Contributor Potluck: January 2025
January music recommendations from the indieAnthro team.
The potluck is back! Each month, indieAnthro contributors get together to share what they've been listening to lately. Enjoy!
Jay Snow
"Burrow" - Taitoki
Taitoki’s Sapphic Ends is an album of many wonders. There are so many surprises along the tracklist, but my favorite song from it is possibly the most straightforward: “Burrow” feels like an all-enveloping embrace, soft snare brushes paddling in tandem with warm, pillowy synths. Like most of Sapphic Ends, it feels like it’s entirely in a world of its own.
“Burrow” is available on Bandcamp and streaming services.
"Like a taxi (Oh well)" - Cece Natalie
Miss Behaves, Cece Natalie’s electrifying debut from last year, gets everything right about late-aughts electropop and magnifies the most dark, obsessive sides of it in seamless fashion. The album’s crowning gem, “Like a taxi (Oh well)”, feels borderline suffocating. The production is minimal and dense, every element coming together to form a stunning piece of dance-pop that perfectly compliments Cece’s hedonic lyrics: the hook gives way to frenzy as she deadpans “Dive in me, I really make you crazy / Don’t die for me, love, I gotta show you something” and a background vocal taunts “I don’t think you can”.
“Like a taxi (Oh well)” is available on streaming services and Youtube.
Melissa
"Creation, Recreation, Procreation, Miscreation" - Jaiden Macintosh / 🦊 / Void / The General of Khiman / BackwardsSpanishFloor / MTS AIRMASS - Creation, Recreation, Procreation, Miscreation
Something I don't see often that I wish to foster and shed light on is the mass-collaborative musical handshaking that stuff like this does, where there's no inherent pretense of a singular vision in the same way a band or a 'project' might. In that singularity's place is a fleshy amalgam of noise and weirdness, symbolic of the rapport you'd find in a group chat of friends, stuffed with in-jokes and serious expressions alike.
"Creation, Recreation, Procreation, Miscreation" is available on Bandcamp.
"There's No Turning Back" - tdstr
Rivalling Cacola for the crown of making music that exists to piss off megacorp copyright laywers, tdstr turns popular Kesha and Tears for Fears songs into a frighteningly dour statement on the present moment. Both spry songs, they're turned into this soberingly slow meditation. "We are who we are" ceases to be the exclamation of boisterous individuality it once was, instead becoming a personal, maybe ironic hymn, best for staring at a mirror and gazing at your blemishes.
"005: A Lovely Pear" - Bull of Heaven
"I'll try to help you."
Clementine
"CHALLENGER" - wolfears**
wolfears utilizes the sound of lover’s rock, using it as a canvas to paint an image of what it’s like in their paws—displaying the full range of emotions that comes with queer expression & lust—all while never shedding that layer of ferocious distortion. ‘CHALLENGER’ sees wolfears yearning for toxic relationship dynamics wanting to give their all to this person with diminishing returns. Knowing, recognizing, and being able to express these feelings is important to staying grounded in a world that has been thrown into disarray.
‘CHALLENGER’ is track 6 off of ‘WOLFPACK’ by wolfears. Available now on Bandcamp.
"CHECKPLEASE (PAINKILLER)" - OkayKirk, Matt240p, & kit. (prod. OkayKirk)
This is 4 minutes of gritty boom bap production with turntablism on display that shows OkayKirk rapping about their life since taking their animation career to new heights, letting the listener in on how they garnered their success and are maintaining it. ‘CHECKPLEASE (PAINKILLER)’ also sports 2 features from—now defunct—zinniagarden members, Matt240p & kit, marking the times with optimism going forward. This track is the triumphant outro to BIG2K—OkayKirk’s February 2024 EP release—acting as a victory lap for the at-the-time recently accomplished animator.
‘CHECKPLEASE (PAINKILLER)’ is the outro track to ‘BIG2K’ by OkayKirk. Out now everywhere.
"IT'S US" - sor uh & louis bedroom (prod. sor uh)
sor uh & louis bedroom pop out on ‘IT’S US’ making their presence known on this bombastic display of aura to introduce us to the world of ‘TUNABEDROOM.’ Being mixed & mastered by ilysm, the bass here is knocking, giving all the space to sor uh & louis bedroom to exude their charisma through this electronic breakdown. Reflecting on their shared history through wax sor uh & louis bedroom have a chemistry that could only compliment each other’s pockets.
‘IT’S US’ is the intro track to the collab album between sor uh & louis bedroom, ‘TUNABEDROOM.’ Out now everywhere.
Ceej
"i90 (feat. josaleigh pollett)" - Ekko Astral
It’s been difficult to listen to anything else the past few weeks. Ekko Astral are brilliant at capturing transgender uncertainty and putting it on full display. There’s a haunting feature by Josaleigh Pollett as well, they have some incredible material you should check out too. This entire record is a scream with hopeful passages to let everyone know we’re not going anywhere.
** - This artist is part of the trickyStoop roster, the label side of our blog.