#113: The 4th annual BNB Thanks List
2025, in review.
It’s Blackout Wednesday, so it’s time the BNB Thanks List, our annual year in review. If you’re with family and feeling antsy, please enjoy an estimated six minutes to stare at your phone and avoid their questions about your life choices.
Let’s take a look back at 2025 and give thanks for everything we learned this year.
1.
Among the bands that formed in 2005, Cute is What We Aim For not only had an irritating name and infuriating hair…
…but frontman Shaant Hacikyan (above) also had some hot takes on rape and racism best left to the back lounge of a tour bus. He wisely stopped posting on social media years ago, but more digging for this issue found him on a Buffalo hair salon’s Instagram. Turns out his partner runs the place, and they have an adorable family. Hacikyan has finally attained the cuteness he aimed for, but it’s kinda funny he ended up with a hairstylist.
2.
Liver failure broke up BNB faves Beercan Pentagram. I was immediately taken by this Wisconsin thrash band when I wrote about them in 2022, but it seemed like they were no longer active. For our 100th issue midtacular, I reached out and learned Beercan Pentagram ended because vocalist Howard had to stop performing after his liver failed. He’s okay now, but if nothing else, it was a fitting end for a band that posted this image on their Facebook.
3.
The first rule of Band Name Bureau is don’t change your name, which Lana Del Rabies learned the hard way. When she announced plans to change her name a few years back, there was such an outcry among fans that she ended up keeping it.
That’s as far as she goes when it comes to pleasing anyone, though. She recently released Omnipotent Fuck, and while you can stream it on various platforms, Lana declares, “This is not a record. It’s not an EP. It definitely is the most deranged thing I’ve made so far.” The bio describes it as “a raw, four-take, stream-of-consciousness recording” that “grapples with romantic possession by a demonic force, embodying a fevered confrontation between desire and surrender to death.”
In other words, it’s the perfect soundtrack for your holiday gathering. May I suggest “Consensual Pain”?
4.
Report Suspicious Activity, one of the many projects the inimitable J. Robbins has played in over the decades, cohered during George W. Bush’s post-9/11 reign of crapitude. As a joke, Report Suspicious Activity made shirts that said “Why not invade Canada?” Ha ha ha! Wouldn’t it be funny if an American president threatened to invade our friendly northern neighbors? Such a thing is preposterous, and therefore hilarious to contemplate!
5.
When your most popular song is called “I Fucked Yr Mom”—25 million streams and counting—it’s probably best that your band is called Sorry Mom. Even if you identify as “the world’s premiere DIY queer punk band,” mom had such high hopes for you. Why can’t you make nice music for nice people?
6.
I would guess most of the artists Band Name Bureau celebrates don’t care about that, especially ones with swears in their name. As Vish Khanna of the Kreative Kontrol podcast put it back in July:
I do think that the bands who put curses in their name probably don’t care about the stuff we’re talking about. If you give yourself a name that is going to niche yourself, then you’re probably in a way not as concerned. If that’s your name from day one, you’re probably like, “Well, we’re going to have limited resonance in the mainstream. Our name has curses in it.”
7.
Or you could go the opposite direction and name yourself after a person who’s been a media fixture for decades, like Ira Glass. The band Ira Glass also hails from Chicago, the birthplace of Glass’ celebrated NPR show This American Life. While that is where the similarities end, let’s see if we can turn song titles from the new Joy is a No Knocking Nation into This American Life episode acts!
Today’s show is in five acts. Act one, “It’s a Whole ‘Who Shot John’ Story,” in which a legendary wanderer says goodbye to the powers that once ruled him. Act two, “FD&C Red 40,” in which a man surveys a world full of poseurs and realizes he is one of them. Act three, “New Guy (Big Softie),” in which numbers insist on order, nostalgia insists on kindness, and one bold ZIP code ruins the fantasy. Act four, “Fritz All Over You,” in which everything polished collapses and a hairpin escape becomes the plan. Act five, “That’s It/That? That’s All You Can Say?,” in which he calls her “precious,” she calls him out, and the streets call the shots.
Hit me up, TAL.
8.
Also based on a celebrity, but tweaked slightly is Winona Fighter. If you don’t like that name, just be glad some of the others didn’t make it, as vocalist/drummer Coco Kinnon shares in this clip from the BNB TikTok, now semi-regularly updated!
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How semi-regularly updated? Why, I even posted Wave Chapelle talking about the time he met Dave Chappelle!
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And Sonia Sturino of Weakened Friends talking about her unlikely friendship with Buckethead! DO I PLEASE YOU NOW, ALGORITHM? SHINE YOUR FAVOR UPON ME!
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9.
In September, Band Name Bureau became your source for weird facts about moths vis-à-vis the Most Beautiful Moth in America. Founder Maggie Rosenberg explained the name came from a video about the luna moth, the species most often given the title of most beautiful in America. My research turned up this incredible fact: Adult luna moths don’t have mouths and live for only a week. They don’t need mouths, you see, because they spend the whole time continually having sex. Look to the luna moth, everyone. Look to the luna moth.
10.
No self-serving year in review would be complete without some masturbatory self-congratulation. I was interviewed by the great Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot for Sound Opinions back in June. You probably know that already, because it’s the reason a bunch of you are here.
However, you may not know that nearly every artist featured in Band Name Bureau appears on the official BNB Spotify playlist. It’s currently 344 songs and 21.5 hours long, a true gauntlet for anyone up to the task.
Much more svelte is the BNB Recs playlist, which highlights bands I think are worth an extra listen. It’s only 53 songs and three hours long, a comparative sprint!
Here are the songs I added this year:
Ira Glass, “It’s a Whole ‘Who Shot John’ Story” (#105) This is abrasive chaos from a band that could have a lot in store for it, or collapse before hitting its stride. Each seems as likely as the other.
They are Gutting a Body of Water, “The Chase” (#109) Speaking of collapsing or triumphing, this Philly shoegaze outfit continually teeters between the two. Why? The lyrics spell it out.
So Totally, “Distinct Star” (#108) Sure, I made sport of this shoegaze band’s interminable bio, but I also said they were good. “Distinct Star” is catchier and more polished than TAGABOW, but there’s room for both of them on this list.
Weakened Friends, “Not for Nothing” (#112 and #11) The recent Feels Like Hell is probably my album of the year—it certainly has the coolest vinyl—and this is my favorite song. No one sings like Sonia Sturino, and they know their way around hooky, ’90s-indebted guitar-rock.
Wave Chapelle, “Soul Food & Hennessy” (#111 and #102) When Dave Chappelle demanded his namesake rap for him on the spot, this is what he heard. I get why Dave was into it.
Discoveries of the American Scientific, “Last Planet” (#109): Relistening to this, I wonder why I haven’t had it on a loop. Synth-laden, propulsive rock that sounds massive. Restarting now.
Hey Nothing, “Death Song” (#108): As a doting parent who hyperventilates when he imagines anything happening to his kid, I shouldn’t be able to handle the fantastically awful loss at the center of this song. But I still kind of love it?
Fcukers, “Bon Bon” (#102): This duo exists in a bubble of cool none of us will ever experience, and their breakthrough song sounds the music played at a hip club that won’t let you inside. Just don’t get too big a head, Fcukers. One of you used to be a band called Spud Cannon.
POST-SCRIPTS
The annual traditions continue next month, with BNB’s Midnight Mass, our yearly look at questionable holiday music. Ugh, I just realized how much AI slop I’m gonna have to wade through.