Q-Music: Pride 2025 Playlist #1

Depending on your geographical location, Pride Month is already in full swing. Thankfully, there is plenty of great music by LGBTQ artists to provide a soundtrack for the season.

In 2016, when Tim Kaine was Hilary Clinton’s running mate, he revealed in a New York Times opinion piece that queer singer/songwriter and fellow Virginian Lucy Dacus was one of his favorite artists, just a few months after her debut album was released. Since then, Kaine has faded from memory, while Dacus has become ubiquitous in the best possible ways. She released “Historian” in 2018 and “Home Video” in 2021, both of which were well-received. Perhaps most significantly, she teamed up with queer singer/songwriter Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker to form Boygenius, releasing a debut EP in 2018, followed by a 2023 full-length album which earned the trio three Grammy Awards. Right from the start, “Forever Is a Feeling” (Geffen), Dacus’ new LP (available on clear vinyl) feels different, beginning with the instrumental “Calliope prelude.” There is a lushness to “Big Deal,” the sexy “Ankles” and “Best Guess” that come across like a warm embrace. “Limerence,” with its piano flourishes and cabaret-style vocals, is as dramatic as it is daring. “Come Out” is Dacus’ most Aimee Mann-esque tune and the very definition of a highlight. And when Dacus switches sonic course, as she does on “Talk,” “Modigliani” and “Most Wanted Man,” she reinforces the reasons we were drawn to her in the first place.

Currently enjoying heavy rotation on Sirius XMU, the song “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation,” a musical response to a panic attack, is from “You Are The Morning” (Saddest Factory), the debut album by British band jasmine.4.t. Produced by Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus (fka the aforementioned Boygenius), and led by trans vocalist Jasmine Cruickshank, the album feels like watching the sun rise over the horizon. Radiant songs such as the title track, “Skin On Skin,” “Breaking In Reverse,” “Roan,” “Highfield,” “Kitchen” and “Best Friend’s House” illuminate an artist who might just be the most important trans voice in music since Anohni or Laura Jane Grace.

Three must be Bob Mould’s lucky number. Via trios such as Hüsker Dü and Sugar, Mould built an enviable and devoted following, made even more so because he is an out gay musician. While he began releasing albums under his own name in 1989, since 2012’s “Silver Age,” he’s been recording and performing as a trio along with Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster. Mould has said of his new album “Here We Go Crazy” (Granary Music/BMG), his first since 2020’s “Blue Hearts,” that it consists of “a number of contrasting themes. Control and chaos, hypervigilance and helplessness, uncertainty and unconditional love.” This is something that comes through loud and clear on “Your Side,” “Sharp Little Pieces” and “You Need To Shine,” giving the album the feel of a statement on the current state of the world. For example, in “Sharp Little Pieces,” Mould sings, “Are you headed to the demonstration? Eyes are open wide. Be the martyr of a generation, I tried.” The song “Neanderthal” is one of his sexiest, with its references to “sweat and cum,” “leash and collar” and “paint.” Known for his blazing electric guitar work, Mould tones things down on the acoustic “Lost or Stolen” and a little more than half of “Your Side.”

The brilliant Sharon Van Etten has a history of working with queer artists including Hercules and Love Affair and Xiu Xiu. So, it’s not all that surprising that on her new eponymous album, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, she would feature trans musician Devra Hoff in her band. Whether intentional or not, album opener “Live Forever,” with its question, “Who wants to live forever?”, is sure to bring Queen and Freddie Mercury to mind. Van Etten and company shift gears on the synth beat and keyboard-driven “I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way),” “Afterlife” and “Idiot Box.” “Indio,” the album’s shortest song, rocks the hardest, while album closers “Fading Beauty” and “I Want You Here,” each clocking in at more than six minutes apiece, take the whole affair in another direction.