Annie

There is something almost naively devoted about this song — the way it refuses irony, the way it just states its feeling plainly and lets the wobbly, sun-faded guitar tones carry it somewhere tender. DeMarco wrote this for his then-girlfriend Annie, and the directness of that dedication bleeds into the sound itself: the chords are open and unhurried, the tempo gentle enough to feel like an embrace rather than a performance. The guitar tone here is particularly characteristic — that slightly pitch-shifted, tape-saturated warmth that became his calling card on the 2 album — and it gives the whole track a quality like a photograph that has aged well, slightly imperfect and more beautiful for it. His vocal is easy and unguarded, sung close to the mic with minimal processing, so you hear the breath in it, the casual intimacy of someone singing for an audience of one. Emotionally it sits in a register of uncomplicated affection that is surprisingly rare in indie rock, which tends to complicate or ironize its sentiments. The song belongs to the early-2010s moment when lo-fi aesthetics briefly made romantic sincerity feel cool again — bedroom pop as a vehicle for genuine feeling rather than studied detachment. This is music for lying on the floor in a patch of afternoon sunlight, feeling simply and unambiguously glad that someone exists.