Yes, yes, yes. It's finally here, the end of the year. Nobody fear. I will steer this video in the direction of my Top 15 EPs of 2024.

Yeah, it's List Week, and I'm Anthony Fantano, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time to go over the best and worst of everything musically 2024 had to offer. And per usual, we are going to kick things off with those little records that are not so small, they're singles, nor are they so big, their albums. They fit somewhere in the middle, extended plays. There are many that drop every year, and in my opinion, these 15 were the best that I heard.

Let's start at number 15. That is going to be the Komputer EP from Franek Warzywa & Młody Budda.

I always struggled to pronounce their stuff and their names. But if you've been following this channel, you know these guys are my favorite internet Polish bedroom freak pop weirdos. And with the chaotic classic, funny, and very cheeky set of songs on this new EP, they continue that streak because, yeah, even though the tracks on this record are quite catchy and colorfully produced at points, they're also so chaotic and erotic and wildly produced that they almost shoot themselves in the foot with just their outright absurdity. But if you're looking for something that is going to be a bit of an ear worm in your head and also maybe tickle your funny bone a bit with just how outlandish it is. The Komputer EP is where you want to go.

Next at number 14, that is going to be the "home" single from foxtails.

This CT-based group are back with a handful of tracks to follow up their 2022 album that I enjoyed quite a bit. They are essentially giving us another helping on this one of their very raw basement show screamosound with a great mix of heavier bits, more a lot of clean passages, as well as violin just humming away in the background of a lot of these tracks, too. The band's sound and songwriting style continues to be beautiful, dynamic, but also very raw and quite intentionally ugly in all of the right ways, too. The three tracks we have on this project are handily some of the best stuff I've heard in the screamo field over the past year.

At number 13, that is going to be Chelsea Wolfe's Unbound EP.

If you are familiar with Chelsea Wolfe as a singer, as a songwriter, most likely you have heard her amazing and fantastic She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She record that dropped earlier this year. For sure, that album is resonating with you if you are at all a fan of Gothic rock or industrial rock or trip hop, anything that is thick and basey and synthy, maybe slightly shoegazey at points, too. But the interesting thing about this album is that it's most definitely one of Chelsea's thickest and most synthetic projects yet. Just a super heavy, heavy, dense, just methodically-produced sound throughout this album. And while the record is great and certainly going to rank very high on my year-end list, there is a certain, I think, intimacy that is lost in the process of delivering these tracks specifically like this for this record. The Unbound EP essentially fixes that problem, if in fact it even is a problem, by essentially taking several key tracks from the record and stripping them back into much more acoustic versions. So you actually do get a very intense and upfront performance of the tracks from the record, along with a pretty cool spirit box cover as well that goes over quite nicely. But yes, the songs on this record are beautiful. They are haunting unquestionably, and it's just great that Chelsea has allowed for them to be consumed in a slightly different light given just the success and very specific direction that her recent album went in.

At number 12, that is going to be The Garden with Six Desperate Ballads.

One of the weirdest and most chaotic duos out there in underground music, proves to us with six more songs that, yes, they are pretty much unparalleled when it comes to very odd, weird, jerky, chaotic punk-adjacent music. Because that's the thing – I feel like a lot of the time, The Garden makes punk without overtly embracing the genre in a way, much in the way that bands like Devo did back in the day. But I think the garden comes to very different conclusions in terms of ethos and overall vibe. The sound on this record is much more scuzzy and odd. And this project essentially just shows us how creative they continue to be, whether they are giving us a rock ranger, more synthy or dancy cut, or even a ballad on this thing. But yes, thrilling and also very difficult to pigeonhole and define are probably two of the most defining characteristics of the garden and their sound that continues to be the case on this EP, which is why it's ranked at number 12.

At 11, shout out to Intercourse for their record, Egyptian Democracy.

On this EP, these guys operate with a pretty cool combination of noise rock and hardcore, as well as maybe a little bit of sludge and post-hardcore, too. The riffs are chaotic, the vocals are unhinged, and just kind of mutant at points. If you're into bands like Chat Pile, I think you will get a lot out of what Intercourse offers here. But this band, by comparison, isn't so much as heavy as much as they are just about speed and just like cutthroat aggression. The guitars are raw as hell. The drummer is a total powerhouse, and the songs are just absolutely relentless in terms of their energy. If you're looking for something on the louder side and the more chaotic side, this intercourse record is what you are going to want to spend for sure.

Moving into the number 10 spot. That is going to be the Corpus II EP II from Show Me The Body.

This East Coast-based project for a while now has continued this little Corpus project series where they engage in a series of neat and surprising crossovers collaborations with a very wide array of artists. They put together two EPs under the Corpus II name this year and put them together as a mixtape. Specifically for this list, I wanted to highlight the second of these two EPs, which features a lot of great collaborations across the project from not only B L A C K I E, but also Spelling, surprisingly. Very few bands out there are bringing a sound as brittle and as noisy and as chaotic and as cathartic as Show Me The Body is, the bangers and ragers on this record are certainly reflective of those intense highs. But also what's surprising about this EP is just how subtle and beautiful some of the low-key moments managed to be. Very good EP all around. Show Me The Body continues to be one of the most creative and surprising groups in the underground.

We also have an EP at number nine that surprised me this year from none other than Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver Sable, EP.

Justin, in a very focused manner on this project, just goes back into acoustic, singer-songwriter territory with three absolutely gorgeous and compelling ballads with some of his most heart-wrenching and moving melodies and refrains in a very, very, very long time. It's just cool to hear Justin going back in this direction because I feel like he's been sidestepping it for a long time, maybe because this is exactly the thing that fans expect from him, given just how he broke into the indie market musically. But now that he's back at this indie folk thing, as it were, with this EP, he sounds amazing. He sounds fantastic. The guitar work is great. The vocals are killer. The lyrics stay stuck in my head, even though the production overall is very warm and low-key and subtle. But yes, I'm hoping that this EP is pointing in the direction of more material like this down the road in 2025, potentially. But yeah, Bon Iver, Sable, number nine.

At eight, we are going to give it to Agriculture with the Egyptian Democracy EP.

It's cool at this point to hear the down the road progression of underground black metal bands on the American side who are clearly taking nods from groups that made waves throughout the 2010s, be they Deafheaven, be they Liturgy, whatever. But yes, on this EP, we also have very powerful, very epic, melodic, fluid, and furious black metal performances, most notably on the title track, which is, I think, the best track the band has written and recorded to date. That has contrasted really well with a low-key ballad, another fire metal track, and a poem on the back end of the project, too. It's just a fantastic listen all around. I think some of the best material I've heard in this lane in a minute, and I hope that at leads to more stuff that is of this grade on future Agriculture projects.

At number seven, a shout out to Badbadnotgood with Baby Rose on this Slow Burn EP.

Badbadnotgood, the famed jazz fusion multi-genre Canadian band has been quite active as of late, mostly with this mid-spiral EP series that culminated into an entire album earlier this year. But what stuck with me most release-wise from them was this little side quest EP they dropped, straight-up, which sees them heading into a straight-up soul direction. Baby Rose was the perfect addition to do a project exactly like this, not only because she is a great singer, but also because she just has this uniquely weary voice, and together they're able to plug into this beautiful vintage sound with great playing and songwriting all around. Yeah, not only is this EP beautiful, but it's eerily beautiful. Yes, that is going to be my number seven.

At number six, we have an interesting surprise. That is going to be the pop or P.O.P. EP from Marina Satti, who is an up and coming pop artist from Greece, of all places.

The vocals and production and autotune on this new project is wild. It is chaotic. It is over the top. It reminds me of very raw, danceable, bombastic underground pop that was super fire back in the 2000s, the likes of MIA, stuff like that, but a totally different series of influences. Marina is definitely on her own trajectory here, but I would say that what she is bringing us is a very bold and chaotic brand of international pop that gives us some great ballads, some very bold ragers, as well as a 10-minute multifaceted posse cut that is actually quite killer, too. Yeah, just when you think you have this project figured out, it hits you with something else that's weird. But simultaneously, the tunes and the production and everything on this record, it's just so bright, it's just so catchy. It's the perfect mix of left field but also accessible. Hopefully we get some more pop from Marina in the near future.

Number five, I'm going to shout out Amaarae with her roses are red, tears are blue — A Fountain Baby Extended Play project.

Fountain Baby, you guys might remember, was one of my favorite albums of last year. With this project, she has essentially given us a deluxe edition of the album, but I guess she's also categorized the additional disk of tracks she has thrown into the mix as its own EP. And look, on this new series of songs, Amaarae essentially continues to show us why she is the most futuristic cutting-edge artist out there right now when it comes to a lot of these Afrobeats tracks that are going crazy as of late. Because while she holds to many of those same rhythms and grooves, that much is true. The production she tends to favor is very spacy, is very synthy, is, again, quite futuristic, very forward-thinking. Also, she just continues to smash track after track after track with her completely unique, one-of-a-kind voice that is very angelic and thin and high-pitched, but also nimble in terms of her delivery. She just darts from note to note to note to note. The flows and rhythmic pockets she hits on these tracks are insane, I presume on some level, these tracks are either Fountain Baby extras or afterthoughts. It's just great to hear that through this album cycle, she still has so much more heat to share here, which makes me even more excited to see what she's going to do down the road on her next project.

Next, at number 4, I want to shout out Haru Nemuri, as well as Frost Children for their Soul Kiss EP.

I've said this before, I will I'll say it again: This is, for me, one of the most unexpected crossovers ever of all time. How ever would Frost Children, this electro clash, pop rock, underground, Western music duo, end up crossing paths with this amazing genre-defying like shoegaze and noise pop and math rock Japanese artist? But hey, it somehow happened and it actually ends up being the best of both worlds when it comes to their respective sounds. Like, not only do they provide enough space for one another to do their thing on this project, but again, the rockier elements and the more electro-clash elements that land on this project, too, they marry very well into some very chaotic, explosive, and ultra-catchy songs, really some of the best material either artist has to their name to date. Yeah, really the only issue with this project that I have is that there just wasn't more to come out of their collaborative efforts together.

At number three, we are going to go with Ugly, with their Twice Around the Sun project.

Not only is this EP great, but it's actually like one of those EPs that feels almost thick and dense and substantial enough to actually be an album. If you added one or two more tracks, we're pretty much talking album territory here. If you have at all been following the UK rock scene at this point, you know there's been a lot of really cool post-punk and art rock and art punk groups that have been really coming up from there as of late. Ugly is most definitely one of those bands, too. However, their sound is much folkier in terms of its instrumental palate and its inspo on the songwriting side as well. Some of the pluckier timbres of instrumentation on this record feel a little akin to bluegrass at points, too. But don't let that make you think that the band isn't onto something that is forward-thinking and progressive here. They most certainly are, as on this record, they deliver one epic winding song after the next, some more narrative-based than others, with killer performances, great vocal harmonies. Again, it's a killer project that essentially just has me sitting here just dying for more when it to UK bands, UK artists, Ugly is one of the few that I am truly excited for the future of right now.

At number two, I am going to put Alice Longyu Gao's Assembling Symbols Into My Own Poetry.

Alice is a producer, a singer, a songwriter who has also really been playing the long build-up game with one single or one EP release after the next. Let's Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire was their last EP that dropped in 2023, and that was my EP of the year. This new one over here is also obviously landing pretty high on this list. I think Alice once again smashed it with eight ultra cheeky and creative tracks that see them embracing more of an art pop and electropop direction. Not quite as quirky or over the top or as abrasive or jarring as many of the productions from the last EP, but still you get numerous focused multifaceted did creative highlights such as the very personal "Little Piggy" or "Bird Without Nest" featuring Danny Brown, which feels like elements of art rap and Björk coming together. You have insane bangers like "Lesbians" as well as "Korean Girls", quirky ballads like "Clingy" and "Yapper". But yes, with this project, Alice continues to be one of the most unique artists out there today, in my opinion, and I'm just still excited for when they eventually decide to go into full album mode, given just how great these past two EPs have been.

Then that leaves me with my number one spot. That would be Connla’s Well from Maruja.

This Manchester-based group is really absolutely blowing me away with their material as of late. They are putting together some absolutely fiery, fiery, fiery recordings and performances when it comes to jazz rock, when it comes to art rock and art punk. Again, like with what I was just saying with the band Ugly, there seems to be something in the water over there at the moment across the pond in terms of just a lot of groups cropping up that are giving us these exciting, thrilling linear rock songs that are embracing a lot of post-rock type builds, a lot of spoken word vocals, but are coming to some very punky and intense and chaotic conclusions in terms of the performances and again, just overall intensity of the sound that they're bringing to the table. And Maruja is really the most standout up-and-coming band when it comes to this new wave at the moment. This project is also an EP that just feels so heavy and substantive and replayable that it's hitting with an album level of gratification, even though it is just a handful of new tracks.

But yeah, that is my number one EP of the year. Hopefully, you guys got some good recommendations out of this. Let me know what your favorite EPs of the year were in the comments down below. I know you will. Yeah, that's pretty much everything that I want to say. Thank you for reading. More lists to come.

Anthony Fantano. 2024. EPs of the Year. Best of. Forever.