Not too long ago, nearly every media outlet’s Year In ReView list looked pretty much the same, especially those hyping the (alleged) best songs of the past 12 months. But something seemed to splinter recently, and now these lists are an absolute orgy of heterogeneity. Hey, we’re all listening to our own shit, and that’s easy to do when so many new tracks are uploaded to streamers every single day. The theme of variety also rules the day (and week, month, year) at Vanyaland, and that’s reflected in our 12 favorite national songs of 2024, a collection of the tracks that caught our attention since January, inspired a gush of digital ink, and never left our playlists. The toughest part of this list, featured in alphabetical order, is limiting it to a simple dozen, as a necessary honorable mention goes to a handful of tunes — The Black Crowes’ boisterous “Wasted and Wanting”; The Cure’s commending “Alone”; Charly Bliss’ anthemic “Nineteen”; and Adore’s punchy “Supermum!” — that would have bloomed in this space under a more expansive format. But 12 in ’24 feels right, and few joints sounded as good as the ones hyped below. 2024 might not have been the greatest year for new music, but it certainly did have its moments.
Artemas, ‘i like the way you kiss me’
In his mega-viral alt-pop hit “i like the way you kiss me,” English-Cypriot singer, songwriter, and producer Artemas famously sings about hooking up but not getting attached. And yet here we are, still vibing hard to the low-key 2024 SOTY contender several months after its release. Nearly 1 billion Spotify streams and more than 100 million YouTube views later (and we’re not even gonna look at TikTok, where the song truly blew the fuck up), “i like the way you kiss me” has failed to fade from rotation, thanks to its basement club intensity, relentless propulsion, and head-spinning hard-vs.-soft dynamic. Pop music has been all over the map in the endless decade we’ve called 2024, but this unfuckwithable slice of hyper earworm-pop has endured through all the highs, lows, and straight-line yawns. While the commercial masses were hyping a calculated re-packaging of indie sleaze, Artemas was making it new — and this would have destroyed the cool kids’ table back in 2008.
Cardinals, ‘Twist & Turn’
The music of Cardinals has an eerie nature to it. The Irish band, the latest in a long line of recent greatness emerging from the motherland, creates the type of haunting indie rock that looms overhead like a ghost, releasing from the speakers the songs that sound like they’re playing for friends engaging in the type of life activities they’d both be talking about 15 years later. We might be talking about Cardinals long down the line as well, and their debut self-titled EP, which dropped in June via So Young Records (hopefully named for the greatest of Suede songs), sets a supernatural tone for the moments that shape it. The genre-spanning, layered, and rich record is led by the eager and yearning “Twist and Turn,” a track so frightening in its familiar and comforting nature that its dense tenderness belies its lyrical nature. “[This] is a song about how writing has become a highly therapeutic practice for us all,” the band admits. “It’s got some poppy melodies and a danceable backbeat, but the lyrics though, they’re all about grief.” How 2024 it is.
Chappell Roan, ‘Good Luck Babe’
Everyone everywhere got on board the Chappell Roan party train this year, culminating locally with tens of thousands of rhinestone cowfolx in a field at Boston Calling singing each brilliant lyric. But while the alt-pop superstar’s singles dominated our 2023 Year In ReView — after all, we first declared her “one of our generation’s greatest and most thrilling songwriters” back in August 2023 — Roan’s post-Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess single “Good Luck, Babe” served as her very own “Bad Romance.” In April, the modern queer icon delivered another sticky-sweet alt-pop bop, and the seductive synth ballad that explores leaving behind a romantic relationship to explore authentic love and self-acceptance. “I needed to write a song about a common situationship within queer relationships — where someone is struggling with coming to terms with themselves,” Roan reveals. “It’s a song about wishing well to someone who is avoidant of their true feelings.” We’ve written a lot on Roan over the past year and a half, and things don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
Cock Sparrer, ‘Here We Stand’
We’ll admit it: We did not anticipate a new single from Cock Sparrer making a case not only for this Best of 2024 list, but for perhaps the absolute greatest track of 2024. But nothing this year was predictable, so it checks out in a raised fist of antagonistic glory. The anthemic and inspired “Here We Stand” finds the influential English punk and oi! band in dynamite form — after more than 50 years in the game! — with their first new music in over a decade. Farewell album Hand On Heart landed back in April, and it packs a lethal dose of classic street punk battlecries that may serve to help us rise up against global oppressors. With “Here We Stand,” Cock Sparrer unleashed a fight song that stands as straight as their nascent Shock Troops era of the early-’80s, and as catchy and potent as anything in the legends’ decades-long catalog. All the young punks can learn a thing or two here.
FEVER 333, ‘New West Order’
There’s a motherfucking heat advisory covering most of the country in June, and we quickly learned why: FEVER 333 dropped a ferocious new single called “New West Order,” and the hardcore and hip-hop hybrid brought heat to the streams via 333 Wreckords Crew / Century Media Records. The chaotic track might even be the first to name-drop Tupac and Morrissey in the same lyric, and that’s reflective of the song overall, as it celebrates the Southern California melting pot of styles, sounds, and cultures. “There is an intersectional hot bed where the hood and hardcore meet,” says FEVER 333’s Jason Aalon Butler. “For pimp’s and punks alike to enjoy and celebrate their taboos. This intersection is beautifully represented in Los Angeles and ‘New West Order’ is an unapologetic exploration of my experience as a social variable growing up in LA that I think the world should also have the privilege of being exposed to. It is also the beginning of West Coast gangster rock as a genre and a culture.” We’re still waiting for this to become an LAFC anthem. Maybe next year.
Isabel LaRosa, ‘Muse’
In September, Isabel LaRosa rolled through town for a show in Allston, and we told y’all not to sleep. The teenage Cuban-American artist from Maryland continued her ascent the following month with an elevated dose of dark alt-pop hypnotism called “Muse,” a lush and dizzying new single via Slumbo Labs/RCA Records. As guitar riffs fuel its alt-rock core, “Muse” explores lyrical themes of admiration and infatuation as LaRosa radiates self-expression and confidence. And it has become a fan fave across her headlining Heaven Doesn’t Wait Tour, which continues across Europe ahead of festival and Jingle Ball performances back in the states in December. “I’m so excited for everyone to finally hear ‘Muse.’ This song holds a special place in my heart, and I wanted to share it with my fans as a heartfelt thank you for all their love and support this year,” says LaRosa. Put her down as a true “one to watch” in 2025.
julie, ‘Clairborne Practice’
As the dust settles on 2024, julie may emerge as the buzziest band still flying just below the surface of the mainstream. We figured the Los Angeles alt-rock band and art collective would be our new favorite band by the time this feature helped close out the year, and we were pretty much correct. The fiery post-‘gaze shadow-roar “clairbourne practice” first slung its calculated noise back in July, waking up a fairly sleepy summer, and it highlighted the trio’s September debut album My Anti-Aircraft Friend. “For listeners who came of age amidst global pandemics, tumultuous political climates, and a host of looming natural and social crises, the sound of a band like julie could equally be a cathartic escape, or a shelter in which to locate a better sense of self-acceptance in a precarious world,” reads the pitch copy that first arrived with the track, and we’re still feeling it as we embrace the societal chaos to come.
The Mysterines, ‘Sink Ya Teeth’
The Mysterines‘ 2022 album Reeling might go down as one of the greatest rock records of the decade, so the Liverpool quartet had their work cut out for them ahead of this year’s follow-up Afraid of Tomorrows. But after February’s “Stray” set an exciting tone, April’s cage-rattling “Sink Ya Teeth” proved the band was not only up to the task, but ready to hit new sonic heights on their sophomore record. As we wrote of “Sink Ya Teeth” around its release: “In true Mysterines fashion, the track primarily features jagged, punk-informed guitar, punctuated by a steady beat. Vocalist Lia Metcalfe shines, her performance easily countering the otherwise intimidatingly powerful instrumental layers. Metcalfe says that ‘Sink Ya Teeth’ is ‘a testament to the brutality of real love’, adding that it was ‘written during a time where the boundaries of pain and passion were warped amidst the chaos of addiction and desire.’ The lofty thematic goals of the lyrics fit perfectly within the high-octane sonic environment the band creates, and evidently are just the tip of the conceptual iceberg.”
SASAMI, ‘Honeycrash’
We’re running this Year In ReView list alphabetically, but if we had to select a true #1 jam for 2024, it would be SASAMI‘s ebullient summer banger and masterstroke of seismic emotion called “Honeycrash.” The Los Angeles artist unleashed it ahead of Memorial Day weekend, complete with a video directed by Andrew Thomas Huang (Björk, FKA Twigs), and it served as our own personal soundtrack over the next few months as summer flings evolve into meaningful relationships. And then, the cinematic wave of lust and longing just never eased its grip on our headspace. “I wanted to write a song with all the drama of a 19th-century classical opera but with the patience and understanding of someone in therapy in 2024,” says SASAMI. “Finding a love so great you’re willing to persist through the elements, even toward certain death to bear its ravishment. It’s about wanting to fight for the pinnacle of passion and desire but knowing that you can’t change or rush someone else’s feelings or where they’re at. But with a guitar as my sword and my steed.” Absolute fucking tune.
Siouxie & The Skunks, ‘Sartoria’
We’ll admit that we don’t know too much about Siouxie & the Skunks beyond the rather peculiar moniker, and that by itself is a relatively exciting thing in our age of information overload. But the Italian art-punk band released new album Songs about Cuddles in March via Wild Honey Records, and with it came a stomper of a serrated smoke dance in “Sartoria” that sounds like the greatest unknown post-punk song from 1983 that now costs a rent payment to own on first-pressing vinyl. Honestly, we weren’t even sure, at first, if this band was real — a name that echoes a certain Banshee leader; a track that in part mimics “Damaged Goods” — and that’s possibly the surest sign of something being oh-so-real in this batshit 2024. Maybe Siouxie & the Skunks are here to save us, maybe Siouxie & the Skunks aren’t here at all, maybe this is simply the soundtrack playing inside the time machine we’ve all been waiting for. Smell it.
Unto Others, ‘Butterfly’
Band comparisons are the laziest form of music journalism, but when a song makes a listener think of a certain beloved band they grew up with, it makes some sense to relay that sentiment to those who may feel the same. Unto Others‘ hypnotic May single “Butterfly” brings us back to when we first heard bands like Type O Negative and H.I.M., and it put us in a beautiful chokehold from first listen. This symphonic crush of magnetic melody from the Portland goth metal band, formerly known as Idle Hands, served as their first musical offering of 2024, and eventually opened September’s expansive album Never, Neverland. “The choices we make everyday, do we create or destroy, do we lift up or put down? Do we do this to ourselves, or others?” the band asks. “The listener can decide.” When we first hyped this banger, we noted how it “went right into our Best of ’24 list” — and now here we are.
Urban Heat, ‘You’ve Got That Edge’
As an unrelenting July heatwave continued its sweaty grip on the country, it’s only fitting that Urban Heat delivered perhaps the most impactful banger of the summer. The Austin trio, clearly no strangers to sweltering temps, unleashed a darkwave and post-punk standout in “You’ve Got That Edge,” an anthem of self-confidence as synths swell and ache before an eruptive chorus finds enchantment from the perch of prosperity. “You’ve Got That Edge” was featured on Urban Heat’s Artoffact Records sophomore album The Tower, alongside the throbbing “Sanitzer” and fidgety “Right Time of Night.” But it’s “You’ve Got That Edge” that blossoms out of the speakers with sincere intensity. “This track is for anyone who looks in the mirror and doesn’t feel like the reflection is a good representation of who they really are,” says Urban Heat’s Jonathan Horstmann. “Humans make changes for all kinds of deeply personal reasons, and doing so can be scary and isolating, so we wanted to remind anyone who feels isolated that they are a force of nature.” Let’s take that energy well into 2025.