“The Top 10 Songs Spinning at KCSU” is written by the KCSU music directors and describes the top artists that your local 90.5 FM DJs are playing this week. The article is updated weekly on Sundays and discussed on their show, “KCSU’s Weekly Gem Countdown,” which airs every Monday from 11 a.m.-noon. Here, you can learn more about each musician or band before tuning in to the top 10 countdown on Mondays, in which the music directors present to you the latest songs topping the charts and break down each song’s sound and feeling.
1. Geena B. Valentine — Pop — (Six spins on 2021’s single, “Take Me To The Endless Sea.”) Geena B. Valentine has reached beyond her Italian homeland to reach fans globally, including us here at KCSU. Her singing career took her from Italy through Austria to Hamburg, Germany, where she lived for three years. She creates singer/songwriter pop and also has her own hemp-based fashion line.
2. Brentney — R&B/Soul — (Five spins on “Go Ahead” off 2021’s “Blue Sky No. 9.”) Brentney is a Louisville-based singer/songwriter “hoping to spark inner dialogue through the medium of meaningful, pop-infused R&B- and jazz-influenced melodies.” She says she is inspired by disco, funk and “the sheer feeling of bliss when you’re roller skating on a sunny day and looking up at the fluffy clouds.” With her music she intends to inspire people to deal with the struggles they go through and eventually release them.
3. Egg Drop Soup — Punk Rock — (Five spins on “Rank Heavy Metal Parking Lot” off 2020’s “Eat Snacks and Bleed.”) Egg Drop Soup describes itself as “an in-your-face, unapologetic, all-womxn punk trio” based in Los Angeles. Its fiery brand of thrash punk/surfy grunge makes for an unpredictable, intriguing and entrancing sound. Its most recent project, “Eat Snacks and Bleed,” came out in December of 2020. The band consists of Bailey Chapman on drums, Olivia Saperstein on vocals and guitar and Samantha Westervelt on lead vocals and bass.
4. Hippo Campus — Alt/Indie — (Five spins on “Bad Dream Baby” off 2021’s “Good Dog, Bad Dreams.”) Hippo Campus is an indie rock band from St. Paul, Minnesota. Off their latest release, “Good Dog, Bad Dreams,” they say it was made with “a genuine sense of freedom and enjoyment … translated here via a lot of screaming.” They sum the album up as “tragic, but it’s funny. It’s intense and honest, confident and vulnerable and strange.”
5. Twofacts — Electronic — (Five spins on “Eaze” off 2021’s “Bluewerks Vol. 3: Heat Wave.”) Twofacts is a lofi-electronic beats artist. Their song “Eaze” made it onto the “Bluewerks Vol. 3: Heat Wave” album, an electronic compilation project. From their Spotify, Bluewerks is “the first ever collaboration series between the two iconic record labels, Blue Note & Astralwerks.” They take different artists who specialize in Jazz and downtempo electronica to create beats to enjoy and relax to.
6. Warung — Electronic — (Five spins on “Sinuous” off 2021’s “Sinuous EP.”) Aaron Hopkins & Dillon Ames are the duo behind the electronic music project, Warung. On their Soundcloud page, they reveal that “while riding mopeds through busy Bali intersections, one half of this duo was intrigued by an Indonesian word that appeared on almost every street corner – ‘Warung.’” It’s a word for a small, family-run business. They decided on that concept for the drive behind the sound of their project.
7. Alex Little and the Suspicious Minds — Rock — (Four spins on “Across the City” off 2021’s “Waiting To Get Paid.”) In their own words, “Blunt, emotional honesty is the driving force behind Vancouver’s Alex Little & the Suspicious Minds, whose scorching garage-pop songs squarely face drug addiction, mental health and heartbreak. And yet, despite the heavy subject matter, the group’s soaring choruses and loud guitars make the mood cathartic rather than heavy.” Alex Little started out by drumming for different bands, and in that time she picked up guitar and began to write her own music.
8. DJ Seinfeld — Electronic — (Four spins on “The Right Place” off 2021’s “Mirrors.”) Armand Darius Anders Jakobsson, also known as DJ Seinfeld, was born in Malmö, Sweden and is now based out of Spain, according to discogs.com. He’s released two full-length albums, the most recent being 2021’s “Mirrors.” In a press release, he says of “Mirrors”, “I wanted to retain a lot of the raw emotionality that brought people to my music in the first place. It’s been an arduous process, but it’s a real statement of where I’m at as a producer and person right now.”
9. Real Estate — Alt/Indie — (Four spins on “Half A Human” off 2021’s “Half A Human” EP.) What started out as a Weezer cover band would later turn into indie-rock band Real Estate. According to their Spotify, the group formed in Ridgewood, New Jersey in 2008 and came into prominence in the early 2010’s for their “warm, hazy style” and casual melodies. Real Estate is made up of singer and guitarist Martin Courtney, guitarist Matthew Mondanile, bassist Alex Bleeker and drummer Etienne Duguay, who met in high school.
10. Sun-Pinned Leaves — Rock — (Four spins on 2021’s single, “Monterey Bay.”) Christopher Brown and Neil Faulkner first began writing songs together in 1975. As stated on their website, the two have a long history and even performed together and separately throughout the 1970’s and 80’s before eventually reuniting to release their debut album, “Theories of Destiny,” in 2019. They describe themselves as a band that makes “trans-genre music for the cultured ear.”
The music director can be reached at music@kcsufm.com.