Today's Top Tune

KCRW shared a copious amount of new music with you in 2024. One of the bands that we fell in love with and might still be just a tinge under the radar is the Chicago-based indie rock trio Dehd. After a banner year, including their debut on Morning Becomes Eclectic and their HQ courtyard performance at Summer Nights, we’re spotlighting “Magician,” a track they will be sure to perform throughout the world as they tour in 2025. 

Brooklyn electronic artist bad tuner enjoys blurring the lines between genres and shifting gears unexpectedly. On this Christmas day, we share the joyful, infectious, retro sound of “make you love” to get you and Santa dancing. 

Tank & The Bangas are up for Best Spoken Word Poetry at the Grammys this year for their album The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, with each song a chapter chronicling the powerful journey of Black womanhood. 

“I want for poetry to get that much more respect and for even more young people to get into the expression of poetry,” Tank expresses. “I want it to be seen as even more cool again. Poetry has always been my first love because it loved me back, it loved me before music even.” We’ll let the words flow on “Ghetto Earth.” 

New Orleans Grammy-winning artists Hot 8 Brass Band are putting the finishing touches on their new album due in late February 2025, so while we wait, let’s take in their signature party-marching-band sound on the title track “Big Tuba.” 

Coming up from the rock clubs of Denver, CO, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats need no introduction as they’ve played a mind boggling amount of concert halls, festivals, and arenas throughout the USA since their debut back in 2015. South of Here is their fourth studio recording and contains the gem “Call Me (Whatever You Like).”

LA indie rockers Peel Dream Magazine — whose name pays tribute to the late BBC DJ John Peel — recently released their fourth full length album Rose Main Reading Room. It’s perfect for soul-stirring listening via headphones: lying on the floor in a dark room, on a train watching the landscape, or waiting for your holiday flight at an airport terminal. Astute at weaving transportive personal stories, Peel Dream Magazine shares “I Wasn’t Made For War.” 

It’s been a meteoric year for North Carolina-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist MJ Lenderman — a man who unsurprisingly found himself on many year-end  “Best Of” lists. His keen balance of wit and sadness is clear on “She’s Leaving You.” 

Ibiza- based duo The Ting Tings skyrocketed to international fame in 2008 with a couple of  insta-classic bangers —“That’s Not My Name” and “Shut Up and Let Me Go” — off of their debut album We Started Nothing.. And subsequent albums have only refined their sound. A new album Home, their first in six years,, is due on Feb. 28, 2025. Inspired by classics from Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan and Christopher Cross — here is “Danced On The Wire.” 

Thai-born, Canada-based drummer, producer, and composer Salin gifts us with an edgy mix that conjoins the sound of her native homeland with 70’s psychedelia from West Africa. The track is called “Puaj,” which is Thai for the indigenous bamboo jew’s harp that provides such a heady mix. “Each note tells a story, echoing the lives and experiences of those who play it,” says Salin. “It’s a reminder that music is a universal language, transcending borders and uniting us all in a shared experience of joy and creativity.”

Cincinnati’s Curt Kiser goes by the alias Carriers and recalls early Bob Dylan and Kurt Vile. In the case of “Sometimes,” Kiser took a bumpy week and turned it into a song. The idea came to him quickly after a scary car accident was followed by his musical gear being stolen while on tour. The song brings to focus the burdens of daily reality we all must endure.