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 – You Caught Me at a Bad Time

"You Caught Me at a Bad Time" is the musical equivalent of quarrelling about something idiotic — such as a shattered razor — and only halfway through realizing that the issue isn't the razor, but something else entirely. Nashville's CS Hellmann takes this minor domestic catastrophe and makes it into a gloriously reflective post-punk apology. The song starts with those obstinate, close drums that have the ring of a midnight kitchen pacing, and guitars that glimmer like the mist of residual frustration. Hellmann's vocals creep in half-muffled, as if he's singing over the hiss of emotion- half-apology, half-obstinacy.

The song progresses, and it ceases to be about the fight and becomes more about human pride's anatomy. The bridge comes crashing down like that sigh when you finally release, guitars unfolding, drums unspooling- all bursting open and mending a bit. It's The Strokes if Julian Casablancas kept a journal after couples therapy. Raw, unkempt, and softly profound, "You Caught Me at a Bad Time" places poetry in the moments we'd rather erase- and makes them something gorgeous and human.

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