Howth - Wind Blows Cold

Favorite lyrics: "I have no fear that you'll disappear cause you were never here."

Wind Blows Cold is such a vulnerable song, it feels almost invasive, but it's something you can't shake once you hit play. The music occasionally stutters like it's having fits of something uncontrollable, like the heart murmur of someone about to face their fear. It just has so much passion in it, especially for being a song about someone that doesn't exist. As well as it's put together, there's still something incredibly raw about this song, like it's being sung in the exact moment the lyrics are being thought.

Glitter Pox rating: 91% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Leisure - Early Morning Skies

Early Morning Skies opens with a beat that sounds like something you'd listen to while staring at an optical illusion, funky and hypnotizing. It's like the inside of a lava lamp, slow bubbles of intense music slithering through one solid beat, with moments of monotony that make you crave the insanely hooking guitar sections. And the first introduction to the vocals is entirely inviting, begging you to fall into the smoky and syrupy music.

Glitter Pox rating: 83% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Magnetic North - Rackwick

Favorite lyrics*: What do you dream at night, when the lights' off? What do you feel in your heart at the highest? What do you see through your big green eyes? I wonder if you dream at all.

 In Rackwick, The Magnetic North has a kind of XX's feel, but with a more ethnic sound and with a bigger range of instruments, like classical but with the addition of electric synth. The fast-paced music works really well with the slow-paced lyrics, and the vocals have just as much going on as the music does. There's a Vampire Weekend voice-shimmy going on in the beginning, but it mellows out into organized whispers and soft singing. It's a song you discover more of each time you listen to it.

 *lyrics by ear, so here's hoping our ears are correct.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Balthazar - Fifteen Floors

Favorite lyrics: My sugar to feel her teeth

With a soft piano intro and a jazz beat, Balthazar has a Cake-like groove and easy flowing lyrics that parallel with the slow-tempo trumpet in the background. It has some lazy afternoon sinful vocals, ones you can practically hear sung with heavy-lidded eyes in a script-written, poetry-reading kind of way. It's a story that tells everything that happens through one pair of curtains, like a lyrical Rear Window.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Plants and Animals - Lightshow

Favorite lyrics: And I'm like an earthquake when I get thinking too much

Solid and shaky and with a beat like popcorn, Lightshow has a soft indie vibe with spontaneous rock solos that fade in and out of the song. The slow way it's mixed together has an Oasis feel; it's not always easy to find a song that does both mellow singer/songwriter and passionate rock really well, but this song definitely manages the seam between both.

Glitter Pox rating: 60% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Chapel Club - Blind

Favorite lyrics: This snake has left us with last year's skin.

Songs that feel like they're from the 80s mixed with more modern sounding melodies are easily catchable. It's kind of like The Cure (vocal wise) and Young the Giant (with that slow, drawn out but still upbeat music) made sound-babies. It actually has the kind of vibe that would be perfect for a The Perks of Being a Wallflower soundtrack, that feeling of being infinite while simultaneously being stuck on Earth with shaky relationships. And lyrics-wise, it has a lot of good moments; Blind starts with "Where to begin?" like you asked for a story and the singer is only responding to your question. It's one of those songs that takes up an entire room, like you can almost feel the sound waves leaking through the walls.

Glitter Pox rating: 80% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Real Fur - The Fool

Favorite lyrics: Will I catch the fool who catches you? Will I hunt him down and run him through, or will I be the fool to fake a smile as I watch him take you down the aisle?

The bass line for The Fool carries the song and sets the whole mood - and with sporadic, funky guitar riffs and random silence, it's pretty diverse. Even though it feels like something that could blasted on the beach, the lyrics have a melancholy feel. The music video also has its own kind of desperation and beauty. The mix of the song, about a man with a frantic need to to keep someone around, versus the video, with a girl violently determined to get away from something that's holding her back, is a kind of musical and visual contradiction that works really well.

Glitter Pox rating: 70% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Foreign Slippers - It All Starts Now

Favorite lyrics: the wind got tired of blowing us back into town.

It All Starts Now has an Airborne Toxic Event-esque chorus with a vocalist hailing from Sweden that really knows how to blend words and music. The album this track is on is titled 'Farewell to the Old Ghosts,' which is perfectly fitting for this song; it has the kind of airy optimism that makes you realize you have hours ahead of you that aren't spoken for yet. It's just always generally refreshing to hear a song that's both musically and lyrically fantastic in a purely talent-driven way, without any flashy additions.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox