Most of us don't have time to sift through the endless amount of content on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube and Soundcloud...but luckily, we don't have to.
On WNPR's Where We Live, Anthony Fantano from The Needle Drop shared some of his favorite music of 2014.
You can vote for your favorite of Fantano's selections at the bottom of this page.
Here are a few of his top picks and what he had to say about each one:
BADBADNOTGOOD: "There's this huge grand flourish of horns and pianos which is something a little different for them because they've never quite written songs that instrumentally feel so layered and heavy and orchestrated," said Fantano.
Timber Timbre: "This is their most instrumentally ambitious album yet and stylistically, they're continuing down that road where they're taking old styles of pop and vocal pop and approaching it in a very creepy, David Lynch-ian way," said Fantano.
Ibibio Sounds Machine: "It's one of the best grooves I've heard this year," Fantano said.
Liars: "This is one of my favorite singles of the year," said Fantano. "This is one of those things on paper that most rock fans fear: one of their favorite rock bands going electronic."
Sun Kil Moon: "He not only talks about Newtown and the tragedy that happened there and how it made him feel but also what he thinks about other shootings that have been in the media," Fantano said about the song Pray for Newtown. "One in particular that he mentions toward the beginning of the song happened to him when he was younger, closer to his hometown."
tUnE-yArDs: "It's one of the boldest, kookiest, pop records that I've heard this year."
Carla Bozulich: "She's very, very seasoned," said Fantano, "and this new record of hers is one of the darkest, wooziest singer-songwriter records I've heard in a long time. She just has such a gravely, smoky voice and just the way the instrumentation comes together so loosely but yet so fluidly just gives this record a unique feel."
Political Animals: "They pull off really great performances," said Fantano. "To talk about this band being the other part of the equation of the equation of waking up the Connecticut music scene."
Swans: "With each song, starting with either a simple beat or riff - no matter how loud it is - and incrementally over a very slow period and very long period of time growing into something completely massive and hulking and impossible to wrap my head around."
