If You Aren't Following These Artists On Twitter, You Should Be

posted in: Features • Pop • Rock

Screen Shot 2013-12-23 at 7.58.42 PMKaty Perry was crowned the Queen of Twitter earlier this week, after figures released by the site showed that she gained more than 15 million followers in 2013. Which is good, because while KP has already received numerous accolades “ Billboard Music Awards, American Music Awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame “ we all know that when it comes to determining popularity (and self worth), it’s all a matter of how many Twitter followers you have.

Perry may have narrowly beat out fellow pop superstars like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber to take home the title of most beloved on the interwebz, but her timeline isn’t nearly as funny, thought-provoking, or all-around enjoyable as some of the musicians who truly rule the social network. For tweets that are full of lulz and aren’t purely written for self promotion, try following these unsung heroes.

John Darnielle “ @mountain_goats
The Mountain Goats frontman is already well known for being a prolific songwriter, but he’s equally active on Twitter. Follow if you like: jokes, death metal, bad movies, progressive politics


Ezra Koenig “ @arzE
Smart songwriting, adorable baby face, perfectly ridiculous tweets “ the Vampire Weekend frontman truly does have it all. And while Koenig tends to disappear from the Twittersphere for extended periods of time, his triumphant returns are always worth the wait. Follow if you like: selfies, New York, dad jokes, but mostly selfies

Self Defense Family “ @EndofaYear
Self Defense Family/End of a Year members Patrick Kindlon and Andrew Duggan tweet opinionatedly and frequently*, musing about life, bands they hate and socioeconomic issues. Follow if you like: loud noises, art, occasional disgust with humanity

*See? We weren’t kidding about that “frequently” thing. All of those perfect tweets happened less than 24 hours apart.

Ted Leo “ @tedleo
Ted Leo kind of seems like he’s just the happiest, sweetest and most wonderful human alive, and his tweets back that up. He’s extremely active and pretty liberal with the retweet button, but those retweets are just like a specially-curated list of the funniest 140-character blurbs to emerge from other peoples’ brains that day. (Bonus: he occasionally interacts with John Darnielle, and the results are almost always glorious and perfect.) Follow if you like: food, cute animals, YouTube, #hashtags

Oh, and if you aren’t already, you should also be following @OurStage and @emcHAMMERRR on Twitter. Or else. We’ll find you.