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The Ten Best Songs from Rochester in 2025

January 16, 2026

2025 felt like a landmark year for Rochester indie music, rivaling any era since buffaBLOG’s inception. We’ve dug through hundreds of songs to hand-pick our absolute favorites of the year. Did we miss that critically acclaimed jam band album or a classical musician’s final bow? Probably. But that’s not really our bag. We chose to focus on the tracks our team truly championed and debated the ones that came out on top. Here is a Spotify playlist we made with all of our picks. Without further ado, here are our favorite ten songs from Rochester in 2025.     10. Harmonica Lewinski – “Rat Race”    Rochester creepsters Harmonica Lewinski started off the year right with their beachy, 60s-era single “Rat Race,” which showcased the band’s punchbowl of surfy guitar riffs, jungle beats, and signature oddness. For a band that’s been around nearly fifteen years, Harmonica Lewinski still has got[...]

Home Videos – Home Taping is Killing Music

July 10, 2025

For a band that first introduced themselves with quiet, acoustic whispers, Rochester’s Home Videos is making a hell of a lot of noise on their debut full-length, Home Taping is Killing Music. Arriving a full six years after their initial EP, the album is the sound of that same band plugging in and turning everything up. The tentative, lo-fi beginnings have been traded for ringing guitars and crashing crescendos, marking a powerful and deliberate evolution from where they started. Home Taping is Killing Music is our album of the week.   The title feels like an inside joke for a band that lives and breathes DIY. According to their Bandcamp, Home Taping… was recorded “slowly 2023 – 2025 by us on a 4-track cassette in a basement in Rochester, NY.” You wouldn’t guess it from the sound, which punches well above its weight. It’s a far cry from the lo-fi hiss of their first[...]

Home Videos – “Instant Coffee”

October 4, 2024

Rochester’s Home Videos describe themselves as “slacker tapehead indie nonsense,” which is a funny way of phrasing “intimate and heartfelt indie-emo.” While their previous efforts seem to be more rooted in a barebones acoustic approach, they’ve recently announced that “they are loud now,” as evidenced by latest offering, “Instant Coffee.” The single features both a loud and a quiet version of the song, the former of which smarts of late 90s emo greats (think the lighter side of Texas Is The Reason or Sunny Day Real Estate) with an Elliot Smith/Heatmiser feel. The song (like all their songs) was tracked live on a 4-track recorder, giving it a warm and organic vibe. Make yourself some coffee (preferably instant) and put this one on – it really is the perfect soundtrack to usher in the upcoming fall weather. You can find both versions of “Instant Coffee” via the Bandcamp embed (below),[...]