This year, rather than make a list of the top 10 albums or songs, the editors of demo have tried to come away with one album and one song from 2024 that we think will stick with us for years to come. Whether the apex of a particular sound, part of a movement we find exciting, or just something that perfectly nails something specific, these records have inspired and moved us above everything else this year.

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Jane's Picks:

Album: Bright Future by Adrianne Lenker

It’s been some time since a song has made me cry, but it doesn’t surprise me that it was a song by Adrianne Lenker that finally did it. “Real House,” the opening track on Lenker’s latest album Bright Future, was an indicator that Bright Future would probably change my life. Lenker sets the scene of her childhood with a series of vignettes—moving into a house with a wild field behind it, her mother holding her hand as they put the needle in at the hospital, the death of the family dog. The song itself is spare, with Lenker’s soft voice accompanied by just a few chords—and as a result, it foregrounds the first of many remarkable narratives in the album. Bright Future approaches familiar topics from new and authentic angles, complementing each set of lyrics with a consistent folk sound that is nevertheless abound with nuance throughout. In “Sadness As A Gift,” Lenker strums steadily, trying to keep from calling as the months go by; in “Free Treasure,” Lenker asks someone if they want to dance against a backdrop of shily plucked strings. Bright Future masterfully portrays life and its many dimensions in songs that have not only made me cry, but have made me feel so much more—and if that isn't the hallmark of a good album, what is?

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Song: “Run Your Mouth” by The Marías

I found out that The Marías had released a new album when my roommate first played “No One Noticed” through the speakers. The song put me in a sort of a trance—what with lead singer María Zardoya’s smooth, silken voice and the slow tempo—but it was when I checked out the rest of Submarine that I came across “Run Your Mouth,” which just so happens to be the polar opposite of “No One Noticed.” In “Run Your Mouth,” Zardoya’s voice captures the blasé, unruffled tone of a song about telling someone that they’re talking too much. On top of that, the instrumentation delivers on the same premise—with a heavy bassline that ramps up into an unforgettable riff in the post chorus, it’s an explosion of verve and frivolousness, of a groove that makes you want to get on your feet. In a year in which I could fall asleep to the majority of the songs on my playlist, this was the song I turned to again and again to wake me up—and from there, to soundtrack everything from getting ready for the day to kicking off my slippers before bed. And those are the sorts of songs you can never go without.

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Finch's Picks:

Album: Beyond Beyond Beyond by The Crane Wives 

I’m embarrassed to say that I’m only a recent fan of The Crane Wives. Having been catapulted into their discography after attending their tour this summer, the indie-rock group rapidly rose to a high rank on my Spotify Wrapped. Their most recent record Beyond Beyond Beyond is what got me through the devastating onslaught of winter, presenting me with respite from the cold each time I hit play. This album combines beautiful and devastating lyricism with angelic harmonies, making even the heaviest of tracks feel tinged in gold. Though this album is chock full of breakup anthems, it also delves into the sheer weight of being alive. If your expectation of The Crane Wives is nothing but sweet, folksy tunes, this is not the album for you. Beyond Beyond Beyond explores angst without being whiny about it, contrasting mournful tracks with female rage anthems. Their instrumentation is no joke, with each layer of guitars deserving an analysis of their own. Masterfully executed and perpetually relatable, the variety of songs within the album means that there’s something for every mood and moment. From the first listen, Beyond Beyond Beyond stuck out immediately kept me coming back like a man possessed. After all I’ve been through with this record, it was an easy pick as my personal favourite of 2024.

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Song: “king city” by Meteor Heist

“king city” has been one of my favourite Meteor Heist songs from the moment I first heard it sometime last year. When it was released as a part of their debut EP in May, I was ecstatic. Though hearing it recorded will never come close to experiencing it live, I’m still thrilled to be able to stream this track on repeat. From the powerful, heart-wrenching vocals to the suspenseful instrumentals, this has it all for me. Propelled forward by an eccentric drum pattern and surprisingly groovy bass, it pulls you along in an effortlessly enchanting way. Whether listening to it on loop while getting my groceries, showing it off to one of my friends, or laying on my floor in a post exam vegetative state, this song feels fraught with an emotion that I can’t fully place. For me, it’s located somewhere between melancholy, wistfulness, and the slow burn of a dormant anger. This song was one of my most streamed this year, racking up a shocking 48 listens the month it was released. “king city” has, like many Meteor Heist songs before it, become a sort of anthem. It got me through some of the toughest parts of 2024, offering a soft place to land whenever I needed it most. Marred only by being just shy of a perfect loop, this song will continue to hold a special place in my playlist well past this year.

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Jonah's Picks:

Album: Charli xcx - brat

In Charli xcx’s brat, the club is not an escape from life, but life itself. It has loss, beauty, pleasure, pain, clout, loneliness, family troubles, and somebody talking about Dasha from Red Scare. The album’s blend of cooler-than-thou party life with banal sincerity delivers a world that is both inviting and intimidating, an album for gatekeepers and laymen alike. No amount of remixes or TikTok trends can take away from how personal and compelling these expertly crafted pop songs are. brat exists amid an ongoing cultural tension which seeks both authenticity and ubiquity in pop music, and Charli navigates this expertly, showing how public performance is not distinct from private feelings, but a Möbius strip to be stumbled or strutted across. The cultural moment that brat created was neither purely organic or purely artificial; to be brat is not to be cool, nor to be misunderstood, but to have the appearance of being misunderstood. To “get it” and to pretend to “get it” are one and the same — the choice to “get it” is often just determined by whichever gets to have the most fun. This album will continue to stick with me, not only for how much it speaks to this culutral moment, but for how it speaks on the phenomenon of cultural moments as they continue to come and go.

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Song: Nettspend - nothing like uuu

Nettspend is still navigating some stuff. The self-proclaimed "badass kid" from Richmond, VA, first gained attention making music alongside xaviersobased and the NYC/internet rap collective 1c, autocrooning into BandLab presets over jerk beats. Nett, a white 17-year-old whose real name is “Gunner Shepardson,” calls himself “Future but Gen-Z” (Skipping Class) not because he shares the black Atlantan’s cultural or systemic struggles, but because he also portrays a lifestyle of siping lean and having one-sided relationships with women. Like Future, Nettspend romanticizes a life steeped in substance use and emotional detachment, presenting it as full of machismo and tragedy. Their songs occasionally betray the underlying despair that fuels this cycle, revealing a lifestyle as much about avoidance as indulgence. Just like this Future's "Codeine Crazy,"  Nettspend's standout 2024 track "nothing like uuu" captures a distinct sense of generational malaise. It’s music for the unemployed doomscrollers and gooners of my generation. Over stunning, glassy, anxious-yet-lathargic beat, Nett acknowledges his inability to foster sober connection, framing this emotional numbness as a fatalistic, euphoric ride in a ‘slut truck’ toward oblivion. Still, beneath the surface of the waning relationship Nett describes lies a kernel of unaffected connection — or perhaps even “love,” whatever that means. It's a song that encapsulates the ability for music to speak directly to our numbness, not past it.

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Hayden's Picks:

Album: Bright Future by Adrianne Lenker

Though she’s been making music in the same kind of folk-country territory since at least 2014, Adrianne Lenker has come into being a real indie music star in the 2020s, with her solo album songs in 2020 and her band Big Thief’s 2022 album. This album was therefore fairly anticipated, and it followed through. The intimate, very emotionally intense songwriting that songs got so much attention for is certainly present, and there are songs that replicate the style of that record. Although it’s fundamentally focussed around Lenker’s plaintive voice and brilliant finger-picked acoustic guitar, there are a variety of other instruments brought in, with “Real House” and “Evol” mostly being based around soft piano chords. “Sadness as a Gift” brings a very heavy country influence with fiddle and songwriting that reminds me of Townes van Zandt. These are all love songs, essentially, although about love in a variety of different forms - “Real House” is a heartwrenching tribute to Lenker’s mother, “Vampire Empire” the story of a toxic and unpredictable romantic relationship, “Sadness as a Gift” and “Donut Seam” bittersweet songs about relationships coming to a mutual ending. The album has its happier moments, too with “No Machine” and “Free Treasure” being equally intense as the rest of the record but more focussed on positive feelings of love and stability. If you like any kind of folk, country or singer-songwriter music, this is a fantastic album.

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Song: “Radical” by Tomato Flower

I first heard about Tomato Flower, who are a psychedelic indie band from Baltimore, when they opened for fellow Baltimoreans Animal Collective in Toronto during their 2022 tour. Tomato Flower’s first two EPs were decent but a bit limp compared to their live sound. Their first full-length, No, which was released this year on Ramp Local, does a much better job capturing the dynamism and creativity of their live sound, with its combination of light and dark, soft indie with King Crimson-esque dissonance or with more aggressive aspects, screamed vocals and the like. This song, which was one of my most listened to in 2024, is a brilliant example of all that distilled into two short minutes. It starts with a lovely airy melody sung by guitarist/vocalist Austyn Wohlers, before turning to a straight-ahead, guitar-driven section with some pretty cool riffs. The song then quite suddenly collapses into an increasingly discordant and anxiety-inducing section before switching right back into the first section. The song has compelling enough guitar and vocal hook parts to make it catchy, but its unconventional three-part structure and the stranger sounds in the discordant section make it interesting enough for repeat listens. Like all of No, an album apparently inspired by the breakup between Wohlers and the band’s other guitarist/vocalist Jamison Murphy, this song has a distinctly cynical edge to it, with its agreeable psychedelic pop always vying with the more off-putting experimental aspects of their sound.

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