Underground 80sUnderground 80s

Underground 80s joined SomaFM in 2008, the same year the network added Suburbs of Goa, eight years after Rusty Hodge launched the station from a basement garage in Bernal Heights in February 2000. Hodge had been experimenting with online radio since 1995 and arrived there by way of a micropower transmitter he ran at Burning Man. Like every channel on the network it is advertising-free and funded entirely by the people listening, which is what lets the word underground in its name mean something.

The focus is early-80s UK synthpop with new wave threaded through — Human League, Depeche Mode, New Order, Ultravox — set beside critically admired but far less played acts like New Musik, Comsat Angels, Lene Lovich and Fad Gadget. It treats the decade as a deep catalogue worth digging through rather than a greatest-hits reel on repeat.