I was lucky enough to check out Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party this month, and on this playlist I’m including some great new songs from several of my favorites from the festival, particularly Wolf Parade, Flor, Kyle Craft, and Perfume Genius. It’s a great month for new music, with new LPs out from Arcade Fire, Passion Pit, Washed Out, Broken Social Scene, and more, along with singles from upcoming albums from Manchester Orchestra, The National, The War on Drugs, and St. Vincent. Radiohead even gave us a previously unreleased gem “Promise” on their OK Computer reissue.
Dnak 98 (June 2017)
We’re continuing to see an avalanche of early singles from upcoming albums. On that front, Arcade Fire (one of my favorite bands) has a couple of great tracks from their upcoming album Everything Now, and we have new singles from Waxahatchee, The War On Drugs, Rostam, Fleet Foxes, Kevin Morby, and The Horrors. Phoenix has released their new LP Ti Amo, and Lorde’s new album Melodrama is impressive and worth a listen top to bottom. Happy Summer!
Dnak 97 (May 2017)
It’s been another great month for live music for me, including an absolutely epic U2 Joshua Tree Tour show at CenturyLink Field. We even got to see Eddie Vedder and Mumford & Sons joining U2 to sing the last verse of “Mother of the Disappeared”. Definitely find a way to see the show if you can. Paul Allen deserves a huge amount of credit and kudos for putting on an impressive inaugural Upstream Music Fest heavily featuring Pacific Northwest artists. It really did have a feel of what I imagine SXSW was like in the early years. A few Instagram pics are below. As for this month’s playlist, we got an avalanche of singles from upcoming albums, including from Phoenix, Grizzly Bear, Mountain Goats, The National, Flee Foxes, and more. We also have surprise singles from LCD Soundsystem and Local Natives. Check it out!
Dnak 96 (April 2017)
I think we’re finally drying out here in California after a drought-busting rainy season. It was just in time for a beautiful warm night in Berkeley last Friday to see New Order at the Greek Theater where I got to experience some of my favorite all-time songs live. I also caught The XX (w/ Sampha) in San Francisco a couple weeks back, so I’m keeping up my live music streak. You can see a couple Instagram pics below. My latest playlist is packed with new pre-release singles, including tracks from Gorillaz, Mew, Future Islands, alt-J, Sylvan Esso, Whitney, Cold War Kids, and Waxahatchee, amongst many others. Definitely check out the new tracks from Joseph of Mercury and Slowdive.
Dnak 95 (March 2017)
My first full playlist of the year is heavily inspired by my recent music-filled SXSW trip to Austin where I saw 58 bands over 5 days and nights. While there were too many highlights to mention them all, the performances by Sylvan Esso, Hamilton Leithauser, and Maggie Rogers left as lasting impression. Check out a few of my Instagram pics below of the performances, or see all of them at https://www.instagram.com/dnak/. 25 of the 30 artists in this list performed at SXSW this year.
Indie 2016 – Top 50 Songs of 2016
In some ways, I think many of us are happy to say goodbye to 2016, with the loss of so many treasured artistic talents, let alone what’s happening in the news. But that hasn’t stopped me from listening to as much music as I can and going to see as much live music as possible. Some of my favorite shows this year were Brandi Carlile, Cold War Kids, Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Foals, Miike Snow, Lucius, M83, Car Seat Headrest, Yeasayer, Bloc Party, & Mitski, amongst many others. I loved putting together this list of Indie-ish songs that I keep coming back to after repeated listenings. Without further ado, here are my favorite 50 songs of 2016….
If you prefer,you can jump to the end to see the Amazon, YouTube, and Spotify playlists.
Let’s get started with Songs 41-50
Dnak 94 (November 2016)
My latest playlist has new music teased from The XX, Jagwar Ma, and Miya Folick, and tracks from the new albums out by Empire of the Sun, Bon Iver and more. And definitely checkout the tracks from Sundara Karma and Amber Coffman. I did manage to go see a bunch of live music recently as well, seeing M83, The Strumbellas, Yeasayer, Warpaint, and Blind Pilot. A few instagram shots are below.