| 1 | Mikie Mayo | "waffle house jukebox" | single | A girlfriend's older brother once patiently explained to me that you can't make rock music about pixels. |
| 2 | nothing,nowhere. | "Pieces of You" | single | I think, in hindsight, that a list of the rockist failures of the song of mine he was talking about should begin with my iffy singing, the lack of drums, and the unsatisfyingly brief chorus, |
| 3 | Anthony Sidoti | "Game Over" | single | but that, given those flaws, the lyrics about disassembling the Mona Lisa in an image editor aren't really making things materially worse. |
| 4 | Onlyfriend | "buckshot boy" | single | He believed in guitars, played through amps. |
| 5 | yung axstn | "RUN" | single | I would have, too, if I'd ever been as good at playing guitars through amps as he was. |
| 6 | glaive | "naturale" | then i'll be happy | I was pretty bad at that, but marginally better at writing lyrics about pixels. |
| 7 | Yandere | "purpose" | single | What you value is not independent of what you grasp. |
| 8 | James Colt | "Level Up" | single | I had nominally asked for his advice, but as is usually the case when we pretend to do that, |
| 9 | Mothshonor | "new moon" | single | I was probably really trying to share stories, |
| 10 | Nosgov | "reminiscing" | single | in a moment when I wanted our stories to interconnect |
| 11 | Loli in early 20s | "Sakura no eda" | single | more than he did. |
| 12 | Delcada | "it never entered my mind" | single | Of course you can make rock music about pixels, |
| 13 | POORSTACY | "Don't Drive (We Drank Too Much Tonight)" | Party At The Cemetery | or baobab trees |
| 14 | Blvc Svnd | "TORMENT" | APATHY 4 | or anything you wish you were better at |
| 15 | Mary Mortem | "The Vampyre" | single | or worse. |
| 16 | Fire-Toolz | "Where On EARTH Is My Sacchidānanda?" | single | The song I thought defined his zealously traditionalist rock band was a short mock-opera about a long-dead children's-book author, |
| 17 | Coleman Hell | "topanga" | single | which I think is existentially indistinguishable from writing about the pixels of the Mona Lisa. |
| 18 | Mitski | "Working for the Knife" | single | We don't show up at gun fights with knives to make an obdurate point, usually. |
| 19 | Mothica | "Heavy Heart" | single | We're just walking around with tools that belong to the characters |
| 20 | JOSEPH | "Honest" | single | in the stories we tell about ourselves: |
| 21 | Simone | "Nevermind" | single | about orphans in garages, |
| 22 | LP | "Angels" | single | or martyrs along a skyline, |
| 23 | Arca | "Born Yesterday" | single | or avatars trading stems on Discord. |
| 24 | j00 | "aces" | single | Every combination of methods and intents |
| 25 | CXLOE | "Close" | Close +1 | becomes possible the moment you let it out of your control, |
| 26 | Phoebe Green | "So Grown Up" | single | and traditionalism is always about control |
| 27 | Carissa Johnson | "Running Uphill" | single | and the dogged rearguard defense about possibilities in pursuit. |
| 28 | Ruusut | "<3 <3" | single | Call your girlfriend's brother. |
| 29 | KEiiNO | "End of Time (Taste of Heaven)" | single | Say it's not your fault, we're just always meeting somebody new, |
| 30 | Helen Love | "This Is My World" | single | and singing new songs about old journeys, or vice versa. |
| 31 | El Columpio Asesino | "Que No" | single | The urge to resist the enemies you know is a hopelessly tenuous denial of the unknown. |
| 32 | Bexley | "Sweetest Thing" | Bexley | You don't need special shoes, or vintage amplifiers, |
| 33 | The Warning | "DISCIPLE" | MAYDAY 6 | or any other armageddon-cult stipulations. |
| 34 | The Dead Deads | "Chloe Dancer / Dead Inside" | single | You don't have to wait for a tornado to carry you into another world |
| 35 | Helion Prime | "Wash Away" | Question Everything: Special Edition | to have a path to follow, |
| 36 | We Are the Catalyst | "Tro" | Tro 6 | and you don't need that path to lead back to where you started. |
| 37 | Naraka | "Mother of Shadows" | In Tenebris | I would like to hear your song about pixels, |
| 38 | Кипелов | "Часы Судного дня" | Часы Судного дня +3 | not because I care more about pixels than books, |
| 39 | Wildways | "Ветивер (feat. polnalyubvi)" | single | or more about vetiver than amaranth, |
| 40 | Frozen Shield | "The Greatest Journey" | single | but because any reason is enough reason for another song. |
| 41 | Anaria | "Golden Crown" | single | A guy who sketched ornithopters |
| 42 | Beneath The Silence | "Nowhere to Go" | single | would have been in line at the Apple Store for every new iPad, |
| 43 | Kandia | "The Flood" | single | glancing nervously at his watch, wondering how long until this elevation is submerged. |
| 44 | Catalyst Crime | "Cognitive Dissonance" | single | Time for how many more ideas? |
| 45 | Jennifer Zamudio | "Ek Sal Berge Klim Vir Jou" | Twintigeenentwintig | For how many rehearsals of promises |
| 46 | Reën | "Stof" | single | to see if we become the people who mean them in earnest? |
| 47 | CROSS VEIN | "Black Fairytale" | single | You will always fear the version of yourself you saw in whatever antihero |
| 48 | Blinding Sunrise | "Dreamin' on" | single | you first discovered when you were 10: |
| 49 | softsurf | "Beyond the Ray" | Returning Wave 5 | albinic or leprotic or fucking sick of whatever monarchy. |
| 50 | DAI DAI DAI | "LASE" | single | But the fear is not of becoming them, |
| 51 | Morfonica | "Harmony Day" | Harmony Day +2 | it's of accepting that your ambition is your own to scope, |
| 52 | #ババババンビ | "マイノリティ" | single | not waiting in a canonical text. |
| 53 | 激情リフレイン | "VERsion up!!!" | VERsion up!!! 5 | You cannot wait for a sign if there are no signs, |
| 54 | PASSEPIED | "言わなきゃ" | single | and there are no signs |
| 55 | AFTER SQUALL | "KUDARANAI" | HOPEMARKET 5 | announcing anything but caution or officiousness |
| 56 | TK from Ling tosite sigure | "will-ill" | single | or what somebody else used to think of when they stood in this spot |
| 57 | GENERATIONS from EXILE TRIBE | "Unchained World" | Unchained World +3 | before they put up the sign |
| 58 | SHE'S | "Chained" | Amulet | in order to stop having to come here every time they wanted to have that thought. |
| 59 | TETSUYA | "REGRET" | STEALTH | You can set anything down next to a plaque reading "chained" or "unchained" or "regret". |
| 60 | Crossfaith | "Feel Alive" | single | Try it. |
| 61 | XAAXAA | "seikousaku" | Shippaisaku | Now walk away. The meaning of this work is now no longer yours to assign |
| 62 | Hello Sleepwalkers | "SCAPEGOAT" | single | or to be blamed for. |
| 63 | Chiaki Ishikawa | "100ある嘘の99" | 理由がないのが理由 | People will come, or they won't, |
| 64 | Kaneyorimasaru | "Itsumono" | Tsukiugokasareteku Bokutachiwa, 6 | along their own paths, |
| 65 | mol-74 | "Replica" | single | arguing about whether these buildings were modeled on other ones, |
| 66 | GOOD ON THE REEL | "私へ" | O₂ | or built here first. |
| 67 | ofulover | "革命序歌" | single | Every city's potential history is infinite. |
| 68 | CrowsAlive | "Smoke Signal" | Twilight World | Let it begin now, |
| 69 | Sara | "Irtoavat leuat" | single | with apologies and divestiture |
| 70 | Voidfallen | "Remnants of the Heart" | The Atlas of Spiritual Apocalypse | and new bakeries opened by people willing to start a business during a pandemic |
| 71 | Kallomäki | "Tyrty veri, seiso!" | single | or a fraught era of decline. |
| 72 | Teramaze | "Blood of Fools" | And the Beauty They Perceive | We will be nostalgic for some of even these days, eventually, |
| 73 | Skeletoon | "Holding On" | single | for how it felt to think, episodically, |
| 74 | 616 | "Code & Key" | single | that we knew which errands were dangerous or unprotected, |
| 75 | Edge Of Haze | "The Other Side" | single | which skepticisms were grounded or performative. |
| 76 | Hegemon | "Mellonta Tauta" | Sidereus Nuncius | We will tell a version of this in which the nights were darker than nights had ever been, |
| 77 | Dead by April | "Anything at All" | single | not because the nights were darker, or even notable for their darkness, |
| 78 | Morbid Mechanics | "Nanotechno" | Between the Tomb and the Womb | but because a scary story needs a cue for the listeners to draw in, |
| 79 | Skar | "Torn from the Heavens" | single | closer to the warmths of the narrative fire |
| 80 | The Algorithm | "Readonly" | Readonly +3 | and each other's laptops, |
| 81 | Olympus Lenticular | "Infinite Genesis" | Artificial Apex | ready for something new to be created or revealed, |
| 82 | Malrun | "The Mask of Joy" | Pandemonium | or protected by alluringly nominal concealment. |
| 83 | Veil Of Maya | "Outrun" | single | You can try to write rock songs about something other than the feeling of air against your skin |
| 84 | Houston | "I Will Not Give in to Despair" | IV | as you run, |
| 85 | Eclipse | "Roses on Your Grave" | Wired | as long as you don't mind hearing people sing them wrong |
| 86 | Akasha | "Mejor Que Ayer" | single | as they explain why they love them. |
| 87 | El Verbo Odiado | "Fargo" | single | Stories can be native to transient worlds, |
| 88 | Erdling | "Götterdämmerung" | Götterdämmerung +2 | and thus gloriously doomed when we still have to make tacos |
| 89 | Schattenmann | "Spring" | Spring +3 | or watch Carles Gil weighing through-passes |
| 90 | Ochmoneks | "In diesem wunderschönen Land" | Gegenwind | or wake up at 4am to once again fail to figure out what the cat is yowling about. |
| 91 | Letzte Instanz | "Du bist nicht verloren" | single | Stories can counterpose contradictory worlds, separated by legends or walls, |
| 92 | Leize | "Un Paso Más" | Leize | without having to account for how commutes will be affected if we all ever start commuting again, |
| 93 | Miss Lucid | "Nil By Mouth" | Nil By Mouth / Prescription Fated 2 | and before you say that there is no high fantasy about zoning negotiations, |
| 94 | End Street | "Dosis" | single | remember that we had lepers and albinos, |
| 95 | Android-18 | "Whenever we're together" | single | and weren't most of the interstices in The Princess Bride about heroic bureaucracy, |
| 96 | Sam Fender | "The Dying Light" | Seventeen Going Under | and didn't Gormenghast have actual chapters of everything Goldman pretended to be pretending to elide? |
| 97 | Tom Jolu | "Twilight Zone" | Fools, Friends, And the Great Beyond | Wouldn't Kafka's The Castle have been fantasy, too, |
| 98 | Ásgeir | "Öldurótið" | single | if K had journeyed in righteousness instead of petition, |
| 99 | Noah Gundersen | "Laurel and Hardy" | A Pillar of Salt | and bright armor? |
| 100 | Jordan Brooker | "Lowlights" | single | Born to run, willing to wait: |
| 101 | Medalla | "Justicia Poética" | Arista Rota | these are ways of saying "once upon a time" |
| 102 | Norse | "Zero Insight" | Ascetic | and "shut up and I'll tell you" |
| 103 | Metsatöll | "Mees Kes Teadis Ussisõnu" | single | and "measure a distant country's airport by whether its bookstore has one secret shelf of books that could have been written nowhere else". |
| 104 | Genka | "Kalevipoeg" | single | Clearly you can make hip-hop songs about whatever this is |
| 105 | Kelman Duran | "Freddie King" | Night in Tijuana | without being suspended in wave-form until I find out. |
| 106 | Nexcyia | "Passing Resemblance" | single | Is it easier to believe in the universal potential of songs |
| 107 | Aero Manyelo | "2 Days 1 Life" | single | than to believe in the equal worthiness of humans? |
| 108 | Aimo | "Ongota" | Ongota +2 | I think yes, |
| 109 | Prince Kaybee | "Sbindi Uyabulala" | single | but I think this is also just a way of saying that it's hard to polish a rock this big |
| 110 | Winnie Khumalo | "Loluthando - Extended Mix" | Iphakade Lami | while everybody is standing on it. |
| 111 | Zap Mama | "Ami" | single | But then we see a picture of ourselves from space, and we are radiant green and blue |
| 112 | Omar Sosa | "Gniri Balma" | single | against the glittering void, |
| 113 | Sam Fender | "Angel In Lothian" | Seventeen Going Under | and we dive back to earth knowing that we are our angels, |
| 114 | GOOD ON THE REEL | "月祭" | O₂ | arriving exactly on time. |
| 115 | Canadian Rifles | "Lessons On Shells" | Lessons On Shells +1 | You cannot wait for the end, whether there is an end or not. |
| 116 | Merzbow | "Deathmetal" | Flare Blues | Time does not move towards you, you have to pull it with the right combination of fury and leverage, |
| 117 | Emra Grid | "seneca" | threatening omens in the clouds | along fractal paths |
| 118 | Aleksi Perälä | "FI3AC2156010" | PHANTASIA VII | in bright armor. |
| 119 | Anna Meredith | "The Vapours" | single | It's never as simplistic as a fight. |
| 120 | Clarice Jensen | "The End" | single | We arrive at a ballistics conference with questions about metallurgy, |
| 121 | Mzansi Youth Choir | "It's Ok" | single | and we leave with a new water bottle and a new favorite Estonian restaurant and three new friends. |
| 122 | Roxette | "Small Talk - T&A Demo" | Small Talk (Joyride 30th Anniversary Edition) 2 | The biggest songs can be about the smallest joys, no matter how sadly often they are required to outlive them. |
| 123 | Sangre de Muerdago | "Cantiga De Folhas E Agulhas" | single | We are not separated by legends, and even in our legends the walls are only barriers if you crouch where you built them. |
| 124 | Aryem | "La Asamblea de las Aves" | The Bird's Assembly | Stand up, and look down, and they are the lines of a picture we drew of what we imagined we looked like when we thought there was a forever in the sky and that's what we built the wall to reach. |