How is it only June? We’re only six months into the year, but the body of music that’s passed through the webpages of Impose has been wide-ranging and widely inspiring: life-affirming political punk, heart-wrenching indie pop, mind-expanding electronic future folk. There have been intricate indie-rock records looking for humor in monotony, masterful punk records made in the confines of Olympia, feminist interrogations of the everyday. “Know your history, know your context,” Downtown Boys told us in May, and its something we’ve tried to keep in mind more intentionally while processing the sounds and messages around us.
As we reflected on the year so far, we decided to prioritize the music itself rather than arbitrary formats, and ultimately put fewer limits on what could qualify for this particular list: albums, EPs, cassettes, Bandcamp releases, 7-inches, and one-off singles were all fair game. In the most basic form, this is simply a no-filler top 50 list of the most exciting music our contributors have heard so far in 2015.
