Indie rock icon Mac McCaughan made his name as vocalist and songwriter of Superchunk, helping to guide them through a long, successful career on the back of his gut-wrenchingly honest songs and splitting-at-the-seams vocals. In addition, he co-founded the Merge label, put together his long-lived side project Portastatic, and released a string of increasingly more accomplished records; he's also a solid collaborator whose range stretches from teaming with Robert Pollard in Go Back Snowball to recording an album of improvised synthesizer and harp duets with Mary Lattimore. Working under his own name in the 2010s, he began to explore synthesizer music on 2015's Non-Believers, then splitting the ticket between keyboard compositions and indie rock on 2021's The Sound of Yourself. No matter the band, the style, or the enterprise, McCaughan's passion never dims and because of this, his bands, his songs, and his inimitable voice form a rock-solid cornerstone of indie rock.