| 1 | Neptunian Maximalism | "Daiitoku-Myōō no Ōdaiko" | Éons | If we measure by the level of percussive creativity on metal records, instead of pandemics or police brutality, we're having a pretty good year. |
| 2 | Jesu | "Because of You" | single | I am disinclined to credit art to concurrent oppression or adversity, |
| 3 | Al-Namrood | "Al Hallaj" | Wala'at | but happy to give art extra glory for everything it transcends. |
| 4 | Astaroth | "Obscura -Another scenario-" | Genesis of "Astaroth" -Chapter 1- 5 | I will tolerate, apparently, any number of metal bands named after variant demons, |
| 5 | Feuerschwanz | "Malleus Maleficarum" | Das Elfte Gebot | or marching anthems dedicated to specious grimoires, |
| 6 | Romuvos | "Aizkraukle (1279)" | The Baltic Crusade | or bookish processionals extrapolated from feudal disputes whose Wikipedia explanations may as well involve Grand Fenwick. |
| 7 | Aseitas | "Blood Into Oil" | single | There are universes hidden in morbid dreams. |
| 8 | Brujeria | "Covid-666" | Covid-666 +1 | We are made of crawling flesh, |
| 9 | Atlases | "Dreadlight" | single | as surely as spinning atoms |
| 10 | Thecodontion | "Pangaea" | Supercontinent | and the slow flex of the turtles that wager our fortunes. |
| 11 | Fellwarden | "Pathmaker" | Wreathed in Mourncloud | Our notions of elegance are formulated in decay, |
| 12 | Grief & Bliss | "A Walking Void" | Hiraeth 3 | or maybe our tolerance of chaos is predicated on our ability to conflate it with complexity. |
| 13 | Red Moon Architect | "Rise" | single | We seek an element of will in a possibility-space of wishful unattended vindication. |
| 14 | Amaranthe | "Viral" | single | We are indignant when asked to take practical steps we used to reserve for ritual, |
| 15 | Volturian | "Haunting Symphony" | single | and awakened by questions posed about our movitations for sleep. |
| 16 | Jasmine Cain | "Burnout" | SEVEN | But we do not sleep to make a point, |
| 17 | Alien Huang | "我不是空笑夢" | single | and we are not subdividing infinity as an act of arbitrary discipline. |
| 18 | 梦然 | "山鹊" | 山鹊 +1 | We believe in our own singularity, and then we paint landscapes |
| 19 | raymay | "update" | single | distinguished only by our techniques. |
| 20 | Poppin'Party | "Breakthrough!" | Breakthrough! | We dream of asteroid mining, |
| 21 | PARADISES | "BRIGHT FUTURE, YOUR SMILE" | single | and returning as heroes from epic journeys, |
| 22 | GO TO THE BEDS | "GO TO THE BEDS is my life" | single | to distract ourselves from these tense quarantines |
| 23 | Yui Sakakibara | "Love☆Jet!" | single | spaced diffidently across the surface of a hollow world. |
| 24 | ミュウ(CV:高橋李依) | "Trauma" | Song of LISTENERS: side Hello | You can try to hate exuberance, |
| 25 | HUiT(有原 翼(CV.西田望見),野崎夕姫(CV.南 早紀),東雲 龍(CV.近藤玲奈),河北智恵(CV.井上ほの花)) | "胸の音色" | 刹那、轟く歓声 | but only by pretending your own retreats and revisions |
| 26 | Kami-sama, I have noticed | "インナーサークル" | single | are not secretly scored, |
| 27 | lical | "nyctalopia" | abyss esthesia 6 | and carefully never learning any difficult skill. |
| 28 | ヨルシカ | "思想犯" | single | The weekend looking up Japanese colleges didn't turn out like you planned. |
| 29 | FOMARE | "MEWOTOJIREBA" | single | If you close your eyes |
| 30 | Mrs. GREEN APPLE | "スターダム" | single | and look up |
| 31 | KEN | "Summer" | single | into a warm and open sky, |
| 32 | JAM Project | "Versus Road 〜非現実的サバイバル〜" | single | all the regret within range of your aura will be lifted three inches into the air. |
| 33 | Triple777 | "COSMIC TRAIN" | single | Amazing things are not always straightforwardly transformational, |
| 34 | The Well Runs Red | "Dead to the Dirt" | Neverscape 6 | but nor are slow apocalypses assembled from just polyester and dismay. |
| 35 | JPEGMAFIA | "THE BENDS!" | single | Anarchy is not a social program, |
| 36 | Backxwash | "Bad Juju (Moris Blak Remix)" | single | and masks have a history woven thickly out of thin layers, |
| 37 | nascar aloe | "I Throw A Fit" | single | but you can't invoke vengeance in the argot of precarious privilege. |
| 38 | SuiSai | "A Petals Ashes" | single | No legends end with gray minions triumphantly fireproofing barriers in slow motion, |
| 39 | James Colt | "Fire Rains" | single | or golf carts with Confederate flags on their rooves jumping flooded access roads or drought-emptied creekbeds. |
| 40 | boyband | "tattoo" | single | Atavism is right to fear new heraldry. |
| 41 | Drippin So Pretty | "Green Dot" | single | We don't have heroes, we have stories of how people held heroism in their hands, |
| 42 | Lil Skele | "i still care, but i know that i shouldn't" | single | and what they put it down to pick up. |
| 43 | Sueco the Child | "Smackdown (feat. TOKYO'S REVENGE)" | single | We have a free market where you can negotiate any price |
| 44 | Ryan Oakes | "SAVE MYSELF" | single | for trophies rendered worthless by purchase. |
| 45 | lil rxspy | "caroline" | single | "This is it", we keep saying. "That's the end of the joke." |
| 46 | Lil Darkie | "ON THE MOUNTAIN" | single | All this means is that the rest of the continuing story is serious, |
| 47 | Ados | "Herkes Konuşur" | single | but it was all secretly serious to begin with. |
| 48 | Big Narstie | "Teachings of Marcus" | single | You can hold up books you haven't read with one hand, |
| 49 | Prince Kaybee | "Hosh - Edit" | Hosh 2 | confident that no knowledge or morals are going to spill out on your tie. |
| 50 | Wiley | "Sorry" | Boasty Gang - The Album | Those who don't read never have the exquisite rapture of unexpected sequels, |
| 51 | Konshens | "Pull Up" | single | or the functional click of learning which oceans hold which islands. |
| 52 | Harry Shotta | "Salute" | single | If we organize by the debts we collectively owe, we are naturally united |
| 53 | Marlowe | "Future Power Sources" | single | and gifted with a redemption plan. |
| 54 | HoodCelebrityy | "Broke Boy" | single | If we can measure by how filled with we are with starlight and confidence, instead of by how many people have to have it explained to them why Black Lives might Matter, |
| 55 | cupcakKe | "Discounts" | single | then we're having a pretty good year. |
| 56 | Molly Brazy | "Curious" | single | We need more female rappers and more female presidents, |
| 57 | Petty Levels | "Dat Ass" | single | and before you make the obvious suggestion, Cardi B won't be old enough until 2028, |
| 58 | Lebra Jolie | "Talk My Shit 2" | single | so we have to get through two more terms until she can run as AOC's VP, |
| 59 | Cmten | "I Want a Shawty Who Plays Minecraft" | single | and in the meantime we need somebody who isn't basically satisfied with a populace forced to stay inside and watch him on TV. |
| 60 | Arca | "No Queda Nada" | KiCk i | If we measure by latent grace, instead of unwillingness to place one's moral center of gravity more than half an inch in front of one's dubious teeth, |
| 61 | vōx | "How Do I Connect To The Spirits?" | single | maybe there is a version of humane spirituality that doesn't reduce to "I am more special than you". |
| 62 | Young Ejecta | "Screen Guru" | Ride Lonesome | Maybe we can use all these wires to do more than narrowcasting offers to trade dissatisfaction for ointments, |
| 63 | Tatiana Hazel | "Tension" | DUALITY | or senses of purpose for small-batch T-shirts. |
| 64 | Miss Caffeina | "Reina (feat. Rozalén)" | single | We are made of perilous land-bridges |
| 65 | Kudai | "Sin Despertar" | single | between continents of insular belief. |
| 66 | Ella Vos | "State of Emotion" | State of Emotion +3 | Our procedures for redress are optimized for petulant censure and minor punishment |
| 67 | Stephanie Cheape | "Back to Life" | single | where we need ways to revoke wrongful death |
| 68 | LÉON | "And It Breaks My Heart" | And It Breaks My Heart / Who You Lovin / In a Stranger's Arms 3 | and transplant broken hearts |
| 69 | HAIM | "FUBT" | Women In Music Pt. III | without pretending unconvincingly that half-hearted is sufficient. |
| 70 | Thyla | "Everything (Vapor)" | single | Too much improvisation is poured into trying to levitate to a high enough point |
| 71 | Moonrunner83 | "Back To You" | Back To You | that you can keep the rain from simply falling without your own profitable intervention. |
| 72 | The Midnight | "Prom Night" | Prom Night +3 | We will survive a year without holding hands, |
| 73 | The Anix | "Do You Remember" | GRAPHITE | and probably retrospect will transmute tedium to wistful yearning, |
| 74 | Anup Sastry | "The Only Thing They Fear Is You" | single | but it won't restore squandered joy. |
| 75 | Driive | "The Intruder" | single | The autopsy of our culture won't say "They were proud of their history", |
| 76 | Stand Atlantic | "Jurassic Park" | Jurassic Park 5 | it will say "They couldn't stop drinking lite beer long enough to recognize their responsibility for extinction." |
| 77 | A Story Told | "Messed Around" | single | It will say "They put off tractable precautions |
| 78 | Nothing But Thieves | "Real Love Song" | Real Love Song +1 | in order to spend the time pardoning killers and misspelling signs proclaiming immunity." |
| 79 | Rich O'Toole | "Back On My Bullshit" | New York | It will say "Exceptionalism is what you get when other people's tears form a crust over your own eyes." |
| 80 | 17 Memphis | "Does She Know" | The Ballad of 17 Memphis | It will say "The meaningless things we fight over look us in the eye and say 'Here is where you get to learn to share, |
| 81 | Moonlight Social | "An Ode To Humanity" | single | or collaborate on a rock opera about this plaintive moment of artificial scarcity, |
| 82 | Alana Springsteen | "Good Things Fall Apart" | single | or just check your masks and hold each other in a tight six-foot orbit.'" |
| 83 | The Chicks | "March March" | March March +2 | It will say "But we had more than momentum." |
| 84 | Liz Longley | "Finally High" | Finally High 5 | It will say "We were weak, and mostly consumed with an constant constructed effort to keep from being consumed, |
| 85 | Clemency | "Let Me Hold You" | single | but we had guitars with so many strings, |
| 86 | Carl Stone | "Figli" | Ganci & figli 2 | and hoarded treasures that became bountiful currency when broken properly into enough shards." |
| 87 | Jónsi | "Swill" | Swill +1 | It will say "We were beautiful in our separate rooms, |
| 88 | Robert Scott Thompson | "Teardrops and the Holding Pattern" | Teardrops and the Holding Pattern +1 | posed against expedient backgrounds, |
| 89 | Parry Gripp | "Rat in a Dollhouse" | Sunny the Rat - EP 5 | willing to see what professionalism reveals when it's sliced open by our lives." |
| 90 | Nightcore Red | "The Other Side (Switching Vocals)" | single | It will say "If you close your eyes |
| 91 | Minniva | "The Human Paradox" | single | and look up |
| 92 | Red Handed Denial | "Telephone" | single | into a rendered sky |
| 93 | Grouplove | "Dancing On My Own" | Dancing On My Own +1 | you can imagine that the blood is water." |
| 94 | First to Eleven | "Girlfriend" | single | We believe in stories defined by their convenient myopia, |
| 95 | American Hi-Fi | "Our House" | Our House +1 | but a bad story relies on brevity to substitute wit for soul. |
| 96 | Kesha | "Children of the Revolution" | single | Keep telling it and you'll eventually get to the part where things change. |
| 97 | Monica Naranjo | "Autómatas (P-Machinery)" | Mes Excentricitès, Vol. 2 | Machines call out for followers, plaintively, ignored. |
| 98 | Inter Arma | "Purple Rain" | Purple Rain +2 | We haven't the patience for dystopia, either, fortunately. |
| 99 | Ben Folds | "2020" | single | Keep telling it and and you'll eventually get to the part where we write a song to remember what it was like in the middle, because we believe there is a middle. |