chaosincurate's 2025 Favourites (9/12) - Song Find of the Year

This category is dedicated to the songs that I didn't get around to when they came out but discovered in the past year, whether that's because it came out before I was into music like I am now, or whether it's just one that escaped me the first time round.

Honourable mention: Mk.gee - Alesis

Two Star & The Dream Police was a strange album to get into. I was warned beforehand, but it didn't make the experience of "learning" the album any less strange. It's almost as if it was created by an alien who was told in great detail what music was, but hadn't heard it themselves. That should be a criticism, but it really isn't, it is an excellent album once you're able to parse the odd production.

Alesis, however, instantly clicked with me. The second half in general is when it all started to click for me, but this stood as the best and most immediate of the bunch to the point where the song dominated the first quarter of the year for me.

Magdalena Bay - You Lose!

This one is a bit of a cheeky choice, but it is absolutely the honest one. After listening to, and obsessing over, Imaginal Disk at the end of last year, I started listening to Magdalena Bay's earlier stuff shortly after the new year, including Mercurial World and this fantastic song.

On first listen, it didn't really click for me. The song was just a bit too noisy for me and I felt like it's excess was just a little too excessive for me, but over the course of the year, that crunchy distortion on the chorus became a refreshing wave instead of a tsunami, I began to see the charm in the very overt arcade game sound of the song, and the depth of the lyrics started to set in while that opening melody began to burrow itself somewhere deep inside my brain to the point where a mere mention of the words "you lose" or the album Mercurial World seems to evoke the retro 16-bit synths.

I honestly don't know how I failed to see in retrospect how incredible the over-the-top production is, or how relentlessly catchy every line and melody is, how punchy every sound feels... It's just so immaculately executed, fun on the surface with depth to dig into. Truly an exceptional song and one of my favourites of all time.