“KCSU’s Weekly Gems Countdown” is written by the KCSU Music Directors and describes the top artists that your local 90.5 FM DJs are playing this week! This article is posted weekly on Wednesday morning and discussed on the show “KCSU Weekly Gem Countdown” which airs every Wednesday from 1-2. During the show, you can tune in to hear the countdown, learn more about each artist behind the songs topping KCSU’s charts, and listen to DJ Fruit-Bat and Lady J break down the sound and feel of each song!
10. Kat Duma – pop – 4 spins – highlighted hit: “Real Life” off of the April 2023 release “Real Life”
As her profile on dmy.co describes, Toronto-based pop artist Kat Duma “produces work that wrestles with the balance between the materkatial world – the body and the planet – as well as the unattainable and the spectral: heaven, love, and nature vs supernature.” She produces much of her own music, working with an industrial, ambient approach to bedroom pop stylings.
Duma’s April 2023 record “Real Life,” is a dreamy blend of orchestral, ambient, house, folk, and pop influences. The track “Land & Sea & Sky” was the #2 slot of our Weekly Gems last week, and this week the title track from the record, “Real Life,” has slipped into the #10 spot.
9. Genesis Owusu – pop – 6 spins – highlighted hit: “The Roach” off of the August 2023 release “STRUGGLER”
Kofi Owusu-Ansah, known by his stage name Genesis Owusu, is a Ghanaian-Australian singer from Canberra. His older brother is musician Citizen Kay, a hip-hop artist also based in Australia, and they’ve collaborated together on the track, “Family Ties,” back in 2015. Owusu’s debut studio album, “Smiling With No Teeth,” was released in March of 2021, getting his name out there and priming the pump for his 2023 release, “STRUGGLER,” which has been met with high praise from critics for its eclectic, liberated sonic playfulness.
Owusu has clear vision and purpose in their artistry, describing “STRUGGLER” in a press statement with this: “The struggler runs through an absurd world with no ‘where’ or ‘why’ at hand. Just an instinctual inner rhythm, yelling at them to survive the pestilence and lightning bolts coming from above. A roach just keeps roaching.”
Our highlighted track, “The Roach,” is all about this roach who just keeps roaching, a heavy, punchy funk track that calls out Kafka’s Gregor Samsa and calls one’s inner roach to action.
8. Daft Punk – electronic – 6 spins – highlighted hit: “Instant Crush” off of the 2013 release “Random Access Memories”
Though tracks like “Get Lucky” and “One More Time” have hundreds of millions of streams across every music streaming app there is, Daft Punk haven’t released a full-length LP since 2013’s “Random Access Memories,” a staple album in the world of electronic and synth-pop. Formed in Paris in 1993, the band are known for their relative secrecy about their true identities, wearing chromatic robot masks both in produced material and at live shows. Though they featured on/helped produce music between 2013 and 2020, they officially disbanded in 2021.
“Random Access Memories” is Daft Punk’s fourth, final, and most popular album, a world built from synthpop, techno, disco, and prog rock. Our highlighted track, “Instant Crush,” is featuring Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, one of Daft Punk’s most popular collaborations and one that’s received pretty consistent play here at KCSU. Casablancas improvised most of the song’s lyrics over the process of working on it with Daft Punk, aiming to capture the feeling of a youthful crush that doesn’t quite go anywhere.
7. The Front Bottoms – rock – 7 spins – highlighted hit: “Batman” off of the August 2023 release “You Are Who You Hang Out With”
Credited with bringing the sounds of early emo to the modern pop-punk and folk-punk scenes, The Front Bottoms have been making satisfyingly angst-heavy music since 2006. Made up of Brian Sella (vocals, guitar) and Mat Uychich (drums), the band’s debut record came out in 2011, a self-titled and self-produced LP that cemented their spot in the East Coast’s endearing pop-punk subcircles. Signed to classic emo label Fueled By Ramen in 2015, this is when The Front Bottoms began to pick up more notoriety, tracks like “Twin-Sized Mattress” and “Father” taking off for young people who connect with Sella’s vulnerable, biting lyrics and talk-y singing style.
“You Are Who You Hang Out With” came out September of 2023, a slightly more pop-oriented sound but still bursting with plenty of the angst and punky instrumentation that fans know and love. Its title comes from a phrase Sella has said for years, even back in a 2017 interview with Billboard. Our highlighted track, “Batman,” is one of the record’s surprise hits with fans, deeper than its title may initially seem.
6. Superviolet – indie/alt – 7 spins – highlighted hit: “Locket” off of the April 2023 release “Infinite Spring”
With midwest-emo-inspired indie pop, Superviolet is the project of Steve Ciolek, the former frontman of the band The Sidekicks, who was without a band in 2020 and in need of a new project to funnel his creative energy into. Superviolet’s Spotify describes their music as weaving “sparse folk,” “soulful indie,” “60s and 70s pop rock,” and “midwest emo,” and these genres are all apt in capturing Superviolet’s shifting energies.
The record “Infinite Spring” came out in April of 2023, the first full length EP Superviolet has released. Our highlighted track, “Locket,” is a relatable little number about love and loneliness, caught somewhere between candid and self-conscious.
5. Field Medic – indie/alt – 8 spins – highlighted hit: “everything’s been going so well” off of the September 2023 release “light is gone 2”
Field Medic is the stage name of American lo fi artist Kevin Patrick Sullivan, a DIY artist who’s been releasing songs online since 2013. With lo fi bedroom-pop production, folk influences, and earnest lyrics, Field Medic has accrued a loyal fanbase who eagerly await every release (and there are many!)
“light is gone 2” came out September 1st, and “mass market paperback” was on our charts last week! This week our featured track is “everything’s been going so well,” a song lamenting how hard it is to appreciate it even when things are going well.
4. Matt Maltese – pop – 10 spins – highlighted hit: “Museum” off of the April 2023 release “Driving Just to Drive”
Chances are you’ve heard at least one Matt Maltese song in the past week, whether it’s on the radio or while scrolling through TikTok. Thanks to his smash-hit 2017 single “As the World Caves in,” which is currently sitting pretty at 330 million streams on Spotify, he’s well-established in the contemporary indie pop scene. His soft voice has been compared to the likes of Chet Baker, but his music has a more playful, contemporary take on classic lovelorn lamentations.
Maltese’s fourth studio album, “Driving Just to Drive,” features the same heartbroken chamber-pop music that he’s known for. He’s been on our charts before for “Coward,” but this week’s featured track is the one the album takes its name from, “Driving Just to Drive.”
3. Current Joys – indie/alt – 12 spins – highlighted hit: “Gatsby” off of the August release “Love + Pop”
If you’re unfamiliar with Current Joys, you might be familiar with Nick Rattigan’s other indie rock band, Surf Curse, in which he’s the lead vocalist and drummer. Current Joys is Rattigan’s personal project, and he’s been releasing music under the moniker since 2015’s single “Kids.” Another artist with an internet-induced cult status, Current Joys is known for movie samples and references (often Cronenburg), and sometimes references to other artists, like in the viral 2013 track “New Flesh,” which features the lyric “I listened to The Cure / and then I cried.” Tracks like “Blondie” and “New Flesh” have amassed hundreds of millions of streams.
The new “LOVE + POP” record came out in August, a Lil Peep-inspired record where Rattigan’s enjoyment of musical experimentation makes itself clear; alongside his usual expected lo-fi indie, there are soft pop tracks, hip-hop ones including a collaboration with Lil Yachty, and even a 9 minute house track. Our highlighted hit, “Gatsby,” is the collaboration with Lil Yachty, an unexpected union that works surprisingly well!
2. The Cure – rock – 13 spins – highlighted hit: “Fascination Street” off of the 1989 release “Disintegration”
Perhaps the defining band for black-clad romantics everywhere, The Cure were formed in Crawley, Sussex, England in the late seventies, in its earliest iteration featuring Robert Smith (vocals/guitars), Michael Dempsey (bass), Lol Tomhurst (drums), and Porl Thompson (guitars). Michael was soon replaced by Simon Gallup on bass, and him and Robert Smith are the two remaining members from the early Cure era to still be a part of the band now. Also joining are Jason Cooper (drums), Roger O’Donnel (keyboards), and Reeves Gabrels (guitars).
Though some of The Cure’s most popular tracks are ones like “Friday, I’m in Love” and “Just Like Heaven,” their music doesn’t just trace these upbeat paths. The Cure have always been experimental, playful, and genre-bending in their music, rejecting the “goth” label time and again; in a 2006 Reuters interview, Smith said: “it’s so pitiful when ‘goth’ is still tagged onto the name The Cure. We’re not categorizable.” This is a fair assessment—The Cure definitely are not easily categorizable, and it’s easier not to expect them to be.
Our highlighted track, “Fascination Street,” is one of their most popular songs off of their seminal 1989 record “Disintegration,” a song that’s as classic now as it was then.
1. Mitski – alt/indie – 16 spins – highlighted hit: “My Love Mine All Mine” off of the September release “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We”
Mitsuki Miyawaki, known simply as Mitski, is a singer-songwriter who’s been releasing music since her first few self-released records, “Lush” (2012), and “Retired From Sad, New Career in Business” (2013), which she originally made while still in college. Mitski’s cult status among indie fans only grew after her subsequent releases “Bury Me At Makeout Creek” (2014) and “Puberty 2” (2016). Mitski achieved more mainstream success following 2018’s “Be the Cowboy”, with tracks like “Nobody” and “Washing Machine Heart” going viral on TikTok and Twitter.
Mitski’s music is associated with many online niches: sad Kendall Roy edits, sad edits in general, what’s often called “sad girl” music, but Mitski rejects the idea that her music has to be defined by sadness, saying in a video for Crack magazine that “The sad girl thing was reductive and tired like 5-10 years ago, and it still is today…let’s retire the sad girl shtick.”
Her newest album, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We,” was released September 15th to massive acclaim from critics and fans. Mitski describes this on her Spotify as her most “American album,” and our highlighted track, “My Love Mine All Mine,” is a soft love song with a tinge of the western echoes that make up the record’s unique sound. Mitski continues to evolve with every record, and this one is no different.