Awesome Synthwave

Yippee-I-aye, Yippee-I-o… the Melodicka Bros. took the oft-covered western staple Ghost Riders in the Sky and transformed it into a synth-heavy cyberpunk jam. The track is accompanied by an appropriately neon-lit, smoke-filled music video that imagines a cybercowboy riding his steel horse to round up some cybercows.

If want to be a Mandalorian, you must recite their creed, “This is the way,” to acknowledge that anything is acceptable. Auralnauts went back through the first three seasons of the hit Star Wars show and tallied up every time the phrase was spoken, and turned it into a pleasant little synthwave track.

The future is a dark place for the Melodicka Bros. The second in their Revolt Saga concept video series transports us to a dystopian future where synthwave and industrial music join forces to fight evil. At the end of the first clip, they acquired the I.R.O.N.M.A.N. suit, and now they’re celebrating their acquisition with a song.

Nicolas Winding Refn is the visionary director behind films like Drive, Bronson, and Only God Forgives. His latest creation is a six-episode Netflix series about a young woman who escapes a life of enslavement to seek vengeance in the underworld of Copenhagen. Expect lots of neon, violence, and synthwave music.

Musician Astrophysics takes songs from various genres, and slathers them with a thick layer of 1980s electronic sounds, then complements them with appropriately retro graphics. There’s lots of great stuff to enjoy on their YouTube channel, but this synthwave remix of Outkast’s 2003 hit Hey Ya! is our favorite (so far.)

You can do all kinds of fun things with magnets, but we never thought of them as musical instruments. The guys from Magnet Tricks and Magnetic Games teamed up to create a series of sounds from magnetic vibrations, sampled them, then turned them into a synthwave track.

Beatboxer Tom Thum shows off his versatility by using his throat, mouth, and a digital looper to create a synthwave track that would be right at home in a 1980s science fiction flick. He might look goofy as he makes noises, but he sure sounds good. They should hire Tom to do music for season five of Stranger Things.

Synthwave musician Astrophysics programmed iconic Japanese vocaloid Hatsune Miku to sing the The Weeknd’s hit track Save Your Tears. The fat electronic sounds are the perfect complement to the synthesized vocals, and fit right in with The Weeknd’s 1980s vibe.

Jung Jae-il’s soundtrack from the hit show Squid Game is equally intense, memorable, quirky, and creepy. YSSY combined the tracks Pink Soldiers and Way Back When and transformed them into a 1980s inspired synthwave song suitable for another Netflix series, Stranger Things.

Hey! What a wonderful kind of day! Hot Dad turns the theme song from the PBS Kids show Arthur on its ear, replacing the warm reggae riddims of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers’ original with a moody 1980s synthwave sound. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

The Mandalorian has a great original score by Ludwig Göransson that suits the western-inspired Star Wars series perfectly. Duo YSSY made an awesome 1980s synthwave version, and it’s like what the show might have been like if Mando and Baby Yoda were being chased by stormtroopers driving Pontiac Trans Ams.

Synthwave duo Litiowave envisions what John Williams’ Imperial March (aka Darth Vader’s Theme) might have sounded like if it came out in the early 1980s rather than in 1977, giving the track a new neon-lit electronic sound.

Diablo meets 1980’s suburbia and a sweet synthwave soundtrack in Kingdom of Night. This retro action RPG has you slaying demons in your neighborhood. Choose from three specializations, each with three classes. Coming to PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch.

Electronic musician Scandroid presents his take on Michael Jackson’s Halloween classic Thriller, applying his synthwave style to the track, along with a great ’80s-look music video, complete with a trio of awesome dancing robots.

Pentagram Home Video’s follow up to their 2017 album conjures visions of helpless characters in a night gone horribly wrong, but a night that they survive nonetheless. The album is split into six tracks, but you should definitely listen to it end-to-end.

Pentagram Home Video closes out 2017 with another amazing synthwave release. Look into the Darkness appears to be their most accessible album yet, while still allowing the music to breathe and your mind to wonder about things that go bump in the night.

Cellists Nicholas Yee, Adam Caulfield, and Katherine Pernal perform a medley of tunes from the Stranger Things soundtrack, created by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. While the main theme is the most recognizable, the entire performance is compelling.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross recorded a fantastic tribute to John Carpenter’s theme from Halloween, adding their own haunting style, while preserving the synth sound that made it a classic. From the upcoming John Carpenter’s ‘Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998.

Scandroid performs an awesome synthwave arrangement of John Williams’ classic Force Theme from the Star Wars saga. While it might not suit the timeless feel of the films, it certainly captures the essence of the era during which they achieved their greatest fame – the 1980s.

Horror synthwave artist Pentagram Home Video ups the macabre for their latest EP. Named after the German term for April 30, Walpurgisnacht (“witches’ night”) will have you looking over your shoulder for tendrils of steam. Or chokeslams.

An album that’s equally important to watch as to listen to. You’ll be quickly transfixed by the imagery which accompany Jerobeam Fenderson’s electronic sounds. The album’s videos were created entirely by feeding signals into a Tektronix 5103N oscilloscope.

Bring out the hairspray and leather jackets. We’re hitting the club with the latest mix from aural time traveler Tronicbox. It’s Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know, a ’90s song that came out in 2011, remixed to sound like it’s from 1984.

Nathan Barnatt directed and stars in this music video which features not only one of our favorite cars ever, but turned us on to The Midnight, a fantastic LA band that blends ’80s synthwave with modern alt-pop sensibilities. See how Nathan shot the video here.