Music Monday: Start of 2026 Playlist

I’m back with my playlist and article discussing the music that I’ve been listening to the last few months (specifically, January through April of this year). I was trying to keep it shorter than the last few, to keep it more manageable. I’m not sure if I pulled of the “shorter” part, but it did feel more manageable, possibly due to better planning on my end.

As per usual, I’ve made YouTube and Spotify versions of the playlist to follow along to. Also, a lot of these artists are on Bandcamp too, and that’s a good way to support them if you like what you hear (the next Bandcamp Friday isn’t until August, but they have the best artist payouts even outside of then). I’ll throw in one last pitch for signing up for the Out of Left Field mailing list below, and then we’ll jump right in.

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Notes: Not too much is missing this time; the track by In Love With a Ghost is not on Spotify, and Jamie Paige’s ‘C-Sides’ EP is mostly constrained to her Bandcamp page.


PinkPantheress: I spent the first few weeks of 2026 continuing to go through various places’ Best of 2025 lists, and ‘Fancy That’ by PinkPantheress was one of my absolute favorite discoveries from that process. It was kind of funny, hearing it and saying “oh wow, I was totally sleeping on this!”, then getting to see her hit the American mainstream a few weeks later (following gold medalist Alyssa Liu skating to a remix of “Stateside”).

The record is pretty short for a full release, clocking in at nine songs and just over 20 minutes on the original version without remixes and such (in fact, she seems to describe it as a mixtape rather than a full album, which makes sense). But gosh, does it just lay on the gas from the word go and never let up, from the spacy synth chords of “Illegal” and PinkPantheress’s breathless introduction that immediately grab your attention before passing you through an infectious procession of thumping bass synths, four-on-the-floor beats, and impossibly catchy hooks. Songs slide into each other in a way that refuses to let up and makes it feel extra cohesive, aided by a sort of stream of consciousness lyrics that feel like they could be describing either a fun night out in first person, or an exhilarating Guy Ritchie-esque romp of mayhem through night clubs. Something breathless and blown up to its most exciting form, soundtracked by a stream of songs that could all stand alone as singles.

It the kind of dance pop where, even if you aren’t listening in a club setting, it still immediately overwhelms you and draws you into its embrace; I actually love the video for “Girl Like Me” for running on that logic, turning the whole world into a set of vignettes run by its thumping beat, like it’s a level from Rhythm Heaven. That really just captures the sensation I’m trying to describe.


Brigitte Calls Me Baby: Chicago alt rockers Brigitte Calls Me Baby were one of my favorite acts back in 2024 with their debut album, so I was excited for their follow-up ‘Irreversible’ when I learned it was coming out. Where would they go from there? ‘The Future Is Our Way Out’ was notable for their distinct sound, which I think I compared to “The Cure if they had an American Rockabilly singer”, but where do you go from there? The answer turned out to be “more of the same”, and it absolutely kicks ass. I don’t know, I feel like reading music criticism, people get really into the idea of changing up sounds to signal new releases and such. And that’s a powerful idea, it’s led to some interesting music, it’s even worked my way into my thinking even though I don’t know that I was ever consciously totally on board with it.

Music Monday: End of 2025 Playlist

And finally, my End of 2025 Playlist is available! It’s a little later than I wanted, but I ran into some delays over the last few weeks, and figured delaying it would be better than rushing things.

I think part of my anxiety about being late is how most places end up doing their year-end lists before the year itself even ends, which I maintain is just wrong; you might still find cool stuff in December! But I suppose it’s too much for me to change everyone else’s mind there. And I guess this isn’t really my “Year End” list anyway, since I kind of let each playlist stand on its own even when they share a year they’re covering. It’s just my “things I liked from the last four months of 2025” list, which is kind of a big difference, but whatever.

We of course have both the YouTube and Spotify playlists that correspond to this article. And just like usual, a lot of these artists are things that I found on Bandcamp; if you wind up liking their music as well and want to support them, that’s a great place to do so! And if you’d like your support to go even further, they even released the schedule for Bandcamp Fridays (where the site forgoes its usual cut in sales so it can all go to the artist) in 2026. I wasn’t quite ready in time for the one in February, but there’s one right around the corner at the start of March!




A quick note: 7mai isn’t on either platform; you can find their music on their Bandcamp page. And the Spotify Playlist is missing a few extra tracks on top of that; Alpha and Strawberry Station didn’t upload their tracks, while Powderpaint and June Jones have recently removed their catalogs from Spotify in protest of the CEO.

(And for a final reminder, I have an Out of Left Field mailing list separate from my baseball writing one. So if you’d like to know right when these articles come out, feel free to sign up here. I don’t use it for anything other than new article notifications too, so no worries about spam. Although if you are subscribed, make sure to check your spam filters.)

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With all that out of the way, let’s start the actual list:

The Playlist, as an Article

Sydney Sprague: I’ve been trying to organize these lists roughly with a “best stuff at the top” mentality for a while now, and while it’s not always perfect (the exact order isn’t always 1-to-1, and I’ll sometimes group stuff based on the flow of the written blurbs in the middle), I do tend to really think about what goes at the top of the list. And while that’s easy sometimes, one album or artist will just stand out to me, this time was a little more difficult. I kept flipping between the top three choices here, and I might even change my mind the day after publication. But I’ve got to publish this list eventually (I’m already behind my loose schedule…), so this is where we’re landing for now. 

Summer 2025 Playlist

I usually try and get my Summer Playlist article out for Labor Day weekend, since that’s the traditional “End of Summer”, but I was busy around then this year, so it couldn’t be done. I thought about waiting until next Monday to post this too since I’ve become really attached to the “Music Monday” column name that I use, but this already feels overdue as is, plus my schedule is getting crowded with the end of the baseball season (and my usual articles that come with it).

So here we finally have it: my Summer 2025 Playlist! I mean, it’s still fairly warm where I am anyway with a final early-fall heatwave, and it’s not like I let out-of-season names affect when my other articles come out (I refuse to move my “End of Year” articles any earlier than the next January, “End of Year” includes what I listen to in December and I need time to process all of that!). I tried to be a little more concise to help speed things up, but I don’t really think it worked.

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As per usual, if you’d like updates about my Out of Left Field posts, I have a mailing list for that here! (And it’s separate from my baseball one.) And also like usual, I’ll note that a lot of these artists post their music on Bandcamp, and that’s a great way to support them if you like their stuff!







Note: In a shocking first, almost every single track that I included was available on both YouTube and Spotify. The one exception was the two tracks by alpha, which weren’t on Spotify (but were on Youtube). Also, I’m still doing album and EP titles in single quote marks instead of italics, to make publishing easier.


The Playlist (but as an article)

Racecar: Without a doubt, ‘Pink Car’ by Scottish trio racecar ended up being the soundtrack of my summer this year. It’s basically perfectly designed for the task, a March release of breezy pop music that even invokes lazily hanging around all summer in the first lines of opening track “Lay Me Down” over a bouncy bassline and funky light guitar riff. It’s a catchy start (one that I couldn’t help but repurpose for the playlist here), and perfectly builds from there into a frantic little pop tune stuffed to the gills with catchy hooks, flowing melodic lines, and exciting little flourishes.

But the fun part is letting it carry you along with the flow and eventually realizing that what seemed like a fun little aural lazy river to float along with actually has some actual depth and currents to it that will sweep you away before you catch on. Racecar is a talented group of songwriters, and their arrangements are richly layered and show off the variety of styles they’re playing with. But the album is also structurally fun, as they let tracks flow into each other as they build out a fuller story about a tempestuous summer fling and the storm of emotions it brings.