You can shudder later

2025 Mix 15: Windowpane revisited; Ari Lennox's early song of the summer; Bb trickz outfoxes Playboi Carti before I can finish my coffee; and checking in on Yuri, Jax Jones, Ari Falcão, & Thakzin.

The cold never bothered us anyway

Another week, another A-pop installment — this one on the gradual convergence of indie (uprooted from “independent”) with pop (uprooted from “popular”) to create what I call a middlestream, and a corresponding genre a few friends named either yearncore or windowpane, depending on your taste in neologisms.¹ I like the latter, which suggests the sort of music you’d listen to while looking out of a car window wistfully, backlit in a too-long shot in an art film. It provides a visual metaphor of the sort of music I’m taking about, too, separated by a thin but impermeable layer from the mainstream it wants to be a part of, and also sounds like it sort of is a part of. (I’ve also described it as an uncanny valley between indie rock and adult contemporary.)

To be clear (no pun intended?), I like lots of windowpane. It’s a bit like thrash in 1989: everything is at least a [6], much of it is a [7], and occasionally you get an [8] but not much higher. Speaking of which (thrash, I mean), The One True Poster over on Bluesky has been tracking 1989 metal for the upcoming Best Albums Bracket in an extensive set of notes, and the section on thrash in particular was great. The whole series is here.

I’ve started tracking windowpane in my ongoing playlist processing. In the couple thousands of tracks I’ve skimmed through so far for my next two weeks’ mixes, I’ve found 54 windowpane songs and counting.² The music isn’t hard to spot; I seem to have a sense of it even during my rapid-fire playlist culling.

“Yearncore” does provide a helpful rubric if I’m on the fence: Is there yearning? If yes, then definitely yearncore, hence most likely (but not always) windowpane. If no, not yearncore, and only possibly windowpane. At that point (“if no”) I need to go to the next item on the flow chart: Did it seem like I was going to remember what it sounded like while I was listening, but then when it was over I immediately couldn’t remember anything about it, but not in an unpleasant way, kinda like an aural sorbet? That’s windowpane, baby.³

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube

1. Ari Lennox: Soft Girl Era
US

This is an extremely good summer song that I fear has been released too early and too, er, softly to make much of a dent. It reminds me of Ciara’s “Thinkin Bout You,” which I assumed would be everywhere in the summer of 2019, but ended up being more of an alternative universe hit that only went to #1 in my heart. I hope “Soft Girl Era” is more popular than that, but am always OK with heatseekers of the heart. (And hey, I got “Espresso” right around this time last year, so fingers crossed.)

2. Shelailai: GOODTHANKYOU
Canada

We have Doechii at home, if we happen to live in Canada. Don’t want to sell Shelailai (whom I’ve featured before) short, though — this has stood out to me more than any single post-iamdoechii Doechii song. I do really like the NPR set, though. But not as much as this joke, which I am obsessed with.

3. Bb trickz: Not a Pretty Girl
Spain

I was planning a long and, it turned out, quite tedious post on the new Playboi Carti album, which I started out thinking was a full dud and have settled on being somewhere in the B-minus range. The idea was to review each of the album’s 30 songs as if it were the “choice cut” from its own separate album. This was fun for approximately four blurbs and then I gave up, which mirrors almost exactly my experience listening to the album. (Like the album, I might have eventually warmed up as I went along before crashing out completely at the end — but unlike the album, this would have required actual work and not just occasionally rolling my eyes while doing some crosswords.)

So I’m happy to report that as far as 2025 kaleidoscopic sketchbook rap is concerned, Bb trickz’s incredible new album has the whole concept covered in 8 songs and 11 minutes — a big step forward from her last album, which was only 6 songs in 11 minutes. I’m tempted to keep it in my full albums list as the #1 to beat, even though I’d bet it would easily trounce all comers on an EP list. “Not a Pretty Girl” is the halfway point between “I Wonder,” her downer first single of this year (or final single of last year; it came out on December 29 and doesn’t appear on the album) and the other casually omnivorous songlets on 80’z, which I might write more about later.

4. Diora Madama, Leslie, Rossella Essence: Che mi fotte
Italy

Italian pop whose rubbery bass line makes me think of primo television synch-pop like INNA’s “Tu Manera.” But its thrown-together claps and snaps driving the percussion also makes me think a bit of Marina Satti’s Eurovision entry last year, “ZARI,” specifically the unplugged version of it, where you wonder how you ever could have imagined the song without steaming plates of food everywhere. That in turn makes me want to connect some dots about distinctively southern European pop—something to maybe keep an ear on, as two data points does not a trend make. (Obviously you need three.)

5. Ariane Roy: I.W.Y.B.
Canada

Quebec artist has kept her video just this side NSFW, like the guy in the dog suit in the Shining staging a gay bachelorette party for a gritty HBO show parody—maybe a third season of The Comeback is in order. Everyone at said party seems unmoved, and the song follows suit, seems to be about a party without actually throwing one, but there’s just enough gusto in the title shout—“I want your body!”—to get the energy up a little, even if everyone ultimately decides to take a nap afterward.

6. Tamten, Pejzaż: Twarze Za Mgłą
Poland

A Polish group whose lite industrial pop is described as “nostalgic impression fueled by carefully selected acoustic music sample and based on the loops from one of Tamten’s favorite polish wave records.” Not knowing what this meant, I googled around and found (possibly unrelated to this comment) Polish dark wave, including a compilation. Definitely something to dig into more.

7. Maegami Pattsun Shonen: Desk Pop!
Japan

8. Yuri: Suki
Japan

9. pinponpanpon: So Cool
Japan

Three from Japan. The first is a young group who style themselves with cardboard cut-out cartoon faces and offer chiptune pop with zig-zag time signatures and rogue slap bass. The second is what I guess is just my favorite Japanese artist now, Yuri, again working with producer Sasuke Haraguchi, doing her thing and hitting it out of the park. The beat is much funkier than I was expecting.

My favorite, though, is probably bratty alt-idol trio pinponpanpon, who hint at a series of interpolations soon to follow on the mix by quoting Queen Elsa—“the cold never bothered me anyway.” Seems like that’s the least of what they couldn’t be bothered by. Refreshingly DNGAF.

10. Jax Jones, Rebecca Black, sooyeon: Bad Boys
US/UK/South Korea

This is not an interpolation of either of my nominations for the People’s Pop Poppelgangers tournament, in which pairs of songs with identical titles compete against each other in tag team matches. I described my noms, both called “Bad Boy,” thusly:

“I believe this is the biggest year gap in the tournament: Jive Bombers soul-blubbering ‘Bad Boy’ from 1956 and Marwa Loud’s viral tresillo pop-plink from 2018.”

Very proud of the phrase “tresillo pop-plink,” which you could also call “that ‘Shape of You’ thing.” You can also listen to an unholy cross between my two noms in Bella Poarch f. Kenia OS’s “Bad Boy” from 2023.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with [airhorn blaring] the return of a decent Jax Jones collaboration with a minor A-pop star! (He’s responsible for one of maybe three good Bebe Rexha songs, “Harder,” and a decent Demi Lovato collab.) A good look for Rebecca Black, who is currently demonstrating the kind of lean-into-the-skid big dumb pop savvy that have made stars like Ava Max and Addison Rae—and, yes, I finally admit, Tate McRae—true Titans of A-pop.

11. lozeak: Nada
UK

Charming hyperpop on a tight budget, alights briefly on Right Said Fred before throwing syllables around willy-nilly. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but phonemes are free.

12. ALTÉGO, Ely Oaks, LAVINIA: No Regrets
UK/Germany

And now the most brazen of the song references, a song that free-rides “The Ketchup Song (Aserejé)” with a surprisingly straight face. But intoning such a silly chorus so seriously makes it funnier to me—giggle for a second and then really focus on that cardio.

13. Pahua, Ancestral Beats: Silencio
Mexico/Colombia

A nominally hyper indie reggaeton number from a Mexican singer working with Colombian producer Ancestral Beats.

14. DJ TOPO, Mc Rodrigo do CN: Golada No Jack - Topo Sessions Vol. 4
Brazil

15. Ari Falcão, Trovão no Beat, HERvolution: Arrocha Eu Sou Bissexual
Brazil

16. DJ BAN 016, Yuri Redicopa: Pontinho Do Jazz
Brazil

Three Brazilian funk tracks: a vandalized Timbaland sample (what comes around sounds like it’s taken a few lumps from an aluminum baseball bat, so probably won’t be able to go back around), then a a reggaeton remix of a bigger hit, “Automotivo Bissexual” by Ari Falcão, I am in no rush to translate, and finally the one in a hundred funk songs I choose only for a specific clave timbre and frequency that lights up some heretofore undiscovered corner of my brain.

17. Jarreau Vandal, Dave Nunes f. Mehdi Nassouli: Ganga Riddim
Netherlands, Morocco

Dutch group brings in Moroccan artist Mehdi Nassouli for a somewhat tasteful but still pretty raucous dance party.

18. KARABA: Siren
Canada

Montreal DJ is adept with South African house styles and palettes—my kid thought this was boring at first but then wanted to hear it again. Same!

19. MÖRDA f. Thakzin: Vault
South Africa

In the same listening session in the car, I was told at the halfway point that this song—a masterful 3-step build-up and break-down from Mörda and Thakzin—was really boring. But then I described how to count out the 3-step rhythm and around minute six my reluctant passenger was fully on board. Changing hearts and minds, one interaction at a time.

20. Juan Pablo Torres: Cacao (Dan Tyler Nad Bulto Versión)
Cuba/UK

It’s Passover, so I guess I can call the constant conveyor belt of Mr. Bongo remixes dayenu-pop. If they had merely tipped me off to the original “Cacao” from 1979, it would have been enough…

21. James Elkington: Golden K
UK

No idea why sometimes a simple instrumental guitar loop does it for me, but this one—from sometime guitar-for-hire with Tortoise, Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, and many others—does it.

22. Lyra Pramuk: Rewild
US/Germany

Saving the Golden Beatology pick for last this time. Pramuk is a US artist based in Germany who does a lot of Björkish work with samples of her own voice, but the secret weapon on this one is the lovely droning string loop that provides the sturdy exoskeleton for breathy mouth cymbals, half-enunciated syllables, and various rhythmic whoops.

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That’s it! Until next time, I wish you a pleasant soundtrack to all of your contemplative window-gazing experiences, even if technically speaking you’re not yearning.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Yuri: Suki (“ヒヤリっと後でしたらいい”)

1. For those keeping track of the broader arguments so far:

A-pop: a designation for American (and occasionally broader Anglophone) pop music that is now competing seriously with other regions’ ascendant music scenes.

1: “A-pop points to a self-defeating provincialism in ignoring the global pop landscape at a time when ideas, sounds, and scenes originating outside of a long-dominant western music sphere have more global reach than ever before.”

2: “Lots of American pop music ends up seeming smaller, while other regional music forms seem comparatively bigger. The stuff that plays at bigness but seems small is definitely A-pop; the stuff that actually hits big might be characterized as something else.”

3: “The transition to a global streaming era has also accelerated the blurring of lines between indie and pop. The end result of this process is not really a new mainstream or a larger separate sidestream, but a sort of ‘middlestream.’”

2. I have not yet confirmed they are all really windowpane, am letting my gut speak for me and will go through them later, and/or never. I am not limiting my search to American pop, English-language pop, or even pop that necessarily meets all criteria, given I am only listen to two-to-three-second snippets. Interestingly, though, both the new Julien Baker single and the new Lana Del Rey single did not trip my windowpane alarm bells.

3. One question I have, though, is whether “genre” is the right categorization for it. I wonder if you might think of it more as a style or song format, like the distinction between dance songs and ballads — in fact, there’s a sense I have that windowpane has basically replaced typical ballads over time, as slow singer-songwriter material has fused with what would normally be a heartbreak ballad. That sounds not quite right but might be on the path to something right — will need to think about it a bit more.