Synth-pop for the indie dancefloor, guitars optional.
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 the late-2000s indie wave at its most electronic, electro-pop and nu-disco mostly, with newer acts still working the same seam mixed in among the old favourites. Whether that is exactly what you want from a radio station or exactly what you want nowhere near you comes down to temperament, and the channel does nothing at all to soften it.
Relentlessly upbeat, zero apologies.
