Artist · chart history
TuneYards
Solo artist United States US experimental project
TuneYards is an artist from the United States. TuneYards has 37 chart appearances on 34 radio countdowns from 13 stations on RockLists, spanning 2011–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Hold Yourself”, which appears on 11 lists with a best position of #22. The station that charted TuneYards most often is WTMD (Baltimore, MD), with 5 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2021.
Tune-Yards, stylized tUnE-yArDs, is the sound of Merrill Garbus building a one-woman riot out of loop pedals, ukulele, a voice that can holler or coo, and percussion that sounds rescued from a garage sale. The project started in 2006 in New England and settled in Oakland, California, where bassist Nate Brenner came aboard and made it a duo. BiRd-BrAiNs, all hiss and bedroom clatter, arrived in 2009.
w h o k i l l, released on 4AD in 2011, was the breakout: "Gangsta" and "My Country" are all jagged rhythms, stacked chants and polyrhythmic swagger, pop songs that seem to have been assembled in the middle of a street party. A major critics' poll named it the number one album of the year. Nikki Nack followed in 2014, and its lead single "Water Fountain", a clapping, stomping playground chant of a song, later turned up in an ad campaign for Google Pixel.
They kept pushing. Garbus and Brenner scored the sci-fi film Sorry to Bother You, and the records kept coming: I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, then sketchy. with "Hold Yourself", then Better Dreaming in 2025. The lo-fi scrappiness never quite went away, and nobody should want it to.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by TuneYards on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hold Yourself | 11 | #22 | – | 2021 | |
| 2 | Water Fountain | 9 | #10 | – | 2014 | |
| 3 | Heartbreak | 6 | #19 | – | 2025 | |
| 4 | Swarm | 1 | #39 | – | 2025 | |
| 5 | Heart Attack | 3 | #99 | – | 2018 | |
| 6 | Look At Your Hands | 1 | #18 | – | 2018 | |
| 7 | Gangsta | 2 | #50 | – | 2011 | |
| 8 | Fiya | 1 | #406 | – | – | |
| 9 | Bizness | 2 | #96 | – | 2011 | |
| 10 | My Country | 1 | #68 | – | 2012 |
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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