This week's theme is "I listened to Lindsey Stirling first and everything else got a quick "is this better than Lindsey Stirling" test"
L-shizzle the Stirizzle - A staple. Good song, good video. Sasuga Stirling. Only qualms are the super high pitch vocal breaking my immersion, and that it's a little bare and we're all (hopefully) familiar with LS as a known quantity. But she hasn't actually been featured since... Sept. 2015?! Okay then, remove that qualm.
Boy Pierce - This is good too, more of an artist demo than a song of the week though. Would be fine in a weaker week, but this week I dismissed it early as "no video and not as good as LS."
DNCE - Good song. Nicki's rap is okay, not quite as good as Boy Pierce's. The dog video is WAY better, it also adds some nice pun meanings to the lyrics. 2mainstream4me though and not as good as LS.
hitchiker x taeyong - "Ah, Taeyeon, here's the week's dose of kpop, I wonder if this will be more on the cute and sweet side or - oh. TaeYONG. Glory to the hypnotoad." Uhhh this was cool and I really like it, however I think I like it way more than most people would, and even I am not sure I would put it above LS.
In This Moment - Ok, this actually does challenge LS for me. Similar in quality and build, different take on the tone. Good music, good video, very resonant.
Lacuna Coil - Also good. Not quite as good on the music as I'd like to keep up with the video though. Bit below In This Moment on the close comparison, and not as good as LS.
This list owns, I liked every single thing, and everything except maybe taeyong is something easily above my "happy if this wins a week" quality threshold. Even taeyong, *I* would be happy with, but probably wouldn't recommend. Anyway, ITM appealed to me a bit more than LS, but I would expect Lindsey to clean up with the consensus. All very close, easy defer if Gref/Kaitlyn/others have some strong opinions.
In This Moment > Lindsey Stirling > Lacuna Coil > hitchiker x taeyong > Boy Pierce > DNCE