There's this kid who comes into the shop every few weeks, always digging through the bedroom pop section, and last Tuesday he asked me if I'd ever heard of Leoniden. German indie band, he said, like I needed the geography lesson. I didn't tell him I'd been running to "Keep Fucking Up" for three months straight. The title track on this playlist—because obviously someone named a whole playlist after it—sits at the exact moment in a run where you either commit to the lie or admit you're not getting better at this.
The playlist description is two words: "Be better." Not "get better" or "feel better." Be. Present tense. Imperative. It's the kind of command that sounds motivational until you're three miles in and realize it's an accusation.
Charlie Otto kicks things off with "Downtown," all shimmery alternative r&b that feels like driving through Wicker Park at dusk when the light makes everything look like it used to matter more. Then Hembree's "Pain & Passion" shifts the register—power pop with actual guitars, the kind of song that reminds you bedroom pop used to require leaving the bedroom occasionally. Magic City Hippies shows up three times across fifteen tracks, which tells you something about either the curator's obsession or the fact that their whole catalog runs at exactly the BPM where your brain shuts up long enough to let your legs do something stupid.
The genre tags read like a record store clerk having a nervous breakdown: alternative r&b, bedroom pop, egg punk, German indie, noise rock, power pop. It shouldn't cohere. Egg punk—which is apparently what we're calling that scraped-raw post-punk revival thing now—sitting next to Bay Ledges' pristine indie pop should feel like a filing error. But around mile two, when Wet World's "Wassup" drops into Vicious Vicious's "Let the People Say What They Wanna Say," the genre chaos becomes the point. You're not running to one thing. You're running to the argument between the things.
Leoniden's "Keep Fucking Up" arrives at track seven, dead center, and it's sung in English by a German band on a label I had to Google, which led me down a rabbit hole about the Darmstadt indie scene that cost me twenty minutes I'll never get back. The song is three minutes of distorted guitars and a chorus that's either self-help or self-sabotage depending on whether you're accelerating or lying to yourself about your pace. It's the musical equivalent of that particular spring wind off the lake that's somehow both encouraging and punitive.
The back half gets weird. Chair Model's "Come On" is noise rock that sounds like it was recorded in a basement that failed inspection, then Bay Ledges shows up twice in a row—"Float" into "Reintroduction"—like someone needed to cool down before Channo's "Vertebrae" arrived to remind you that alternative r&b can still have edges. Dr Sure's Unusual Practice closes with "Keeps Ya Head Up," which would be inspirational if the production didn't sound like it was mastered on a four-track in someone's kitchen.
I've been trying to figure out what this playlist knows that I don't. It's not about BPM consistency—it's all over the place. It's not about genre purity—there isn't any. It's not even about getting faster or stronger or any of that bullshit we tell ourselves when we lace up. It's about the specific delusion required to keep moving when the evidence suggests you should stop. The playlist doesn't lie about what you're doing. It just plays the soundtrack to doing it anyway.
Magic City Hippies closes with "Queen," which is either a reward or a taunt, I haven't decided. Forty-four minutes, fifteen tracks, and I still don't know if I'm better. But I know I'm still running to it, which is either progress or just proof that I'm the kind of person who needs a German indie band to tell me it's okay to keep fucking up.
