How do you find new music to listen to?

Lately, I have been looking for new tunes. I usually listen to what my friends have dubbed “Roadtrip Mixes” – meaning popular Rock/Indie/Punk songs everyone knows and that are bound to come up on Shuffle or on the radio on every roadtrip.

But there are only so many times you can listen to the same songs. I dabbled with Brit Rock/Pop a bit, mainly due to my ex-boyfriend’s influence as he was a massive Oasis/Blur/Pulp fan but also partial to 70’s and 80’s music from Queen to Roxy Music and Duran Duran.

But now I’ve found a new favourite thing: soundtracks of indie films and obscure TV shows!

And not the ones you can buy in shops, no! I mean the kind that you have to research hard to find a promising but unofficial tracklists for. The kind that requires debate whether the song was by one band or another. The ones that you spend hours for on Youtube trying to find a version of it you can listen to in order to see whether it’s the version from the film.

I actually quite enjoy that search, as it introduces me to related and / or similar artists I’d never have heard of otherwise!

Recently I researched the soundtrack to NZ TV show The Almighty Johnsons, thanks to which I got reacquainted with  New Zealand music and such bands as Clap Clap Riot and The Phoenix Foundation.

Then there’s the soundtrack of film happythankyoumoreplease, which introduced me to Shout Out Louds and Jaymay.

Sometimes it takes a while to track down legal versions of the songs, but they’re so worth it in the end.

I’ve come to think of these soundtracks and assembled CDs as modern mixtapes. They represent my current mood, and a great compilation may well end up being given as a gift to someone at some point.

It’s a shame, really, that nobody does proper mixtapes anymore.