Artist · chart history · #273 in alternative artist polls
Hot Hot Heat
Band Shawnigan Lake Active 1999–2016
Hot Hot Heat formed in 1999 in Shawnigan Lake and was active until 2016. Hot Hot Heat has 110 chart appearances on 76 radio countdowns from 31 stations on RockLists, spanning 2003–2022. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Goodnight Goodnight”, which appears on 23 lists with a best position of #15. The station that charted Hot Hot Heat most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 29 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2003.
Hot Hot Heat came out of British Columbia in 1999 and spent the next few years proving that a Canadian indie band could make you dance and make you twitch at the same time. Steve Bays sang in a yelping, hiccuping rush and played keyboards, Paul Hawley drummed, Dustin Hawthorne played bass, and Dante DeCaro supplied the jagged electric guitar during the band's breakout years. Critics reached for tags like art-punk and dance-punk, and every one of them fit: they mixed electronic sounds with the usual rock kit and played everything like it was about to boil over.
Sub Pop, the Seattle label, signed them in 2001, and the band spent most of its career on Warner. Make Up the Breakdown, in 2002, was the one the critics loved. "Bandages" is its calling card, a jittery, synth-stabbed sprint with a chorus you can shout, and "Talk to Me, Dance With Me" and "No Not Now" keep the pulse racing.
Elevator, in 2005, arrived with a shinier, more confident sound. "Middle of Nowhere" and "Goodnight Goodnight" are sugar-rush pop with nervous energy under the gloss, and "You Owe Me An I.O.U." has all the swagger its title promises. Happiness Ltd. followed in 2007 with "Harmonicas And Tambourines", and the Rhapsody Originals EP that year carried "Let Me In". The bass passed from Hawthorne to Parker Bossley and then Louis Hearn, and Future Breeds, in 2010, brought "Goddess on the Prairie" and "21 @ 12".
After years of near silence, the band put out a limited 7-inch, "Nature of Things", for Record Store Day in 2016, then announced it was calling it a day, with a final self-titled album coming out that June. A brief comeback at the end of 2023 brought the single "Shock Me", but in January 2024 they called it off again, with Bays, their main songwriter, unable to commit.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Hot Hot Heat on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Goodnight Goodnight | 23 | #15 | – | 2005 | |
| 2 | Bandages | 40 | #3 | – | 2003 | |
| 3 | Middle of Nowhere | 22 | #6 | – | 2005 | |
| 4 | Talk to Me, Dance With Me | 8 | #26 | – | 2003 | |
| 5 | Let Me In | 7 | #42 | – | 2007 | |
| 6 | No Not Now | 2 | #30 | – | 2003 | |
| 7 | Goddess on the Prairie | 2 | #38 | – | 2010 | |
| 8 | This Town | 1 | #50 | – | 2003 | |
| 9 | Harmonicas And Tambourines | 1 | #73 | – | 2008 | |
| 10 | Stiff Kittens | 1 | #80 | – | 2007 | |
| 11 | You Owe Me An I.O.U. | 1 | #93 | – | 2006 | |
| 12 | 21 @ 12 | 1 | #100 | – | 2010 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Featured on
Songs by other artists credited with Hot Hot Heat as a guest.
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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