Artist · chart history · #817 in indie & aaa artist polls
Calexico
Band Tucson United States Formed 1996
Calexico formed in 1996 in Tucson, United States. Calexico has 45 chart appearances on 30 radio countdowns from 14 stations on RockLists, spanning 2000–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Two Silver Trees”, which appears on 7 lists with a best position of #63. The station that charted Calexico most often is The Colorado Sound (Fort Collins–Denver, CO), with 11 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2015.
Calexico took their name from a border town in California and their sound from both sides of the line. Joey Burns and John Convertino had first played together in Los Angeles as part of Giant Sand before settling in Tucson and starting their own band in 1996, and the pair have steered it ever since.
What they built is desert noir, a phrase that has stuck to them for good reason. Mariachi horns, the lope of conjunto and cumbia and the heat of tejano get stirred together with country twang, jazz shadings and the widescreen patience of post-rock, so that songs like "Ballad of Cable Hogue", from Hot Rail in 2000, feel like spaghetti western soundtracks with a pulse. Quarterstick Records put out a run of their albums, and a 2005 EP made with Iron & Wine, In the Reins, even reached the Billboard 200.
The lineup has grown into a small caravan, with Jacob Valenzuela, Paul Niehaus, Martin Wenk, Volker Zander and Depedro alongside the founders, and the records keep coming: Algiers in 2012, Edge of the Sun with "Falling From the Sky" in 2015, The Thread That Keeps Us in 2018 and El mirador in 2022.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Calexico on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Two Silver Trees | 7 | #63 | – | 2008 | |
| 2 | Falling From The Sky | 7 | #25 | – | 2015 | |
| 3 | Under The Wheels | 6 | #89 | – | 2018 | |
| 4 | Quattro | 2 | #264 | – | – | |
| 5 | Harness The Wind | 4 | #18 | – | 2022 | |
| 6 | Splitter | 3 | #31 | – | 2012 | |
| 7 | Alone Again Or | 1 | #125 | – | – | |
| 8 | Quattro (World Drifts In) | 3 | #487 | – | – | |
| 9 | Maybe On Monday | 1 | #392 | – | – | |
| 10 | Fortune Teller | 2 | #734 | – | – | |
| 11 | Ballad Of Cable Hogue | 1 | #22 | – | 2000 | |
| 12 | Not Even Stevie Nicks | 1 | #420 | – | – | |
| 13 | Crystal Frontier | 1 | #590 | – | – | |
| 14 | Corona | 1 | #488 | – | – | |
| 15 | Love Will Tear Us Apart | 1 | #645 | – | – | |
| 16 | End of the World With You | 2 | #87 | – | 2017 | |
| 17 | Bisbee Blue | 1 | #905 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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