My favourite cover of 2025 was Gasoline – originally by Haim, covered by Djo. I really like Djo and Joe Keery in general. I wasn’t sure about The Crux, his album that came out this year, when it came out. There were some stand out tracks and some parts I didn’t love. There were songs that were heavily inspired by other artists and I felt like the album didn’t fully tie all those elements together. I had some good conversations about the album that made me return to it a little less cynically. It’s good fun and you can see what he’s doing. He’s making music independently, writing songs that sound like what he likes, without the curation that would come from major label involvement. It’s a cool thing to be able to leverage his acting success to make what he wants.

I hadn’t heard the Haim version of Gasoline when I heard Djo’s version. I was a big fan of Haim’s first singles back in 2012, but by the time the first album came out I think I’d heard too much of them. They were too cool. I was definitely a little hipster dork about it, but I was only a little boy (I was a 20 year old man) at the time so I can be kind to myself about it now. We went our separate ways, they had major success, I had lesser success, and I was always roughly aware of what they were putting out. But it was only after hearing Djo’s cover that I really went back and listened – and enjoyed – what Haim have been doing since Don’t Save Me.

I like how stripped back Djo’s cover is, almost making the original version sound overproduced. It’s an easy one to sing along to. It’s got nice quiet parts and they resist the urge to blow it up. They manage to maintain the dynamism that is often lost when traditional bands cover pop music. They build layers and Joe Keery lifts the vocals when it needs to be brought to the next level. It’s a cover that stands on its own as a nicely constructed song.