Kevin Bronson on November 14th, 2025

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We’re heading like a fast-moving storm front toward the end of the year. New music keeps arriving, though, so here’s Greatest Hits … This Week (Vol. 364), featuring Active Child, Blondshell, Nico Vega, Jay Buchanan, Ny Oh, June-oh, Magdalena Bay, Giant Waste of Man, Jason Heath, Jessy Fury, AKA BK, Kim Theory, Matt Ellis and more. Dig in, and stay for the closer, a cover from Thundercat.

Past and future playlists may be found here, complete with hastily penned liner notes.

Note: Anita Mills contributed to this roundup.

■ Active Child, “Coming Up” — Pat Grossi has been living life, and his creative vehicle Active Child has taken a back seat. That’s the short of it: five years since the third Active Child album, being a family guy in Pasadena. Featuring his typically sublime vocals and co-production from Alex Goose, “Coming Up” ends that hiatus. “‘Coming Up’ is about sorting out who I am — my identity as an adult, a father and a husband — and trying to reconcile that with what can sometimes feel like a self-absorbed journey as an artist. In many ways, it encapsulates where I am now in my life and sets the tone for what’s coming next for me musically: a search for balance between my creative path and my role as a parent and partner.”

■ Giant Waste of Man, “All My Friends Are Batshit Crazy” — Indie long-timers Giant Waste of Man (watch this by way of introduction, it’s worth it) have released their third album, “Fighting With Time.” The band (Cameron Dmytryk, Benji Heywood, Heather Heywood and Brandon Hardy with Scott Mercado and Robert Cheek) remains as intensely visceral as they were on 2022’s “Biographer,” just in different ways. “All My Friends Are Batshit Crazy” (a remade early track), “I Don’t Wanna Die in LA” and “Gaeta” are good points of entry.

■ Nico Vega, “Nothing Can Stop Me Now” — Resurgent L.A. rockers Nico Vega have released their second EP in as many years. It’s titled “Battery” (title track here), and over seven songs it’s a mix of blues, rock and pop guided by Aja Volkman’s high-octane vocals.

■ Jay Buchanan, “Caroline” — Most know SoCal native Jay Buchanan as frontman of the hard-rock band Rival Sons, but he wielded his formidable powers as a singer-songwriter for a decade prior. He released two EPs in the 2000s and recorded a still-unreleased full-length in 2007. So “Weapons of Beauty” (out Feb. 6) will be his solo debut LP, and it’s calling card is the powerful single “Caroline.” And, yes, that was Buchanan fronting the house band in the film “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”

■ Ny Oh, “Shine” — Ny Oh is the nom de tune of Naomi Ludlow, who was born in the U.K., reared in New Zealand and now is perched in Topanga Canyon. A backing vocalist and multi-instrumentalist in Harry Styles’ band, she made her debut album, “Wildwood” (out this week) with producer Jonathan Wilson. Dulcet folk, jazzy soft rock, sultry (in her own way) pop, echoes of ’70s sirens: “Wildwood” is a feast. Live March 10 at Pappy & Harriet’s and March 12 at the Fonda, both opening for Margo Price.

■ Matt Ellis, “Not Even Springsteen” — “I was texting with a friend after the election results came in,” High Desert songwriter Matt Ellis says. “Incredulous at the result, I half-joked, ‘Not even Springsteen changed their minds,’ an off-the-cuff comment that carried so much cultural weight, it became a defining lyric for the song and album in many ways.” Details to come on that album, but “Not Even Springsteen” is a helluva start.

■ AKA BK, “Barefoot Hopscotch” — Kicking off with the impossibly catchy single “Hannah,” “Mush,” the debut EP from AKA BK, arrived today. Those “I MUSH YOU” T-shirts are pretty cool, too.

■ Jessy Fury, “Funeral” — Since issuing his “Hollywood Forever” EP this past spring, Jessy Fury has fed his followers a stream of originals and covers that bop between eras and pop genres. “Funeral,” with its ripping guitar solo, seems an artifact of hunky, leather-jacketed cover boys; this, meanwhile, seems like an audition tape for a role in the biopic of a mid-1980s idol. Who’s casting?

■ Magdalena Bay, “This Is the World (I Made It for You)” — Beginning in September, Magdalena Bay — still riding high from last August’s release of the album “Imaginal Disk” — began releasing singles two at a time. Four pairs in all, including songs such as “Paint Me a Picture”, “Second Sleep” and this week’s “This Is the World (I Made It for You).” Now they’re batching all eight songs into “Nice Day: A Collection of Singles.”

■ Common People, “Ready or Not” — Common People (Nicky Winegardner, Sam Belzer, Asher Thomsen, Konrad Ulich and Cormac Cadden), an indie-rock quintet, drop “Ready Or Not,” produced by Brad Shultz via Parallel Vision/Big Loud Rock. The band says: “This song represents looking back and looking forward – guess it just depends on which way you’re looking.”

■ Avalon, “How To Lie” — Alt-pop artist Avalon Baker, aka Avalon, follows the beautiful ballad of “Sydney” with “How To Lie.” The tracks starts with soft-acoustic guitar, ending with a compelling shogaze breakdown. Baker says: “This song is for people who love hard and love fast in any situation.”

■ Ima Robot, “Sing Boy” — Friendly reminder that Ima Robot, the early-2000s dance-punk agitators, today released their “lost album,” “Search and Destroy.” You know these guys.

■ Blondshell, “Berlin TV Tower” — Also out today, Blondshell’s “Another Picture,” the companion album to her May full-length, “If You Asked for a Picture.” Among the new record’s offerings: re-imagined versions of selections from the earlier album, covers from Conor Oberst, Folk Bitch Trio and Samia and the new jam, “Berlin TV Tower.” Blondshell will play Coachella 2026 on April 11 and 18.

■ Jason Heath & the Greedy Souls, “Earth Fire Water Airborne” — For more than a decade, Jason Heath & the Greedy Souls were among the most reliable purveyors of roots-rock around L.A.. They had not released an album since 2017 until this week, when they dropped the big, brawny new LP “Earth Fire Water Airborne.” The album starts off with a bang — the title track features the late Wayne Kramer on guitar. (Heath is executive director of the charity that Kramer co-founded, Jail Guitar Doors.) “Earth Fire Water Airborne” bares its teeth a few more times before all is said and done.

■ Khamal, “Gina n Martin” — Just the third single released by Khamal White, the alt-R&B/rap track “Gina n Martin” is a sweet homage to one of the couples who helped define Black love on television. It’s a son, Khamal; says, “about chemistry that doesn’t need to announce itself. It’s imperfect, real and magnetic. Just like the people who inspire it.”

■ Maisy Kay, “Death Of The Party” — Solo artist Maisy Kay drops the stand-alone single “Death Of The Party,” a dark-pop song, following “Somebody You Never Touched.”

■ Lucas Aaron, “Another Game of Luck” — Yet another earnest dive into the Sixties (complete with harmonica and organ), “Another Game of Luck” is the third single from Lucas Aaron’s forthcoming album “Paradise,” out Dec. 12 on Lolipop Records.

■ June-oh, “The Boy Who Plays Bass” — Sarah Frost and Alexander Vaccarello are June-oh, a queer shoegaze duo that also goes by “shoo-gayz.” Frost says: “Whatever I learned in music school about how you’re supposed to write pop songs, I think ‘The Boy Who Plays Bass’ might be the opposite of that.”

■ Badsoma, “A Little Goes” — Today brought the release of “Badsoma,” the self-titled EP from L.A. indie-rock sextet Badsoma. It leads with “Coffee Pot” and then goes some interesting places.

■ Sylvia Black, “Talking in Tongues” — Sylvia Black is goth-rock singer-songwriter and bass player who has composed music for the Netflix’s “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Her new single, “Talking in Tongues,” is a bass-heavy new wave banger from her new album “Shadowtime,” dropping Jan. 16. Black says: “The song is a look at the damage caused by giving up agency to outside nefarious forces that tempt and lie to you.” Sylvia is a force of nature in the music video here.

■ Kim Theory, “Child Star Teenybopper” —  Kim Theory is a new punk-rock quartet of teenagers who’ve named their band after their “sheroes”: Kim Gordon, Kim Shattuck and Kim Deal. “Bitch Scene” is the first EP from the group (Audrey Cymone, Lula Seifert, Lucy Fraser, Zoey Su). Catch the “riot-grrrl-adjacent” (their words) live on Saturday at Backyard Party, an all-ages space at 1260 Lincoln Ave., #1300, Pasadena.

■ 2070, “Transducer” — L.A. quartet 2070 (Trevor Coleman, Khari Cousins, Rogers DeCoud and Danny Rincon) make reverb-saturated noise-pop, some songs striking like lightning and others more ambient, moving in like the marine layer. They’ve released three albums, and, newly signed to Danger Collective records, 2070 just announced another, “Big Blue” (out Feb. 6). “Tranducer” (here’s the video) is the first offering.

■ Window Suite, “Malicious” — Synth-pop duo Window Suite drops “Malicious,” an intense synth-rock track from their new self-titled EP.

■ Where’s West?, “Cast Out a Line” — L.A. quartet Where’s West? (Zan Curleigh, Robbie Cullerton, Aidan Babuka Black and West Hauser) got their start in 2024 and have released five singles that boogie rather effortlessly through tidepools of the 1970s. “Cast Out a Line” is their latest.

■ Natalie Del Carmen, “June, You’re on My Mind” — “June, You’re on My Mind” is an acoustic folk track from Natalie Del Carmen’s upcoming sophomore album “Pastures,” out Jan. 30. Natalie says: “The song is about finding the unwelcome presence of a significant part of your life in the corners of your own emotional attic, neatly packed away but never truly gone for good.”

■ Thundercat, “Upside Down” — Our playlist-ending cover song this week comes via Thundercat, who tackles the Diana Ross hit in collaboration with Candy Crush. The song comes with a playable, interactive music video. Start here.