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!