Primitive Man, "Loathe"
Primitive Man is very aptly named, a knuckle-dragging sludge/doom act from Denver, putting out punishing, bleak records that are unsubtle in the extreme. This little ditty comes from Home Is Where The Hatred Is, an EP from 2015 that is just basically sunless and crushing like this.
Thou, "Feral Faun"
Thou is actually one of the bands I think of as being closest to Primitive Man, so nice pull, shuffle. I suppose there's more nuance to Thou than Primitive Man at times, as you can hear in the intro to this song. But, overall, it's the same kind of bleak approach to things. There's more melody here, I suppose, if you squint hard enough.
Anti-Pop Consortium, "Ping Pong"
Anti-Pop Consortium moved from legendary underground hip-hop label Ark75 to legendary underground electronic label Warp Records for Arrhythmia. Honestly, it's a better home for them, with the experimental and electronic facets of their music. It's an excellent album, as is their habit, full of stuff that sounds familiar today but was pretty out there for the early aughts.
Linda Lyndell, "Bring Your Love Back To Me"
Back to Stax Records, a song from the end of their run with Atlantic Records. Their sound had largely developed by this point, and it was just hit after hit for the label around this period.
Dance Hall Crashers, "Shelley"
We are all over the map here today, people. This is a good example of what a bunch of "ska" bands did during the mid 90s. This isn't ska by any reasonable measure, but the Dance Hall Crashers played around with a few elements of ska at times, and they had a few songs which were reasonably ska-ish, so they got all lumped in with the other bands in the third wave. That's not to say they're bad - they're not! The sweet harmonies, the poppy tunes, that's all good stuff. But ska?