Best Psychedelic Music of December 2023

Happy New Year! The year’s end and the beginning of a new one are always busy times for music blogs. Many of us are usually wrapping up the best of the year posts and playlists, along with real-life stuff like family get-togethers, holiday parties, and all of that goodness.

Like last month, I didn’t do a comprehensive look at the best psych of December 2023 but I am going to include a Spotify playlist at the bottom and some assorted Bandcamp links of my favorites. Oslo Tapes’ Staring at the Sun Before Goin’ Blind was a top record for me this month, and so was Ryan Pollie Quartet, and BenBen’s Sincere Gifts. Both Ryan Pollie Quartet and the BenBen record come to us from the label Perpetual Doom, who’s been on a roll lately.

The Canadian heavy psych doomers AAWKS also released a new EP with the excellent single “The Figure,” and the Colorado-based psych rock trio In Plain Air dropped a new EP called Sunnyside. Other records I’ve been digging include Fenster by Krautwerk, a couple of fascinating and strange ambient experimental records by an artist known as Species of Fishes, and the new album by the stoner rock stalwarts Mars Red Sky.

I hope you had a great holiday season and I wish you an even better 2024. Here’s a shortlist of Bandcamp links to some of the best psych and psych-adjacent music of December 2023, in my opinion:

Here’s a link below to the Spotify playlist I made for Best Psych of December 2023.

Not all of the above-mentioned albums are on there, and it appears many of them are only on Bandcamp at the moment. This gives you even more reason to support these hardworking artists by buying the music on Bandcamp!