A favorite of mine from a few years ago.

• Invidious: https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=KEu3tWXdnxI
• Bandcamp: https://viperdrive.bandcamp.com/track/driftrider
• Anime used in the fan edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redline_(2009_film)

I love the mashup between one of my favorite metal bands and one of my favorite synthwave bands. Works unexpectedly well.

Fantastic vocals and great synth work, this song by The Bad Dreamers is another favorite for me.

The Bad Dreamers have great vocals and Timecop1983 is always solid for Synthwave melodies. The two combined make a fantastic pairing.

• Invidious: https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=GlLQ2qJmy8c
• Bandcamp: https://perturbator.bandcamp.com/track/humans-are-such-easy-prey
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perturbator

This is the song that got me into the genre. And if you get a chance to see The Midnight live, it's well worth it. They put on a fantastic show!

Retro racing game with a great soundtrack.

One of my favorite aspects of "wave music" is that it's spun off so many various sub-genres and niche aesthetics. We've got:

Synthwave, Chillwave, Vaporwave, Retrowave, Darkwave

as some of the main players, but what else is out there? What other "waves" have you come across?

One of my personal favorite streams for late nights

A live broadcast of synthwave music. This has been my go to station at work for a while now.

This is my favorite album. Took me ages to get a vinyl copy but we'll worth it.

Droid Bishop (real name: James Bowen) is a one-man synthwave artist who's put out multiple banger albums over the last decade-ish. Each album feels like the soundtrack to an introspective 80s drama/action film. Beyond the Blue is probably my favorite road-trip album of all time; it makes driving through the empty expanses of I-80 through Wyoming feel like a grand, meaningful adventure.

As far as I can tell he doesn't have an official YouTube presence, but this channel seems to have all his works: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYb8MJseDAimJBFCJQ8Hfvg

INEXED is one of my favorite channels for background music. If I wanted to introduce someone to synthwave, this might be where I direct them.

Videos are consistently high-quality, and the compilations are long (1hr to 2hr+) without repetition. There's perhaps not a lot of variety in vibe: some videos label themselves and vaporwave, chillwave, retrowave, etc, but I'd consider those to be more the flavor of synthwave being featured than actual examples of those genres. Most compilations are calming but energetic, with a bit of a surreal touch.

It's frustrating that INEXED only has about 37k subscribers when the quality is so much better than a lot of other synthwave/chillwave channels out there. Please check them out!

https://www.youtube.com/@INEXED

NewRetroWave is the GOAT.

They've posted over 3000 retrowave and synthwave songs and albums since 2011, and more keep coming. With over a million subscribers, they're one of the biggest players in the YouTube synthwave scene, and for good reason: in an era of low-effort compilations repeating the same tired tracks over and over, NewRetroWave somehow keeps finding quality fresh material for us listeners. Most of their posts are single songs (3-6 minutes), but there's a few longer (hour-ish) compilations mixed in.

This feels less like a YouTube channel and more like a library. Definitely check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/@NewRetroWave

Dreamingr0b0ts is a fantastic house/trance YouTube channel with a mere 123 subscribers. (It may not technically be synthwave, but it's synthwave-adjacent)

Some of the very oldest videos are a bit rough around the edges, but they quickly improve in quality. I like this channel because it has more of an old-school vibe than most synthwave; it reminds me a lot of early-2000s electronica, back in the days of Armin van Buuren. Vocals are present more often than not, and the vibe is more "dance" than "chillax." Great music to stay awake during a long road trip, or to stay motivated during a big house clean-up. A lot of synthwave videos rehash the same songs over and over, but as far as I can tell these are quite fresh.

Check out their "The Daily Dose" series, each of which are albums of about 20 minutes each.

https://www.youtube.com/@dreamingr0b0ts