PopTronPopTron

PopTron arrived on SomaFM in 2009 alongside Mission Control, nine years after Rusty Hodge moved the project from a micropower transmitter he ran at Burning Man to a full-time internet station in February 2000. It runs on listener donations with no advertising anywhere in the schedule, the same arrangement every SomaFM channel has had since the network went live out of his Bernal Heights garage, and it landed at the exact moment the sound it plays was cresting in the clubs.

The format is indie dance rock with the guitars turned down and the synths turned up — Cut Copy, Datarock, MGMT, Hot Chip and the electro-pop end of the late-2000s indie wave. It is relentlessly upbeat and makes absolutely no apology for being so, which is either exactly what you want out of a radio station or exactly what you want nowhere near you.