Your New Favorite Band's Favorite New Bands
Say that ten times fast.
When I published my guide to discovering new music, I foolishly left off one of my best tricks. Thankfully,
, who writes the excellent Songs from Insane Times, reminded me, and now I’ll share with the class:Find your favourite artists' personal playlists!
Just imagine if you could ask your favorite band what music they stumbled on recently, or who inspired them, or what bands they’re friends with who you haven’t heard of yet.
Of course you can read interviews, but let’s not pretend that instant gratification isn’t enticing for even the biggest lovers of longform content among you.
I can think of no better antidote to a disappointing algorithmically-generated playlist of near-misses than hand-selected picks from a band you love.
Shitty as it is for artist royalties, Spotify does have some benefits. Music discovery is one of them, and artist playlists are one of its hidden gems.
I picked a handful of my own personal favorites, which you can find (way) down below.
But first, I have a special treat for you. I just need to set the stage.
SPRINTS - Letter to Self, Playlist for All
At this point, it’s unlikely that you haven’t heard of SPRINTS. But since this is New Bands for Old Heads, I don’t like to make too many assumptions, so let’s do a little overview.
January is a tough time for record releases. By the time we get around to racking up our favorites at the end of the year, I always get nervous that the best of the firsts will get swept under the rug.
Luckily for SPRINTS, who dropped their debut LP Letter to Self just five days into the new year, they are still looming large in our short memories and attention spans.
If you haven’t listened to them yet, I’ve described them as a mix of Fugazi, Sonic Youth, Pixies, The Distillers, and PJ Harvey. Because they’re Irish, you’ll often hear about them in the same breath as Fontaines D.C., too.
I think that’s a lazy comparison, though, especially after the release of Romance (though I’m not sure anyone is still making it, to be fair). They are making their own brand of angsty, emotional post-punk.
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SPRINTS’ star has risen dramatically since they released their debut. They’ve skyrocketed from relatively unknown local band to international festival mainstays, supporting big guns like IDLES, Pixies, and Gossip on tour.
They’re kind of a punk rock fairytale, if you think about it.
So when I hassled asked them if they would send me a list of their favorite new bands, especially considering they have at least four such lists already available, I was thrilled that they agreed.
Yeah, I know I’m cheating. I made a music curation TikTok account, posted a bunch of videos, got the attention of a band I liked, slid into their DMs, and suckered them into responding to me. Then I made their list into a playlist.
And let me tell you…
Do you know what you get when you ask a great new band to give you their own great new band recommendations? That’s right, ace. You get a perfect fucking playlist.
You don’t have to go through all the effort I did to get amazing playlists like this, though. You just have to scroll around a band’s page on Spotify to see if they have any of their own readymade playlists hanging out. They look like this:
And since that might also be too much work, I’ll finally get to the damn point and give you the list of lists I’ve been promising you so you don’t have to go digging at all!1
Some Great Artist Playlists
Blair Howerton of Why Bonnie
The band: Brooklyn-based folk/shoegaze/americana with myriad ‘90s influences.
The playlist: Everything from The Dare’s previous incarnation Turtlenecked to Lil Nas X to yé-yé/Italo-western revivalists The Limiñanas
Ellis Dickson of ELLiS·D
The band: Glam rock noir. You can see my write-up here.
The playlist: A DJ set fit for a dark French disco
The band: Arts and crafts, but in music form.
The playlist: Vibey electronica and hip hop, Afro-Caribbean beats, and all the little elements you’d expect to coalesce into a new Garbus record
The band: This shoegaze/grunge band made waves last year with their sophomore release Girl with Fish
The playlist: A whole lot of lo-fi, with a little experimental, electronic, and egg punk thrown in (including my personal favorite, cool sorcery)
The band: Back in 2021, I described them like this: “Boredom has never been so sexy since Warm Leatherette.”
The playlist: Undoubtedly a playlist to impress your coolest friends, this 39-hour behemoth gets by despite having more old than new tracks because it features my favorite new-to-me recent discovery — Jacqueline Taieb’s “7 heures du matin”.
That’s it! If you have more, please drop them in the comments.
Other playlists you may have missed…
Frankly, it isn’t a given that an artist will actually have these playlists. But why not check, I ask you?
This rules. Can’t wait to see Sprints live in a couple weeks.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1bjaJEaKAgMre4gIx3oMtL?si=7yOHb5QfTa6iyjfc-EfQpQ&pi=e-OSW0YlcSQAWm
One of my favourite bands is Divorce. They produce a really fun newsletter which the different members take turns to write and they have all included a link to songs they are currently listening to and which have inspired their song writing. They are all an eclectic mix of old and new. I think maybe this one from Kasper has the most contemporary artists on it.