Samica, courtesy.

Like many people of my rapidly increasing age, I’m looking for shortcuts to seeming younger than I am. There are a lot of ways people try to accomplish that. Some date an especially attractive member of their preferred gender, for example, or some drive an impractically fast car. I’m doing both those things and, while they’re great and I highly recommend them both, it’s not giving me the desired youthfulness.

That leaves the dreaded option that goes so wrong for so many: Trying to get interested in young people things. But don’t worry, I’m not going to start wearing Ed Hardy shirts and using embarrassing modern slang. I’m dabbling in TikTok.

Since I’m assuming nobody who reads my column is particularly young, I’m gonna let you in on something you probably don’t know: There are bands on there! And not just viral songs that thirst traps all do the same dance to; actual bands who’ve used the platform to get exposure.

Here are five of them. If you’re under, say, 25, you’re probably familiar with them already, but humor me here. They’re new to me.

Sub-Radio — “Stacy’s Dad”

This is actually the first song I was sent from TikTok before I even had an account. I shared it with the RIFF Slack and lobbied to include it in Tuesday Tracks, but all my colleagues are boring.

Since the TikTok algorithm focuses on things like time spent watching the video and likes, a lot of these bands get their viral moment with a cover, either by changing the lyrics to something awesome (like this one) or swapping genres (like the next one), and I am here for it. Lots of great bands got their start as cover bands, and if that’s what it takes to get an audience, it’s certainly easier and more creatively fulfilling than a lot of options.

Anyway, this song is fantastic, and so is Sub-Radio’s original music.

Dead on a Sunday — “Bloody Mary”

This is a darkwave cover of a Lady Gaga song by a singer whose voice sounds vaguely like Bob from “Bob’s Burgers.” It sparks a lot of joy for me.

The band actually took off because the dude sounds like Bob Belcher, to the point that now they call their music Bob-Core and he sometimes performs in an apron. And they covered this song because it’s what everyone does the Wednesday Addams dance to, though why everyone chose a sped-up deep cut of a Lady Gaga song rather than the original “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps is beyond me.

But I digress: This song is great. I’ve been digressing a lot since trying TikTok. Hard to focus for more than two minutes now.

Dexter and the Moonrocks — “Where I Steer”

Dexter and the Moonrocks bill themselves as “Western space grunge,” which isn’t, strictly speaking, a genre but is a very good description of what they do. The Texans do capture the grunge spirit with a bit of a country twang, and I’m into it. And, being stuck in the ’90s like I am, I love me some grunge.

I ran across them in a video I forgot to save a link to in which the one guy who doesn’t work long hours at a blue collar job explains that his social media strategy is to introduce attractive tattooed women so they play the music for their fans, who then come back and listen to more of their music. And apparently it’s working because they’re included here, though admittedly because of the explanation. I had to go out of my way to find their actual music.

Not gonna tell them how to do their jobs, but please make it easier to find your actual music. I spent time because I was curious what “Western space grunge” sounded like, but I assure you that most people are profoundly lazy.

Samica — “Happier Than Me”

I stumbled across Samica because of her series of “Lazy Girl” videos, where she explains how to make mostly Indian or Indian-inspired food with as little effort as possible. They’re all set to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and I have no idea why I couldn’t help myself but watch them in their entirety whenever they came up. But because I did, they kept coming up.

Eventually I saw a video by her where she talks about a show and I thought, wait, she does music? Until that point I thought she was just some woman amusing herself on social media. So I checked out her stuff and, what do you know, I like that too. Not gonna lie, it’s a pretty roundabout way to get my attention about music. But it worked, so well done. Breaking new ground in music promotion.

Kid Sistr — “X-Tape (Want To Want Me)”

How the music industry treats women is an ongoing gripe of mine. While record companies will sign men to any genre, and while they’ll sign men who sound like Bob Dylan, Eddie Vedder, Tom Waits or even James Hetfield, women are expected to be solo pop artists with traditionally polished vocals. The amount of wiggle room for creativity within those bounds is unpleasantly small.

Women who rock have made strides using social media and YouTube and the like, but there are so many people on those platforms that they still need publicity to push them into prominence, which unfortunately generally comes from the PR department of a record company. But TikTok? You can follow people, but the algorithm does the heavy lifting. It throws things at you without you having to look. That means if your song is good enough that people listen to it, bam, publicity.

Thanks to that, there are quite a few all- or mostly-female rock bands that have made a splash on TikTok, and as of right now this song is the best I heard the week I put this column together. But there are more, so even if you’re an old, take a look.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.