Did you know it's International Strange Music Day today? Not to worry, nor did we until last week. The brainchild of composer and musician Patrick Grant, the day hasn't picked up a lot of traction yet, but a day to encourage people to listen to strange music – whether just new to them or truly bizarre – is the kind of holiday we can get behind here at GoldenPlec. We're doing our bit to spread the word by sharing this selection of weird music we love. If some of you favourite weirdos didn't make the list, we're sorry – it was really, really hard to pick just twelve songs! Hit us up on Facebook or Twitter with your favourites. And if this list doesn't succeed in throwing the most jaded of you for a loop at least once, well, the least we can hope for is that you'll enjoy it.

What in God's name am I listening to? The songs

1) Scott Walker and Sunn 0))) - Brando:
It's been a long and varied career for Scott Walker, from the orchestral pop of The Walker Brothers in the 1960s to 21st century avant garde musician, but news of a collaboration with drone metal band Sunn 0))) still sounded like a hoax at first. It's not, but it is exactly as weird as it sounds.

2) Catch 22 - A Minor Point:
There's nothing inherently weird about Catch 22, one of the more favourably-remembered Third Wave Ska bands to come out of the US scene in the 1990s (faint praise to some...). Nor is there anything inherently weird about lyrics drawing on propaganda slogans that cynically dismiss criticism of the use of violence in pursuit of revolution. No, it's the combination of Third Wave Ska and hardcore communism that's really weird, please tell us we're not the only ones this sounds incredibly strange to.

3) Melt-Banana - Shield For Your Eyes, A Beast In The Well On Your Hand:Even in their early days of more straightforward hardcore, Japanese band Melt-Banana stood out because of singer Yasuko Onuki's high-pitched vocal style - not the typical choice for aggressively fast punk bands. But as they went on, they got more experimental with guitar effects and song structures, achieving a sound that's gloriously noisy, but still melodic and coherent. Shield For Your Eyes... is a classic example of what they can do.

4) Venetian Snares - Hajnal:Breakcore producer Venetian Snares is one of those extraordinarily prolific electronic music producers, but in the end, "Rossz Csillag Alatt Született" will probably be seen as his definitive album. Inspired by a trip to Hungary, the album combines samples of (mostly 20th-century) classical music with driving, glitchy breakcore beats. This song takes a while for the beats to kick in, but it reminds us so much of the theme tune to the old Tintin cartoon that we couldn't help but pick  it.

5) Death Grips - The Fever (Aye Aye):
Death Grips are not the only act to bring industrial and noise influences to hip-hop (checkout clipping. and Dälek if you're already a fan), but between erratic performances, collaborations with Björk and deliberately leaking their second album onto the internet with the title written in sharpie on a penis as the cover when their label wouldn't release it quickly enough, they're certainly one of the weirder ones.

6) Stump - Buffalo:
Inspired by Captain Beefheart and Flann O'Brien, Stump were technically formed in London, but Irish people were involved and if we're honest with ourselves, that's as much claim as we ever had to My Bloody Valentine or Father Ted, so we're still going to count them. A fraught recording session and disappointing sales meant the band didn't stay together long after the release of their debut album, but they were happy with the album itself, and rightly so.

7) No Means No - Forward To Death:
In 1992, Alternative Tentacles, the label founded by Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, celebrated its 10th anniversary and its 100th release. To mark the occasion, the put out a compilation of 15 Dead Kennedys covers by 16 bands. While most of the covers play it straight, and not all live up to the originals, Nomeansno's a capella cover of Forward To Death injects a healthy dose of humour - and actually manages to work far better than it should.

8) Melodica Deathship - Look To The Sea:
An unambiguously Irish band, now, and one who manage to achieve weirdness just by a combination of genres no one could ever have expected - hip-hop, dub, and sea shanties. Also unexpectedly, it works really well, as on this brooding exhortation to anarchy and piracy.

9) Tom Waits - Kommienezuspadt:
What list of weird music could make any pretence of completeness without Tom Waits? While he managed respectable sales in his own right as a relatively normal singer-songwriter, having songs he wrote covered by The Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart at exactly the right time gave Waits the chance to get weird, as he does on this song, originally written as the white rabbit's song in a musical based on Alice in Wonderland

10) VHS Head - Sunset Everett:
Glitchy IDM is strange enough in its own right, but VHS Head's strict reliance on old video tapes for samples gives his output a distinct feeling all of its own.

11) Björk - Crystalline:
Another artist we really couldn't leave out, Björk has probably come closest to mainstream crossover success, but she's kept experimenting and evolving throughout her career. This song starts off delicately and ends with a pounding drum & bass crescendo, and is largely driven by a 'gameleste', an instrument developed specially for the concerts that led to Björk's second most recent album, "Biophilia" - a celesta modified to sound like gamelan, which can be played with an iPad.

12) The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World:
Loved by Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain, The Shaggs achieved a level of influence in indie music that utterly belies their lack of actual desire to be a rock band. When the first two of Austin Wiggin's mother's predictions from reading his palm came true - that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman and that he would have two sons after she died - he set to work making sure the third one did too. He pulled his daughters out of school and bought them instruments and music lessons, sure that their success was foreordained. It wasn't, probably due in large part to the fact that Dot, Betty and Helen Wiggins were only doing it because their father made them. But something about the innocence of their approach, and the strangely beautiful moments they sometimes stumbled on has meant that The Shaggs have never been entirely forgotten.