Great pop music nods to the past, often in the form of certain musical tropes, while feeling like the future, often in the form of youthful enthusiasm. Enter Cumulus, an Anacortes-born band that in the past year has become a Seattle standard, playing shows that burst with bright, jangly joy while harkening back to the best indie pop of the ’90s. Bandleader Alexandra Niedzialkowski pens songs infused with musical history. In fact, pop is so ingrained in her being that, as she told me once, she didn’t even realize that her tremendous pop track “Do You Remember” contains an allusion to one of the genre’s great songs. “We walk through streets that have no names,” she sings as the song glows bops behind her, “but we knew our own, so it was all OK.” Blissful. cumulusband.com
Read all of our picks for Arts & Culture, and explore the rest of this year’s edition of Best of Seattle.
