Best of Denver local music 2025
By Duane Davis, Supreme Arbiter of Taste
If you want to understand Denver in 2025, don’t bother looking at real estate prices or whatever fresh civic disaster is unfolding up and down Colfax. Listen to the bands. This city is a pressure cooker disguised as a postcard, and the music proves it: wild beats and noises bouncing around in cracked skateparks, punk sermons ringing out in abandoned warehouses, tender songs whispered in condos built where venues used to stand. You can hear the contradictions humming like power lines — altitude-induced delusion, DIY desperation, and the kind of communal stubbornness that keeps scenes alive long after the chamber of commerce has given up.
We’ve got hardcore bands rewriting the rules of care and rage in the same breath. We’ve got doom-lords summoning weather systems from their amps; indie kids weaving heartbreak into neon circuitry, noise weirdos setting fire to the manual, and singer-songwriters documenting the emotional topography from Colfax to the foothills with more honesty than any planner’s map. It’s a city speaking in many tongues, all of them slightly unhinged and absolutely committed.
*****
1. Pink Lady Monster – “Ponk”
A post-everything carnival of atonal glee and joyous misbehavior. It feels like a free-jazz séance held inside a collapsing puppet theater — deranged, inspired, impossible to categorize.
2. Supreme Joy – “410,757,864,530 Dead Carps”
A mad-science pop experiment where post-punk, ambience, and garage sparks fly out of the mixing board. It sounds like the band joyriding through genres with no intention of returning the keys.
3. Cherry Spit – “Plaything (Tape Mix)”
A demolition derby of noise rock, mathy chaos, and tape-warp delirium. The band plays like they’ve read the instruction manual for reality and decided to annotate it with knives and claw-hammers.
4. Flutter – “When You Love Somebody”
Sweet, jangly power-pop that opens the door, hands you a lemonade, and then slaps you with a killer hook. It’s sunshine with emotional whiplash — the best kind.
5. Dead Pioneers – “PO$T AMERICAN”
A scorched-earth punk broadside aimed straight at the myth of the “good old USA,” delivered with the conviction of a band trying to exorcise a ghost that refuses to leave the house. The record rips like a manifesto stapled to a molotov cocktail — furious, funny, sharply observed, and vibrating with the sense that collapse is not a warning but a lifestyle. It’s political punk for people who’ve already given up on salvation and are here for the audit.
6. Totem Pocket – “Chump”
Fuzz-blasted dream-pop that lumbers, glimmers, and detonates in equal measure. Imagine My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr. arguing over the aux cord on I-25.
7. calm – “Pushing the Portals”
Denver hip-hop as philosophical science fiction, a wormhole of narratives folded inside riddles folded inside toaster portals. It’s the sound of two emcees cracking open the multiverse just to see if the beat echoes in parallel dimensions.
8. Team Nonexistent – “idontneedyoupleasedontcall”
Yeah, it’s only a single — so sue me. This punches way above its weight, hitting you with an LP’s worth of aggro: surly riffs, zero patience, and the kind of sneer that sounds like it was sharpened on unpaid bills and unanswered texts. Perfect for hanging up mid-ring.
9. White Rose Motor Oil – “Merry Crisis”
A holiday record spiked with expensive whiskey and wrapped in barbed wire. It’s festive chaos: the sound of decking the halls with whatever didn’t break in the last chorus.
10. Cheap Perfume – “Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask.”
Feminist punk that kicks in the door, steals your megaphone, and uses it better than you ever did. It’s furious, hilarious, and righteous enough to melt the paint off the club walls — the soundtrack to every group chat where someone finally snaps.
11. DOGTAGS – “ROSEWORLD”
A velvety swirl of queer soul, jazz, and soft-lit longing, like a house party at the end of the universe where everyone’s confessing secrets on the roof. Gorgeous, slippery, and emotionally booby-trapped.
12. In the Company of Serpents – “A Crack in Everything”
Denver doom at its most volcanic: riffs that move like tectonic plates and vocals that sound like a sermon shouted into the void. This isn’t music; it’s geological trauma.
13. V/A – “Notes from the Underground Vol. 2: Denver”
A love letter to Denver’s scene disguised as a mixtape of misfits. Eclectic, sprawling, and buzzing with possibility — like running into everyone you know at three different shows in one night.
Honorable mention: Another local baker’s dozen
1. Dollpile – “Someone Else’s Heaven”
Lo-fi folk drifting on a weird gravitational tilt, like lullabies written for people who never sleep. The record sways, sighs, and smolders — fragile on the surface, quietly volatile underneath.
2. Old Deer – “Someone in the House”
A rattling, feverish slice of math-sludge paranoia, like you just discovered your walls whisper back. Heavy, unhinged, and beautifully unpleasant — the perfect soundtrack for a house you should definitely move out of.
3. Gasoline Lollipops – “Kill the Architect”
Gothic Americana with a crooked grin, like Springsteen got possessed by swamp ghosts. These songs swagger, brood, and stalk the room in heavy boots.
4. ratstallion – “Sisyphus Happy”
Grunge-gaze haze pushing its boulder uphill with stubborn determination and immaculate pedalwork. The whole album feels like a beautiful struggle rendered in smeared pastel distortion.
5. Cop Killer – “S/T”
A hardcore broadside that hits like a concussion grenade tossed into a basement show. These tracks are short enough to bruise you fast and loud enough to bruise you twice.
6. Broken Record – “Routine”
Anthemic emo-rock built for pacing a dimly lit apartment at 2 a.m., muttering about missed chances and broken alarms. The band turns daily burnout into something loud enough to wake the neighbors and heartfelt enough that they won’t complain.
7. Destiny Bond – “The Love”
Hardcore so earnest it might punch you in the chest just to help your heart start beating again. It’s a beautifully feral tangle of survival, connection, and sheer volume — radical care with its teeth bared.
8. The Teflon Dons – “Final Fall”
Rowdy, ragged rock that storms into the room like it’s already late for its own bar fight. A tribute, a shout, a punch — take your pick.
9. Origami Summer – “Late Night Infomercial”
Dreamy electro-pop filtered through insomnia and late-night TV static. The record glows like a malfunctioning neon sign promising happiness for three easy payments.
10. Palehorse/Palerider – “Waves I”
Doomgaze drifting across the plains like a weather system with trust issues. Slow, heavy, gorgeous — the musical equivalent of staring at storm clouds until they start staring back.
11. Blackberry Crush – “My Own Backyard”
A bittersweet indie fever dream that sounds like someone spilled nostalgia all over a perfectly good guitar pedalboard. Every track drips with that “back home feels weird now” energy, like coming back to your old neighborhood and realizing the ghosts are the only ones who remember you fondly.
12. Float Like a Buffalo – “Float Like a Buffalo Live with the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra”
A maximalist carnival of funk-rock theatrics smashed headlong into a full symphony like someone dared them to get excessive. It’s triumphant, chaotic, and so much fun it should require a permit.
13. Duncan Coker – “Roadside Attractions”
Americana from the long, weird highways: motel neon buzzing, truck stops humming, stories hitchhiking from bar to bar. You can practically hear the gravel kicking up behind the songs.
That’s it for this year.
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