“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 12-1. 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. hemlocke springs – pop – 9 spins – highlighted hit: “Girlfriend” off of her September release “Going…Going…GONE!”

Isimeme “Naomi” Udu, aka hemlocke springs, is a testament to the internet’s power to skyrocket the careers of young musicians who use the platform to share music that challenges mainstream sounds. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Springs grew up listening to pop and electronic music, experimenting on Garage Band with her own self-produced songs.

Springs posted her first song, “Gimme All Ur Love,” on her TikTok page spring of last year, immediately going viral. Her eclectic, sugary electric-pop speaks to the DIY, bedroom-pop approach that’s coming to define the new generation of pop stars. Her debut EP, “Going…Going…GONE!” came out this September, already with millions of streams online. Our highlighted track, “Girlfriend,” is one of the leading singles from the EP and one of Springs’ most viral tracks!

9. Chappell Roan – pop – 10 spins – highlighted hit: “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” off of her September release “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”
Chappell Roan has been writing and releasing her own music since she got her start on YouTube as a teenager in 2017, an internet-led “dark pop” princess whose word-of-mouth success began with her track, “Pink Pony Club,” going viral on TikTok in 2021. Building a further following from accompanying artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Fletcher on tour, Roan became known for her camp (self-made) outfits and unapologetically glittery pop music.

Her debut record, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” sees Roan really coming into her own sonically and aesthetically, met with praise from critics and fans alike. Our highlighted track last week when Roan featured was “HOT TO GO!” but this week’s is “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl.”

8. Animal Collective – alt/indie – 10 spins – highlighted hit: “Broke Zodiac” off of the September release “Isn’t It Now?”
Animal Collective are considered one of the most prolific and idiosyncratic acts making music, which they’ve been doing since the early 2000s. Formed from a group of friends in Baltimore, the band currently consists of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb). It feels a disservice to AnCo to try and define them by any genre, but they’ve been described as experimental pop/rock, freak-folk, electronica, psych, and more.

Every release is different, taking the band in new and unexpected directions. Their most acclaimed record is 2009’s “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” considered a classic in the world of indie music. Their most recent release, September’s “Isn’t It Now?” is formed from songs they started working on remotely in 2019, and ended up as their longest record to date. Our highlighted hit when Animal Collective featured last week was “Gem & I,” and this week’s continues the astrology theme with “Broke Zodiac.”

7. Troye Sivan – pop – 12 spins – highlighted hit: “One of Your Girls” off of the October release “Something to Give Each Other”

Another artist who got their start on the internet, Troye Sivan’s story is a particularly compelling one. He started posting YouTube videos as a kid, growing in popularity through his teenage years through his comedy, vlog, and song cover videos. His debut EP, “TRXYE,” came out in 2014, followed by his debut studio album, “Blue Neighborhood,” which came out in 2015.

Sivan’s second album, “Bloom,” was released in 2018, and in the time between that and his third record, “Something to Give Each Other,” he’s released a steady stream of singles alongside focusing on acting for a while. Released October 13th, “Something to Give Each Other” has been received with immense praise from fans and critics. Our highlighted track, “One of Your Girls,” went viral following Sivan’s exploration of gender in its accompanying music video.

6. Front Bottoms – rock – 12 spins – highlighted hit: “Emotional” off of the September 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 is “Emotional,” one of the standouts from the record.

5. Joey Valence & Brae – hip-hop/rap – 13 spins – highlighted hit: “DANCE NOW” off of their September release “PUNK TACTICS”
Bringing the sounds of 90s east-coast hip-hop to the TikTok age, Joey Valence & Brae are known for their scrappy, heavily-mixed rap songs, proudly wearing their Beastie Boys influences on their sleeves. Joey Valence and Brae met their Freshmen year at Penn State, goofing around with music together and starting out posting their stuff on TikTok, collaborating on tracks like 2021’s “Crank It Up” and “Double Jump.” Following the success of these songs, their career moved from a few successful TikToks to appearances on tv shows like Ellen, where their music began to reach an audience bigger than just the in-the-know teenagers who already liked their stuff.

Released September 8th, “PUNK TACTICS” is the culmination of these collaborations, their debut record together. The record is high-energy, fast-paced, experimental, sample-heavy, and bursting with both the influences of their hip-hop successors and with all the new stuff they’re bringing to the table.
Joey Valence and Brae have featured in our Gems with a number of different tracks by now, and for this week’s Gems we’re featuring “DANCE NOW.”

4. Slowdive – alt/indie – 14 spins – highlighted hit: “skin in the game” off of the September release “everything is alive”

Slowdive are shoegaze royalty. Formed in Reading, Berkshire in 1989, the band consists of Rachel Gloswell (vocals), Neil Halstead (vocals/guitar), Christian Savill (guitar), Nick Chaplin (bass), and Simon Scott (drums). Slowdive’s career started as a slow burn, their cult status slowly growing in shoegaze circles until their second record, 1993’s “Souvlaki,” become one of the most seminal shoegaze records ever created. They broke up after their third record, 1995’s “Pygmalion,” but reunited in 2017 with a new album, the self-titled “Slowdive.”

“everything is alive” was released September 1st, and it describes the sound of this record well—the soundscapes the band explore over the course of the record are living and breathing, subtle and layered without any elements getting lost. We’ve featured the lead single “kisses” from this record before, and this week we’re featuring the track “skin in the game.”

3. Olivia Rodrigo – pop – 15 spins – highlighted hit: “bad idea right?” off of the September release “GUTS”
No longer just an up-and-comer in the world of pop music, Olivia Rodrigo is the world of modern pop music, a leading figure in shaping the sounds and aesthetics of modern pop music. Her debut record “SOUR,” was a massive pop-cultural moment, the fastest album in history to have all of its songs certified RIAA Platinum for higher. Rodrigo got her start as an actress, featuring on shows like “Bizaardvark” and “High School Musical: The Musical: The Show,” but her passion for music led her to the career she has now.

Rodrigo’s second release, “GUTS,” came out in September to more praise and hype, currently putting her at the spot of the 22nd most-streamed artist in the entire world on Spotify. The album has a pop-rock/pop-punk inspired approach, edgier and more honest than Rodrigo was able to be on “SOUR.”
Our highlighted hit, “bad idea right?” is another breakout single from the record, of which there are many!

2. Mitski – alt/indie – 16 spins – highlighted hit: “When Memories Snow”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 the subtle twang woven throughout some of this record’s tracks emphasizes that inspiration. This record has been so popular here at KCSU that we’ve practically featured half of it by now, and this week’s highlighted track is “When Memories Snow.”

1. Hozier – folk – 17 spins – highlighted hit: “Who We Are” off of the August release “Unreal Unearth”
Hozier (aka Andrew Hozier-Byrne) is a singer-songwriter from Ireland who skyrocketed to fame after his 2013 song, “Take Me To Church” became one of the most popular songs of the year (now with over 2 billion streams on spotify). His bluesy, folk-oriented music explores love, politics, religion, nature, and everything else one might expect from an Irish wordsmith whose songs reference everything from the bible to Dante’s Inferno to his favorite jazz songs and poems.

Hozier’s most recent release, “Unreal Unearth,” was released a few months ago on August 18th! It’s based upon Dante’s Inferno, with each song representing one of the circles of hell that Dante journeys through in the famous poem. Hozier wrote this album partially as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, telling GRAMMY.com: “As a structure, I did want to acknowledge something in my experiences of [that] two, three year period, and what I was processing. I [wanted] to find a way that nods to that, and the significance of that — albeit, not necessarily in a way that was a lockdown album or a pandemic album, or songs that focus on the nuances of that experience, but at least acknowledge the journey. And it’s taking the structure of that journey as imagined by Dante, these Nine Circles he walks through and then he comes out the other side.”

The record is a hit with Hozier fans who waited patiently for its release, and Hozier’s two Red Rocks shows past week were attended by tons of students who’ve spoken pretty highly of the show! Hozier has been leading our charts for a few weeks now, but the track we’re featuring this week is “Who We Are.”