I'm in the process of making myself a new mix. My process: go through music I own, hope that a song catches my attention, dump it into a folder of songs I think it might work well with and then gradually order and prune the mix into something listenable, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. One of the songs that jumped out at me was 'What's That Got To Do (With Loving You?)' from the (formerly) San Francisco trio Los Microwaves off their 1981 album, 'Life After Breakfast'. Every song has something to offer (even the few that don't do much for me) but this one has the most "groove" IMO (FYI: their song 'T.V. In My Eye' was covered by Le Shok in 1999 and I remember reading somewhere that Los Microwaves were inspired to get back together after David Javelosa saw a "young punk band covering our song" and I like to think it was Le Shok). There was a review of Los Microwaves in Maximumrocknroll that said they were "nestled somewhere between post-punk and synth pop" and that description works for me. I'm not sure how popular the band ever got but so many current acts in the synthwave/postpunk continuum feel like they're cribbing from bands like Los Microwaves. If they aren't then they should be.
