May 2025 (Part 1)

So the plan is to, over the next few weeks, get these posts caught up to more or less real time so I’m not on here constantly talking about some song I liked when I first heard it a month and a half earlier. For now let’s continue living in the past and talk about the first ten tracks from this playlist of songs I enjoyed listening to in May of 2025:

Davi Music - “green bird”
Inspired by the cut-and-paste approach Makaya McCraven used on the excellent Universal Beings, Davi Music’s on by is a warped take on a beat tape full of woozy ambient gems. I first heard “green bird” on the latest episode of Calm Roots w/Alex Rita on NTS and was immediately hooked; I’m a sucker for the handmade feel of these fuzzy, interlocking tape loops.

Destroyer - “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World”
We spent the first two weeks or so of May traveling around southern Italy and while over there I heard a frustrating amount of Grammys ass American music at bars and restaurants. Maybe I’m being unreasonable or we spent too much time at places catered towards international tourists but to my disappointment I heard way more Doechii and Benson Boone than like, regional Italian pop icons. Either way I didn’t have a ton of time on vacation to actively listen to music of my choosing but this track from the great new Destroyer album was bouncing around my head throughout the trip any time I wasn’t being antagonized by that one Hozier song.

Real Estate - “Barely Legal”
A lo-fi era Real Estate cover of a Strokes classic originally featured on a tribute compilation curated by a music blog? We used to have it so good, man.

MIKE and Tony Seltzer - “WYC4”
🙅🏻🛹🙅🏻I NEVER LEARNED TO SKATEBOARD🙅🏻🛹🙅🏻
😤💸😤BUT I LEARNED TO GRIND😤💸😤

Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - “Mean Solar Time”
Modular synth/viola duo Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer follow up 2022’s Recordings from the Aland Islands with a departure from that record’s lived-in, lush atmospherics. “Mean Solar Time” is the pulsing, icy opening track to their new album, Different Rooms, out later this month on the reliably cool International Anthem records.

Cole Pulice - “In a Hidden Nook Between Worlds I”
I’ve been a fan of Cole Pulice since stumbling upon their collaboration with Lynn Avery, To Live & Die In Space & Time, a few years ago and with every new release they seem to reach a new level of blissed out complexity. I’ve been loving their new album, Land’s End Eternal, a sprawling ambient jazz suite that incorporates electric guitar textures for the first time in their discography.

Hooverphonic - “Tuna”
Dylan from Del Paxton put a track from Hooverphonic’s Blue Wonder Power Milk on a recent mix and I was blown away when I heard it. What a crazy find! This track specifically is a fusion of a bunch of different types of bullshit I like: vocals indebted to Elizabeth Fraser’s etherial howls, drums that live somewhere between chilled out trip hop and Krautrock's motrik beat, and of course the absolutely tasteless MIDI strings.

PinkPanthress - “Noises”
I’m not sure if as a 36 year old man I am allowed to have an opinion about PinkPanthress other than “pretty cool!”

Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka - “Nøkken”
Everything I’ve heard from Sofie Birch has been so good and this single from her new collaborative album with Antonina Nowacka is really nice! You know I love a hammered dulcimer and some wordless vocals.

Toner - “Raja Ali”
I love that this new Toner song is less than 80 seconds long and the first ten and the last twenty seconds are feedback. The remaining 63% of the song is also rad.

Full May 2025 playlist embedded below, back soon with more thoughts on the rest of all this junk: