Asklemmy

Way too many to list but I'll throw one out. Do you like Radiohead, REM, The National, Pixies, Frank Turner, or Dinosaur Jr.? Well, they (or their lead singer) all love Mark Mulcahy's music enough to have recorded a cover song for the tribute album when Mark's wife passed.

Mark led the band Miracle Legion, released some solo work, and led the band Polaris (not the metal band from Australia), best known as the band from the show The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Also noteworthy: Miracle Legion toured and released an EP with The Sugarcubes, aka Bjork's band.

Song recommendations: The Backyard, All For The Best by Miracle Legion - Hey Sandy, Saturnine by Polaris - Taking Baby Steps, The Fiddler, Hey Self Defeater by Mark Mulcahy.

Album recommendations: Drenched by Miracle Legion, Music from The Adventures of Pete & Pete by Polaris, and Fathering by Mark Mulcahy.

In general, Parliament/Funkadelic has a ton of artists within its scope worth exploring. George Clinton is probably the most famous among them, but there's also Eddie Hazel, Bootsy Collins, Gary Shider and his son Garrett Shider, Fred Wesley, and a lot more.

I also recently discovered a Japanese artist called Masaki Ueda who seems criminally unknown.

Jukebox the ghost. Criminally underrated, they'd have been as big as queen or muse if they had the right publicity and timing.

The Tallest Man on Earth. Probably the best modern folk artist, but not as well known as he should be.

Aimee Mann. One of the best songwriters of the 90s and 2000s. Popular, but not as much as she should be.

Placebo.

Talk Talk. Spirit of Eden is one of the greatest albums ever made, but not many people know about it.

Nick Drake.

Years ahead of his time and while he gets a lot of recognition posthumously in certain music circles, he didn't have any hits during his life, or even any hits after, so the average Joe hasn't heard of him.

All three of his albums are fantastic, though Five Leaves Left is my favorite.

Knower - pretty fucking sweet music with a good sense of humor.

• Thank You Scientist

• Tesseract

• Panzerballett

• Ado

The metalcore band Harm. IMO better than Spiritbox but only has like 3000 montly listeners on Spotify.

Easily Fish in a Birdcage, my number one vibeing artist.

My kids say I don't have a good handle on which bands are popular, just listen to what I like and then get surprised when one band comes to play the stadium and another a little bar. So they taught me to look at the count of YouTube subscribers and these guys are way more good than popular

Joshua Ray Walker

Ramsay Midwood

And famous but not nearly as popular as they are good?

Janelle Monae

Parker Millsap

Inhaler

Gone but never got the success they really ought to have gotten. We saw these guys any chance we got they were so freaking amazing.

J Roddy Walston and the Business

Ozric Tentacles

Electric Storm by White Noise. Included the lady who recorded the Dr Who theme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Electric_Storm

Listening to Dadi Freyr right now!

Destiny Potato. They released one spectacular album.

Orebolo - 3 guys playing acoustic perfection.

Goose - same 3 guys from Orebolo, but with the rest of the band, non-acoustic, and some good jams.

Nineteen Forty-Five

Their debut album, Together We'll Burn Like Autumn Leaves is solid gold all the way through; the second studio album I Saw a Bright Light is almost as solid. I like them so much I tracked down all the members' previous bands and solo projects and B-sides.

Evade the Eye. Excellent guitar work, good songwriting. Genre: instrumental prog metal

Amigo the Devil - Cocaine and Abel, Perfect Wife, Murder at the Bingo Hall, Hell and You, Hungover in Jonestown... If one of these songs doesn't grab you, I don't think we can be friends

Froglord - The Mystic Toad, Wednesday, Army of Frogs

Snakemother - they only have one ~40 minute album, listen to it from start to finish. The first 5 minutes or so are pretty different than the rest so give it a chance.

Edit: came back to add Hippie Death Cult, my fave songs are Hornet Party, Nice to Know You, and Arise which is from the new album Helichrysum - worth giving the whole thing a listen as I think it's their best work to date

Do they have to be recent or alive? If not:

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - if there is any one person that can be attributed with inventing Rock'n'Roll, it is her, and she gets far too little credit for it. Watch this docu about her to find out more, or even better yet, listen to her songs.

Panpticon, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Chat Pile, Ashenspire, Swans, Obongjayar, Black Midi, and emancipator

TOBACCO has this super-sludgy techno sound that next to no one's doing; I love his work for just kicking back and lighting off a blunt. Been pretty heavy on American Murder Story as well, since it looks like we're not getting the finale to the Devil's Carnival yet.

Neko Case! The voice of God with red hair, I call her. Also her other supergroup band The New Pornographers is amazing. A one of a kind voice.

Also Drive-By Truckers should be considered a worldwide treasure.

Kamaiyah

There's a really underrated band from Vancouver called Slightest Clue that just put out an album. Alternative/punk and very fun

The Revivalists are an incredible bluesy rock band, but everything of theirs on the radio is their blandest stuff. They really excel with live performances and amazing instrumentals.

"It Was a Sin" builds slow but gets really high energy by the end

"Soul Fight" has a top notch saxophone solo

Here's a full concert at Red Rocks

• All of Nerdcore really
• sleep token

katie dey https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7eYvkSWhpemCVpPm0Mg9tQ

Emma Ruth Rundle

TR/ST

Ionnalee

Keosz

Rival Consoles

I Will Keep Your Ghost

Moon Cathedral

Russian Circles

Caroline Polachek.

Weird Al Yankovich

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Antonin Dvorak

Cold blue

Shilpa ray.

Here’s her audiotree live session, but if no one is going to invest 30 minutes into a new artist, at least check out this part, two of her best songs done in a sort of medley format.

I’ve seen her play a few times, once she was playing for free on a sidewalk, which seemed criminal to me, honestly. She’s way too good to be setting up her own shit and waiting while some bar owner’s nephew futzes with a shitty PA system. Second time she had her full band and it was hands down the best show I saw last year. And I saw a lot of great shows, KNOWER being one of them, mononeon, Sleafors Mods, Dry Cleaning…