We made it through the year! It’s hard to believe that nearly every year, but this particular one was a real test. To celebrate making it this far, and to give you a taste of what Team COYOTE is really like, we’re putting together a package full of favorites: songs, dishes, feuds, and more.

Below are the songs that kept us going this year — new and old. Some of these were released this year. Some are old enough to have grand-kids. But when we needed something special this year, these are the tracks we kept returning to.

Note: What the hell do people use to share playlists these days? At COYOTE, we simply refuse to use Spotify. YouTube is owned by fucking Google . Every socialist on Bluesky claims to be using Quobuz but I don’t think they actually are because none of them can answer questions about how it actually works. Are people burning CD’s? Making cassettes? God I hope so. Anyway, we picked Apple, which is also bad (see: using conflict minerals and doing union busting) because we can no longer have nice, simple things like playlists. Yell at us about it in the comments about what we should have used instead.

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“Be Nice ‘Cause” by Backhand

I’m a sucker for punk songs that are about the most punk thing: actually giving a shit and doing the right thing. This song is cheesy as hell (there is literally a lyric about how you should buy your mom flowers) and thus I can always count on it to cheer me up when I need to bounce around the house and be both angry and hopeful at the same time. — Reo

“Break Me Down” by Yukimi Nagano

I first heard this song performed live almost exactly a year ago at the New Parish in Oakland. I’ve been a longtime fan of the Swedish soul/electronica band Little Dragon, but something about seeing the group’s lead singer, Yukimi Nagano, step out solo for the first time — arms lifted, ethereal voice cutting through the room — put me in a trance-like state. "Nothing’s gonna break me down/Nothing’s gonna shake, no one’s gonna break me." In a year when so many of us are digging deep to find community and our own voices while living in an increasingly authoritarian country, this song landed like a quiet act of defiance – endurance is political. And, it’s personal: “Break Me Down” arrived right on time for all the different kinds of tender moments that found me in 2025. — Cecilia

“Credits Theme (feat. Silvia Morelli & Louise Dodds)” by Alessandro Coronas

If I am being honest with you all, the song I listened to most is this track from a video game called Mutazione. I’m not a gamer, and in fact Mutazione is less a game and more an interactive soap opera story about people living in a mutated swamp who are tangled in a dramatic and messy melodrama (there is very literally a “you are… NOT THE FATHER” scene). The game also features a cat person and a pirate who have a punk band together, and that band ostensibly performs this song full of gibberish lyrics. Something about it smooths my brain. — Reo

“Gas Station Love” by EJ Jones

It’s a great song about heterosexual cruising and a great song, full stop. “Everyone off their phones and living in the moment,” that sort of thing. — Danny

“I Lied to You” by Miles Caton

Dude. DUDE!! Can you believe that Sinners was just this year? I feel like once a generation, we get a piece of fiction that reminds of why you get up and make fuckin ART, despite the agony of the times and the task before you. The centerpiece of Sinners is exactly that: a number performed by cinema newbie Miles Caton, a babyface with a grown-ass voice. It starts Delta blues and skips through musical dimensions, quoting Hendrix, Snoop Dogg, and other groundbreaking artists from the past and present of the music of the African diaspora. Never forget that your ancestors and descendents are always watching you work. — Soleil

“Idiot Box” by Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

It’s a perfect song for 2025, and look, I hate my phone, and I hate how much of my life and your life and our lives we’ve wasted, and gained a little, and lost a lot, and fucked up completely how many times now, and man, the horrors, the endless horrors that live on the glass in my pocket that I pull out when I’m bored because capitalism demands it lives on my person at all times, but the way this song builds and insists on living, from the synths to that one emphasized beat toward the end, and always and forever Sharon’s voice. I’ve loved it since I first heard it on that late-aughts LP, when I was unemployed and haunting Brooklyn music venues like a sad little cloud of ambition with nowhere to put words other than my notebook. I’ve spent the better part of this year listening to Van Etten sing “Everyone on the idiot box / come on outside, let me hear those thoughts.” I’m still trying. — Rahawa

“Joy, Joy!” by Valerie June

It’s impossible for me to choose my favorite song off Valerie June’s new album Owls, Omens, and Oracles, because — like her other three albums — every single one is perfect. Her music blends folk, blues, soul and country, and her Tennessee accent and unstoppable energy has accompanied me on every roadtrip I’ve taken in the last five years (with some bonus kitchen dancing episodes). She never shies away from the hard stuff, but the first song in her new album is an insistent call for us to find our joy. It feels radical, and also difficult to access at this moment. Are we able to step away from the struggle for three minutes to tune in with ourselves? Let’s listen to Valerie, who reminds us there’s a “light you can find if you stop to take the time.” - Nuala

“Make It On Your Own” by Donny Hathaway

My parents grew up in the 1970s seeing Marvin Gaye at the Oakland Coliseum, were fed by the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program, and were part of a growing Black radical environment of the Bay. To me, soul music is the DNA of these movements, telling stories of wins and losses, triumph and devastation. Despite this and perhaps because of this, love remained a focal point of topics.

In my childhood home we listened to Anita Baker on Sundays and the Four Tops on the way to school. As kids, we thumbed through Smokey Robinson vinyls and laughed at the old photos with funny outfits. Donny Hathaway reminds me of that time. A time of purpose, togetherness, and love. Albums full of undeniable hits. Hip-hop’s tendency to use this era for sampling has reinvigorated a focus on that time and the music behind it. Sometimes I like to play a game where I try to guess how many songs have sampled a certain song. I guessed right with the song by Freddie Gibbs and Madlib called “Practice.” — Amir

“Mayors A Cop” by WIKI, MIKE and The Alchemist

Let’s start with the title: unless you’re an actual mayor who’s an undercover cop, how could you not love it? Earlier this year, the YouTube algorithm gods blessed me with this 2023 gem of a song, and album, that features the front-teeth-missing Puerto Rican emcee and former RatKing frontman WIKI, the bold, smooth, New Jersey flows of MIKE, and the ever-immortal audio wizardry of LA’s The Alchemist. Just a straight up hip-hop throwback that at its core is proclaiming that our nation’s elected leaders are, indeed, and overwhelmingly, dishonorable narcs. —Alan

“Nobody Loves You More” by Kim Deal

This album, the first full-length solo record under Deal’s name, came out in the waning days of 2024, and has sustained me ever since with its strange and beautiful full-band ballads and indie-grunge-pop. After years of watching her be the best thing in the Pixies and the Breeders, I feel weirdly personally invested in Deal’s career and happiness. Watching her grin confidently while performing its title track live at the Fillmore in March — commanding an 11-person band with strings, horns, a full Kim Deal orchestra — was one of the highlights of a frankly fucked up year. — Emma

“Moving Without Touching” by Rubblebucket

A friend of mine recently texted to curse me out for playing them this song, because it’s too catchy and they can’t get it out of their head now. Consider yourself warned! Brooklyn-based Rubblebucket delivers a joyful package of pop, funk, dance, and psychedelia and their 2024 album Year of the Banana is an absolute delight. — Reo