True to the HighClouds spirit, we’ve once again tried to shine a light on overlooked releases and new or under-the-radar artists alongside some more familiar names. And yes… for the second year the same artist is topping our Best Songs list. At this point, it’s safe to say we’re obsessed. All of the tracks featured here (and many others) are also gathered in our Spotify playlist, that you can find below.

Thank you for reading, listening, and sharing music with us throughout 2025. We wish you a beautiful end of the year, and we’ll be back very soon in 2026 to share even more amazing music with you.

60 Avalon – Harder To Reach Than God
59 Farao – Waiting for You
58 Reggie Devoyage – Down Town
57 Nuovo Testamento – Picture Perfect
56 Yumi Zouma – Drag
55 Boyhood – A Grand Time
54 Danny L Harle; Caroline Polachek – Azimuth
53 Fernette – Lowlands
52 Jouska – Season of Dread
51 Charli xcx – Chains of Love

50 Pearly Drops – End Credits
49 Marina Zispin – Penthouse Samba
48 Boyish – Jumbos
47 Sword II – Sugarcane
46 TOPS – Chlorine
45 Robyn – Dopamine
44 The Deep – KPOP B!TCH
43 Juliana Madrid – Jamie
42 Men I Trust – Come Back Down
41 R. Missing – Telepolartears

40 Jenny Hval – The artist is absent – 89 seconds rewrite
39 Fontaines D.C. – Before You I Just Forget
38 hemlocke springs – the beginning of the end
37 Sea Lemon – Stay
36 Georgie & Joe – Pacemaker
35 Fine – I could
34 Jessy Lanza – Slapped By My Life
33 Arny Margret – Day Old Thoughts
32 Lipsticism – Erased
31 Clara Kimera; notinbed – angel candles

30 Neggy Gemmy – Mysterious Girl
29 Joanne Robertson; Oliver Coates – Always Were
28 Hannah Jadagu – My Love
27 HTRK – Swimming Pool
26 Night Tapes – television
25 Raisa K – Affectionately
24 helen island – hot zone, regular day
23 Dean Blunt; Elias Rønnenfelt – 1
22 Cole Pulice – After the Rain
21 crushed – starburn

20 AMORE – Delirio
19 Oneohtrix Point Never – Rodl Glide
18 Erika de Casier – Delusional
17 Judeline – chica de cristal
16 Dijon – Yamaha
15 Rochelle Jordan – Ladida
14 PinkPantheress – Illegal
13 Maria Somerville – Garden
12 Ethel Cain – Fuck Me Eyes
11 Sophia Stel – Everyone Falls Asleep In Their Own Time

10 Jim Legxacy – ’06 wayne rooney
9 Magdalena Bay – Human Happens
8 snuggle – Woman Lake
7 Addison Rae – Headphones On
6 After – 300 dreams
5 FKA twigs – Striptease
4 james K – Play
3 Nourished by Time – Max Potential
2 Smerz – You got time and I got money
1 Oklou – blade bird

It has been one year since indie pop duo Boyish released their sophomore album Garden Spider, a 10-track project where India Shore and Claire Altendahl were expressing their “Big Gay Sadness”. They’re now back with “Superstar,” the first single taken from their upcoming new EP.

Created last summer, during the quarantine, “Superstar” explores “the feeling of worshipping someone you’ll never meet, yet someone you feel you know everything about.” The concept was inspired by India, who is a fan of One Direction.

“We started writing Superstar in July of 2020 while we were both staying in Minneapolis,” they stated. “India went down a one direction rabbit hole over quarantine, and was inspired and highly emotional after the 10 year anniversary. It’s about admiring someone without knowing them, and how in some ways that’s easier because you won’t see their flaws. Mix that in with a good amount of social anxiety and we got the chorus “I want to be alone, but if I didn’t, I’d wanna be with you.” We started recording it in Claire’s bedroom studio before returning to Brooklyn to finish the song and the rest of the EP in another apartment bedroom studio.”

The accompanying video was directed by Eli Edwards. Watch below.

We’re only 6 months into 2020 and it actually feels that the world as we know it is about to collapse. Who knows what’s coming next? For better or worse, a lot of things are simultaneously happening around us and music has been an essential way to find hope and kill time. In 2020, artists need us more than ever and, in case you did not figure it out while being stuck at home, we also need them. Can you really imagine a lockdown without music? We can’t. As we’re now at the mid-way point of this exceptionally horrible year, it’s time to share with you, like every year, the 30 tracks that have helped us to hold on so far. If you need more to cheer you up, you can also explore our other favourite tracks of 2020 via our Spotify and Apple Music playlists below.

070 Shake – “Guilty Conscience”
Agar Agar – “Nap”
Annie – “American Cars”
Boyish – “AnDroGay”
Caribou – “Never Come Back”
Charli XCX – “forever”
Christine and the Queens – “People, I’ve been sad”
Cindy – “Never Let Me Go”
Cindy Lee – “I Want You To Suffer”
Couch Prints – “Of Drawing”
Discovery Zone – “Blissful Morning Dream Interpretation Melody”
Dua Lipa – “Physical”
Fiona Apple – “Shameika”
Geranium – “Separate Life”
Kate NV – “Sayonara”
Magdalena Bay – “Airplane”
Moses Sumney – “Virile”
MOTHERMARY – “Catch Fire”
Perfume Genius – “On The Floor”
Phoebe Bridgers – “Garden Song”
Planet 1999 – “Party”
SAULT – “Wildfires”
Soccer Mommy – “circle the drain”
TOPS – “Direct Sunlight”
Waxahatchee – “Can’t Do Much”
Yaeji – “When I Grow Up”
Young Ejecta – “Crayon Cactus”
Yves Tumor – “Gospel For A New Century”
Zelma Stone – “Dreamland”
Zoee – “Rio’s”

Boyish, the duo comprising India Shore and Claire Altendhal who curates our Queeropedia playlist this month, has just released a new album today. Garden Spider features the previously released singles “FUCK YOU HEATHER“, “zodiac killer“, “anxious butterball” as well as the highlight “AnDroGay”, a soulful new offering exploring gender roles. Listen to the track and stream the whole album below.

When India Shore was a student at Berklee College of Music, she needed someone to accompany her for an audition. Her friend’s roommate, Claire Altendahl, helped her out. In 2016 they formed the alt-country duo The Blue, and after graduating from Berklee, the pair’s musical chemistry evolved into a dreamier, darker sound as Boyish.

Boyish‘s debut single, “Brooklyn Red,” is a queer love poem full of cross-country longing and sharp, bluesy guitars. The video, which the band released in April of 2019, features India in bed with her tied wrists being puppeteered by someone off-screen, lit by a stylish blend of red and blue hues known as “bisexual lighting.”

A few months later, in October, they released a video for “July,” the lead single from their self-released 2018 record Carnation. The track leans even further into dark, sultry blues vibes, with the occasional country twang accenting its improvised guitar riffs. India’s vocals hit a sweet spot between soft crooning and pained howling on the lines, “Baby, baby, I / Ooh babe, I’m not your darling.” What’s more, the video features slow-dancing queer affection and more extremely on-brand bisexual lighting.

Later that same month, the duo released “Ghost” on New York label Invertebrate. It’s a dreamy, folk-tinged slow burner of a track that builds up to an incredibly satisfying payoff; in the lyrics, India lays out a relatable list of laments — lonely nights, playing the waiting game, being too broke to move to New York.

“Our songwriting process is very chaotic,” the band told HighClouds. “We usually write by separately coming up with little bits and pieces of songs, and then when we are together we piece them together into one song and write lyrics. We usually love a song for the first week then feel like we should trash the whole thing.”

In early December, the pair dropped “Zodiac Killer,” a slow, glittery track about “growing up while everything is going wrong, big gay sadness, and realizing that people aren’t always who you thought they were.” You know, life. The song expertly incorporates a voicemail interstitial between dreamy guitars and watery synths.

Speaking of the Zodiac, HighClouds has exclusive intel that India is an Aries Sun, Libra Moon, and Scorpio rising, and Claire is a Leo Sun, Scorpio Moon, and Sagittarius rising. All that fire energy and those Scorpio placements basically explain how these two are so good at writing dark, sexy, high-energy pop tracks.

I love when a song’s title really speaks for itself. On “FUCK YOU HEATHER,” Boyish cycles through every possible human emotion on their way to finding closure after a breakup. The track begins with gently plucked guitars and ends on blown-out, atonal synth flares, mirroring the emotional journey and chaos of the lyrics. It makes sense that this is a theme that’s on their minds, since some of their favorite artists right now are FKA Twigs, Frank Ocean, Girl in Red, Mannequin Pussy, and Muna.

On January 31, Boyish released their latest single on Invertebrate. It’s called “Anxious Butterball,” and it’s a dreamy pop track about the physical manifestations of anxiety.

“When writing ‘Anxious Butterball’, India went into a room for ten minutes and came back and sang the opening lines in a weird country/Phish vibe. It stumped us for about two weeks before I went into Logic and made the opening hits to the song,” Claire told HighClouds. “Lyrically, I was driving home and thought about how when both India and I have anxiety we gain weight and sweat a lot, so the name ‘Anxious Butterball’ (Butterball being our roundness) popped into my head. From there, we decided to write about the ridiculous anxiety symptoms we feel.”

If you’re in New York, you can catch Boyish at C’mon Everybody in Brooklyn on February 27 with Uruguay, Syd Silvair, and Madeleine Mcqueen. If you’re not, you can keep hitting replay on “Anxious Butterball” until your crush texts you back. It’s ok, we won’t judge.

Check out India and Claire’s picks for Queeropedia using the player below (also available on Apple Music), and get ready for their debut album Garden Spider on February 14.

All the previous episodes of Queeropedia are available on our Spotify profile.

“Now I don’t even know you / lost your name in a shitstorm I caused,” sings 22-year old India Shore, who is a member of the alt-country and queer project Boyish, which she started with guitarist Claire Altendhal.

Following up to “Ghost” and “zodiac killer,” “FUCK YOU HEATHER” combines anger and resentment with that pure, early 20s confusion about how relationships should (or shouldn’t) function. The track starts with an indie-acoustic, summer-lovin’ guitar tune, courtesy of Altendhal, with Shore crooning sweet nothings until you realise that “FUCK YOU HEATHER” is not a love song – it’s a breakup bop.

Boyish take the listener through a mirage of built-up emotions (anger, remorse, hope) and through various stages of grief experienced while ending a relationship. There is the obvious pain and guilt, as well as denial and bargaining (“We could be friends / we could be friends…”).

A cathartic moment comes when Shore screams the titular “Fuck you Heather”, followed by the spiralling sounds of bass, synthesisers and drums, heavily contrasted by the minimal, calm start of the tune.

Overall, this new track is not that different from their previous releases. On the other hand, it marks a certain breakthrough in manifesting more negative emotions through their music in a level of self-awareness that is rarely seen in even much older musicians. Listen below.

Boyish, that another writer of HighClouds described as “dark, breathy, gay shit” in a private conversation, is a duo formed by “two very confused” 22-year-old artists, India Shore and Claire Altendhal. Since their formation in 2016, they have already achieved to attract attention as their 2018’s debut album, Carnation, got nominated for an Independent Music Award, in the alt-country category.

Following up to their indie-rock elegy “Ghost“, they’re now back with another dreamy track titled “zodiac killer”. Besides the snippets of conversation, which encapsulate the anxiety and struggles they face in their daily life, the vulnerable song boasts on a hypnotic, captivating final build-up. When asked about the track, they commented: “‘zodiac killer’ is a song about growing up while everything is going wrong, big gay sadness, and realizing that people aren’t always who you thought they were.”

After finishing college, India Shore and Claire Altendhal felt the need to start over. Emerging from their former life in an alt-country project called “The Blue,” the 22-year-old pair have reunited under the name Boyish and composed an indie rock elegy to a fading relationship with their new single “Ghost.”

The track begins minimalistically, with just Claire’s reverberating guitar and India’s rich, haunting voice to begin their story. Slowly it builds, adding drums in time for the chorus: “And if I called you, would you say that i’m your girl? / Because I miss the way you used to rock my world.”

The track’s intensity builds as India lists her laments — lonely nights, playing the waiting game, being too broke to move to New York — adding a deep bassline, echo-y backup vocals, twangy guitar riffs, and shouting that nearly turns to howling. It reaches its peak at the 2:45 minute mark, a slow build that pays off completely.

When asked to describe their sound, Boyish noted that “that feeling of having growing pains one night, and waking up feeling taller and weirder the next day.” “Ghost” is the second single off their upcoming sophomore album, Garden Spider. Check it out at the link below.