This past year was one full of pleasurable tunes, finding new music and rediscovering the old. No matter what year, month, or time of day it’s possible to find music and that suits you and makes you feel something. If you think that it’s impossible to find good music anymore, then it will be. But if you look hard enough, it’s always there. Something is always being created, waiting to be appreciated. In this issue I’ll be sharing with you some of my favorite artists that aren’t too different from any one of us and are probably making music in some studio apartment miles from here in this very moment or playing small intimate shows within the area very regularly.

To start off, Girlpool is a folk-punk girl band based in Los Angeles. Their fan base is extremely small, which means they are not strangers to their fans, and make their own merchandise and have intimate shows. They are a straightforward, socially conscious, unapologetically feminine and childlike girl band that you might see on some 90’s live TV show, with pink electric guitars and a drum set with their classic strawberry logo on the front. The two singers have extremely unique, clear harmonies with each song into which their emotions are shared and their lyrics have never been easier to sing along to. On their album Before the World Was Big, they sing about real life friends and lovers, insecurities, and childhood memories. A few songs off the album worth checking out are, “Before the World was Big,” “Dear Nora,” and “Jane.”

Frankie Cosmos is another young, cute female singer/songwriter with a light heart and fearless honesty. She started doing music from a very young age, playing drums and guitar with original poems that didn’t rhyme and adding a strum of a guitar, which became her style. Her sound feels so effortless and sweet, and her voice is similar to that of Kimya Dawson, who sang most of the Juno soundtrack. Frankie Cosmos is extremely soft-spoken and a lot of her lyrics are simple, but felt and endearing. It’s hard to narrow down my favorite one-liners from various songs of hers, but here they are: “I feel 17, saying stuff that I don’t mean,” “I like you so how come you don’t like me,” and “you’ve got nice eyes, they’re very blue, and that is why I look at you,” all of which can be found on her album Donutes. You can name your own price and buy Donutes on bandcamp for as much or as little as you want, but keep in mind all the starving musicians out there who could use a penny or two.

Kevin Sullivan is an indie-folk singer/songwriter living in San Francisco; he has a solo career as Field Medic and is in another band called Rin Tin Tiger. Out of all the musicians I’ve mentioned, he is definitely the least known, and has played at Aubergine a few times in our own small town. From my sophomore to junior year I attended a few small acoustic house shows in San Francisco, at a small apartment on Geary St. where Kevin Sullivan would perform regularly. Out of everyone who would play, he always had the warmest stage presence, he never missed a string, and had the most poetic, chilling lyrics. These house shows usually had a maximum of 10 to 15 people, and he’d leave every single person silent. My favorite songs of his are “Full Grown,” and “M.M.G.A.T.M” from his album, me, my gibberish and the moon.