This Top 10 Indie Songs playlist for February 2021 is perhaps one of our favorite top 10 song playlists of the past year, and we had just said the same about the January Top 10 Indie Songs playlist (recommended listening!).
The staff at IRC has shared and listened to these tracks (and many others that didn’t make the cut) over and over again. We agree that not only are these tracks our favorite 10 songs from February but still will be among the top 2021 indie tracks by the time the end-of-year playlists come out.
IRC chooses tracks carefully. We listen for songs that are original, different, heartfelt, well-crafted, and of course, brimming with talent from new, or newly discovered, indie bands and artists from around the USA and the world. (See below for our mini-reviews of each track). March Top 10 Songs is coming up soon.
The Top 10 Indie Rock Songs, Feb. 2021
1. Our No. 1 track for February goes to Swedish musician Melpo Mene (new aka is ‘heyMelpo’). IRC has been a big fan of Mene going all of the way back to our earliest years posting about under-the-radar DIY/small label artists. The first time we heard Mene it was a tiny miracle – “wow, who the bleep is this?”, we inquired. That amazing, totally – totally – original voice, and sweeping atmospheric melodic hooks are back with this new energized and uplifting single, “Wrong At Last.”
2. A sparse, somber acoustic ballad from DIY indie outfit Three Day Monk with soft, hauntingly beautiful vocals; light drum beats, swirling flutes; one of the most original and raw lo-fi indie tracks of 2021
3. Iyarkai‘s “Rijul Chakraborthy” is a transformative, soaring, dream-like track with faint eastern influences set to new-age-like instrumentations and sound effects that include chirping birds, flutes, and slight touches of auto-tune. It’s almost impossible not to be touched by this track.
4. This is the first track we’d ever heard from the Dutch indie band Elephant and it hit us right in the heart and ears. this is a song you feel, and there’s even a little bit of a BeeGees vibe to this terrifically melodic and upbeat track.
5. not a fourth of july song in the way you’d expect – but Victims of the New Math (VOTNM) deliver quiet, slumbering, light strum on guitar with filtered, almost distant vocals and featuring a neat little acoustic duel (don’t jump!)
6. DWP with their minimalistic recording approach – love it! – ground together with pulsating keys and dual guitar jams paralleled with spoken vocals – think The Fall but with a strange and ominous dance element added in (#1 or 2)
7. “The Other End” is an uplifting single from indie-rock collective Solar Strides. This track sonically combines the nostalgic with the contemporary, as the record brims with foot-tapping, spirited instrumentals and features the crystal clear vocals of India Foskett.
8 “Wasted” from UK DIY band Colour Tongues‘ debut album insinuates a negativity that the lyrics, dream-pop vibe, and melodies completely knockdown. Song lyrics reminisce of realizing one’s own self-worth and self-love, and that there is no time ever again to be ‘wasted’ on anyone.
9. Short but booming full-throttle rock with a garage/punk edge, shouted (but works) catchy chorus, and streetwise attitude from the alt. rock band Harker.
10 – Weezer’s “All My Favorite Songs” is a solid track but it’s a bit too commercially slanted so it goes down a few notches to the end here for the former indie veterans now mainly commercial sellouts.