LITM Rock Picks Tunes Featuring A WOLF LIKE ME, Launch Control, YEARN and more!

LITM Rock Picks Tunes featuring A WOLF LIKE ME, Launch Control, YEARN, Michellar and Scott Yoder!

1. A Wolf Like Me – 4:49

With "4:49," A Wolf Like Me sacrifices high shine in favor of emotional texture, providing something all too rare in modern music: honesty and no spectacle. The song unspools with slow-burning elegance, wearing its wounds in dignified silence. There is no hurry here, no hook in pursuit, only lived-in narrative from someone who has obviously trod a couple of hard roads and made a mental note or two along the way.

There's terrific bittersweet beauty in the production, a nostalgic flashback to Melbourne's indie days, with gentle guitar melodies and warm, analogue sound that leaves you feeling as though you're rifling through a box of old photos. What is compelling, naturally, is the sense of isolation infused in the song: It doesn't grab your attention but rather earns it by simply being honest.

4:49 is a music set journal entry, a contemplative break from the cacophony of life. If you want a song that sits with you, not shouts over you, this one's a quiet success.

2. Launch Control – Plastic Fruit

If anxiety were soundtracked, "Plastic Fruit" could be it, and we're saying that as the ultimate compliment. With this latest release, Launch Control slows the punk speed and serves up dread at a slow, bubbling boil instead. This isn't music that gets punched in the mouth; it's music that whispers in your ear and compels you to wonder everything you ever believed was true.

From hesitant acoustic strums and siney vocals, "Plastic Fruit" slowly builds into a nightmare crescendo, complete with texture-filled static and a spoken word bit that falls like a gut-punch diagnosis. It's creepy. It's intimate. It's softly apocalyptic.

Where their previous work was raucous and loud, this song dials back the volume to turn up the discomfort. By the time the whole band comes thundering in, it's not a revolution, it's resignation. There's no conclusion here, just acknowledgement. A song that sounds less like a record and more like a slow, coherent dream dissolving. Briliantly unnerving.

3. YEARN – "Midnite Mine"

YEARN's "Midnite Mine" isn't a song, it's a message from the void within. Lily Minke Tahar's audio alter-ego weaves lo-fi soundscapes with the secrecy of a whisper and the creeping horror of a half-forgotten dream. Ditch structure and sheen; this is gut instinct over professionalism, sorcery over technique.

Constructing from the shoals of fever dreams and the spectres of late nights, "Midnite Mine" is all cracked mirrors and strobing lights. Glitched percussion clangs like possessed machinery, with jazz-inspired melodies drifting in and out like incomplete recollections. Her voice? Smoke wafting through an empty chapel—half tender, half terrifying.

There’s something deeply raw in the way Tahar approaches her art. You’re not just hearing a song, you’re witnessing a becoming. “Midnite Mine” lives in that strange, sticky place between breakdown and breakthrough. It’s music that doesn’t just bend genre, it warps reality. For the brave listeners craving something real, strange, and soul-deep, YEARN delivers.

4. Michellar – “Ave Maria”

Michellar's "Ave Maria" is a name that sounds familiar, but this isn't a grandma church song. This one is a rich, layered reinterpretation, half devotion, half drama, synching hallowed tradition with smooth, contemporary Latin pop.

From the initial harmonies, there's a feeling that something sacred is happening. Not in the religious way, necessarily, but emotionally, this track has purpose. The rhythms beat like a heart, consistent but alive, propelling you through a sound prayer that's both personal and communal at the same time. And when guest vocalist Lloyd Miller joins the fray, the atmosphere thickens with velvety tones and spiritual urgency.

“Ave Maria” balances reverence with reinvention. The production is pristine, the lyrics grounded in identity and pride, and the groove? Pure fire. This is sacred pop done right, faith-forward, fiercely feminine, and boldly unforgettable.

5. Scott Yoder – “Feather Light”

"Feather Light" drifts like a dandelion seed on the breeze, tenuous, ephemeral, and sublime. With this song, Scott Yoder introduces listeners to a realm of yearning that's as lyrical as it is intimate. Spawned by Kahlil Gibran's Broken Wings, the music embodies an anguished fragility that is ageless.

Self-recorded and intimate, the track embraces imperfection. Yoder’s vocals waver like candlelight, and the production is soft-focus, like something you’d overhear playing in the background of a memory. His theatrical flair is present, but it’s reined in, this is flamboyance draped in tenderness.

"Feather Light" conveys a particular pain: the type of love that touches your life for a second and then is gone, leaving behind nothing but questions. And still, despite the sadness, the song shimmers with warmth and enchantment. It's nostalgic without being despairing, romantic without being foolish. In a world that sometimes insists upon roaring declarations, "Feather Light" reminds us of the subtle strength found in soft goodbyes.

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Ratbag Joy: The Dancefloor Confessional You Didn't Know You Needed

Picture a dance floor at 2 AM. Neon lights falter. Glitter abounds. Someone has just spilled their drink and doesn't even care. And amidst all the happy chaos, The New Citizen Kane's "Ratbag Joy" is thumping out of the speakers, and it just works.

This isn't your average weekend club hit. Oh no, "Ratbag Joy" is what occurs when introspection makes a surprise guest to the party, and becomes the life of the party. It's that sort of dance song that not only gets your body going, but it also talks to your soul through the bassline.

Let's Discuss This "Ratbag"

First, the title. "Ratbag Joy"? Sounds like the moniker of a strange, underground poet who will now and then DJ in Berlin, or that houseplant you kind of, sort of became emotionally invested in. But that's all part of its charm. The song has its weirdnesses like a well-worn leather jacket — torn, worn out, and utterly unrepentant.

And just like its name, this song doesn’t follow the usual EDM playbook. It grooves with intent. There’s a heartbeat to it, not the pounding, generic fist-bumper you’ve heard on every third Spotify playlist, but something more organic. More human.

Vibes First, Drops Later

From the very beginning, "Ratbag Joy" sneaks up with an attitude. It doesn't blow up. It exhales. The groove builds up around you before the beat gets going, like the party is heating up, and you get there before anyone else notices the change in mood.

The New Citizen Kane, as ever, lets his musical sensibility guide. His voice glides over the synths like they're sharing late-night secrets, delicate, fragile, but never fragile. There's self-assurance in his restraint, as if he knows how the night ends, and he's merely offering you a front-row ticket.

If you've listened to "San Diego" or "Killer Charisma", you know he's not going to rush. His music isn't about racing to the drop; it's about constructing an emotional architecture, one beat, one harmony, one lyric at a time.

Heartache in a Glitterball

There’s a delightful contradiction in “Ratbag Joy.” You’re dancing, probably smiling, but there’s this undercurrent of bittersweet vulnerability. Like you’re celebrating despite everything. It’s the sound of those late-night kitchen talks with your best friend after the party, feet sore, mascara smudged, laughter and tears indistinguishable.

Lyrically, The New Citizen Kane is subversive. He doesn't bellow his feelings; he allows them to seep. In the delivery, in the synths that swell and recede. There's an authenticity to it, not cringey sadboi nonsense, but genuine.

Because happiness isn't always neat. It's usually messy, complicated, and, yes, a bit ratbaggy.

A Genre-Bending Love Letter

This album also sounds like a love letter to a specific period of EDM. The one we danced to in college dorms and house parties. The kind that balances feeling and fun. Early Moby, late Daft Punk, a dash of Flume, and the emotional aftertaste of a great Robyn song.

But it's still contemporary. It's got the sharpness in production, the restraint in layering, and the determination not to sound like everyone else on the release table this week.

The New Citizen Kane: A Sonic Cartographer

What is so great about The New Citizen Kane is the way he charts his music, not like a pop act charting a course for chart control, but like a man mapping his internal landscape and bringing it into grooves we can move our bodies to.

His art is emotional, yes, but never excessive. You know he's lived these songs prior to playing them for us. And there's something magical about an artist who makes you feel understood discussing his life.

Final Thoughts: Press Play. Repeat. Reflect. Dance.

"Ratbag Joy" is more than a dance song. It's a tiny life package. It's discovering beauty in the imperfect, movement where there is stillness, and joy where there is mess in life.

It's the song that you listen to when: You're in your bedroom by yourself with the headphones on, imagining you're in a music video. You require a reason to smile amid chaos. You’re dancing with friends and forgetting, just for a second, how heavy the world can be. So go ahead. Add it to your playlist. Share it with your people. Let yourself feel all the things. Because sometimes, joy is a little strange. Sometimes it’s a little bruised.

And sometimes- just sometimes- it sounds like “Ratbag Joy.” Give it a listen! We know you’ll love it!

LITM Rock Picks Featuring Ettie, Boxfires, Tom Minor and More!

LITM Rock Picks brought to you by Ettie, Boxfires, Tom Minor, BOLIDDE and CS Hellmann.

1. Ettie – You’ll Never See Me Cry

If ever there was an anthem for the emotionally exhausted but spiritually undefeated, Ettie’s “You’ll Never See Me Cry” is it. This track doesn’t just tug on your heartstrings, it yanks them, tunes them, and strums out an indie-pop-punk power ballad of quiet vengeance. It’s the sound of someone who’s cried in private one too many times, risen from the emotional ashes, and now wears her pain like glittery war paint.

Ettie sings softly but with a fierce, aggressive tone, as if to say to you she's finished with you and calmly daring you to do something. It swells gradually, piano and acoustic guitar calming you into a serene mood before violently erupting into a full-blown, blazing climax, a cathartic sigh contained within crashing percussion and harmonies piled like sheep bells. Her Gemini duplicity is working at full capacity: hurting and healing simultaneously, both and neither.

For fans of Taylor Swift's poetic slaps and Avril Lavigne's swaggering sentimentalism, this is eyeliner-and-steel-boot heartbreak.

2. Boxfires – Every Year

Boxfires' "Every Year" is a snuggly, fuzzed-out indie-rock meditation on death, memory, and hooks that get caught in your head like a contented, pesky spectre. The band walks the fine line between dolorous and pop sheen with care, delivering a sound that's both introspective and poised to score your car ride on a dismal afternoon.

The guitars hum and buzz with an old-timey happiness, and the rhythm section keeps it all anchored, propelling the song forward with a pulse that is human, imperfect, hopeful, and full of life. "Every Year" lyrically is like digging through old album photos: a little blurry around the edges, but emotionally searing.

What really sets the track apart is its musical pull. You don't hear once, you repeat. It's musical déjà vu, but the good rhythms. This is the kind of song that catches you in the middle of walking and texting someone you haven't talked to in years. Big concepts, bigger heart.

3. Tom Minor – The Loneliest Person on Earth

Tom Minor's "The Loneliest Person on Earth" is more of a monologue than a song, recited at last call when the lights are down low, the bar is half-full and everybody's feigning not to hear. It's raw. It's powerful. It's the aural equivalent of staring up at a ceiling fan and wondering why love goes silent.

The instrumentation is lean but forceful. A mournful piano figure is the heartbeat of the song, and Minor's vocals waft by like cigarette smoke, fragile, evaporating, and indomitable. The words are sung in such naked honesty, you'll find yourself thinking that you've opened up a stranger's diary you shouldn't have read… but can't put down.

And just when you think it's all whisps and sorrow, the B-side "The Manic Phase" explodes in like a technicolor fever dream. Punchy and psych-tinged and completely out of hand in the very best way, it's the perfect foil. Together, they're two sides of the same coin, one going inward in explosions, the other going outward in bursts.

4. Bolidde – Rainbow Galaxy

Buckle up, because Bolidde's "Rainbow Galaxy" is not a ride; she blasts you full-boat through a sonic wormhole full of glimmering synths, snarling guitars, and emotions bundled in glitter and grime. This is not music, it is a starship fueled by passion and punk-shine, with a dash of indie melodrama and an alt-pop heartbeat.

From track one, you’re pulled into a universe that’s both futuristic and deeply personal. One moment you’re vibing with an anthemic chorus made for stadiums, the next you’re floating through synthy introspection that feels like you’re reading someone’s inner monologue in zero gravity. It’s bold. It’s cinematic. It’s genre-fluid and emotionally loaded.

Lyrically, Bolidde does not just touch on the surface, he digs deep into questions of identity, growth, and how to amount to something in a broken world. Picture M83 mixed with The Killers but with a pinch of Tame Impala's stardust and with loads of big feelings.

A rainbow never went so big.

5. CS Hellmann – Burned Romances

CS Hellmann's "The Burned Romances" is the aural equivalent of a cyberpunk noir film in a dreamscape. Half of post-punk gloss and half of synth-drenched despondency, where this single walks the fine line between classic and visionary, interlacing shadow and light to form an uncomfortably familiar-sounding fabric of sound.

The guitars jangle like broken glass in a velvet box, the bass snarling beneath waves of synth that come and go like smoke on bright city streets. It's a sound made out of oppositions, tactile but fierce, old-sounding but progressive, structured yet dreamlike.

Hellmann's singing does not beg for attention; instead, it welcomes you in, cold and calculated, with lyrics that taste like secrets and scars. If you like The War on Drugs, early Interpol, or a darker vision of dream pop, this is the record to add to your next solo drive home.

It's not a song, it's a mood, a movement, an introspection for the breathtakingly battered parts of ourselves.

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LITM Singer-Songwriter Picks To Set The Tone of The Week Featuring Oaken Lee, Sean Griffin, Just Rick and More!

LITM Singer-Songwriter picks tunes to set the tone of the week brought to you by Oaken Lee, Sean Griffin, Just Rick, Mahto & The Loose Balloons and Ink To Spill.

1. Oaken Lee – The Longest Way (to Say Goodbye)

Oaken Lee's The Longest Way (to Say Goodbye) is like the kind of song you come across during a late-night drive, the stars twinkling above you, the drizzle on the windshield, and thoughts you didn't intend to face resonating in your head. It's a subdued but emotionally deep song that carelessly threads acoustic guitar and ambient modern production into something that sounds like a recollection in movement. Lee won't overwhelm you with theatrics; he invites you into a realm of quietude, heat, and slow-burning contemplation. The song is as much about the gravity of leaving behind as it is about the hope that remains in release. Whether it's a physical goodbye or a symbolic leave-taking from an aspect of yourself, this song greets you exactly where you are. It's personal, ageless, and the kind of song you'll want to hear as the credits roll on your own indie moment.

2. Sean Griffin – People Are Mad

Sean Griffin's People Are Mad is akin to being treated to a carnival of contemporary life in three and a half manically addictive minutes. It's punk-folk pandemonium at its best, all harmonicas, banjos, train whistles, and a generous serving of dark Irish wit. The song begins rooted in an acoustic strum and soon unfolds into a wondrous circus of sound, demonstrating that yes, humans are crazy, and it's hilarious and heartbreaking. Griffin's lyrics are keen yet completely relatable; you'll find yourself chuckling, agreeing, and perhaps even whispering the title phrase to yourself while doomscrolling next time. There's something freeing about the way the song embraces the absurdities of life. Crafted with passion and panache by Grammy-winning artists, the end result is a rich, unpredictable soundscape that never forgets its humanity. Imagine Zippity Doo Dah and Sgt. Pepper with a pint on the table and a nod to the insanity surrounding us.

3. Just Rick – Quaint Celestial Reflections

Just Rick's Quaint Celestial Reflections is the kind of song you don't just hear, you drift through it. It's cosmic daydreaming for overthinkers and quiet rebels both. Against a psychedelic landscape of undulating synths and laid-back grooves, the song considers ambition and disillusionment and the peculiar calm of letting go. Rick delivers the existential with charisma, dropping lines that fall like stardust on the soul, glittering, soft, and somehow reassuring. It's like talking to your future self who's already experienced the quarter-life crisis and emerged wiser (and a bit weirder). With trippy instrumentals and lyrics that sound like stoner philosophy colliding with poetic understanding, Quaint Celestial Reflections doesn't preach—it reflects, muses, shrugs, and gives you a cosmic bong. The lo-fi spacey quality of the song makes it ideal for journaling, zoning out, or drifting through memories that never really stuck. It’s an escape hatch in audio form, celestial, quaint, and sneakily profound.

4. Mahto & The Loose Balloons – Parking Lots

With Parking Lots, Mahto & The Loose Balloons deliver a song that feels like a sepia-toned photograph of your youth, faded, familiar, and still full of meaning. This track is a masterclass in nostalgic storytelling. Mahto’s voice carries a quiet ache, the kind that knows better than to shout. It's contemplative but not maudlin, romantic but not silly. The composition is simple—tattered strumming, ethereal keys, that lets the lyrics carry the weight. And they do, with phrases that pull you into that transitional place between "what was" and "what might have been." It's the soundtrack for every unfinished love story, every drawn-out goodbye, every parking lot where you sat thinking what the fuck comes next. Parking Lots doesn't attempt to fix anything. It simply asks you to sit down and recall. And sometimes that's all you truly need. a song that allows you to inhale the past, if only a little.

5. Ink to Spill – South Side

Ink to Spill's South Side is more than a song, it's a film-like nod to the grit, heart, and soul of a girl who discovers magic in crayons and strength in art. The band weaves an emotional force that's half-heart-tug and half-head-bob. You can almost envision the Chicago streets as Farrah Adams—vulnerable and blazing, takes the spotlight in this sonic short film. Gus Reeves' voice is full of lived-in honesty, and the band, augmented by new and old blood alike, plays lush, driving support that propels the tale along. From the understated but beautiful guitar of John Tate to Ernie Adams' perpetually accurate percussion, every facet gives weight to the tale. But it's the lyrics of Bob Sauer that really stand out, sketching pictures of survival, of beauty, and belief amidst chaos. South Side is not a song, it's a movement—a reminder that art can be rebellion, and crayons can paint the future.

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