t Wanna Get Up
South Korea

Red Velvet singer with a mid-tier midtempo melodic bonbon.

6. Crescendo: Diam-Diam Suka
Indonesia

The occasional K-pop-style Indonesian pop number not by No Na to make it through.

7. Starjunk 95: Error 4 on the Floor
Japan

8. MilMoon: True Mind
Japan

Two different approaches to hyperactive J-pop, via triple-shot espresso from a hip coffee shop and novelty oversized Pixy Stix from an abandoned arcade, respectively. The hipsters probably merit an album listen. The Pixy Stixers are singles only for the time being.

9. NASAAN f. That Mexican OT: Luke Combs
US

10. Trap Dickey f. Key Glock: Down South
US

Two rap tracks that have finally gotten ubiquitous rappers That Mexican OT and Key Glock onto my mixes. The first one sets a terrible joke accent against a trap beat without really achieving Trap Daniels velocity (probably better for it as song and as joke). The second one uses a reliable Other Dave mix hack—throw in the “Rump Shaker” sax.

11. Dallo: El 2ashash
Egypt

Egyptian electro palate cleanser. I’m not beating the “doesn’t include Egyptian music unless it’s augmented with some arty cosmopolitan adornment” allegations.

12. ERISTHEPLANET: Geezer [2025]
US

Glad to hear that Vayda’s casual whispery flow has some traction in the wider world of up-and-coming MCs, via DC rapper Eristheplanet. Less glad to discover as I write this that this is originally from April 2025 (woops) and went viral early this year soundtracking Drake gambling content. But on the plus side, I also learned that the first album she ever bought was Selena Gomez & The Scene’s Kiss & Tell: “I loved the album cover and it was the first album I had downloaded on my iPod Nano as a purchase. I was like eight years old but I knew what I liked.”

13. SY3: Tell Me
China-US

Chinese-American group based in L.A. on a Dutch label. A bit caught between stools, too slow for contemporary electropop and too upbeat for throwback downtempo trip-hop. They claim it’s influenced by ‘00s Chinese pop from Faye Wong and Zhou Xun, which is as good an excuse as any to listen to Faye Wong’s 2000 album Fable.

14. Ea Othilde: Florence
Norway

Whither windowpane? I think my indie installment in the A-pop series has aged most poorly so far (if you don’t count the continued implosion of Eurovision, which to be fair I accounted for in the fourth installment). My fascination with a deluge of mush-pop was probably just noticing the glut of a landfill at the end of a trend. I hear far less uncanny valley indie rock/adult contemporary this year—even this one, which puts me in mind of it, clears out some of the mush and falls more cleanly on the indie side. I do think that Sombr is the Bruno Mars of this particular era of indie/pop, so maybe he just “won” the mush landscape, gave it a shave and a haircut, and is on his way to becoming a sui generis monster. (Yes, I can link three A-pop installments in one blurb, what of it.)

15. Rachel Lime: Jangdan
US

A nifty little art-pop number that has the feel of being in 12/4. Lime’s vocals are really the only part of the mise en scène operating as wallpaper, which suits her, like the vocals are printed as a Magic Eye and you need to relax your vision for them to really pop out (I’ve never been able to do a Magic Eye but would probably ace a Magic Ear).

16. Daisy Grenade: Girls Are So Lucky
US

Third or maybe fourth lifetime appearance from neo-(neo?-)teenpop duo Daisy Grenade, who no longer sound like Skye Sweetnam with cursing and now sing glittery but grizzled songs about life on the road (“full glam in the minivan,” which I misheard as the better line “four grand and a minivan”).

17. MikkyZia, Club Dangdut Racun: Skip Dulu
Indonesia

18. Thắng, Wala: Hoá Ra Là
Vietnam

Two watery R&B numbers, sloshing aimlessly but not unpleasantly. The first I think is from a hipdut playlist (which from what I can tell just means “alt R&B from Indonesia”) whereas the second is one of many contemporary V-pop songs that makes it onto my radar each week without having an organizing subgenre that I’m aware of.

19. Vanessa Carlton: Woke Up High
US

Vanessa Carlton woke up high, but not that high. Sounds more like Earl Grey.

20. Rachel Kitchlew, DOUGH: Spook
UK

21. Lyra Pramuk: Ending (Djrum Endless Rework)
US-Germany/UK

22. ((( O ))): Evolve
US

Ending with three mostly-instrumental mood pieces. The first is a heist scene jazz jam by harpist Rachel Kitchlew, the second a defacement of Lyra Pramuk’s already pretty viscous experimental vocal pop stretched into a rictus smirk by DJrum, and finally, mix-closing standby ((( O ))) brings things to a soft landing sounding like she’s trying to smother some Afrobeats in a sweater.

That’s it! Until next time, don’t be afraid to speak for yourself rather than your whole generation (note to self).

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Vanessa Carlton: Woke Up High

No time for chit-chat — it’s April in review! Hope you’re well.

11 Songs I Heard in April (unranked)

• Courtney Barnett: Mantis

• Dani Lia: Schwindelig (omgomgomg)

• Deli Dünya: Qamar

• DJ Mandrake 100% Original: Piano do Mal

• heavy / bloom: Бруд [“Brood”]

• LinLin: + [“Plus”]1

• Natalia Doco: Hacha

• Quỳnh Anh Shyn: Girl Phố

• Six Sex: Not Ur Mom

• VICKY: Bunte Scheine

• Yuri: てきとうメイク [“Tekito Make”]

10 Albums I Heard in April (lightly ranked)

• RAYE: This Music May Contain Hope
  Haven’t really grappled with this thing yet. It goes long (really long) on the promise of artful/joyful/theatrical R&B-pop at the end of the aughts, which I don’t think ever really produced anything quite this maximalist and overstuffed. But it leaves a strong aftertaste that I can’t quite figure out. I have determined the aftertaste is NOT: Britishness! musical theater! meta asides! indulgent set pieces! or FUN! But it might be: flattened production where many different styles feel mashed together rather than set against each other. Weirdly, I think what I really want is a well-produced live stage show recording of the same material—as if this is a studio reproduction of the real thing I want to hear.

• LØLØ: God Forbid a Girl Spits Out Her Feelings!
  Feel similarly about this as I do about RAYE, from a different angle—every piece fits together nicely but the album taken as a whole feels a bit washed out. It’s like the blueprint for a perfect mid-aughts alt-confessional album, but it sort of works on those terms—I think any more discernible grain or personality from LØLØ herself might even ruin the effect.

• Fallon: Winter Princess
  A decent full-length of the continued integration of bouyon into French pop music, in a variant Fallon apparently calls RnBouyon. (As a pathological genre neologizer, I must respectfully say: no thank you.)

• Zee Nxumalo & Dlala Thukzin: Inznja Zam Vol. 1 [EP]
  A no-brainer collab between one of my favorite vocalists in amapiano and a producer who is, if not exactly a favorite, an accepted titan.

• Ashley Monroe: Dear Nashville
  Really slept on Tennessee Lightning last year, and am determined not to sleep on this solid but slight follow-up, which is less oomph and more craft, goes down a bit easier despite having fewer highlights. (Stephen Deusner at Pitchfork says: “aggressively modest.”) Like watching a good spring training game.

• Julia Cumming: Julia
  Sunflower Bean lead singer gave a charming interview on a podcast I listen to and I liked the songs from this that they played. It’s very piano forward and overwritten in the same way the stuff I sometimes try to write is. It briefly inspired me to try to write some songs, which were all bad.

• Vanessa Carlton: Veils
  I don’t think I consistently underrate Carlton like I do Michelle Branch, but maybe there are other Carlton albums I’ve missed? (It looks like I’ve longlisted her albums twice in the last 20 years, in 2007 and 2020.) A lot of echo and space: bedroom pop, but it’s a big bedroom and maybe haunted—just a little, not so much that it keeps you up.

• Makthaverskan: Glass and Bones
  Featured one of the songs from this jangly Swedish indie rock album on a mix after Isabel recommended them. The other ones are good, too.

• YUNA: Ice Cream [EP]

  Which K-pop EP to feature this month? YUNA gets the nod on pure banger ratio, but I was probably more interested in the hyperpoppish alt-K variant from HEYOON, seriously unserious (that’s the title, not my judgment of it).

• Ilykimchi: Prenup [EP]
  One of a bundle of potential recs from George Henderson tracing the current gnarly little family tree branches of Weird Girls Who Dance But Ambiguously Take the Piss, edging out Lil Mariko (who is more obviously taking the piss).

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Laufey: Madwoman
Iceland

Is Laufey…good? I think no, but I find her popularity fascinating. She’s in Fortnite! She got one of the hockey show guys in the video! This sort of zombie songbook pastiche irritates me but I’m not immune to its charms; with a dollop more irony she could aspire to Touch & Go. Her songs work occasionally when the bones are good, good enough in this case that I can overlook a repeated syllable emphasis clunker like “something SO vex-ING ‘bout YOU.”2 Oh god, there’s a Katseye cameo in the video, too? Hm—is Laufey the neo-songbook Katseye? In true ‘90s bachelor pad fashion, consider this song the “negative track” on the CD that you have to rewind backwards from 0:00 to get to.

2. Kumail, Nickson Dufala: Vultures
India-Portugal/DRC

A lot of Golden Beatology this week, with plenty of three-digit YouTubes and, when available, Bandcamp links. This one feels very much like an album intro, which in context it literally is.3 It was also used for a short documentary about the project soundtracking a day in the life of chef Nickson Dufala in Kinshasa, where Kumail lived for 5 years. I think it stands on its own when the groove settles around 90 seconds in.

3. Les Poissons: Nature Boy
Norway

I’m pretty sure that every cover of “Nature Boy” (the Eden Ahbez standard) is good, but I’ve never tested the theory of whether every song even called “Nature Boy” is good. This is evidence in favor of that theory.

4. Narasimha: Fanga
US

Fun single from Ninja Tune, glimmers of “Mutant Brain” by Sam Spiegel and Ape Drums, soundtrack to what just be a top 5 perfume ad music video. Some day when someone finally makes me the music coordinator on a children’s animated show I will be sure to include this song in a chase scene.

5. Jorge Drexler f. Rueda de Candombe: El tambor chico
Uruguay

Bittersweet to win a round in the People’s Pop World Cup against this catchy and warm samba from Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler.

6. Asimptot: Kes Deri
Turkey

Shambling Turkish indie with a bit of Weezer in the DNA, but more ramshackle than that comparison suggests. Maybe Weezer should start writing and performing songs without practicing and with one arm tied behind their backs.

7. isbit: Brodder
Norway

Jazz-pop from Norway, gets a little brassy as it goes on but the vocals never take the bait to compete.

8. nikocorlin: Something Wrong with Your Hands
Denmark

We have Miya Folick at home, if we happen to live in Denmark. (Yes I have used this joke template before, possibly several times…and I’ll do it again.)

9. Serebii, KAJJA: Bends Not Breaks
New Zealand

Electropop pulses create a certain buoyancy, but the singer has the good sense to stay underwater.

10. MARO: It Ain’t Over
Portugal

Maro represented Portugal at Eurovision in 2022 with “Saudade, Saudade,” which is wispy and mushy in a way that this one threatens but mostly avoids by perking up in the chorus. Would still probably prefer it in Portuguese.

11. Dana and Alden f. Mei Semones: Lee’s Greenhouse
US

Mei Semones street team mode in full effect! She’s just vocalizing to a flute melody on this one (ha, “just,” as if), but it’s great. Why can’t she be in Fortnite??

12. Bolbec: Le Prof de Gong
France

Stereolabby French hipster swing with all the right accoutrements and with very little else going for it, in a way that I think probably helps it.

13. Negadeza, Zuri Ribeiro: Mestra Querida
Brazil

14. Edssada: No Mato No Sertão
Brazil

Two from the more tastefully-minded Brazilian (i.e. non-funk) lists I pull from, one from the granddaughter of Selma do Coco and the other from the singer from Brazilian group A Outra Banda da Lua.

15. Yassine Nana: Telephone [c. 1984-1989]
Mauritania

Great find from Bongo Joe, ‘80s Mauritanian pop salvaged from little-circulated cassettes (little-circulated enough not to get a more precise date for this song from skimming Discogs). From Bandcamp:

Recorded in Mauritania as well as during stays in Paris and Rabat, these songs integrate drum machines, synthesizers and electric guitars into Saharan musical structures.

Influenced by reggae, soul and new wave, the group develops a sound that reflects the circulation of music and technology in the 1980s, while remaining firmly rooted in Mauritanian languages, themes and melodic systems.

16. Antonio Carlos & Jocafi, Adrian Younge: Rala-Bucho
Brazil/US

Another canny international jam sesh opportunity from Adrian Younge, who brings Bahia duo Antonio Carlos & Jocafi into the studio to provide another good flute on the mix.

17. Ezra Collective: Chapter 7 (Live at NPR’s Tiny Desk)
UK

Can never remember what these guys’ deal is—would have pegged them as US, but they are British enough to have won the Mercury Prize (that is, very British). This is the only thing I’ve heard from them that has earned inclusion on a mix, and since it is NPR Tiny Desk I have an excuse to share this video again.

18. Nettle DJ, Dumo the Vocalist: Amahlathi
UK

Afrohouse from a UK producer that could maybe use more of the hard angles of the face mask she wears in live performances.

19. Khun Narin: Poet Wong Pt. 1
Thailand

Rural Thai psych-rockers, playing what they call phin prayuk, went town to town blasting this stuff from a homemade soundsystem until an L.A. producer heard them on YouTube and enlisted interpreters from a local Thai restaurant to reach out on Facebook about recording them. They put out their first album in 2014 and this is a long-awaited album 3, their first recorded in a real studio.

20. Dagmar Zuniga f. Austyn Wohlers: Even God Gets Stuck in Devotion
Nicaragua-US/US

Have noticed a lot of praise for this album, a scrapbook of demos recorded on a Tascam, though I don’t fully understand the appeal. This is the one I settled on, a slow guitar figure and languorously stretched-out syllables with (via?) author Austyn Wohlers. Suspect this might be my lo-fi Laufey, so let’s call it the bonus “secret track” on the far side of the disc.

That’s it! Until next time, let me know what your favorite secret CD tracks are on either end of the disc.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Kumail f. Nickson Dufala: Vultures (“Na likolo parmi ba vautours”)

I was all set to write more about LØLØ, the Canadian artist who has been putting out somewhat anonymous but competent pop hits for a few years now, and her new album God Forbid a Girl Spits Out Her Feelings!, which in concept (“what if I just stopped mucking around and made a classic mid-aughts confessional alt-rock album without some other hook”) is the best album I’ve heard this year. But I feel stuck appreciating it at a stubborn distance—which I find compelling, like it’s more an idea for an album than album.

But then the New York Times published a list of greatest living American songwriters (no comment) and conducted what I think is one of the only long-form interviews entirely about songwriting craft I’ve heard from Taylor Swift in many years. So screw it, I’m talking about that.

Some revelations in the interview:

• She reveals the extent of her obsession with emo music and especially its lyrical construction, though she doesn’t give an exact timeline of when exactly she was studying Fall Out Boy and Dashboard Confessional lyrics. Certainly later than 12 but probably earlier than 17. My sense is that direct emo tropes don’t really start to show up in her music in full force until after Fearless, but maybe it’s in there earlier. Swift directly quotes the line that Isabel Cole used in her incredible essay on Tortured Poets Department from 2024: “I’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song.”

• In 2024 I wrote: “Taylor Swift seems to come up with lyrics like a rapper might, in disconnected bits of inspired wordplay or the perfect one-line evocation of an idea, which is then sometimes backfilled with other words to make it scan or, just as frequently, left stranded with other one-liners like a confetti of fortune cookie slips.” She all but confirms this, talking about carrying around an enormous list of words, phrases, and one-liners that she hooks into whatever song she’s working on. (This strikes me as similar to how Kendrick Lamar describes writing songs. Daniel Radosh claims that Bob Dylan’s songwriting process looks like this, too, especially since the 1990s.)

• In one of my favorite moments, she comes up with a distinctively Swiftian phrase on the spot to describe something she might have noticed in post-adolescence and early adulthood: “candle ash on the cuff of the shirt and the button,” an image that I have trouble visualizing (what is “candle ash” and how does it get on someone’s cuff?) but you can tell it’s interesting to her as word sounds: “Can-dle ash on the cuff and the button.” (“I have little phonetic things,” she says.)

• There’s a compelling, though maybe conveniently post hoc, explanation for the line “when we’re on the phone and you talk real slow, ‘cuz it’s late and your momma don’t know” in “Our Song,” rather than talk real low. She says that she doesn’t like ending a word with a consonant and starting the next one with the same consonant. Whether this is technically true or not, I’d never just tried to sing it as “real low.” It doesn’t sound as good!

• If you didn’t think she was pandering to me specifically in this interview, she complains about the label of “confessional” and how it often wrongly connotes “messy,” and should be applied to more male artists (she brings up Sombr). “Are rap beefs messy? Or are they confessional?” As the only music critic to make a direct comparison between Young Jeezy and Ashlee Simpson, I very much enjoyed this.

More on LØLØ’s incredible disappearing/reappearing personality act next week in the album and song round-up, maybe.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. ADÉLA: KGB
Slovakia

Do I love this song, or am I just rooting for ADÉLA and interested in an up-and-coming star talking about studying English from age eight so that she could infiltrate the US marketplace? Probably the latter, but I’ve come to think it really is a stronger song than I gave it credit for at first. I can’t help but set her against Katseye, her onetime reality TV competition, and note how naturally stardom comes to her after all that hard work, whereas you can always see how hard Katseye are working in a way that I find at best annoying and at worst distasteful.

2. Paloma Morphy f. EMJAY: Qué ves en mí?
Mexico

3. GRTSCH f. Medio Picky: Mamita
Mexico

I also don’t think you need to infiltrate the US marketplace (or sing in English) to knock it out of the park these days. More alt-rock noises from up-and-coming Mexican pop stars, from EMJAY’s recent EP to this collaboration with Paloma Morphy, who has always been closer to a post-Lorde confessional sound. Then, the second mix appearance for GRTSCH with some hard industrial clatter in the lead up to an almost tango-like chorus.

4. Natalia Doco: Hacha
Argentina-France

5. LUCIYE: Sabotáž
Czech Republic

For the artier side of clave-oriented pop you could do worse than art-pop smeared with guitar squeals from Argentine-French Natalia Doco or Brazilian-style pop-phonk from Czech artist LUCIYE. I used to be able to provide a handy distinction between Brazilian phonk and Brazilian funk—it has to do with whether there’s a hard potato-sack thump on all four beats with with some clave accents interspersed (phonk) or if the clave is driving the rhythm with a hard landing on the four, possibly via potato sack, or cartoon anvil, or a pile of bodies living or dead (funk)—but I’ll admit things have gotten even more mixed up than usual in the past year or two and seem harder to disentangle, especially when it’s getting reimagined in Eastern Europe, which, to make things even murkier, has its own substrand of phonk, to which this particular song bears basically no resemblance.

6. Ikkimel, Florida Juicy, nocashfromparents: Not Today
Germany

I am now drawn to enough German novelty filth on a weekly basis that I have to do a quick scan to see if I’ve featured an artist before. And yes, as I thought, this is the same Ikkimel who first drew my attention to this scene(?) with the delightfully foul “Unisexklo.”

7. Popa: Dove andiamo a ballare questa sera?
Italy

Disco pastiche with a period aesthetic video that doesn’t make me grumble like a guy examining the epaulets in a historical reenactment. They stick to what looks like a simple low-budget 16mm shoot and don’t crop the rounded edges around the frame. Don’t mess with what works!

8. Karl Wine, Sleazy Stereo, ValsBezig, Reanny: Baddie Alarm
Netherlands

Some dancehall that as best as I could tell is from all Dutch collaborators, constructed a little bit like baile funk but with a dancehall vocal on top. If I couldn’t do phonk/funk justice there’s no way I’m going to get across what’s going on here.

9. Miimii KDS: Coming
Guadeloupe

Breakout bouyon star with the inevitably paler but still good follow-up to her hit “Se MiiMii,” the official video to which seems to have been taken down in a copyright claim. Download yr faves!

10. LinLin: Maman m’a dit non
France

The better bouyon this week is from LinLin, who is from France and has put out a few real firecrackers this year, including her bigger hit “+” (“Plus”) which I might feature on a future mix.

11. sportcafé: Сумнівне кохання [Sumnivne koxannya]
Ukraine

Flat, thin post-punk noises from a Ukrainian group I’ve featured before and called “tuneful Ukrainian goth-pop.” This is notably less gothy, like they strained all the juice out of their sound.

12. Kathryn Mohr: Property
US

I like how this song traps itself in the opening riff of “Airbag” by Radiohead and fights its way out the whole time, like if “Airbag” was actually recorded in an airbag.

13. Coals: Basen
Poland

Polish art-pop group goes a bit too mellow, sometimes bordering on somnambulant, for me to handle in more than small doses, but this is the right dosage.

14. Hana: Un sólo parpadeo
Argentina

It’s a tough year for an Argentine electropop star with an arts background to keep using HANA, especially when she has what to me seems like a perfectly stage-ready given name (Florencia Ciliberti). Seems bound to get lost in a morass of search results for the Japanese girl group. But I was able to find her website eventually!

15. noffkoffska: w_moim_małym_pokoju.mp3
Poland

Needed to fill my Polish bedroom-pop quota. Lucky find.

16. Maryam Saleh: El Faqd
Egypt

I heard a different track from this album in the Peoples Pop World Cup (Saudi Arabia won its first match of three! It feels weird to be rooting for Saudi Arabia!). I don’t think I found this one from that lead, though I did like the song in competition. Has the cosmopolitan artiste layer I so often need to make Egyptian music scan. Someday I’ll figure out how to get down more reliably with the stomping 2/4 foundation of Egyptian pop without needing to cut it with something.

17. Hannah Peel, Beibei Wang: Awaken the Insects
UK/China

Golden Beatology-core—arty UK DJ and Chinese percussionist who claim that this album is a tour of the Chinese Zodiac or something. Bio mentions “Peel’s uncanny ability to evoke the atmosphere of a city she had never been to,” and that is in fact what this sounds like (not derogatory, but not entirely complimentary ), though Wang’s insistent, borderline hyperactive, overlapping vocals are the star of the show.

18. Chino Kidd, S2kizzy: Fashion
Tanzania

19. Aymos, Blackmyth, Blissbuoy f. Canicee, Oga: Xigubu 2.0
South Africa

20. Tkcreedlion, Mordecai, Sandy6eats f. Springle, Philharmonic, Miikey Ndlovu: Swidi K’Phela
South Africa

Ending with three interesting if minor variations on amapiano, which continues to amass in a holdover list that is past 100 tracks already this year. First a poppy take from Tanzania that interpolates “Jimmy Jimmy Aaja Aaja,” then a sunny track that sounds like it borrows from some old-school kwaito, and finally one of my favorite amapiano tracks of the year in a “heart wants what it wants” sort of way, a leisurely party jam that trades off between vocal hooks and smooth keyboard improvisations.

That’s it! Until next time, try to figure out any “little phonetic things” you might have yourself and go make some songs out of it.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from ADÉLA: KGB

I’ve been testing a few of my theories around US pop music lately. My general idea is not exactly that US pop is becoming a distinctive regional form of pop music, but that thinking about US pop in this way is somewhat alien to pop discourse, especially for people (like me!) who tend to centralize the US themselves, and also perhaps for people who have lived in the comparative shadow of the US’s role in global pop culture and distribution.

One side question that this brings up is whether or not there really are currently a lot of distinctively regional US hits, ones that don’t travel abroad. The Billboard Global 200 is a useful metric here, because it has one version that includes the Billboard Hot 100 along with other regions’ data, but a different version that excludes US charts. So you should be able to see the times that there is, by Billboard’s standards, a big hit in the United States that doesn’t hit as hard anywhere else, without having to do extensive analysis of lots of country’s pop charts.

It turns out that something hitting in the US and not hitting on other charts is relatively uncommon in any given snapshot of the Hot 100 versus Global 200 (Excl. US) charts. Most songs that do well on the Hot 100 also do pretty well on the Global 200 (Excl. US); there appear to be many more songs that do well on the latter (non-US) and don’t really hit the former (US). But there are some exceptions that I think are interesting.

(Important style note! I’m going to be referring from here on out to the cumbersome “Global 200 Excluding US” chart as “GXU,” which I think is somewhat annoying to read but is much easier to type!)

Here as best as I could tell are the songs that have done much better (i.e. greater than 25 places or so) on recent US charts than on the GXU charts:1

• Ella Langley: Choosin’ Texas — US peak #1, GXU peak #83

• Kehlani: Folded — US peak #6, GXU peak #58

• Noah Kahan: The Great Divide — US peak #6, GXU peak #39

• Morgan Wallen & Post Malone: I Ain’t Comin’ Back — US peak #8, GXU peak N/A

• Luke Combs: Sleepless in a Hotel Room — US peak #11, GXU peak N/A

• Luke Combs: Be By You — US peak #12, GXU peak N/A

• Lil Uzi Vert: What You Saying — US peak #12, GXU peak #69

• Pooh Sheisty: FDO — US peak #12, GXU peak N/A

• Don Toliver: E85 — US peak #15, GXU peak #100

• Noah Kahan: Porch Light — US peak #20, GXU peak #102

• Zach Bryan: Say Why — US peak #25, GXU peak N/A

Songs popular on US rap and R&B charts that cross over to the Hot 100 don’t always make a comparable leap to non-US audiences, though many others do. Country is even more distinctively regional to the US, which squares with a few ideas I’ve gestured toward occasionally—about the success of country as “regional US music” in the ‘20s, especially on the Hot 100. I mentioned but didn’t really dive into this in a section (plus footnote) of Part 2 of the A-pop series. I realize now, though, that I got my footnote point here backward:

The process through which pop music achieves any level of popularity follows certain universal principles of social diffusion. These principles now apply at a frictionless global scale that mirrors frictionless global access to streaming media. The result is more music from more places getting more popular much faster than was possible in previous eras of mass media distribution.

I think one side effect of this is that lots of American pop music that positions itself as part of an aspiring (or assumed) hegemon ends up seeming smaller, while other regional music forms seem comparatively bigger, including some forms in the United States itself.

Footnote: I think this is one of the factors of country music’s recent world-wide expansion, with the secret ingredient being its full sonic embrace of rap to bring it more in line with pop that tends to travel internationally. Why hip-hop (and jazz and blues and rock before it) traveled so well is a good subject for a different post, one I may or may not be qualified to ever write.

So really what I was noticing at the time was probably not “country music’s recent world-wide expansion,” but rather a regional music of the United States doing very well on measures of US listening. It is much more likely a regional success story, not a global one.

To some extent this may always be true of cyclical country music successes in the Hot 100; it’s somewhat difficult to make a comparison. But I think it’s worth underlining the current gap between US audiences and international audiences (as represented by the GXU charts) here. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is the song with the biggest discrepancy in scores for any song that has recently appeared on both the US and GXU charts (#1 US versus #85 GXU).2 But pretty much all country music is like this. Morgan Wallen only cracked the top ten of the GXU charts once, for “I Had Some Help” with Post Malone, which peaked at #3. He has only had 3 other songs on the GXU charts across his entire career: “Last Night” (peak #82), “What I Want” with Tate McRae (peak #118), and “Love Somebody” (peak #134). Luke Combs has four songs that never got higher than #76 in the GXU charts, and Zach Bryan has two songs, with the highest peaking at #92.

When I talk about “A-pop,” I am not really referring to a regional form of music that is mostly popular within the US. I’m instead thinking about still-globally-minded US pop music seeming trapped in a battle against many other regional competitors for everyone’s attention. But I wonder if this sort of US regionalization is a related phenomenon. There are many forms of US music that haven’t always traveled well, but what seems different is that these types of more localized music are showing up in measures of listener accounting that tend to be more globalized. That is to say, the Hot 100 is perhaps taking on the characteristics of a more regional chart, one that may get more local and idiosyncratic as time goes on.3

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Courtney Barnett: Mantis
Australia

I don’t have an “All My Exes Live in Vortexes” or “Fist” level indie fave yet this year, so I suppose I will make up for it with volume. First, my favorite of a long suite of indie rock(ish) songs leading off this week, from an artist liked a lot at one time with what sounds to me like her single best song in a decade (not that I’m keeping close tabs). I like how she sings about searching for the melody every morning metaphorically, but the song hunts around for a melody, too, finding it in moments, missing it in others. She gets across a sense of persistent irritation in a grand search for meaning, maybe in songs or in trees, while allowing that beauty can be both a cop-out and a fair enough argument ender.

2. Robber Robber: New Year’s Eve
US

Have heard various chatter about this band, scrappier and more tuneful than some of the big alt names who I tended to like more when they were scrappier and, hm, less tuneful, weird.

3. TV Star: Reality Cheque
US

The last US rock group in this batch, had been holding onto this for a few weeks. Since that time, I’ve found the song additional multiple times, which usually means I will bail on any song I’d been wavering on—it starts to feel like too much of a PR push for the good faith nudge from [6.5] to [7]. Then along came this particular mix and they slotted in nicely. I will just roll my eyes and skip it if it keeps appearing again and again, idly wondering what streaming jackpot it hit (was it made or just happened?). Could be worse: I have now heard the Bloodhound Q50 song “Don’t Blink Or Stare” every single week for one year and three months. I referred to it as “a trifle.” If only!

4. Naaz: Something Good
Netherlands

5. Zara Colombo: Le Stelle
Italy

6. Elmer: Geen Beest
Netherlands

Three more rockers, two Dutch and one Italian. Dutch-Kurdish artist Naaz goes Cure in music rather than just name-dropping them; Italian duo Zara Colombo charm with guitar bends; Elmer ups the brightness but retains a sneer.

7. Nubiyan Twist f. Patrice Rushen: Threads
UK/US

Commence Golden Beatology vibes! The weather here has been a whiplash between scorching and freezing — we turned the air conditioner on last week and I have my little space heater back on overnight as I write this. I’m sure it’s all…fine. Let’s enjoy Patrice Rushen sitting in with Nubiyan Twist and not think too much about it.

8. Baalti, Lapgan: Romance
India-US

I am a reliable sucker for Bollywood sampledelica, will still go to bat pretty hard for Bombay the Hard Way.

9. Deli Dünya: Qamar
Turkey

That said, the -delica award this week goes to a plainer “psyche-” variant from Turkey.

10. Jamala: Flirt
Ukraine

Jessie Ware-ish dancefloor bravura—I should probably give the latest Ware more of a shot, but her last few albums have left me cold, strike me as a little fussy and prim. This has some of that, too, but not so much that it’s a dealbreaker.

11. Sara Costa: GroovinU
France

Straight down the middle cosmo Afrohouse, what more could you ask for? Well, a lot. But you don’t need to sometimes.

12. Sa & Guarabyra: Vem Queimando a Nave Louca (Ao Vivo no Sesc) [1979]
Brazil

This was a nice find, don’t know Sá & Guarabyra, a Brazilian duo known for mixing Brazilian Caipira music into rock styles, but to my ears it just sound like post-disco funk-rock, gnarly riffs ‘n’ Rhodes.

13. 鄭思恩 SHIYIN: Mila
Malaysia

Have been very much enjoying the resurgence of light samba and bossa across regions without it feeling too archly retro—here’s a nice one from Malaysia.

14. Neeti Mohan f. Siddhant Bhosle, Shayra Apoorva, NEVERSOBER: Rab Se
India

Checked to see if Siddhant Bhosle, a producer on this swaying Indian R&B number, was of any relation to Asha Bhosle—no, but he is the son of Sudesh Bhosale, a playback singer for Bollywood films who in one interview claimed that “everyone thought I was Asha Bhosle’s son.” There was a fantastic Bodega Pop Asha Bhosle tribute show on WFMU after her recent passing that you can listen to here.

15. MESTIZA: Salam
Spain

Says here “DJ duo that combines electro and flamenco influences.” Checks out!

16. Horse Lords: Brain of the Firm
US

Finally got acquainted with music critic meme du jour Angine de Poitrine, a math-leaning jam duo from Quebec with some inspired novelty elements—polka dot outfits, bare feet, live looping with a double guitar/bass, ostensible microtones. It looks and sounds great live, and promptly goes limp on the record, which is sort of par for the course for this kind of stuff (see also: Reggie Watts).4 There is no dearth of bands doing time signature fuckery with nominal avant/classical trimmings (phasing, looping, ostensible microtones, whatever). This one was pretty good!

17. Green Cosmos: Kalimba Walk
Germany

None of the twisty turny sharp elbows stuff can compete with a kalimba used for basically any purpose, go fig.

18. Omar Sosa, Joo Kraus, Diego Pinera: El Comienzo
Cuba/Germany/Uruguay

19. Nightmares on Wax, Adrian Sherwood: Sweeter Still
UK

Two languorous cosmo-pop jams to cool down to a close—a jazz hangout that I enjoyed and a DJ chillout sesh that I mostly just abided, but both worked well for the mix dismount.

20. Jon Bastiste, Josh Harmon: Song of Storms
US

A little post-script bonbon from a viral video that turned up in my playlists afterward. I won’t say this is anything more than a Leo-finger-pointing novelty for people who like silly jazz improv and already know the song from Ocarina of Time, but I am one of those people. I have also confirmed that I can actually play this! (And that I need to get my piano tuned and practice more!) Koji Kondo made things easier for me by composing everything around notes in a D Dorian scale, an easy key to improvise in. I wrote a bit about the Zelda soundtrack last year in this post.

That’s it! Until next time, practice!

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Courtney Barnett: Mantis

4

I also discovered that if you google the band now, this happens:

It’s the most wonderful time of every four years—when the People’s Pop Polls turn into the Pop World Cup, a music tournament where players nominate songs from countries participating in the World Cup. Some poll participants are assigned countries to “manage,” meaning nominating one track from the country and offering other suggestions. Each country gets three songs, and all of the songs then go head to head in a series of matches that resembles the World Cup’s match structure.

The preponderance of music will usually be not in English, with lots of potential for finding new music from new places. One of these tracks, Kat Stevens’s nomination from Austria, leads the mix this week. I have disqualified on release year grounds my favorite golden beat on a quick skim: via LondonLee, a 2025 song from French group Astéréotypie called “Cheese Bad Girl.” However, there is no restriction on sharing that song in the intro, so here you go!

I think the Pop World Cup and occasional Not In English polls (or comparable themes with a de-emphasis on well-known Western Anglophone pop) always do a little extra educative work without feeling like a chore, as people look into the regional context of music, learn new artists and genres, and tend to have more patience and enthusiasm for unfamiliar forms and other languages. I seek that stuff out in every poll, but the reason that the polls in general work is because you don’t have to seek it out; that’s just one of many ways to engage.

Which is to say, I will also probably be voting for “Say It Right” by Nelly Furtado, representing Canada and one of my favorite songs of all time. Join in the fun if you’d like—it’s run on Bluesky but all voting happens on Google Forms, so you can participate without having a Bluesky account. Tom also keeps an ongoing list of live matches off of social media on his website.

Here are my two noms as the manager of the Saudi Arabian team. They will join Jesper Haglund’s nom, Seera’s “Shams” from last year—a great find, and better than any of my potential third picks to round out the team.

Asayel: Asliyah (Saudi Arabia, 2024)

There has been a small TikTok-based Saudi Arabian pop boom in the past few years, which is where I found both of these songs. Rapper and social media personality Asayel came to fame and local “notoriety” in 2020 with her single “Bnt Mecca” (“Mecca Girl”) after government authorities decided the video was sacrilegious and ordered her to be arrested. (I originally found her by searching artists targeted by the Saudi government.) In 2024 she released this infectious and deceptively tour-de-force performance over Neptunes click ‘n’ cluck.

Amy Roko: Hia (Saudi Arabia, 2023)

Amy Roko is a pseudonymous online comedy personality who started way back on Vine and moved on to TikTok. She does a lot of media and advocacy for progressive niqabi practices and is worth looking into (I liked this interview). Her rapping is a bit of a side project but she’s good at it.

I like how both of these tracks have a certain sunniness to them that you don’t find as frequently in other countries’ current rap scenes, which in my experience tend to get stuck in painfully classicist boom bap or else sweat a little to keep up with more contemporary and “hyper-” trends. I appreciate their effervescence in the face of a threatening and oppressive environment.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Dani Lia: Schwindelig (omgomgomg)
Austria

The real Renee Rapp? Dizzy, indeed — a formidable opponent in the Pop World Cup.

2. FLVCKKA, Jrkv, NEOBUCHONISMO, LP Ent: Brazil
Mexico

This is the second Brazilian funk-indebted track I’ve shared from FLVCKKA this year, this one much more direct, though the lightly trippy piano and synth string wash in the background is an inspired touch.

3. Quỳnh Anh Shyn: Girl Phố
Vietnam

V-pop is still firing on all cylinders. This one’s a fun genre-mash, classic house organ and rubbery disco bass line gradually revealing themselves, restless in the best way.

4. Tkay Maidza: Must Be
United States

Tkay Maidza is one of those artists I continue to listen to whenever I see her—for about ten years now. Occasionally she comes through: really liked her Pixies cover on a 4AD comp, and now here’s what sounds like a periodic reintroduction to her somewhat chameleonic charm.

5. Didi B f. Zlatan, Chley: Je m’appelle
Côte D’Ivoire/Nigeria/South Africa

An interesting collaboration here—Ivorian star Didi B is first billed but the collaborators pull the sound away from Ivorian pop and toward Nigerian/South African hybrid amabeats. Gets more juice out of the combination than that particular pipeline tends to provide these days.

6. Tera Kòrá, FS Green, Freezy: Get Busy
Curaçao-Netherlands/Saint Lucia

From what I can tell this is a pretty good hipster simulacrum of Caribbean dancehall from a Curaçao-born and Rotterdam-based DJ and producer—could only find a reliable link to the song on Bandcamp.

7. DJ Kawest, Forever Music: Konpa Paradise 4 - Wasn’t Me Remix
Guadeloupe-France

DJ Kawest’s Konpa Paradise series continues to provide enjoyable twists on and perversions of pop classics, none getting close to the breathtaking “Get Ur Freak On” head-fake of part 2. But I appreciate that each one stands on its own despite messing around with an outsized sample.

8. XYVRL, Ivo Impreso: Scottie T (Remix)
Philippines

A nimble romp through a desert of outdated pop culture references—I caught “beast mode,” Tarantino, and Finding Nemo in quick succession in XYVRL’s chorus, all of which still somehow best Ivo Impreso’s verse.

9. kuudere, Reikko: Summer ‘16
Japan

No idea where this satisficing Japanese landfill hyperpop came from, have been searching my playlists for ten minutes now and see no trace of it. Maybe it was an algorithm gift? It happens sometimes! (Not often.)

10. DJ DEIVÃO, mc pl alves: Como Que Vou Acreditar no Amor
Brazil

11. DJ Lopez, Mc Gw, Mc Lekão, Conexão do Funk: 125 Bpm do Xxx
Brazil

12. Staffan Lindberg, Mc G7: Botâo
Sweden/Brazil

13. DJ Mandrake 100% Original, MC LIPEX: Piano do Mal
Brazil

Brazilian funk block! DJ DEIVÃO fits farty oompah into hard clave; my radar gun confirms “125 BPM do Xxx” goes its advertised speed; a Swedish interloper smuggles some dubstep into a particularly uncool but still successful hybrid; and my favorite of the bunch is phonk/funk that pounds out a salsa-like piano figure and hits you over the head like…not a hammer, but maybe one of those padded Whac-A-Mole mallets.

14. DJ Aka-m, John Trouble, Kukupela: Fim de Semana
Angola

I really need some better leads on Angolan pop — might as well plug Jonathan Bogart’s 2025 list again and follow some of his leads myself.

15. VICKY: Bunte Scheine
Germany

More German viral novelty! This one’s relatively clean, too, just lots of bright bills in baggy jeans.

16. Baimint: คนมันเฟี้ยว
Thailand

I compared Baimint indirectly to MILLI in her first appearance on a mix last year, more in charm than skill (I wrote: “sounds like a character that MILLI would have impersonated for a few seconds in a verse in ‘Sudpang!’”). Still true!

17. User116: 杀
China

18. uzi9ine: Come Here
US

19. 09PEAS, Artahe: Lightboy
France

Noisy block! I assumed all three of these were from billdifferen’s March roundup, but I see that only the low-rent French house-pop from 09PEAS came directly from the list.

Uzi9ine was featured, but he has gone viral enough with his dank DMV hit that it is now lodged permanently in most of the rap recap playlists I pull from. Unlike Skino’s “300B” last year, it does not sound quite enough like “the rapper is trying to stay on beat while he and everything around him fall down the stairs.”

That leaves Shanghai-born and London-based User116 with the rare hypertrap assault that lands for me, one from Ryan Dee’s rolling songs list.

20. THEFOODLORD, Bill Rothko: Fancy Clown Husband
US/UK

One of the handful of retro-ish backpackers I single out in a given year, congratulations to THEFOODLORD (569 monthly listeners on Spotify) for this honor.

21. Fetty Wap f. Divinity, Ymanie: White Roses
US

I always really liked Fetty Wap’s plaintive honk when he broke through on “Trap Queen,” and on this one he sounds like T-Pain shedding the Autotune, revealing that there’s always been a Pretty Voice(TM) under the pretty voice. I like it best when you still get a few glimmers of the old honk, though.

22. Praed: Assarab
Lebanon

A lot of short songs this week, so there was plenty of time for this avant-jazz Lebanese group to go long with a frenetic groove that starts somewhere between Sam Gendel and Polysics and finds plenty of other routes to try out on its way to minute eight.

23. Rish NK: Idichakka
India

Curious if YouTube is deceiving me about the popularity of an Indian film tie-in song, from the Mollywood film Derby,1 whose official trailer has 2.6 million views even though there are only about 3K on this upload from the soundtrack. The song has a slapped-together charm, sounds like it’s augmenting the wind section with kazoos but still gets an actual flute solo in there.

24. Talal Fattal, Samini: Black Stars Straight to the Top [2006]
Ghana

Ending things with the non-pop World Cup, a time capsule celebration of Ghana making the tournament for the first time in 2006. The song sounds like it was recorded twenty years prior to that.

That’s it! Until next time, go check out the only World Cup you are guaranteed to feel good about participating in.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from VICKY: Bunte Scheine (“ich hab' noch dreiundneunzig Cent”)

It has only been two weekends since the last time I sat down with a big pile of songs, but that still means I have quite a backlog to sort through this coming week.

I didn’t have a ton of time for discourse in those two weeks, but I have wanted to write something about a calcifying pop myopia that I’ve been noticing for a few years now. I was thinking about it looking at what feels like the hundredth absurd “genealogy” chart of pop music I’ve seen, that begins with Madonna and ends with a group of minor stars that to me have little to do with their supposed lineage.

I’ve been having a hard time categorizing this sort of pop chat, which seems to fall somewhere between fandom conversations, social media spitballing, and shallow YouTube native criticism. It is characterized by a stunted timeline that rarely goes past the mid-to-late ‘80s, assertions of a shared canon of stars that seems haphazardly cobbled together, and the persnickety flowcharting of what to me look like arbitrary associations.

What it reminds me of is…me. When I was sixteen.

I was pretty late getting “into music,” by which I mean having strong opinions about and studying popular music closely. I’ve written about my rock-critical history before, but to recap: in my junior year of high school I realized that the kids I wanted to talk to about movies talked about music half of the time and I wanted to keep up. The first thing that really stuck in my craw was three people having a conversation about The Joshua Tree by U2 and having absolutely no idea what the hell they were talking about.

So I threw myself into a frenzied study of rock history. But it wasn’t just any rock history, it was a weird version of rock history that had congealed into a blob of conventional wisdom on the internet, across indie message boards and websites. It was typified in Pitchfork, where you’d learn that the Beatles were extremely important as long as you discounted the teenybopper stuff, but also that Pet Sounds was wildly overrated (a subject of roiling debate) and the Rolling Stones were kind of passé (no such debate that I can recall) and the Pixies and Pavement were gods. I have a graveyard of ‘90s recommendations that came as a historicized package but that I see no particular rhyme or reason to now—though I do regret selling my copy Eccsame the Photon Band by Lilys. It was an authoritative-sounding history from a group of people who were mostly just describing the records they happened to like (fair enough).

None of the reference points really meant much to me early on, so I sort of went along with it, bought albums that were said to be important, avoided ones that were said not to be.1 I liked the Doors and Pink Floyd, but I didn’t invest much in them (literally—I was still buying a lot of CDs at the time). I was really into Frank Zappa on the recommendation of a teacher, but the herd was steering me toward Captain Beefheart.

Now that I’ve had a few more decades of sense-making under my belt, I recognize how slapdash all of this ostensible canon-making was—to be clear, mostly on my part, but also on the part of those early sites and a few sniffy online personalities. This is maybe just the nature of canon-making.

But there was something specifically slapdash about the indie canon, which seemed to absorb little bits and pieces of broader conventional wisdom around classic rock but not others, deified a few non-indie nobodies that I never understood how anyone could possibly like, and drew meticulous lines between big influences and many tiny little ripples in ways that were exciting to me when I was younger but now make little sense to me. The story about the past seemed to change to retroactively match whatever minor contemporary indie artist was now in the spotlight. I came to eventually understand that the historicizing was happening backwards: find the next big thing right now and make the “canon” fit to it. It was never really about the past; it was about making some version of a past to fit the present, so that the present—which was small and insular by many metrics—would seem bigger and more important.

My sense is that some version of “pop music”—most of which really falls under the umbrella that I’ve been calling A-pop—is going through something like its indie phase. What’s important about that distinction is that it’s an audience distinction more than an artist distinction, per se. The rock canon of indie sites in the early aughts didn’t only comprise “indie acts,” but conversations about every act was “indie” because of the weird way that they distorted history to make a selective crop of minor contemporary artists feel worthy of sharing that same canon.

I think the same thing might be happening now with the sort of pop music that was once dismissed in those indie conversations: a need to shrink the field down to something manageable, to meticulously catalog its smallness as a sort of illusion to make it appear larger. Again, this may in some sense just describe all canon-making—and I would bet that many of the flowchart-makers are themselves pretty young. But I think most people really into indie rock music in the early aughts would tell you that it felt small then, and felt in need of a defense against the tides of more popular mainstreams. It seems similar to defensiveness about certain pockets of pop music now, which have lost their claims to a coherent mainstream and need other ways of asserting importance.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Six Sex: Not ur mom
Argentina

Well, folks, the song of the year has arrived — in fact it arrived a few weeks ago, but I had several mixes in the pipeline already and only got to share a few breathless posts about it over on Bluesky.

It’s Argentine provocateur Six Sex’s “Not ur mom,” a real hoot, blahs blah-ed and nyahs nyah-ed, that strikes me as equally funny in or out of Spanish. To my surprise, the only explicitly racy line seems to be the, er, titular joke. (Fair warning, the official video, a combo of “Not ur mom” and lead-in “Ultra Terrorific Fantasy” is highly recommended but maybe not at work.) I hope this is the opening salvo for a whole album—she’s already released a follow-up, “boyfree.”

If you need a primer on Six Sex, try Richard Villegas’s profile from 2024 in Remezcla, which anointed her “queen of the perreo rave.” On paper she seems like an Argentine Charli XCX, including precocious rave attendance, canny collaborations, and an eye and ear for transgression within alt-pop’s plausible deniability that you’re doing it as a bit or as commentary. All that is fine as far as background goes, but I don’t think her previous work quite prepares you for what’s happening here. This is doors kicked down stuff.

Being late to artists like this always makes me wonder if I should be trying to follow scenes more diligently. One reason I don’t really follow scenes very well is that my ears tend to be on the alert for sparks flying out beyond their boundaries; the scene itself is like a launchpad and I’m always looking up. I think this is mostly a “me” problem—I’m easily distracted—and I don’t want to downplay the importance of the terrestrial. My own role in the musicwrite ecosystem is weird, more based on a restless disposition and addled attention span than some underlying philosophy that says the sky is better than the ground. (Plenty of people can watch both.) I think the work people do in scene cataloging is vital; it just doesn’t happen to spark joy. Only the stars do.

2. Theodora: Miss Kitoko
DRC-France

Speaking of stars, some people just have it, you know? It’s not necessarily a pop star thing, though it sometimes overlaps with pop stardom. There are plenty of non-stars who have it, and it boggles the mind that they struggle so much (well, not really—it’s not really up to anyone in particular). So it’s nice when someone like Theodora ascends in what seems to be a simple, preordained sort of way—hit after hit, spark after spark. Her third appearance on my mixes this year alone and likely not her last.

3. BikaBreezy, Jaytrue: 巴适 (Bashi)
Kazakhstan

Q-pop rapper goes ama-pop, sounds fantastic.

4. Lil Uzi Vert: What You Saying
US

Is this the first Lil Uzi Vert song I’ve paid attention to in ten years? Has there really been over a full decade of Lil Uzi Vert? (What year is it?) Who chose to roll with this sample and why does it work so well? I’m counting this as very tenuous Eurovision influence in mainstream US hip-hop—Indila was rumored to be approached for 2026 for France. They went with this one, which is good, is a very satisfying A-pop story (Monroe was born and raised in Utah) and would also be a good Lil Uzi Vert sample.

5. Yuri: Tekito Make
Japan

My statistical find for artist of the year 2024 (i.e. didn’t realize how many times she appeared on mixes until I looked at a spreadsheet) is back, and I can’t place the obvious song that her flow sounds like. The closest I got was “Work from Home” by Fifth Harmony.

6. Cosmosy: Chance ~switch on~
Japan

One of those “global girl group” deals between Japanese and Korean companies, but with all Japanese members. I don’t know if the standard jazz-inflected K-popish chord progression (which I wrote about a bit here) has a specific name but I am nothing if not neologism-minded so should probably call it something. A J/K progression? (The “j” could stand for “jazz” but also sometimes “Japan”?)

7. Sugar ‘N Spice: Sun-Kissed
Thailand

For more sugar than spice, you’ll probably need to go further afield—Thai pop continues to operate across multiple K-pop generations, not being afraid to sound goopy and saccharine in a seemingly passé sort of way that I still like.

8. KiiKO: KiiKO Forever
Japan/Ireland

Well-produced glitchy J-pop from a duo based in Ireland.

9. MJ Cole f. PinkPantheress: Still Sincere (MK Dub)
UK

A leisurely coasting two-step number with PinkPantheress baked right in, sounding a bit like someone pasted her vocals back onto a track she’d already absorbed into her own music.

10. Anitta: Pinterest
Brazil

Anitta released this charming, low-key samba about plotting out a vacation with a new beau on Pinterest in both a Portuguese and Spanish version, and I kept changing my mind on which one to put on the mix. You get the highlight (pronunciation of Pinterest as “peen-ter-esh”) in both versions, so vote your conscience.

11. Julia Takada: Take You Away
Japan

The opening synth swoop really got me; the rest of the song lives up to it (just).

12. heavy / bloom: Бруд [Brood]
Ukraine

This is kind of what I wanted the Hemlocke Springs album to sound more like—lots of sharp left turns into rapping and chanting and guitar solos, a sense the song can’t figure out where it’s going.

13. Pappy Kojo: Masallaci
Ghana

14. Pablo Fierro: Yal
Canary Islands

15. Antropoceno, sonhos tomam conta: Ayaba Oxum
Brazil

A quick Golden Beatology stretch before the extended indie rock landing: smooth Ghanaian rap, interesting Middle Eastern cosmo hodgepodge from a DJ from the Canary Islands, and an indulgent Brazilian guitar freakout.

16. Avalon Emerson: God Damn (Finito)
US

17. The Orielles: Shadow of You Appears
UK

18. Ida: It’s Not All Right [1995]
US

19. Makthaverskan: Pity Party
Sweden

20. Teen Suicide: Spiders
US

Indie section! Starts with an artist I would have sworn was a Spotify Indie Find or something but apparently has enough cred for a bunch of Pitchfork coverage. Then, former fave The Orielles take the Phoenix route of devolving for each new album—the indie Benjamin Button disease—moving further away from songcraft and toward pleasant in utero (not In Utero) drone, pleasant enough in this case to make the mix. This suite also gives me an excuse for a Numero Group rerelease of an Ida song from 1995 (which means it does not feature Karla Schickele—aka k.—on bass).

To finish up, a great rec from Isabel, melodic Swedish indie I would have pegged as…Irish, maybe? And finally some light downer guitar thrashing from a group that I once again failed to realize features KITTY. I noted in this very blog that she was in this band only a few months ago and yet still forgot again when I pulled this song. I guess she’s still got star potential after all these years.

That’s it! Until next time, follow the stars, even if they don’t become stars.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Anitta: Pinterest (“e agora já são quatro weekends”)

I am away this week, so am writing this intro well in advance. Luckily, it being [checks calendar date two weeks from now] April 2, it’s a good time for a March roundup. Here are the albums and songs I liked and/or remembered this month.

11 Songs I Heard in March (unranked)

• Alizade: Immigrant

• Bebe Rexha: Çike Çike

• Ditonellapiaga: Che fastidio!

• Dziarma: Moment

• María Isabel: Suiza

• Pipiolas: NaNaNa

• Psyché f. MERVE: Yallah!

• Sw@da x Niczos: Synchronija

• Tea White: Season

• YENA: Catch Catch

• Zee Nxumalo & Dlala Thakzin: Awe Mah

10 Albums I Heard in March (lightly ranked)

Still nothing jumping up my personal album charts yet. But plenty of enjoyable albums and EPs.

• EMJAY: Confesiones de las que me voy a arrepentir [EP]
  Mexican neoperreo filth monger goes confessionalish and expands her palette if not to confessional rock proper than at least to broader pop omnivorousness.

• Fif: The lower forty eight
  I love finding a crunchy indie album that lets itself shred a little as a treat.

• Jack Harlow: Monica

  Not going to dive into the controversy around Harlow’s New York Times interview except to say that any outrage expended on Harlow should go double for the interviewers. This album is one-dimensional but the band is resolutely in the pocket even though it sounds like they recorded in a quarantine from the singer. Like if Astral Weeks was…a Jack Harlow album.

• DJs Di Guetto: DJs Di Guetto II

  Jagged Príncipe DJ odds-and-sods album comprising archived tracks from 2007. From the same group of batida scene-makers on the first DJs Di Guetto release in 2006, which was then repackaged in 2023.

• Djy Biza: Art of War

  Have been waiting for “Jazz3” to reappear on streaming since putting it on a mix two years ago. The album follows suit—expansive and jazzy amapiano if you’re into that sort of thing (I am).

• DJ Erik JP: No Clima da Sul

  Haven’t yet found a Brazilian funk album to write home about, but this one is worth at least a post-script.

• Mary Middlefield: Will You Take Me As I Am?

  Winner of the A-pop neoconfessional arms race so far this year, even though she’s technically from Switzerland.

• Pina Palau: You Better Get Used to It

  Haven’t given the whole album enough time to see if I really like anything as much as the two songs I already featured from it on mixes, but it made the cut on a first listen.

• underscores: U

  Gonna tell my kids this is Brat, if only because they’re more likely to encounter underscores through nerdy gamer culture than they are to get into Charli XCX (they probably think Charli is dad music, even though dad only thinks she’s OK)

• Xylitol: Blumenfantasie
  …Gentle jungle? Mm, nice.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Bebe Rexha: Çike Çike
Albania-US

Bebe Rexha has finally found a route that might work for her—leaning in to A-pop, where the “A” stands for Albania. I’ve long teased Rexha’s lightly cursed pop career in part because I do genuinely like her and think she’s capable of better songs than she’s generally made. All she needed to do to win me over this time was get a decent DJ Snake bass line and throw a cedilla or two into the title. And this is in fact a pretty strong post-A-pop (non-Albanian usage) strategy, as you can not only fool cosmopolitan dilettante marks like me but also reduce wasted effort in appealing to an elusive US mass culture. (Of course, Bebe Rexha can’t even really compete for first place in this very specific area, because she’s still got fellow Albanian Dua Lipa to contend with.)

2. ALTÉGO: Call Me
UK

I mostly know these guys from Frank Kogan sharing occasional mash-ups, including most recently them striking while the iron was hot on the t.A.T.u. sync from Heated Rivalry. Played this for my youngest, who was frustrated that they don’t commit to a bigger drop that intensifies when it repeats. I explained that it’s really more pop logic than EDM logic, so you want to return to the same chorus, not provide a bigger release each time. But my kid was probably right.

3. iza tkm f. AKRIILA: Nos keremos tanto
Mexico/Chile

There’s a sort of uncanny valley to hyperpop, where you want to be firmly on the “art” or the “pop” side and not fall into the dip. I think this is a structural weakness of hyperpop, since really good art and pop shouldn’t be so easily separable. Think this chooses to hug the art shore, almost always the weaker choice to my ears, but it works here.

4. Miami XO: Bazooka
US

I thought this song was very funny, and then I had a stray thought that it was genuinely poignant in parts, the synths and the sister doing heavy lifting. My curiosity piqued, I discovered that it is wildly popular, with dozens of remixes tracing mostly the comedy (lots of grannies getting hit by bazookas). To me the result is a compelling botch, the kabooms and kablaows not quite meeting the melancholy. It’s like watching something get 40% of the way to opening a portal to a new universe and then stalling out with the door left stubbornly ajar.

5. Jeune Morty: Katy Perry
Côte D’Ivoire

Ivorian hypertrap about finding answers in one’s glass, but not necessarily the answer to the question “why is this song called Katy Perry?”

6. Alizade: Immigrant
Turkey-Netherlands

Alizade brings a stinkbomb to an “immigration debate.” In the video she drapes herself in the EU flag while the camera cranes out of the bars trapping her in a concrete bunker. She says “immigrant—that’s my nation” like she’s cutting you down to size in the lunchroom.

7. 1LIFE f. Sexsi: OMG
Thailand

Getting early Lonely Island vibes from the video, but if the song is parody, it’s either playing it close to the vest or I don’t get the joke (either seems plausible).

8. Younha: Karma
South Korea

From what I can tell, Younha has always tended more toward J-pop than K-pop, and this is from a covers album where she takes on “Karma” by South Korean duo Dareharu from 2020. “Karma” similarly blurs the lines between the two countries’ pop scenes. If you want more proof, here’s commenter kmsk1999 to provide backup: “Korean: Isn’t this J-POP? Japanese: You’re saying this is K-POP? Western: Did RDR draw this?”

9. Ánh Sáng AZA: Shine
Vietnam

I thought about comparing the synths in “Bazooka” to the Postal Service but decided not to, thought it was a stretch, but now I am compelled to compare the synths to the Postal Service. Or maybe Owl City? Whichever you pick, it sounds better as V-pop backdrop.

10. Zulia: Toma!
Mexico

Whirls and swirls until a reggaeton beat breaks out, but he sings like he’s tiptoeing across trying not to trip.

11. Claudia Valentina: Girly Things
UK

Wasn’t sure where this was from until she name-dropped Harrods.

12. AGGi f. RCEE: Big Spender
Ghana-Denmark/Ghana

Riding a phrygian figure like an old Beyoncé song playing next to you in someone else’s car, you don’t even strain to hear it, just sort of let it seep in as pleasant ambience.

13. Reo, Téhilah: La vie doux [2025]
Dominica

14. TKS 2G, P.L.L.: Boucan Canot
France

Some of my playlists for new Caribbean music have a loose definition of “new,” though they’re generally current enough to keep (for now). That means I’m ending up with a lot of previous summers’ bouyon hits, to which I can only say sorry not sorry.

The shatta stuff I track, however, is pretty well vetted at this point, so I don’t usually get huge hits from the previous year. Whether this one’s a hit is hard to say, at about 300K views at press time it might be? It sounds like one, but that doesn’t always tell you much.

15. Telly*, Biga*Ranx: Big in Japan
France

Reggae and dancehall remain a blindspot for me, partially for taste reasons and partially for not looking hard enough (the two are probably related). Occasionally some song that I’m confident is both Jamaican and must have been released years ago crosses my radar, and I am usually wrong on both counts.

16. Anish Kumar: Passionfruit
India-UK

17. Asha Puthli, Say She She: Pawa!
India/US

Cosmo-pop reigns! Anish Kumar with a “Passionfruit” nipping at the heels of Drake’s only non-derogatory record for “best _____” that I can think of. Then Say She She features Asha Puthli on a slick disco track, kind of a no-brainer collab.

18. La Sécurité: Bingo
Canada

Haven’t featured Montreal band La Sécurité in a while—they appear to be singing in English now, but are still about as good as they usually are in French. Is this the best song with a Battleship grid mentioned in it? There must be other contenders for this title, right?

19. Mura, Udulele: Another One
Kenya

Ending with a suite of pleasant songs from the world café that I could more or less identify in geography but not in time—there’s not an archival rerelease in the bunch. To start, an insistent Kenyan dance track that finds just enough room for guitar and trumpet solos to break through. It could stand more space to stretch out, but then again I am very Jasper van ‘t Hof’s Pili Pili pilled.

20. Tietê: Geologia
Brazil

I absolutely loved this Brazilian ensemble’s 2023 album and especially their track “Zig Zag” (still under four digits on the YouTube views!). This might be the only overlap in coverage I’ve ever had with indispensable but criminally underutilized (by me) blog Brazil Beat.

21. Stella & The Longos: En Retard
France-Germany

Berlin-based band of mostly French musicians, just funky enough to avoid full lounge, which isn’t to say there’s no lounge.

22. Mohamed Doumbia: Kende
Mali

OK this one I would have bet good money was archival, but it’s “a little known bar band playing in contemporary Bamako, Mali that feels like an unearthed classic.” Could have fooled me, and almost did!

That’s it! Until next time, don’t worry if you get fooled, it happens to all of us. You can even get fooled again if you want, I’m not your boss.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Jeune Morty: Katy Perry (“Des fois j'recherche la réponse dans mon verre”)

Was honored to be mentioned in Ann Powers’s NPR newsletter last week in a great essay on looking globally for new music: “I’ve found that seeking out more off-the radar music helps me fight off the tendency to absorb this far-flung music into an Americentric world view. It’s a tiny way I can resist my own provincialism.”

For those of you new to the newsletter, I post a sequenced CD-length mix (at least 20 tracks, no more than 80 minutes) of new songs from around the world every week, along with a bit of commentary for each song and an essay up front. I will occasionally repackage highlights, or you can just skim the ongoing playlist below on Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, or YouTube.

I’ve also written a few larger essay series. My first series was on Taylor Swift. Last year I wrote about our current global pop era of ascendant regional styles, and I refer to a relatively diminished role of the US in this context as “A-pop.” You can read about it here:

So how is A-pop (or at least US-originating music) doing this year? At this point I have a regional snapshot of my own listening in the first quarter of 2026. For the first time ever, the United States has fallen well below a plurality of tracks on my mixes.1 US songs comprise 11% of all tracks, which puts it tied in fourth place with Africa, and below Asia (16%), Latin America (14%), and Europe (13%).2

I’m not consciously downplaying US music in my listening. In fact, I don’t usually think about anything except sounds and vibes when I’m doing my somewhat frenzied weekly listening, which is highly intuitive. The A-pop series was mostly intended as a provocative intervention, poking at English-language music coverage that still treats thriving global scenes competing with US pop on its own terms like they’re geopolitical curios or “world music.” (The historical emergence of “world music” itself is a worth exploring in light of how access to the world’s music has changed over the past few decades.) I still have a deep remaining bias toward thinking and talking about pop culture from a US-centric vantage point, but my ears aren’t really cooperating with that bias.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Katelyn Tarver: #1 [2025]
US

2. Mary Middlefield: Summer Affair [2025]
Switzerland

3. PONY: Superglue [2025]
Canada

One side effect of how I listen to music for this newsletter is that it’s been a real challenge to focus on albums. I used to engage with albums to hold my attention across one artist’s work, but I find that I can do that just fine with strings of singles and EPs now, and this makes me much less forgiving of album filler.

One remaining useful feature of the album format is discovering songs I’ve missed in the last six to nine months—it feels like catching a show I’ve missed on cable in syndication, despite everything technically being available on demand.

Here are three lead singles that are what I would maybe call A-pop by genre (only one is by someone from the US), all released in 2025. They’re from pretty-good-to-very-good 2026 albums by Katelyn Tarver, Mary Middlefield, and Pony, all three traversing the post-windowpane indie singer-songwriter landscape in their own ways, mostly by being less shy about pop hooks.

Tarver clearly put everything she’s got into her lead single, maybe her best song ever. The other two artists are new to me. Middlefield is a playlist find, while Pony was one I found mucking through Rate Your Music with a few strict filters applied. This gets harder to do as the year progresses and too many RYM barnacles get stuck to their recommendations across genres.

4. Pipiolas: NaNaNa
Spain

Charming Spanish electropop whose chorus hook reminds me of something specific from the ‘80s that I can’t place.

5. Hallows: Wear You Out
US

By contrast, this is attempting to remind me of something specific from the ‘80s, but it isn’t. That said, I’ll take budget freestyle moves any time.

6. Jappie Lebona: You’ve Got It [1984]
South Africa

If you needed a reminder of what the ‘80s actually sounded like, here’s the real deal, a chunky synth groove from South African artist Jappie Lebona, from a compilation of South African disco and boogie music from label Music Team, put together by Kalita Records.

7. Cochemea: Dilo
US

Indigenous go-to sax session guy for Daptone with an effortless jam that seems ready for the right media sync and/or barbecue.

8. Vv Pete, DEELA, Lisha G, UTILITY: Toss It
Australia/UK/US

Only the “yeet” would clue you in to when in the last 15 years this blooping and bleeping minimal rap might have come out.

9. LB aka LABAT, Skin On Skin: Feel So Good Around U
France

A breakbeat, a guitar riff, a cooing vocal hook, and a little “hey” punctuating the end of the loop—somehow this is music that A.I. can’t seem to replicate, even though it can nail Taylor Swift’s melody and rhythm perfectly. Strange times.

10. BOWPRAT: ความสัมพันธ์ชั่วคราว (Midnight Love)
Thailand

Something about the production here put me in mind of the late aughts boomlet of sunshine teen R&B like Jessica Jarrell, Priscilla Renea (mk 1), Teyana Taylor (also mk 1), and Vistoso Bosses—the latter of which released their first song in 15 years pretty recently, apparently. These sounds have already worked their way through various regional pop scenes for over a decade, but sometimes a specific synth flute timbre takes you back directly.

11. BigDaddy f. Dangrangto: RẤT LÀ NHIỀU TỎI
Vietnam

Haven’t heard much straightforward clave like this in Vietnamese pop, but maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention?

12. Kuty: Tezgah
Turkey

I couldn’t really tell you why this particular Turkish rap made it through this week, sometimes a song just sorta hangs together, you know? Mix spackle is an important resource.

13. H3adband: BOO
US

It’s been a decent year for meme rap so far, with this low-rent horrorcore plodder ignoring genuine menace for the campy fun of something like Killer Klowns from Outer Space, if John Linnell was collaborating on the soundtrack. H3adband is also responsible for the most shameless use of the “six seven” meme I’ve heard, but this song is better.

14. Marou, Massin, Kempi: Dans
Netherlands

Bouyon seems to be spreading internationally as fast as any regional rhythmic music I’ve tracked in the past few years—here it is showing up among Dutch artists whose other work is more nondescript hip-hop from what I can tell.

15. Loukeman: Elktorn
Canada

A catchy, if atmospheric, electronic bauble that I’d file under “upbeat IDM” if people used that genre descriptor anymore.

16. Roselle f. Junes: Eau Salée (Phil Murray remix)
Canada

The original and remix both have a subdued Eurodance feel, but the more sophistipop rework matches the melody better, I think.

17. Shabaka: Step Lightly
UK

Sons of Kemet leader processes a wind section within an inch of its acoustic referent even before the drum machine thump comes in, though maybe that’s a heavily processed acoustic drum, too? Whatever it is, I think it sounds neat.

18. Miike Snow, Yttling Jazz: Ingrid the Sailor
Sweden

A Scandijazz take on the sea shanty craze from a few years back, maybe? A kid chorus sings some nonsense about the high seas over impeccable vibes (literal only—the figurative vibes are a little off).

19. Parker Graye: Gas Station Flowers
Canada

Sometimes I just happen to share the Don’t Rock the Inbox house taste rather than getting songs directly from them, but I do appreciate being able to outsource a blurb!

NW: There’s enough lyrical heft here to pull it out of echoey ballad mediocrity — as ever, some pedal steel doesn't hurt either.

20. Saranggola Society: Sana’y Di atapos Ang Gabi
Philippines

Throwback twang ballad—I would have guessed this mythical early ‘60s dance band time-warped to the present from Indonesia, which tends to specialize in uncanny retro rock. But it’s a combo from the Philippines who I hope get lots of work soundtracking dances.

21. Marco Benevento, Marianne Mirage: Turandot
US/Italy

Winding down with some exit music to a film, a little 6/8 mystery/melancholy from a US composer/producer and Italian vocalist who go alternately smoky and baroque.

22. Gregory Uhlmann: Back Scratch
US

Some fun with phased piano to close things out, just manages to skirt tinkle and hit twinkle.

That’s it! Until next time, don’t tinkle if you mean to twinkle.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from BigDaddy f. Dangrangto: RẤT LÀ NHIỀU TỎI (“trong đầu tao đã nhiều sỏi”)

I sometimes say that 2004 felt more like 1994 than like 2008.

This is most obvious in technology: by 2008, YouTube and iPhones had both taken off. In 2004, I was in college and still had a landline, which I used to make three phone calls with any regularity: girlfriend, dad, and Pitchfork. It was a weird time; the internet had sort of arrived, especially if you were in college with a fast connection, but it wasn’t yet quite a thing you could take for granted. Social media was for the most part still in its prehistory. The most reliable forms of rapid response in online communication (email and message boards) and direct media access (file sharing) were the same forms that I was familiar with in the late ‘90s, just slightly more expansive and growing every day.

I think of that period, 2004-2008, as an interzone, after Alfred Soto’s term for the period of US popular culture between 1988-1993, the Poppy Bush Interzone. Here’s Soto:

[T]he Poppy Bush Interzone (PBI) comprised a period in American pop music a product of and detached from history. It encompasses the fall of 1988 until the fall of 1993, a period just before and just after Bush’s term in office. Decades aren’t walls of mortar. The increasing visibility on MTV of British acts borne of punk and post-punk resulted in greater crossover radio play. This was the era when The Cure, Depeche Mode, Morrissey, New Order, and Siouxsie and the Banshees enjoyed their dominance; so did Psychedelic Furs (in many ways this era’s John the Baptizer), Echo & the Bunnymen, XTC, and members of Bauhaus, among others. Chris Molanphy has written well about this era. I should note too that my nomenclature owes a debt to critic Ned Raggett, who on the ILX message board years ago first used “interzone” as descriptor.

By contrast, the pop chart reflected the dominance of the decade’s biggest marquee draws. Taking advantage of Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen’s silence after the last singles from Bad and Tunnel of Love, respectively, had peaked, Madonna and Janet Jackson entered a new chart and critical ascendancy. Prince hung in there. Lionel Richie chose silence. In their wake rushed a slew of imitators: Karyn White, Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli. Although boomer rock acts had adapted to Contemporary Hits Radio during the High Reagan Years, the sudden importance of VH-1 gave the Doobie Brothers, Paul McCartney, the Traveling Wilburys axis, and especially the Rolling Stones another medium on which to preen for viability. Thus, you had the phenomenon of “Mixed Emotions” and “Miss You Much” played within minutes of each other, or “Free Fallin’” beside Michael Penn’s “No Myth.” Fine Young Cannibals landing a #1 album and two #1 singles? Purest PBI. Listeners over the age of thirty-five may remember the PBI as the years when the Beatles catalog in its American compact disc pressings finally saw the sequencing — hence integrity and gestalt — of the original albums restored. World Party, Matthew Sweet, Jellyfish, and less remembered imitators profited.

I can’t really speak to the veracity of Soto et al.’s account of this particular interzone. ‘88-’93 are formative years for me (circa ages 4-8), but I was also a little kid and not well equipped to notice structural changes, while my nostalgia also keeps me from thinking about it too far outside of that personal lens.

But I can say that there is a definite interzone feel in the “Sonny Bush” period. About ten years ago I even considered outlining a book about this period, chronicling different music acts starting in 2004 and ending with the 2008 election. It was modeled on Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, the book by Will Hermes that chronicled changes in disco, rap, salsa, and rock in New York City between 1973 and 1977. At the time, my first thoughts for major stories were indie (Arcade Fire), rap (Kanye West), art-pop (M.I.A.), and either pop (Britney Spears) or maybe confessional teenpop (Ashlee Simpson). Now I think I’d probably want any book like this also to focus on reggaeton or dancehall, which are well outside my own expertise.

I do think the broad strokes of these stories are all still interesting, and many stories have been told in the interim. Chris DeVille’s Such Great Heights captures the indie boom; Britney Spears has had documentary treatment of her reception during this period and general understanding of the tabloid nadir has changed a lot. I think the appetite for diving deep into three out of four of these acts is complicated by their present-day controversies, but I think you could probably tell plenty of stories with a wider lens without focusing on them specifically. (For instance, someone should do a 33 1/3 style book on Hyphy Hitz.)

It’s a little strange to me that I find this four-year period easier for me to historicize than more than a decade of music history that followed, where I feel like I missed most of the biggest stories outside of the US and broader Anglosphere. But that’s probably someone else’s book to write; I’m still following the breadcrumbs backward to try to figure it out myself. I might still write the confessional teenpop book some day, though.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. YENA: Catch Catch
South Korea

Two big K-pop singles leading mixes already in the first quarter of the year (this and KiiiKiii’s “404 (New Era)”), is that better than last year? I can never tell how any particular style is faring with this newsletter. God knows I don’t keep track of anything in my head; that’s what the spreadsheets are for. But between I-liked-it stuff like this big new YENA single—which an online K-pop chat friend connects spiritually to the 2011 2nd gen heyday (when YENA herself would have been about twelve)— and also the don’t-like-it-but-respect-the-hustle stuff from BLACKPINK and IVE, I think my claim last year that even a “bad year” for K-pop can’t hide its center of gravity is looking pretty good.

2. Say Now: Millions
UK

But if you need an older center of gravity, throwback millennial girl group Say Now has you covered. They’re still repping the pop couture from oh-four. Every time that I wonder why they’re not much bigger than they are, I remember that this was in fact over twenty years ago and that I am officially old enough to frequently wake up with mysterious aches from muscles I seem to have pulled in my sleep.

3. Wersow: Party Girl
Poland

I’ll have to hold my thoughts about words versus phonetics and whether this is a distinction in need of a collapse. Will quickly mention, though, that “business woman party girl” has to be said in exactly this way in exactly this song to work, whereas Wersow could have gotten away with many other line readings of “ha! ha! ha! ha!”

4. María Isabel: Suiza
Dominican Republic-US

Was charmed by this one even though my analytical faculties are stalling out at the usual embarrassed grimace and shrug while stammering something like “er…kind of a soca vibe in there maybe?”

5. Dziarma: Moment
Poland

I have no such stalling issues with the Brazilian-inspired Polish weirdo-pop with hulking CGI rats dancing in pink polka-dot bikinis, which they do not look like they’re wearing for the first time today. You go, girls.

6. Raakasaga, Jokujekku: Paha Maine
Finland

Finnish rappers have some bass and a trap beat lying around and put on a show.

7. GRTSCH, Mon Laferte: Streetfighter
Mexico

8. Myaap: Beep Beep
US

Two joyrides. More peanut-butter-in-chocolate Latin/Caribbean crossover with bouyon (and maybe a little Balkan?) touches as a Mexican artist I’m finding hard to Google peels out. Glad to add Team GRTSCH to my badge collection next to Team Team Dresch. Then Myaap zips along, hand on horn, and drops references to previous hits like cursory glances in the rearview mirror.

9. Kuami Eugene: Scatter
Ghana

Afrobeats from a highlife singer who smuggles a party through a swamp of foreboding minor-key synths.

10. $ober, Shyron, MunH0: Sua Voce
Finland

Some phonk songs capture the fancy of the whole world while others flounder in triple-digit views. Such is life.

11. DJs Di Guetto, Dj Pausas: Mootoo (Remix)
Portugal

12. DJ Danifox: Mais Alto Que O Medo
Portugal

Two Príncipe (or -adjacent) picks, one from a wild album of avant-technno from DJs Di Guetto (click through the Bandcamp link) and the other a water-treading but pretty minimalist single from DJ Danifox.

13. Ploegendienst: Surinaamse Broodjes
Netherlands

Resident fact-checkers can let me know what else going on in this sharp, contemptuous Dutch punk song about the racist assumptions strangers make about where the subject is “from.” (“Why the fuck are you asking me where to get Surinamese sandwiches?”) All I really know is that I could hear “contemptuous” just fine through the language barrier and I’m glad I trusted my instinct not to sing along phonetically.

14. Mclusky: As a Dad
UK

Here’s one in English, and I couldn’t possibly tell you what it’s about even based on how it sounds. Turns out that’s because Mclusky did the smart thing and stole the chorus from a toddler.

15. Ragapop: Catharsis II
Ukraine

16. Deli Kate: Оз [Oz]
Ukraine

Two from Ukraine, post-punk with a hint of TV sync-ability, and then the sort of auto-pilot dance-pop that needs a sprinkle of fairy dust to signify, which this one has along with tossing in a wolf howl for good measure.

17. Evaya: Sprint
Portugal

My Eurovision country qualifier skimming hasn’t yielded a ton of gems, but my heart’s not really in it this year. This was the highlight from Portugal, synth-pop with a nice balance of moodiness and brightness.

18. ira4ma: Locket
Malaysia

Amazingly I did not get this directly from the billdifferen February roundup, but I checked back when the video looked familiar. I suppose that either means that Malaysian hyperpopper ira4ma has enough heat to make a few playlists or else I’m swiping from someone else with a similar taste profile. (Double checking now, I think it came from Ryan Dee’s playlist, so here is the requisite semi-yearly shout-out).

19. Sofia Kourtesis, Novalima: Los Poemas No Siempre Riman
Peru

I guess I’ve somehow gotten myself onto the Sofia Kourtesis street team? Here’s a track from her upcoming DJ-Kicks mix.

20. Styn: Rode Druif
Netherlands

Dutch techno hodgepodge that (according to the Bandcamp bio but also, to some minor extent, my ears) mixes hard techno with global styles — bubbling and (so it says but I didn’t really hear) batida. Whole album is good.

21. Souad Massi f. Youssoupha: Congo Connection
Algeria-France/DRC-France

A little world café for my own tastes, but there’s some heft to the arrangements and some tunes underneath—there’s a little more rock and funk elsewhere on the album.

22. V#, summerdayy: Chẳng Quan Tâm
Vietnam

23. Châu Bùi: Big Girl Don’t You Cry
Vietnam

Ending with two V-pop songs, both decent snapshots of the development of the pop scene there, which feels like it’s been holding its own with any other hyphenate you’d care to name. The videos, on the other hand, neither reach for the decadent heights of K-pop in its music video bloat era nor revel in the scrappy low-rent charm of Thai pop. Good thing I don’t care about videos!

That’s it! Until next time, recommend me some good recent music videos, I guess?

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Say Now: Millions

I am participating in the People’s Pop Pop World Cup as a manager, which means that I am responsible for corralling song nominations for a country that is also competing in the non-pop World Cup. I made many jokes about preemptively trying to find a decent song for Qatar or Saudi Arabia, and then very amusingly did in fact pull Saudi Arabia in my random draw.

I’m pleased with the challenge, and quickly found my main nomination, which I won’t spoil here. In going through my newsletters, I see that I only knowingly featured a Saudi Arabian track once, in early 2024: Fulana’s “Ya Thalam Ya Kabes,” from Saudi Arabian label Wall of Sound Records. My research for the tournament has taken me pretty far afield from this lead, though.

I first had to sort through enough khaleeji music to know that it probably wasn’t going to be a good fit for the tournament, and then moved on to the sort of YouTube and TikTok algorithm nudging that is much more helpful for this particular purpose than my usual playlisting methods. For what it’s worth, I did find one khaleeji track that captured my attention, only to realize that this is because someone had uploaded the song at the incorrect RPM onto streaming services, opening up a tantalizing hypothetical cultural phenom of chipmunk khaleeji. (This isn’t all that different from what PinkPantheress, TikTok, and hyperpop all did to pop tempos coming out of the ‘10s, and I like a lot of that stuff better than its predecessors, too.)

Although I have the main nom sorted, I’m happy for anyone’s ideas in this region in the off chance I need other options (seems possible that no one else will nominate anything from Saudi Arabia). According to the tournament rules, this could be someone not born in but now based in Saudi Arabia or a Saudi artist living abroad.

One side effect of looking for songs differently is that I accidentally trained my YouTube algorithm to find Arabic pop that I often miss to the vagaries of crowdsourced streaming playlist curation. (Here is a second plug for Jonathan Bogart’s 2025 year-ends, featuring videos he finds mostly from a well-trained YouTube recommendation system.) The YouTube accounts on my laptop can’t recommend videos at all due to the many extensions I use to strip YouTube down to a minimal white screen. But my unfiltered phone account has been suggesting some great stuff, including this one that I missed in late 2024, from a Syrian/Lebanese duo based in Toronto. Maybe I should do try some algo herding after all?

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. underscores: Tell Me (U Want It)
US

There is a new underscores album due out in March, and the rumblings I’ve gotten from the pop commentariat—plus the lead singles and a recent remix with Yves— suggest it could be major.

2. Sw@da, Niczos: Synchronija
Poland

My favorite Polish find of last year, who were runners-up in Poland’s Eurovision qualifier, continues to synthesize global sounds with a mad restlessness (this time with Afrohouse), like they’re trying to cram the whole world into a little snow globe to shake up.

3. MOLIY, bees & honey: Partygyal
Ghana-US/Germany/UK

One left-field Billboard Global 200 heatseeker meets another one, as the star of “Shake It to the Max (Fly) (Remix)” and the production team behind WizTheMc’s “Show Me Love” (no the other one…no, the other other one) join forces for something that probably won’t make as big of a splash but does let MOLIY swim way out into the ocean without any sense of when she might come back.

4. Thee Diane, Sabrina Bellaouel: Nana
France/Algeria-France

Immediately got a solo track from Thee Diane after liking her feature on a Christine and the Queens track a few weeks ago. In the car, my kid said “this one is kind of interesting,” but when I asked how they’d describe it they shifted intonation: “I’d describe it as kind of interesting.” Fair enough.

5. Ditonellapiaga: Che fastidio!
Italy

Pulled this from the blindfold taste test before learning it got third place at Italy’s Sanremo Festival. (I’m behind on listening to the country-level competitions.) The contenders this year did not, to my ears, feature much of the global genre synthesis I was hearing when Angelina Mango won a few years ago. But any pop song bemoaning things being boring (Pet Shop Boys, The Pierces, babyMINT) or, in this case, being annoying, is a dependable microgenre. Bonus points for complaining about bossanova before going into a little bossanova section.

6. Eve La Marka: TI X4
France

A French rapper whose bouncy-ball flow reminds me of Young Leosia from Poland, but trying to do something more indebted to Latin American pop. Come to think of it, Young Leosia already did that—and she threw in a few log drums for good measure, too.

7. Trim, Bankroll Ni, Bri3, thickney: Guapo
US

8. Bri3: Hard ES
US

9. BunnaB: Not My Problem
US

Three rap singles from our current golden age of Young Women Having Fun in Hip-Hop While Everyone Frets About Rap Dying Or Whatever. A welcome respite from the fumes of the humorless breakthroughs of the last decade on the one hand and the hip but persistently mildewy art frauds on the other—I would bet that at least one of the most buzzed-about noise-rappers appears at a Whitney Biennial before they make a song I’d want to play twice.

Two of these tracks feature Bri3, who on a quick listen seems to have already made a big leap forward from her debut album in October. BunnaB is a dependable ringer that I could have put on a few mixes by now—this is her third single since January. I was holding “Seeumsayin” in reserve for a while but decided on this one instead.

10. Jezzy: La Mujer Que Me Pario
Dominican Republic

Never know when I’m going to find an “M” after the YouTube view count. Seems like a slower than usual take on dembow that makes up for lost kinetic energy with a jarring snare sound, like trying to charge your dying cell phone with a cattle prod.

11. ZXKAI, slxughter: No Batidão [2025]
Brazil

Speaking of “M’s” on the YouTube count, how’s about sixty of them for the latest interchangeable Brazilian phonk dance trend that memed its way onto the global charts! And that’s only the regular-speed version, which happens to be the best one and thankfully is the one getting the most attention. If you include the “slowed” version, you get another 44 million, and that’s before trying to do any TikTok forensics. For what it’s worth, the dance looks easy enough that I could figure it out, or at least as much of it as the teacher in one of those compilation clips who comes in right at the end as a surprise.

12. DJ LK 011, DJ GOMEZ, MC BN: Sarra Na Peça Dos Cria
Brazil

13. Chzter, FLVCKKA, angely2k: 3some
Mexico

14. MC ZKW, Poundshop: Sou Eu Mesmo
Brazil

An interesting trio of funk and funk-alikes. First is a particularly wobbly cut-up of the “Careless Whisper” sax, which is the second use of it in a Brazilian funk song I’ve featured to date. I’m sure there are several more I haven’t heard. Then, three Mexican rap troublemakers hop on some hard clave for a threesome that looks (and sounds) a lot more like sitting around getting drunk with two friends at your apartment and passing out in the middle of a conversation. And finally there’s MC ZKW and Poundshop with the first Brazilian funk song I’ve heard try to surf the recent bouyon wave. Maybe the global ferment torch has been passed—not that you can’t have a bunch of torches lit and passed at the same time.

15. VÆB f. dóttir.x: Gamerboi
Iceland

Iceland dork duo who got into Eurovision last year and now get to rep Iceland in the Other Dave parade of Eurovision boycott countries, albeit on a technicality (I haven’t looked for any other Icelandic songs yet).

16. rusino f. Hatsune Miku: Looping the Rooms
Japan

Patrick St. Michel has a long post on the past present and maybe future of Vocaloid, but I still mostly pick these things out like I’m searching for a keyboard tone that scratches the right itch. My kids’ friends are all obsessed with Hatsune Miku as something other than a syllabic preset. I think she’s more interesting as what I called in the A-pop series an auteurist mirage, “not personalities reduced to instruments, but instruments elevated to personalities.” See also: Addison Rae?

17. asmi: チョコっと好きよ [Choco Kinda Like You]
Japan

No presets, just lots of little left turns in rhythm and arrangement, a song that can’t sit still and is better for fidgeting.

18. Michał Anioł: Lubię Burzę
Poland

Remember how I mentioned a keyboard tone that scratches the right itch? This is one of those.

19. Psyché f. Merve: Yallah!
Italy/Turkey

A standout from a forthcoming Italian psych album with guest singers from Turkey and Tunisia, and sounds borrowed from all over, if by all over you mean the sort of stuff you might find on Habibi Funk.

20. Oskido, Nkosazana Daughter: Ngizimesele (DJEFF Remix)
South Africa

Finally, some Afrohouse that’s not from Poland! Another longtime kwaito and Afrohouse producer with an upbeat edit that mostly tips me off to a stronger original, from a relatively recent track (from 2022). You can follow Oskido’s trail back 25 years, through his first YouTube video in 2011 and then to his DJ sets and Church Grooves compilations from the early ‘00s.

21. Matute Boy, Mulest Vankay f. Xduppy, Mellow & Sleazy: O Batla Nako Or Chelete
South Africa

22. MxCarter, Rody Joh, T-Low: Tondolo
Tanzania

Two solid amapiano and Afrohouse tracks to close things out with. You’ve got another 13 minutes, right?

That’s it! Until next time, feel free to respond to this newsletter at any time with “how annoying!” but hopefully never with “how boring!”

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Ditonellapiaga: Che fastidio! (“Il sogno americano—che fastidio!”)

Haven’t formulated enough thoughts for a proper intro on a few topics of the moment: (1) the relationship between syllable sounds and meaning, and to what extent understanding the words in a song gives something an edge in the way I listen to it. (The short of it: sometimes, but not as often as I might have thought earlier in my life.)

And (2) the expansion of K-pop in the past few years, roughly post-NewJeans, into something not only competitive with American pop norms and ambitions, which it has been for a while, but so obviously eclipsing it. Brought on by Sam3K’s observation on Bluesky about the new BLACKPINK single: “I can't remember the last time pop music sounded or looked this expensive.” (That the single isn’t very good is sort of a moot point, but that does mean I’m less interested in writing about it this week.)

Then I looked at the calendar and hot damn it’s March already! So I can do a February round-up hot on the heels of just getting around to January. No big movers and shakers in the albums category yet.

11 Songs I Heard in February (unranked)

• Paula Biskup: Halo?

• Christine and the Queens f. Thee Diane: Ah Ya

• Emjay: Brainchem

• Hannah Jane Lewis: Consolation Prize

• HUR+ / 林詩雅Grace: Refund

• KiiiKiii: 404 (New Era)

• Magic System f. Didi B: Même pas peur

• Pigeon: Miami

• Luka Salam f. Hadi Birajakli: Toute

• Theodora: Des mythos

• North West: Piercing on My Hand

10 Albums I Heard in February (lightly ranked)

• HANA: s/t
  J-and-sometimes-K-pop group with a don’t-bore-us-etc. hodgepodge pop album that hangs together in a way I find oddly miraculous given the nature of such projects

• Whodamanny: Onda Biloba
  Italodisco revivalists include the kitchen sink, and its a farmhouse

• Liz Cooper: New Day
  An indie songwriter that held my attention at album length!

• Hemlocke Springs: The Apple Tree Under the Sea
  Love it the nerdier it gets, does not plumb the depths of nerdiness quite enough but I am still firmly team hemlocke

• Willow: petal rock black

  Look, I’m not going to claim I loved-loved this album, but I do think Willow is a no-foolin’ genius and I also like the occasional jazz noise

• Magic System: Dôni Dôni

  Ivorian party music; does it maintain the party to album length? Maybe?

• Dina Ögon: Människobarn

  Swedish indie-pop is maybe the closest to a Golden Beatology album this week. I imagine many readers will like it more than I do (though I do like it and have featured Dina Ögon a few times)

• Natoxie: Cout Scrub Riddim [EP]

  A not bad shatta party with lots of good vocalists. Not really an album medium, but could be an EP medium?

• Eem Triplin: a love song for u [EP]

  This one is good, mostly annoyed that I missed his full-length from last year

• Luka Salam: Hassasa [EP]

  All-over-the-place Egyptian jazz-positive bedroom pop, thoughtfully patched together even if it’s still a mess

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Zee Nxumalo, Dlala Thukzin f. Funky Qla, Shakees & Les, MK Productions: Awe Mah
South Africa

2. Tea White: Season
South Africa

Let’s check in on the status of 3-step, which in South African house subgenre years has what feels like a decade under its belt (it’s in circa year 4), which means it is a legacy style before I’ve even figured out how to properly stylize the genre name. From breakout star producer Dlala Thukzin and I-hope-still-breakout star vocalist Zee Nxumalo comes an attempt to fit Thukzin’s production into a contained pop package that I think works pretty well, though I’m not sure why the visualizer above cuts 90 seconds out of an already pop-length edit. They could have pushed it to 5 minutes and it’d still seem short.

Then from Afrotech-centric label Stay True Sounds, Atmos Blaq’s label, comes a producer I didn’t know before, Tea White, with the full 7+ minutes of lush instrumental bliss I’ve come to expect from these minimalist album covers. A producer to explore more — I also like his Afrotech album from 2023.

3. Justine Skye: Thong
US

A rec from Katherine St Asaph, who continues to write a fantastic monthly column over at Stereogum that you should be reading. Another production win for Kaytranada, who has been on a roll with R&B royalty and assorted heatseekers for several years now.

4. Kromow: Look at the Sky
Netherlands

Dutch rapper and producer with a solid R&B hook cut-n-paste and post-mumble sing-rap that has a certain sheen to it. I was not entirely surprised to see a deluge of YouTube commenters admitting that its placement in an ad on Instagram is where they discovered it. As for me, I often like the commercial music without even watching the commercials—when I was teaching high school, every time my head turned for a song I wasn’t expecting to hear in the classroom it was invariably for a YouTube ad before the real song played.

5. Danny L Harle f. PinkPantheress: Starlight [2025]
UK

Well, score another one for me liking something when everyone decides it is no longer cool or interesting. I’ve never been big on the first wave of hyperpop, but the selloutish pop album from PC Music’s Danny L Harle—featuring this song that came out last year—was more interesting to me than any of the golden age stuff. I could also probably give a lot of credit to PinkPantheress’s appearance here, even though it doesn’t really sound like she had much to do beyond throw her vocals into the song grinder.

6. Tenxi, Yung Caters, Jemsii: Liga Baru
Indonesia

7. Effie: Red Horse
South Korea

8. Nori, Kori: i_ain’t_fly (G6)
UK

9. Francis Jeremy, 1MillionU$D: Lazerdim
Uruguay

Four picks taken from or inspired by billdifferen this week. The blog appears to be back (this is why you keep bookmarks and blogrolls, whippersnappers!). He’s started posting a monthly roundup there—here’s January and here’s February.

The first two songs are leads from his best of 2025 list: Indonesian art&B from Tenxi and Jemsii, who both feature on a 2025 song from the hipdut scene (which I have never heard of). Whether or not this particular song counts as hipdut I couldn’t tell you—it sounds like Drake, but not in an entirely (derogatory) sort of way. After that, art-pop from South Korean artist Effie, whose name rang a bell and whom I apparently covered back in November, writing: “Butterfly meme, but it’s a fairy instead of a butterfly: is this fairy trap?”

For some signature billdifferen face-meltage of the sort I usually admire more than I can stomach it, you will need to dive into the lists yourselves; my tastes are Lawrence Welk by comparison. I will, however, cosign the low-rent hijacking of “Like a G6” by UK rapper Nori, if only as an excuse to share this video about the original song’s creation. (Spoiler alert: the Cataracs accidentally put their synth line in the bass track and sold 5 million records.) I will also pass along, if not exactly cosign, the weirdest rap voice I’ve heard since South African rapper Vson’s strangled Death Muppet flow: Francis Jeremy, who is the only rapper I think I’ve ever heard that turns a nervous, tremulous wheeze into a real threat. He sounds like there’s soup dribbling out of his mouth, and he will definitely kill you.

10. DJ SEBB, Junior, Le Jèm’ss, YSN: Tiki Taka
Réunion/Martinique/Guadeloupe

Jonathan Bogart has also been sharing a best of 2025 list that also contains many songs I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never heard before. Interestingly, Jonathan’s picks often fall on the opposite side of my personal tastes—that is, the opposite vector from wherever face-melt is located. …Face moisturizer?

I can bet that almost nothing I single out on my newsletter lists will overlap—Jonathan’s carefully curated YouTube dumb-algorithm is as unintuitive to me as I’d bet my streaming dumpster-diving is to him. But music criticism is a team sport, and I always find new artists and scenes to follow as a result. My interest in Caribbean music, especially shatta, owes a huge debt to his work.

(All that said, I was going to pick this one regardless because they throw some Soulja Boy style “YOOOUUUUUU”s in there.)

11. Nikita the Wicked, Jkyl & Hyde, CREG: Horsepower
US

A song that in a quick snippet seemed like a sample I’d hear in an underground rap sorta track that gets through to me, but by all appearances this is a couple of EDM DJs moonlighting as hip-hop producer for a no-profile rapper whose bio just tells you to follow their Twitch.

12. Miguelle & Tons, Dav Julca: Quiero Decirte
US/Panama-Peru-US

Miami DJs keep things upbeat but the real star here is whoever supplies the vocals and the clumsy keyboard solo—I believe but didn’t confirm that both are from Dav Julca.

13. Morobeats, Dj Medmessiah: Di Papasakop
Philippines

Ragtag rap posse from the Philippines, can’t keep track of how many people are rapping, but I particularly like whoever is yelling like Zack de la Rocha.

14. Zoe Lucy, Meryl: An Lo Mal
Guadeloupe-Haiti/Martinique

Paused on this one for Meryl, who mostly adds color to a song by rising Haitian singer Zoe Lucy.

15. My New Band Believe: Numerology
UK

I’ve never followed Black Midi enough to know which reductive historical comparison songwriting duo to slot Greep/Picton into, so suffice it to say that I like both of their solo directions well enough, though I’m mostly using this as an excuse to share one of my more cursed mashups: Gracie Abrams vs. Geordie Greep’s “I Love You I’m Holy.” Petition to get both these guys more guest singers, or maybe a nice consulting fee for sneaking trickier charts into Gracie Abrams songs.

16. Natalia Catalan: Beat Up
US

No rhyme or reason to which hyperpop song-shards reach my brain or heart, I guess, but these ones did.

17. HANA: Bloom
Japan/Korea-Japan

Up-and-coming girl group formed through a televised audition process for newer J-pop label BMSG with Korean-Japanese rapper CHANMINA. I had a different song in this spot, but then saw this translation by Kimonobeat, whose translations I follow over on Bluesky for leads on Japanese pop. That got me listening to other tracks—turns out the whole album is great (see album rundown above). You can see what a difference a thoughtful translation makes when you compare the “color coded lyrics” in the YouTube to the Kimonobeat translation. The subtle distinction between the YouTube’s “bloom you can’t grasp” and the stronger “bloom you can’t seize” was enough of a smile to get the title this week.

18. Ranil Y Su Conjunto Tropical: Bahia [c. 1975]
Peru

Another comprehensive restoration from Analog Africa, whose incredible Roots Rocking Zimbabwe got a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album last year. This time it’s a second compilation for Ranil Y Su Conjunto Tropical, a great Peruvian cumbia act apparently rarely heard outside the region.

19. Mei Semones, Liana Flores: Koneko
Japan-US, Brazil-UK

20. Willow: Ear to the Cocoon
US

Yes, I am a sucker for corny jazz arrangements from my favorite singer-songwriters, and yes I think I’m probably grading both of these on a curve. I seem to be really into what Mei Semones is putting down, even when she puts it down a little too gently. Willow, on the other hand, is a generational talent and I have become something of an evangelist, so you maybe shouldn’t trust me when I tell you this new album is good. I do think her stubborn one-woman-band self-production is impressive, for whatever that’s worth (not much, if I’m being honest). I’ll probably let the tangled web of melodic ideas on this song stand in for the rest, though.

21. Yasmine Hamdan: Mor Club (Deena Abdelwahed remix)
Lebanon/Tunisia-France

Never really warmed up to the whole Yasmine Hamdan album after loving “I Remember I Forget” last year, but this spare, skittering remix has piqued my interest to try again, or at least hope for a remix album.

That’s it! Until next time, try to figure out which way you’d like your face to go, on or…off.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from HANA: Bloom.

Had the opportunity to revisit Britney Spears and will.i.am’s “Work Bitch!” while I was putting together my list of songs of the 2010s. When it came out, I gave it a [10] at the Singles Jukebox:

will.i.am is such a dork, we all knew that, but more importantly Britney Spears is such a dork. I think that is wonderful, that we have such a huge dork in the fifteenth year of her unabated music career still blowing up planets and laughing with a little snort at the end (fun fact: Britney Spears is about as far along in her career now as Madonna was when Britney Spears debuted). But mostly I think this song is wonderful, this bluntest instrument in an era of very blunt instruments, bashing everything up not because it’s better (though it is) or because it’s dorkier (because it isn’t) but because these dorks are the biggest dorks, a distinction they have both earned, damn it.

Since that time, a somewhat compelling but unproven theory came out that Britney Spears is not (or is barely) singing on the track, and that the bulk of the song, along with other songs from Britney Jean, was recorded by her backup singer, Myah Marie:

The demo sounds pretty similar to the recorded version, where Myah is credited as backup. The question is whether the vocals are entirely Myah’s. There’s a comparison track—Britney Spears re-recorded the song for her Vegas residency, with those vocals isolated and then matched with the original instrumental:

I am not committed enough to this question to break out the waveforms or spend too much time parsing microscopic differences. The two different vocals already sound pretty similar, and I also don’t know exactly what I’m hearing in either of those original clips to begin with.

The question that I’ve been wrestling with, though, is how much I would even hypothetically care about whether or not Britney Spears is actually singing the original “Work Bitch.”

Although many things about the current wave of A.I.-generated music seems like hype, or like people over-reading the direction of a new technology too early in its mass adoption, the technology’s ability to copy voices is improving rapidly, and at some point A.I. generated voices of celebrities will probably be indistinguishable from a recorded vocal.

Just as an example of where the technology is at right now, Holly Boson created this Taylor Swift song with the following prompt: “A Taylor Swift song from the late 2010s or the early 2020s about performing massive environmental damage by rolling coal in a private jet, spraying cans of hairspray outside while yelling, using generative AI to come up with songs, and so on.”

I wonder if A.I.-generated voices will be used to augment or replace vocals from artists, in a way that’s indistinguishable from tried and true practices like stitching together multiple vocal tracks, slathering on vocal effects, or stacking on sound-alike back-up singers. And the question is whether I’ll care about this in the same way I care about the possibility that Britney Spears does not actually appear on “Work Bitch.”1

But the thing is, I can’t really work out how much I care about whether that’s actually Britney singing. I only know the answer is definitely not “I don’t care at all.”

A lot of things that feel like values in music-listening turn out to be relative assessments that are at best only true in a plurality of cases. In some instances these may be like value phantoms—that is, things you think you might believe until something forces an exception or reveals a contradiction that causes the whole house of cards to tumble down. For my part I try to steer clear of saying anything too definitive when I genuinely don’t know how I feel about something, or if I have never had reason to think about it.

At some level, all music is a magic trick: signifying personality from performance, tools of obfuscation and polish creating something that is realer than the thing “under” the thing—what you hear is what you get. I care deeply for how things sound and what they seem to convey, and I often don’t get too hung up with the documentary technicality of their construction, which might be illuminating or might be totally beside the point. There are songs whose evidence of creation deepens the impact of what the song is doing, and also songs whose resonance totally defies the boring, accidental, or tawdry reality of their creation. It usually doesn’t bother me, or at least not consistently.

But the Britney thing bothers me. And a lot of the A.I. stuff bothers me, too. I certainly feel differently about generated songs than I ever did about, say, AutoTune or synthesizers or samplers, which I always viewed entirely as production tools. I found skepticism or hostility toward them baffling. In fact, I would say that the further extremes of electronic manipulation have often brought out the humanity in the music they produce—like Autotune becoming a primal squeal, or synthesized instruments ignoring verisimilitude to let their various freak flags fly. But maybe there will be more exceptions with A.I., too, and I just haven’t grappled with them yet.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Georgia Maq: 10 Drunk Cigarettes
Australia

I always doubted that “10 Drunk Cigarettes,” the ostensibly A.I.-generated viral novelty from 2024, was actually a fully A.I.-generated song. At the time, I figured A.I., if used at all, may have horked out the lyrics and provided the vocal from a guide track. I didn’t think that A.I. song generation alone could produce a song with such “good bones.” By now I think it probably could, but interestingly I don’t know if the resulting song would be “bad” enough to be so good. Anyway, the song’s pristine skeletal structure is on full display in this crackling cover from Georgia Maq of Camp Cope (h/t to Jacob Sujin Kuppermann). An early A.I. era “standard,” maybe, along with “BBL Drizzy” and Frank Sinatra’s “Cruel Angel’s Thesis”.

2. Hannah Jane Lewis: Consolation Prize
UK

If you need it realer, here’s one of two realer-than-real (neither complimentary nor derogatory) country songs via Don’t Rock the Inbox this week, though this was the only one I remembered was from them (i.e. didn’t pick it out of the blindfold taste test). Natalie at DRTI singles out the line “heard you rode the Bitcoin train to the bottom/ don’t know when to quit boy, that ain’t my problem.” I also like this week’s title bad news coming out of the woodwork. (I imagine it emerging like the girl in The Ring.) There’s more, across a whole EP.

3. Anna Calvi f. Iggy Pop: God’s Lonely Man
UK/US

I am a perennial sucker for both schaffel-stomp and Iggy Pop guest appearances (his old Teddybears feature could have used a dollop of swing), so Calvi doesn’t need to do much to make this work. She holds her own trading lines and does a fun register swap in the chorus.

4. Lydia Képinski: À l’extérieur
Canada

5. Vamo: Des heures au tel
Canada

Two from Montreal: first, electro that is a combination of chintzy and blunt that sounds practically Eastern European (complimentary), and then some nice sing-rap on a clave base.

6. Javi Wayne, Anto Bosman: Hello Kitty
Chile

Campy reggaeton-pop (skews a little closer to dembow, maybe?) from Chile that retains the kawaii spirit of Hello Kitty while also defiling it. Frank Kogan recently had some musings on “neocute” (“i.e., claiming to reclaim cuteness as empowered choice”) which I don’t know if this qualifies as, but I think isn’t unrelated to.

7. Prod.Nifour, Mc Gw, Cacau Chuu: Ela ké Leitada
Brazil

8. Menor Teteu, MC Menor MT, DJ J2: É Só Prainha
Brazil

Two funk picks this week—blown-out brega funk fun with utility player Mc Gw and twice-mixed Cacau Chuu, then Menor Teteu gives “Glad You Came” by The Wanted a defib.

9. pinponpanpon: Pon Direction [2025]
Japan

Despite featuring several batshit pinponpanpon tracks last year, I somehow missed this one from October, where they hold Paris hostage with a baguette.

10. Amayajane, Zae: Spend That
Philippines-US/Philippines

Filipina rappers go way recessive in surroundings but not performance and give a sense of overshooting the mark. Normally this is something that requires some alchemy between vocals and production (like Cassie with Ryan Leslie, say) but here it works on personality alone (barely).

11. Bad Gyal, Chencho Corelone: Choque
Catalan/Puerto Rico

Catalan neoperreo star Bad Gyal with a straightforward scorcher.

12. Lestef KJF Boyz f. Dj Luchshiy: TAKE UR TIME
Guadeloupe

Have finally started backing up my mixes in earnest after figuring out how to mostly automate the extremely tedious process. I’m through 2023 and heading into 2024, and so far I’ve only completely lost two songs: The Emillio and Vagif Nagiev’s light EDM remix of “Azerbaijan” by Muslim Magomayev; D’Athiz, Ke-nny, and Locomeister’s quantum sound “Gumba Fire.” A third song I thought I’d lost: a Nigerian mara (street rap) song by Professional Beat, “Aye lo so (mara),” but I did find a copy of it eventually—in fact, while I was writing this.

Professional Beat, “Aye lo so (mara)”

There are another 10-20 songs I had to similarly reconstruct from other places because they’re off of the major streamers. All of this is to say that I need to be a bit more timely and diligent about the backups, especially for local scenes and songs that originate on Soundcloud or seem to be on wobbly copyright grounds. My guess is that this designation might include crackerjack bouyon remixes of Madonna hits, already only available on YouTube as a session video.

13. 林詩雅Grace f. HUR+: Refund
Taiwan

Taiwanese girl group recommended by ‪Iain Mew, though this particular song—a highlight from their album 9of9 Arcana—seems to be credited as a solo by Grace Lin. Maybe they’re doing their BLACKPINK and post-BLACKPINK careers simultaneously?

14. Haku.: ふわ輪 [Fuwa wa]
Japan

Dubdobdee fave Haku. is back…BACK! as they seem to be every few months. Tuneful J-rock power pop.

15. Luizga f. Faew: A Caverna Ligou No Wifi
Brazil

Gilberto Gil-minded singer/guitarist teams up with (from what I can tell) a backpack-minded beatmaker and create something with electronic logic and mostly acoustic sounds.

16. Cazzu: Jujuy Estrellado
Argentina

Cazzu is a huge star I don’t follow very closely; I can’t tell how much her somewhat traditionalist bent in the past year or so echoes other parts of her career—I first heard her on charming trap-pop hit “Chapiadora” in 2018—but this one splits the difference a bit, feels intriguingly out of time.

17. Ashs The Best: Weeruway
Senegal

Have rustled up a few more Senegalese pop playlists and found this lovely ballad, a wash of harmonies sounds great in counterpoint to the wandering guitar line.

18. Yemi Alade: My Bébé
Nigeria

Yemi Alade is always dependable, was reminded that she’s been a pretty big deal for over a decade now when Jonathan Bogart shared “Bounce” in his songs of the ‘10s countdown. (His countdown points toward the ‘20s in a way that mine shies away from them; should go back and do some revisionism at some point with more of a post-A-pop mindset.)

19. IKITSUKE, Toshiyuki Yasuda, Sala: MSA
Japan

Bringing the mix in for a landing with a light Japanese ballad that forces the horn arrangement behind the singer to muffle themselves with pillows.

20. Naïma Frank: Ainsi soit-il
Haiti-Canada

Montreal is bringing it this week, very cool kitchen-sink art pop that pins its various ideas to a serviceable Jersey club throb.

21. Luka Salam, Hadi Birajakii: Toute -  توت
Egypt

Egyptian pop goes Latin-tinged songbook, but it can’t stay on the same page of the book and whirls through a few other jazz-pop styles, ending somewhere in Paris, probably well clear of pinponpanpon.

22. August Ponthier: Everywhere Isn’t Texas
US

Didn’t realize this was recommended in the same Don’t Rock the Inbox newsletter as Hannah Jane Lewis, but will pass the recommendation karma on to Hannah Jocelyn, who just reviewed the album in Pitchfork. I appreciated the audacity of the musical quote that Hannah singles out in her conclusion:

On paper, the title track and its reprise take that sentimentality too far: Even given The Wizard of Oz’s historical significance to the queer community, it’s risky for an artist to interpolate “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in 2026, and riskier still to do it twice. Yet these tracks do that while also getting across the album’s central dilemma: Do you flee your home when it’s getting too dangerous, or do you work on making the place you’re from better? Do you come out, or do you stay safe? The first song flees for greener pastures; the second song digs its ruby heels in, with a message that seems directly aimed at the trans teens who will likely find this record: “Everywhere isn’t Texas/’Cause the words and laws they wrote/Couldn’t touch our soul.” It’s achingly optimistic about the future of trans people without being naive. Ponthier doesn’t always strike the right balance of mischief and melancholy, but when they get it right, the mix is disarming.

Happy to let that be the last word. But I will take the opportunity to link one of my favorite “Over the Rainbow” interpolations — more of a passing resemblance —On!Air!Library!’s “Bread.”

That’s it! Until next time, go dig up your old On!Air!Library! records, I guess?

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Hannah Jane Lewis: Consolation Prize

An odds and ends week in both mix and intro. There are a lot of tracks from late ‘25 this week, mostly because I caught up on a few regional viral charts, where December material is still going strong.

I should probably be recapping songs more regularly for those of you who value your time and sanity and therefore skim and skip mixes. One way to keep up more casually would be to follow what I call my Golden Beatology playlist. Those songs are chosen to appeal to a hypothetical median voter in the kinds of music discovery polls that I like to participate in online. It pares down the number of songs and probably hits a pretty broad cross-section of readers, not to mention at least one person in my household. (Not the one who wants me to teach them this song on the piano.)

I’ll also try to do periodic recommendations for albums and songs. Might put these somewhere else and just link to them once a month, though.

11 Favorite Songs I Heard in January (unranked)

• 143leti: Venite haacia mí

• ano: ピカレスクヒーロー [Picaresque Hero]

• BabyDaiz: Allonsy

• Danpapa GTA: Ikeja (No Go Thief)

• Dora & Marlon Collins: Rákata

• ily: ปิ๊งป่อง (PINGPONG)

• Juky San f. Liu Grace: Ta Cùng Nhau Quên Niềm Đau

• MOLIY: Backie

• No Na: Work

• Yael Naim: Wow

• Zsá Zsá, Lucry & Suena: P*rnstar

10 Favorite Albums I Heard in January (roughly ranked)

• Vayda: Don’t Lose the Groove EP

• Juky San: ĐẪM TÌNH

• Poppy: Empty Hands

• PVA: No More Like This

• Yumi Zouma: No Love Lost to Kindness

• Imarhan: Essam

• Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic

• Djy Ora: The SGIDONOLOGIST2

• Lia Larsson: Dunka

• Plash: I Live Alone

Marginally useful album descriptions from Bluesky:

Indie: Yumi Zouma. Alt-pop: PVA. Chill vibes/tasteful=high: Imarhan. Chill vibes/tasteful=medium: Djy Ora. Get high and stare out the window bc wow: Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore. High energy tasteful=medium: Vayda. High energy/tasteful=LOW: Larsson. Screaming: Poppy. Anti-screaming: Plash.

Other odds and/or ends, but no sods:

• Al Varela has a great Top 100 of 2025 with write-ups for every song.

• Kayla Beardslee and friends have put out their always great list of K-pop songs of the year. (Also recommended: Kayla’s least favorite K-pop songs of the year.)

• Must give a special shout-out to Brad Luen for writing up my Taylor Swift mash-up album (!!) and even politely acknowledging without writing up the follow-up that was probably more fun for me to make than it is to listen to.

• New Willow album klaxon! She produced and played every instrument on petal rock black, and does to tune-yards what Taylor Swift did to Lana Del Rey on “Snow on the Beach.” I like it, but it is not immediately my album of the year, which was not true of Willow’s previous two albums.

• I didn’t realize that the Charli XCX Wuthering Heights soundtrack is…basically a Sky Ferreira album? Majority co-writes with Ferreira co-writer Justin Raisen, and one featuring/written by Ferreira herself. As Sky Ferreira albums go it’s merely pretty good, but it’s great if you don’t really like Charli XCX.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. KiiiKiii: 404 (New Era)
South Korea

I know they’re not actually singing “404, the new error, error,” but it is where the title comes from (new era = getting off the internet and really living maaaaan) and this is now what I will sing to myself every time I get a 404 error for the rest of my life. Well done!

I am heartened, if skeptical, that my K-pop tastes are re-aligning with critics I trust on it after a decade of divergence (mostly from me not paying much attention). Though maybe it really does mean 2025 was a bad year for K-pop if I am familiar with almost everything in the top thirteen of the Pop Excellence list? I featured six of these songs on mixes, including a 2025 KiiiKiii song on the list, “Dancing Alone.”

2. Sentimento, Nadia Rose: Busy
France/UK

Nadia Rose graces a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin busy beat from a French producer. Sounds like she’s dodging the sound effects, including the ones she makes herself.

3. Pedro Sampaio, MC Meno K, Melody: Jetski
Brazil

4. Marina Sena f. Psirico: Carnaval
Brazil

Two December ‘25 singles on the current Brazilian viral charts—summery brega funk whose hook vaguely resembles Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” and then a party anthem at once solid and slippery, gives the sense of bodies sliding together and apart, which I assume is also what it’s “about.”

5. Sara Wakui: 幽霊になっても美しい [Yuureininattemoutsukushii]
Japan

A fun little J-pop song that twitches and cruises along at the same time, high-strung and cool in equal measure.

6. North West: Piercing on My Hand
US

Well, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s daughter has finally had her hypertrap debutante ball, and rather than get into anything that could be inferred as commentary on her background, I’ll just say that this song is fantastic. The song has guileless youth media charm shining through its polished wall of noise.

7. Eem Triplin: If I Wanted To
US

A November ‘25 single (just released as part of a new EP) from PA rapper Eem Triplin, who has the sort of impish squeaky vocal that I also liked in Luh Tyler the few times he could land a joke. Eem Triplin seems more consistent in this regard—funny guy. I likely got this from Stereogum, where I see Tom Breihan also used “squeak” to describe the vocals—you’ll just have to trust I did not read his write-up first.

8. NAZU: Pura Pura
Malaysia

Trap-inflected R&B from a Malaysian pop star tucks some log drum into the mix so I am claiming it for ama-pop (“we count those!”).

9. Magic System f. Didi B: Meme Pas Peur
Côte D’Ivoire

I first heard Magic System in 2009 when I fell in love with “Même pas fatigué,” which I reviewed at the Singles Jukebox. (I’d probably rate it an 8 or maybe a 9 now.) Interesting what a difference a decade makes, I doubt I’d make a top-of-mind genre joke now without doing a little effort to get more of a sense of region/scene or at least be more transparent about my ignorance. Eh, maybe I would.

10. Chuwi: Plei
Puerto Rico

Another mix appearance for Chuwi, and another opportunity to be transparent about my ignorance! Want to go with “light salsa” but I just don’t have the body-feel for rhythmic and genre distinctions in this field. It opens with one person wanting to go out and the other person wanting to stay in and play Playstation, which means I have an excuse to link “The Game Song” by Keke Palmer (“that’s why I, I hate Madden! That’s why I, I hate Madden!”).

11. Bic Runga: Red Sunset
New Zealand

Bic Runga! I had her on one of my 1998 mixes, the “jagged lilt” mix — Mix 8: I’m Alive I’m a Mess. She was sequenced between Anouk and Vonda Shepard. (You can see the full track list for those mixes with a link to the playlist here.) Looks like Red Sunset is her first proper album since 2011. I have also learned that Bic Runga’s 2008 cover of “Autumn Leaves,” a song I believe is impossible to cover without achieving a minimum 7/10, is a 7 out of 10.

12. ALT BLK ERA: Tissues
UK

ALT BLK ERA is back rhyming “tissues” with “issues”! Charlotte Church would be proud. What’s she up to? (Checks.) Huh, interesting journey, but watch out for spoilers for Celebrity Traitors.

13. Christine and the Queens, Thee Diane: Ah Ya
France

Have always been hot and cold on Christine and the Queens but I am (re?) warming up as the recent Rahim Redcar collabs continue to hit gold, first his song with Cerrone and now with French Afrobeats generalist (post-Afrobeats? is that a thing?) Thee Diane.

14. PPJ: Me Pega
Brazil-France/France

She’s from Brazil, he’s from France, which is about where I left the research. Decent bongo mileage, nice harmonies.

15. Serebro: Кто я для тебя [Kto ya dlya tebya]
Russia

Wasn’t sure exactly when Serebro flipped back into the ON position, or in what formation, or who flipped the switch and how I should feel about that. I started on the Wikipedia and there were twists and turns galore. This is a fully rebooted new line-up and the “past members” list now stands at a whopping eleven. Aims for the lightly trashy melodrama heights of t.A.T.u., but I can’t really blame them for falling far short, as the bar is literally in outer space.

16. Lala Lala: Arrow
US

Struggling with my Amerindie quota this month, does Lala Lala count? To find out, I have burned two of my four Pitchfork views outside the incognito tab to reveal she has gotten two polite 7.5’s, which I probably didn’t need to click through to guess.

17. Charlotte de Witte f. Conduit: A Prayer for the Dancefloor
Belgium/US

Some real techno for my fake friends (that is, people who actually go to clubs) despite usually sharing fake techno for my real friends.

18. Nation of Language: Inept Apollo (Tom Sharkett Remix)
US

First question was whether the indie vocals were going to be a dealbreaker, and when they weren’t, the second question was whether the groove is worth seven minutes. It…isn’t, quite, but it’s close enough!

19. Mulest Vankay, Pcee, Scotts Maphuma f. Slyzza Rsa: Mark Zuckerberg
South Africa

Skimming various South African charts to see which amapiano hits I’m missing and turned up a good ‘un, hopefully this is not pro- its titular billionaire (don’t tell me if it is, though).

20. Societeit de Harmonie f. Natasya Elvira: Syakara
Indonesia

An Indonesian band doing decent Tin Pan Alley and swing era classics, both covers and originals. Singer Natasya Elvira does a mean kazoo solo.

That’s it! Until next time, practice your kazoo solos.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Eem Triplin: If I Wanted To

Have unfortunately been thinking about generative A.I. and “slop” this week after having to make a determination on my first automated content regular in the comments section. (It was a reluctant block.)

I’ve started replacing the ubiquitous word “slop” with the word “spam” when thinking about machine-generated content whenever it’s applicable. The difference, I think, is one of malicious intent: not just creating shit, which is always a gamble, but flooding the zone with shit. I think if you don’t factor that in, you’re simply using machine automation to replace assumptions that were until recently attributed to a presumed group of highly cynical people—suits, grifters, mercenaries, marketers. Before it was slop, it was crap or junk. There were technically humans producing that stuff, but in the old telling, the humans had no humanity.

I am anti-spam on principle, but this doesn’t extend to being dogmatically anti-junk. Junk is often a vessel for great art, and the line between junk and non-junk depends on who’s drawing the line and why and sometimes when. Your trash might be my treasure, and today’s trash might be seen by someone else as tomorrow’s treasure, etc. I’m also pretty seasoned at this point in refusing a trash/treasure dichotomy, or at least trying to ask a more interesting question when there’s a more interesting question to ask.

The real issue with generative A.I. content in music as I see it is its potential volume and speed—that is, the problem is the collective impact of all of it together, not the features of a specific piece. As Tom Ewing wrote over on Bluesky: “Floods of slop on platforms is like ‘what if the Long Tail was gangrenous?’”

I think that’s an interesting way of putting it. But I would add that the long tail of any creative content, especially online, has always been an incoherent morass of mostly-garbage, and could easily seem gangrenous if you chose to dive into a random subsection of the tail without any sense of what you were looking for.

For what it’s worth, right now I don’t actually experience A.I.-generated music as spam, even if it functions that way on many major platforms at some level that I don’t happen to encounter much. And if it’s just a slop problem and not a spam problem, well, welcome to the party, pal. You always have to slop through the muck — muck through the slop? — to find the gems. But the gems keep coming, for now.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Theodora: Des mythos
DRC-France

I’m glad that my initial sense that Theodora is difficult to pigeonhole by genre is in fact the result of her not confining herself to genre. This is art-pop full stop, with an arresting video that makes a play for people who may not be as amused with, say, BBL bouyon as I am. I’d say find someone who can do both, but I don’t think you really need to find someone who can do both. Still, it probably doesn’t hurt.

2. Fcukers: L.U.C.K.Y
US

Some folks, on the other hand, really only do the one thing, but do it pretty well sometimes. I don’t know if electroclash lives, but it still generates a few pings on the heart monitor.

3. Paula Biskup: Halo?
Poland

This might be the most pandemic-coded video I’ve seen since 2020. I’ve featured Biskup at least once before, and wouldn’t have described her as bedroom-pop—not any more than any other alt-leaning dance-oriented stuff. But maybe I should!

4. Yuri Redicopa, Supernova Ent: Amapiano
Brazil

Interesting funk song that flits between lots of broader Latin American pop zeitgeists. This is maybe Yuri Redicopa’s whole deal? Despite featuring him a lot (at least six times) I apparently enjoy totally different elements of his music each time—the archives tell me I’ve singled his songs out for trot, indie rock (via a Cafuné sample), balalaika, brain-tingling clave timbre, and “real elf shit.”

5. PETERBLUE, Simona, Pablo Mayorga: Barcelongas
Colombia/Spain

Relentless house thump and steel drums from PETERBLUE and bare minimum personality signification from Simona, at which she seems to excel.

6. Ms Nina, Isabella Lovestory, King Doudou: Sucia
Spain/Honduras/France

“Would I like fast and filthy global music less if more of it was in English” is a question that comes to mind occasionally. It’s nice to be reminded that the answer is “no.”

7. éther: Dérange
Canada

Quebecoise rap, a scene that I don’t know anything about and will not bother to pretend otherwise.

8. Problema: Тваринні інстинкти [Tvarynni instinkti]
Ukraine

Ukrainian rap I have a little bit more experience with, enough to know that Problema has more impressive technical chops than a lot of the other pop-oriented Ukrainian rappers I’ve featured. One to keep an eye on.

9. Facta, Warrior Queen, Killa P: SLoPE VIP
UK

10. Dana and Alden f. Ghais Guevara: Obsidian
US

11. Zukenee: Suicide Note
US

Three rap tracks that instinctively triggered my “share the Bandcamp” Spidey Sense (4-digit or fewer views on a YouTube that is a “topic” post or not an official video), and was only off on one of them. First a UK producer that evokes some of the lighter elements of aughts grime mostly thanks to a fun guest spot from Warrior Queen. Then a Philly rapper I (somewhat self-consciously) underrated at the Singles Jukebox, with a jazz-minded production duo who wisely go less smooth to compensate. Finally an Atlanta rapper who is too popular for the Bandcamp threshold finds exactly the sort of music box hook that will trick me into sharing pretty much anything using it. Or, to quote my favorite YouTube comment:

12. Flow Glow: Punisher
Japan

It’s a VTube group, which means there is an ocean of online context I will never bother to understand. But I like to think it’s what a good Bratz song might sound like in 2026 if cartoon supergroups were still a going concern in the states. (Are they?)

13. Young Posse: Visa
South Korea

Who needs cartoons when the real thing can just put out a hypertrap masterpiece like it’s no big deal.

14. efey4hya: Hasta
Turkey

Compared to Young Posse, this Turkish rapper puts twice the effort into menacing hypernoise for about half the payoff, but half the payoff still easily clears mix inclusion.

15. ARTIGO016 f. LVNT, Mc Dioguinho: Samba
Brazil

Frank Kogan notified me of a new EP from Artigo016, a Brazilian funk DJ [EDIT: funk DJ act] whom I shared with Frank when I was the fourth view on one of his YouTube videos last year. (The above YouTube has five at press time.) I’m awful at keeping up with most of the folks I unearth in a given year, so am thankful for the nudge. Whole EP is great.

16. DJ Jeeh FDC, Iraqui ZL, Mc Dricka: Mágoas, Ódio e Rancor
Brazil

More funk, builds the beat around a pretty ambient phrase.

17. Djy Ora f. M&N Projects, You Found Axe: Sticks & Stoness
South Africa

A recommendation from Job de Wit on Blueksy, who has a great ongoing playlist here. He refers to it as amapiano with a harder edge — and the album introduces me to yet another amapiano subgenre, sgidongo (Djy Ora calls himself the Sgidongologist), which has the harder metallic edge of quantum sound but a bit more of a party atmosphere. Not that I can usually tell this stuff apart or describe it very well.

18. Veg: 再会 [Here Again]
Japan

Hard pivot to light jazz-funk from Japanese band Veg. Had been holding onto this one for a week or two looking for the right transition for them, and instead found the perfectly wrong transition.

19. Clara Roy-Jensen: Mon amour
Canada

Indie chanteuse from Montreal with a light bossa sway, not sure if it earns the full four and a half minutes, but I’ll let it ride.

20. Ora Cogan: Honey
Canada

Smoky indie rock with an alt-country bent, could use a lyric sheet but the words getting half-buried in slurred mannerisms doesn’t bother me for some reason, plus I like the piano and banjo punctuation throughout.

21. Lella Fadda: 25
Egypt

Left-field bookends of two big finds from 2025—first Theodora opening the mix and now Lella Fadda (nearly) closing it, with a slow introspective number that isn’t nearly as weird as Bb trickz’s early 2025 entry in this vein, and hopefully won’t portend the rapid crash of Bb trickz’s career, either.

22. Tiwayo: Up for Soul
France

23. The Olympians: Strawberry Kiwi
US

Ending with two neo-soul numbers, one produced by a Black Puma and the other a Daptone supergroup conjuring up forgotten classics. This particular forgotten classic-alike (“Strawberry Kiwi”) is the sort of thing that could open Season 2 of Wonder Man, the soundtrack of which surfaced a different Daptone find: Benin funk group El Rego et Ses Commandos with “Hessa.” Fun show, doesn’t devolve into a rainbow laser CGI mess or waste fifteen-minute stretches on tedious backfilled exposition.

That’s it! Until next time, if you are writing a new Marvel show, just cut the exposition and laser fights and let Ben Kingsley say something funny.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from from Paula Biskup: “Halo?” (“może przez przypadek napiszesz”)

I have not gone to Miami, but I am away, so it’s a quick one while etc. Lucky for me, the haul this week was more than enough for a mix, with about ten to spare.

Last week I shared a playlist with the uncategorizable songs from the ‘10s, so this week I will share some more categorizable ones from my decade list. Won’t spoil the whole list, but here are five as a sneak preview in no particular order.

Angelica Garcia: Karma the Knife (2019)

This is a song I’ve been trying to figure out how to nominate for a poll or otherwise get more people to hear it for years. I always thought it was a 2020 single (the album is from 2020), but it was first released in August of 2019. So into the ‘10s it goes.

DJ Zinc & Ms. Dynamite: Wile Out (2010)

Hoping that folks haven’t forgotten about this one. It was a big hit at the then-recently-rebooted Singles Jukebox back in 2010 and frequented many mixes I made in that period.

Kiiara: Gold (2015)

I really don’t understand why this song works as well as it does. There are few songs I associate more with the mid-2010s than this—the only song I can think of that employs bort-pop technique and still sounds incredible. (This is probably because the syllable chopping isn’t defacing some older hook, but creating a brand new one.)

Vershon: Mercy A God (2016)

This was a serendipitous find—was driving at night and tuned in to a college radio station that happened to be playing is. The DJ never ID’d the song but I was able to find it later, no idea how (I probably remembered a few lyrics).

The Knocks f. Sneaky Sound System: The One (2014)

The first song I remember hearing after my first kid was born. For any brand new or future parents among you, this trick only works once, so make it a good one! (Just kidding, I don’t think you really get to choose if a song does this, or which one.)

I wrote about it as my “song of the decade” back in 2019:

My decade was all about family—making one, maintaining one—and so I only have three options for the song that defined my decade. One is inextricable from its surroundings—“On My Own” from Farrah Abraham’s My Teenage Dream Ended, an album about death and motherhood that is as poignant and sad and weird as anything I’ve ever heard. Another is from the second-best mom album of the decade, Flesh Tone by Kelis, “Song for the Baby.”

But my song of the decade is the first song I heard after my first son was born, “The One,” by the Knocks featuring Sneaky Sound System. The thing about having kids is that it really wrecks you—I didn’t realize that my entire life, its daily rhythms and boundaries, was being broken down and remade in those first few weeks. I was consumed with a pointless mania, so while he and his mom slept I spent most of my time hacking wooden chunks out of his bedroom door with a boxcutter in a doomed effort to “level it” and putting together an enormous playlist of every song ever featured on the first 50 NOW! compilations—something that I have almost no memory of doing, but which nonetheless currently has 38,000 followers and counting.

This is all to say that maybe I wasn’t my most stable or least sleep-deprived self when I first heard “The One,” but whatever it was, I remember thinking, when the chorus hit, that this crass thing, this stupid thing, is right—everything is going fast, and he is everything to me, it is true, he is the one, my number one, and I cried, a good, long, cleansing cry. And then a few weeks later, when I was settling into the new me and sleeping a little more and monkeying with that NOW! playlist for the minor omissions from my fugue state and nursing the wounds on my fingers from the boxcutters, I listened to “The One” again, and you can probably guess by now that I cried again, the very same cry, with snot and everything. And then three years later I had another son, so I listened to it again, just to see what would happen, and I thought, surely this time it won’t—but it did! And I cried again, because he was my number one now, too, the song was still right, because with your kids they’re all number one, you just find more heart to hold it all.

Why did this particular song have this effect on me, a song that to my knowledge no one has heard the way I hear it, possibly including the people who made it? Right time, right place, right me? A random twist of neurochemical fate? Maybe it doesn’t really matter—we all get our own private sessions with epiphany, but we don’t control the schedule, something like that. Songs speak to us when we listen and sometimes even when we don’t, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can really hear them whether or not we were ready for them—there, I heard it, this was the one, and I didn’t get to choose my vessel any more than I got to choose my kids, but there it is and I love it all the same. Now it’s been five years and it still goes fast, and there is so much to lose, more to lose than you could have possibly imagined. But it’s lovely while it lasts.

All 2026 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. EMJAY: Brainchem
Mexico

EMJAY’s 2025 album Me estoy volviendo loca is filthy and wild, but to me the music all congealed into an undifferentiated mass as an album, though I liked “Boss,” especially in its remix version. “Brainchem” seems to be pandering to me directly with avant cheerleader bounce and a nicked chord progression from “Toxic.” It might be my favorite song she’s done so far.

2. DJ Kanji f. 7, eyden: Money Up
Japan

Noisy and annoying 808-driven J-rap that doesn’t let up for a second, while the MCs make like they’re not touching you they’re not touching you they’re not touching you.

3. Whodamanny: Loca Loca
Italy

A whole album of throwback Italo disco sunshine. Sometimes trying to sound too much like a past sound comes across as too studied, and there’s a hint of that here, but I think the singers manage to put it over.

4. Pigeon: Miami
Guinea/UK

A perennial People’s Pop favorite that I’ve featured at least once before and try to check out when they cross my radar screen. This is sillier than I remember them being—8-bit keyboard hooks, absurdist lyrics. But I’m very cold at the moment and would like to drop everything for some sun in Miami, so good timing.

5. FLVCKKA, Yeri Mua f. Angely2k: Notype
Mexico

FLVCKKA’s “Tsunami” was a favorite of mine last year that didn’t really take hold of the pop commentariat that I try to evangelize some of these things to, and in this case I think I need to trust the commentariat. But I’m glad the women in alt/reggaeton/pop seem to be building a critical mass anyway.

6. SadBoi: Twisted
Canada

Can never tell how big SadBoi is despite sharing her songs for a few years now. I think her voice is pretty memorable, but her beats are all over the map—she tries out a bouyon-ish beat here, after sounding just as comfortable alongside “Shake It to the Max” breaktrhough MOLIY in a song I shared last year, and with Atlanta rapper Vayda the year before that.

7. Eliangel, Saga: 日本 Borracha de Poder
Venezuela-Mexico/Mexico

More Mexican alt-pop, this one with the exciting distinction of having zero views on its YouTube page.

8. 1T1, MiiMii KDS: In Di Corner
Guadeloupe

I’ve been trying to follow some of the music coming out for Carnival a bit more closely this year, and MiiMii has been capitalizing on her breakout bouyon hit “Sé MiiMii.” Funny to have shared 1T1 for the first time last week only to immediately hear their duet here. It sounds good but their delivery isn’t quite massaging the impact of the words enough not to notice a few clunkers: “I smell you from down there” is one you might want to retire from your pickup line repertoire.

9. Jahlys: Bizness
Martinique

Shatta star Jahlys gets a second lifetime mix appearance and I would not be surprised if she gets a third.

10. Spice: Soft Girl Era
Jamaica

Meanwhile I’ve wanted to feature Spice for a long time now—most recently she was on the remix to Zuchu’s “Amanda.” I suppose making yet another great song with the title “Soft Girl Era” is as good an excuse as any.

11. Zé Filipe, Bellagi: Pretin
Brazil

An odd one, seems to split the difference between brega funk and Europop, like they borrowed a soundboard from Toy-Box. Is there a genre called “bubblegum brega”?

12. Saalva13: #générationkartel
Martinique

Another discovery from my shatta playlists, a bit harder and less crowd-pleasing than his hit from last year, “La Sérénade.”

13. Scoophy Snacks, CDQ, King Soundboi: Hola
Nigeria

Thought about subbing in something from my South African holdover list here rather than this Nigerian producer’s somewhat scrappy take on amapiano, but in the end I decided I had to feature an artist named Scoophy Snacks on one of my mixes.

14. Bongo Maffin, Oskido: Mari Ye Phepha (Fka Mash Afro-Glitch remix)
South Africa

An Afrohouse remake of kwaito group Bongo Maffin’s “Mari Ye Phepa” from 1999. Kwaito is a big blind spot for me—this song was huge and I’m glad to finally be acquainted with it.

15. Dj Yk Mule, Mastertune: Sax Dance Guitar
Nigeria

Cruise producer Dj Yk Mule mostly creates a backdrop for guitar from what I’m assuming is Mastertune. Couldn’t find a lot of info on this one on short notice.

16. By Özdemir, Liza, Raif: Mevzu Sen Olunca
Turkey

Sort of a Turkish take on the kind of pleasant but anonymous pop I found a lot on Spotify in the late ‘10s. I have no way of judging how fake any participants are here like I could back when some Z-list EDM producer brought in a fake Carly Rae Jepsen. But the vibe is similar (not entirely derogatory!).

17. noffkoffska: Szept (Czy czujesz to samo co ja?)
Poland

18. Nagham Saleh, Abraxsophia: Cabaret
Egypt

19. Kuaskio: Ю Раниш [Yu Ranish]
Ukraine

Three circa 2-minute songs from Poland, Egypt, and Ukraine before a very long song to follow, all of them mostly getting by on the performance more than anything special happening in the production.

20. Toffo Houssou Gilles, Orchestre Les Volcans Du Benin: Yemakpego Dragons [1984]
Benin

Yes, I have 15 minutes to spare this week and plan to use them. Benin group’s Afrobeat jam is modeled on a salsa jam, and if it maybe doesn’t earn every minute, I’d say it earns most of them. A rerelease from the Albarika Store distributed by Acid Jazz Records, available on Bandcamp.

21. Lia Pappas-Kemps: Towers
Canada

22. Baby Queen: I Hope You Don’t Remember Me
South Africa-UK

Ending with some indie-pop—I like how Lia Pappas-Kemps inches toward baggy (🪇), and I also like that she’s got Canadian government funding to do it. Baby Queen is one that I perennially underrate until I hear something that reminds me to go back and revisit. I guess “Dancing Alone” is basically a golden oldie now but when gloomy sequencer confessional works, it works.

That’s it! Until next time, I hope you are able to travel to warmer areas of the world than the one I am currently in.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Pigeon: Miami