Click Beta 6: The Playlist

What's a little near-armageddon among friends?

Another month, another flirt with global catastrophe. So of course Matt Zeigler, Jason Buck and I sat down to whinge about the permapocalypse and find the laughs where we can, and the tears where we must.

Mostly as a coping mechanism, here’s a playlist to go with the key insights - 11 songs of mostly new music, all within the last few years. Enjoy the heat. If you just want the tunes, here’s the playlist:

Here’s the whole video (and for gluttons, the full transcript is below the paywall):

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"These V-shaped recoveries mean nobody learns any hard lessons. Everybody's okay. Everybody feels safe. And that's been a big part of it." - Matt
🎶 Song: Fontaines D.C. - "A Hero's Death" (2020)

The reality of most bubbly markets is that they “feel” like we’re in a new age, and when we have headfakes like “liberation day” or the largest bombardment since the Gulf War, it really “feels” like the past doesn’t matter.

Fontaines DC is one of the best bands working these days, and this song's repetitive, almost maddening chorus of life advice ("Life ain't always empty," "Don't get stuck in the past") is an echo of that feeling. Should we really just pretend everything’s fine? I dunno. Seems like a good time for a punk-rock revival.

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"Our minds want to make this all rational and logical, but that's not how markets work. They've basically legislated their way into this wall of money coming in to buy the dip." - Jason
🎶 Song: Yard Act - "The Overload" (2021)

The wall of money, in this case, is the combo platter of passive investing and the reality of markets as a political utility, not a weighing machine. Month after month, another $100 Billion shows up in ETFs buying risk. Can it ever end? I mean, 2023 did happen.

This Yard Act track is a brilliant and reminds me intensely of “Pepper” by the Butthole Surfers, and not just from of the droning chorus. The rambling monologue about navigating a nonsensical modern world ends with the kind of advice that would seem pretty commonplace right now: "give the man what he wants." Anyone else feel like a tiny fish in a big, chaotic, irrational pond? Hopefully if the tide really is rising, we’ll all catch a lift.

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"How can you have a bear market if nobody sells? If nobody wants to be the one puking, how do you ever get a sustained bear market?" - Dave
🎶 Song: Winona Fighter - "Swear to God That I’m Fine" (2025)

I keep ending up in Nashville for a day at a time, and thus I have still never seen a band there, unless you count the folks who play corporate events or airport lounges. Winona Fighter — a new band with a killer debut album — would be right at the top of my list of bands to chase down next time I’m there.

Reminding me of a harder, more polished Cayetana, this track seems to get that “everything’s fine” meme down. We’re all collectively "swearing to god that we’re fine," holding our positions and propping up a system that feels increasingly detached from fundamentals.

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"Does any of it ever actually matter? Does it matter that we labeled these heuristics and biases and other things? It almost feels like you should just take all those textbooks and throw most of them in the trash can." - Matt
🎶 Song: The Last Dinner Party - "Nothing Matters" (2022)

This may be the theme song to ClickBeta honestly, and I keep meaning to include it in playlists but it seems so obvious. We do feel in a post-truth world, where whatever the AI says is taken as gospel no matter how much it hallucinates.

This song pretty much established The Last Dinner Party as a FORCE in indie music, coming TWO YEARS before they finally released the album it anchors (Prelude to Ecstasy, which is brilliant from the needle-drop). This was the first song that I, and I suspect most folks ever heard from their debut album last year. It got a LOT of airplay, but for good reason. It’s huge, sweeping, baroque and profane.

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"I've been saying privately for about the last year, what concerns me more is an oil spike... that sort of recessionary input that we get from energy prices scares me more than anything else." - Jason
🎶 Song: Corridor - "Mourir Demain" (2025)

The only French-language band on Sub Pop that I know of, they’re like the most Canadian thing ever. "Mourir Demain" (To Die Tomorrow) is a good intro to their shtick: capable of big-bad guitar music, lost-highway harmonies or experimental rhythm shenanigans, they’re chameleons and that’s cool.

This track came to mind because of the “chung chung chung chung” beat of the second half, with the marching band snares and chasing octaves through mountains of distortion. That’s the feeling I get from this “but the inputs drive it all” vibe from Jason.

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"What does it take to shake Americans out of that US-centric perspective? The reality is... the US market is not ripping higher. Germany is ripping higher." - Dave
🎶 Song: Benjamin Booker - "Black Ops" (2025)

You have to listen into the lyrics, but Benjamin Booker’s (what is it, garage-punk? post-grunge?) whole recent album, Lower, is a giant critique of jingoistic consumer self-obsession.

“Give a little love, they bug the house again
Give a little love, they're on the lawn
Give a little love, they’ll kill you while you sleep
Give a little love, the place is gone
And before I get away
I'll be buried in this place
Hallelujah, dying fighting
For a life I ain't had yet”

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"What I'm excited for... is what does it look like in that world to show authenticity in the real world? What are going to be the exciting things? In-real-life meetups, zines. What is the thing that's really going to show that?" - Matt
🎶 Song: The Beths - "Expert In A Dying Field" (2022)

Maybe the best Beth’s song (although “Future Me Hates Me” is a close second), the title is a perfect description of being Human in the age of AI. While mostly a lament-lovesong, it’s a banger, and the search for authenticity in a disposable world at least harmonizes the quote and the song. The "dying field" in this case may be our analog, real-world connections to each other.

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"I think about the analogy of just-in-time inventory in manufacturing. We have all had unbelievable wealth because of that. And then we saw when that gets disrupted by COVID what that actually does to our daily lives." - Jason
🎶 Song: Venturing - “Something Has To Change” (2025)

Venturing is a “vibey” project that fits into the same airy, perfect-but-simple guitar genre as last year’s MkGee album. Mostly I love this album, and the line “When you wake up, nothing’s ever wrong. I’m your baby till I’m not” hooked me to Jason’s observation of just how fragile things really are.

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"I had a niece who's heading off to college ask what to study: behavioral economics. It's become very much a hot topic... because humans do seem like the last great frontier."
🎶 Song: Straw Man Army - "Age of Exile" (2024)

Brooklyn duo Straw Man Army tackles big-picture themes like “capitalism”, but with a post-punk snark. The long lead up breaks into a good hearty punk anthem about the human condition, and the hunt for a “sleep without disturbance or annihilating dreams.” And there seems to be a lot of “tracing distant times to the shadows in my head” going on out there in the Woo-ification and hunt for meaning.

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"We need stuff that is more mid. Because between luxury and crap, that's the real part that gets hollowed out here." - Matt
🎶 Song: Djo - "Basic Being Basic" (2025)

I’m an unashamed fan of Keery - the dude from Stranger Things. The stuff Djo is putting out is honestly just great. Check out this cover of HAIM’s “Gasoline.” I’m desperate to see them live. They’re so tight in their filmed recordings and really seem to know who they are as a band (putting them in similar territory to Wednesday, or, even, HAIM).

And Keery clearly understands Matt’s exhortation to just “be more Mid.”

”I don't want your money, I don't care for fame
I don't wanna live a life where that's my big exchange
I want simple pleasures, friends who have my back.
Everyone has secrets, but not everyone can fool a man like that.”

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"It's going to take some stuff breaking that feels very local... hospitals, particularly in the south of the United States, are going to close... those things I think, really will be polarizing." - Dave
🎶 Song: ROLE MODEL - "Sally, When the Wine Runs Out" (2025)

I have since learned that this song went viral on the TikToks. I have no idea about that, but I do love the vibe here, and it has that quality of “well, we’ll see what happens!” to it. It may be a little bubblegum-pop-with-country-flavoring for my usual taste, but a great song is a great song.

See you next month. Please don’t go falling in love then disappear when the wine runs out.

(Full transcript below the paywall, for your LLM posting pleasure)