Summer Indie Music Playlist 2014

Anyone notice how few HAPPY summer indie songs there are this year? It felt like an intense archaeological dig to uncover these. I sifted through literally a thousand songs over the last six months, and I'm still a little underwhelmed by what I found. The trend I've noticed is the only upbeat music today is crappy radio pop with bludgeoning choruses repeated twenty times, most of it combined with the worst dubstep leftovers. I don't put rap on my summer mix because it's a total fucking party killer - full of misogyny, violence, drugs and pedestrian boasts. As far as "indie music" goes this year, the bulk of it is so spineless, mid-tempo and sad that even Rolling Stone is running out of adjectives (smoky, elegiac, somber, heartbreaking, crooning, poignant, meditative, spacy, murmuring, cozy, languid, minimalist, aching, weepy, spectral, atmospheric, moody, haunting, drowsy, vulnerable, dark, forlorn). IT'S FUCKING SUMMA-TIME, YO!!! Are indie bands simply trying to write creative suicide notes? The only music that rocked this year was metal and punk, which I also won't put on my mix because it's too dissonant (even though I love that shit).

Can somebody please step up to the plate and deliver a home-run feel-good summer album like the Cars' first release back in 1979? Do you feel me? 

Anyway, here's the YouTube video playlist (songs below):



1. Wunder Wunder - Coastline
2. White Denim - Pretty Green
3. Beginners - Who Knows
4. Lincoln Jesser - Wicked Son
5. Little Dragon - Klapp Klapp
6. Ray LaMontagne - Lavender
7. King Khan & The Shrines - Bite My Tongue
8. Lowell - 88
9. Painted Palms - Forever
10. Woods - Shining
11. Cibo Matto -10th Floor Ghost Girl
12. Kishi Bashi - Philosophize With It! Chemicalize With It!
13. Tobacco - Eruption (Gonna Get My Hair Cut At The End Of The Summer)
14. Jungle - Busy Earnin'
15. Barrence Whitfield & The Savages - Blackjack
16. Coves - Cast A Shadow
17. Black Bananas - Physical Emotions
18. Chromeo ft. Toro y Moi - Come Alive
19. Mr. Little Jeans - Good Mistake
20. War On Drugs - Red Eyes
21. Kelley Stoltz - Kim Chee Taco Man

Coachella 2015 Line-Up Wish List

There's a resurgence of great music going on these days. The Coachella crew is pretty adept at finding and booking sweet bands. If my two-cents counts for anything, here's who I wanna see next year (in no particular order):

1. St. Vincent
2. Tune-Yards
3. Parquet Courts
4. Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger (Sean Lennon's new band)
5. Papercuts
6. Woods
7. Paolo Nutini
8. Ray LaMontagne
9. Thee Oh Sees
10. Major Lazer
11. Flying Lotus
12. The Black Lips
13. Purson
14. The War On Drugs
15. Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
16. TOY
17. Of Montreal
18. White Denim
19. King Khan & The Shrines
20. Painted Palms
21. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
22. Aztec Camera

Take a few minutes, go on YouTube and introduce yourself to these bands if you haven't already. Enjoy!