There is music in my life, but it plays less and less of a role as I easily tire of what I’ve listened to before. From what I’ve heard from the streaming services, they serve a demographic and not cultural curiosity. On occasion, I find something that resonates with me, but liking it on YouTube or buying it on iTunes doesn’t lead me into corners that would deliver serendipitous feel-good sounds of a surprising nature. Take Luna from Ukraine and her song “Lilac Paradise,” which you can find by searching for Луна – Сиреневый Рай on YouTube, but how am I living in Arizona supposed to know that? Another Ukrainian artist to look for is Avoure – click here to listen to Aura.

There are an estimated 100 million songs that are floating around our earth, and the algorithms want to feed me Ariana Grande and Bruce Springsteen while I come across Polnalubvi singing about comets in her song “Кометы.” Where does one search for “songs like this” on the internet? Why isn’t this Russian treasure in heavy rotation on American airwaves? What about some other Russian music, such as Rasster and their catchy track “Sad.” Click here to listen to that track.

New to me this year was The Blaze, hailing from France. What a beautiful song about love.

Adi Lukovac died back in 2006, only 36 years old, due to a fatal car accident, but to many Bosniaks, the man is a hero who lives on in his music. I learned of Adi during a conversation on Colin Benders’ Discord channel, where I ran into a guy from Bosnia who I started talking to about our encounter with the music of Haris Džinović and specifically a song that had become an earworm titled, “Muštuluk” and Nera Stipičević and her song “Centar Svita,” both linked below. I was asked if I’d heard of Adi, which I hadn’t, but now I own the album titled Remake, which is a part of my listening repertoire.

Okay, so this wasn’t from this year; it’s from the months after we returned from Europe, and in cruising through some random videos, I came across Kollective Turmstrasse and their song, “Sorry I Am Late.” I recognized the filming location as the spot near Kotbusser Tor in Berlin, where I was shopping at Schneidersladen Eurorack synth shop. The song is a jam and on my rotation list. While not new, it’s likely new to you, and the video has a great John Water’s vibe regarding the characters.

Then there’s Sevdaliza who is a Dutch/ Iranian artist who just came to my attention thanks to a friend who’s been listening to her also. There’s a new track out called “Rhode,” but I’ll stick with the above link.

This is the Haris Džinović song I mentioned above.

And this is a seriously poor copy of Nera’s “Centar Svita” which I’d like to point out we first heard at a streetside basketball game in Split, Croatia. This is now our Croatian summer ice cream song 🙂