Bands That I Like

105 Foxygen Foxygen Foxygen is a band from California. The band-members (multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Rado and singer Sam France) grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village and started the band in 2005 when they were both just 15-year-old high school freshmen.  Apart from sharing a voracious love of classic albums from The Ramones to Led Zeppelin, the two bonded over a shared inspiration after watching the rockumentary DIG! together. Learning that Anton Newcombe- the mastermind behind The Brian Jonestown Massacre and key subject of the film- played up to 75 different instruments on his band's albums inspired the youths to learn as many different instruments as possible themselves. The pair worked on about ten home-recorded, self-distributed albums in their high school days, eventually parting ways when it was time to go off to college. The two eventually reunited after college and they were eventually signed to legendary indie label Jagjaquwar Re...

104 Four Tet Four Tet Britain's own Four Tet (real name: Kieran Hebden) is easily one of the country's greatest exports. There's a reason he gets over 2,000,000 streams on Spotify per month. Four Tet is probably the hipster's favorite D.J., he surely has made is name known in the indie scene. His debut album, 1999's Dialogue introduced the world to his signature sound of combining acoustic instrumentation with electronic sounds- this sound turned out to be timeless from the get go. His 2003 (and third album) Rounds is one of the best albums down-tempo has to offer. I didn't jump on board (& didn't really become a real fan [even though I had heard his name {which kept popping up}]) until his 2015 release Morning/Evening , which was designed with the classic vinyl-format in mind, with an A-side and a B-side. The project was a two-sided record trying to capture the magic of each the sunrise and the moonlight. And boy, did it work. It had beautiful middle ...

103 Flying Lotus Flying Lotus Flying Lotus (or FlyLo for short) is the brain-child of Steven Ellison. His first album was 1983 (released in 2006). Rarely does an artist come straight out of the gates with their sound so fully formed and hit it out of the ballpark- on the heals of his rookie season. (OK, I don't know why I felt the need for all the baseball analogies there, but that's how good his debut album is. [Pitchfork described it as: "IDM-influenced sounds from this talented architect of instrumental hip-hop."]) FlyLo went on to release two more amazing albums (2008's Los Angeles & 2010's Cosmogramma ) before I had ever heard his name. Cosmogramma made many end-of-the-year best-of lists, so it is safe to call that his breakthrough album... that's when he entered the pop culture zeitgeist and officially came onto my radar. So it was with naivety but open-mindedness I finally check out FlyLo with 2012's Until the Quiet Comes . It was like en...

102 Fleetwood Mac Fleetwood Mac There are essentially three Fleetwood Macs: the first, a British blues-rock band in the vein of the Yardbirds; the second, a dreamy, laid-back California-style pop outfit; and the third- well, that's the '70s hit-making, dysfunctional, made-for-TV, hippie family unit we've all come to know and love. Fleetwood Mac's earliest albums are difficult to find, but they comprise such an essential part of the band's catalouge that you can't just pretend they never existed. Fleetwood Mac began life as a straight-ahead blues band, named after its rhythem section: drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. The group's calling card, however, was the twin-guitar attack of Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, who wielded a sure, sensitive hand with their oft-abused source material. Fleetwood Mac and English Rose revolved around Green's economical lead lines and slide work. Carlos Santana plucked the guitar solo nearly intact for h...

101 Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes started off in Seattle in 2006. The band self-released 50 copies of their debut E.P., simply titled The Fleet Foxes & indie-success soon came calling. The band signed with legendary label Sub Pop and released their second E.P., 2008's Sun Giant . 2008 also saw the release of their debut album, Fleet Foxes . Pitchfork would go on to name both the E.P. and album the best release of 2008 & it's hard to argue why. Fleet Foxes' sound pairs layers of harmonized vocals — the sort of sound that could have emerged from the 1920s or the 1970s — with shuffling drums and finger-picked guitars. The band's sound evokes the duality that is Mother Earth; both her beauty while also incorporating the wickedness of the wilderness. The lyrics suggest a bucolic vision of nature, though lead singer Robin Pecknold's lyrics occasionally hint at violence ("And Michael you would fall / and turn the white snow red / as strawberri...

100 Flaming Lips Flaming Lips Rock has produced few stranger or more daring bands in the last 35 years than Oklahoma City's Flaming Lips, who embrace everything from merry prankster psychedelia to orchestral pop. From the outset, the Lips tried to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between Butthole Surfers-style dementia and bubblegum pop, with mixed results. Their early albums are humbles of ideas, the weirdness genuine, the songs expansive and sometimes giddily incoherent. They're as much a response to hardcore punk's inflexible pithiness as to mainstream rock's polish. Rarely does a band have such a signature sound on the first track of their first album, but that's exactly what the Lips did with their debut album (not counting their self-titled debut E.P. , a recording that shows the band so much in their embryonic phase that Wayne had yet to take over lead-vocals- it was  his brother singing!), Hear It Is , released in 1986 on Restless Rec...

99 FKA twigs FKA twigs FKA twigs is the brain-child of Tahliah Barnett. Under her stage-name of FKA twigs (which I'll just refer to her as twigs from here-on-out) she has released three EP’s (2012’s EP1 , 2013’s EP2 , and 2015’s incredible M3LL155X EP )  and two albums (2014’s LP1 & 2019’s Magdalene ). With someone with such a small catalogue, it's amazing how dense and rich this music is. Before Billie Eilish made the whole whisper-singer mainstream last year, twigs was already releasing down-tempo-trip-hop-whisper-sung music back in 2012. That is when she released her debut, EP1 . twigs hqd been studying dance since the age of six, but deep down, she knew she always wanted to be a recording artist so she eventually left the dancing behind (in a way [dance has always been a big part of her project]) to focus on her music project. However, limiting to just a music project is doing it an injustice in labeling. It’s more of a visual-dancing-art project. Ever ev...

98 Father John Misty Father John Misty Before releasing seven (!) lo-fi folk albums as J. Tillman, and drumming for the Seattle band Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty was just Josh Tillman. But in 2012 he re-christened himself Father John Misty. Father John Misty is the musical project of Josh Tillman, not including the aforementioned solo work he did as J. Tillman. As soon as Josh adapted the Father John Misty moniker, boy, did the music escalate. All of a sudden- there was: high production, arrangements, strings, back-up singers! Father John Misty is what would happen if Frank Sinatra started an indie band. Sweet crooning over strings & indie-rock. Josh had released multiple indie-folk albums before, but something about adapting the Father John Misty character really upped his musical game and things began to change & quickly... with people taking notice. He has mentioned that his Father John Misty character is a satire on rock ‘n’ roll stars… but satire or not- you can...