Pop, Lock & Bops: Best of September 2018

Welcome to Pop, Lock & Bops, a monthly playlist series documenting our favorite windswept country tunes, heartfelt tearjerkers and down-right intoxicating dirty-pop club bangers.

Close your eyes, and hold on tight, folks!

Sister Sparrow shatters the ceiling with a towering vocal. Equipped with the title cut to her new record, out this Friday (October 12), the singer commands all of our attention. So, it just makes damn good sense to kick off our latest month roundup with a classically-throwback number, adorned with soul-freeing piano and a swarm of brassy horns, vehicles for her voice to reach even higher and more invigorating levels of awesome.

Ruston Kelly‘s Dying Star is easily one of the year’s best records, and “Paratrooper’s Battlecry” is quite the stunner. It’s a tragic and brutal tale of substance abuse and coming to terms with one relationship’s slow descent into the black, looming abyss of nothingness. Then, Katie Barbato flies like a bird with a haunting portrayal of “The Art of Falling,” the titular moment from her recently-issued new EP. It’s a stark, faded and torn photograph of humanity, vanishing through the slits of a disastrously dusty shade of blinds. Her vocal is as thick-skinned as it is quaking with vulnerability.

The latest monthly roundup is quite the early autumn treat, anchored with other story songs and ghoulish excursions down into a skeevy corner bar for a midnight binge. The new playlist includes songs by Glades, Rae Spoon, Tom Freund, Whitney Road, Moonbeau, Posh Hammer, Drunken Logic, Jamie Lin Wilson, XYLØ, nicopop., First Aid Kit, Ace Harper, Kari Arnett and many more.

When all is said and done, we’ve got 57 songs to discover over and over again.

Take a spin:

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