It’s that time of year again. That time to realise your barbecue gas canister is empty, you don’t own a working radio, the blow-up pool has a dozen bindi-sized holes in it, and that every second person you invited over will only eat ethically sourced eggplant sausages.

For the second year in a row Australia’s beloved music poll, the Triple J Hottest 100, will not be counted down on 26 January – a date which marks the anniversary of the arrival of the first fleet, and a date which many believe should be mourned, not celebrated with a national holiday.

Recognising this – and responding to a listeners’ survey – Triple J decided in 2017 to move their broadcast to make the Hottest 100 “an event that everyone can enjoy”. This year it will be held on Sunday.

(For those bemoaning this blow to the sanctity of tradition: while the countdown has been around since 1989, it only officially synced up with Australia Day in 1998 – the same year everyone voted for Offspring’s Pretty Fly (For A White Guy). Not all traditions should hold.)

So who’s going to win this year’s poll?

Australian acts seem likely to make up the majority of the top 20, after a year in which local music has flourished on radio.

And there looks to be a steady stream of Aussie women in the top reaches, too: ocker rocker Ruby Fields, Gold Coast world-beater Amy Shark, the technicoloured pop of Brisbane’s WAFIA, and polymath Mallrat all seem likely to comfortably land in the top 10. And a little lower down in the list we should see the dark pop of Angie McMahon, the visceral roar of WAAX and wunderkind G Flip.

But hotly tipped to take out the top position on Sunday is a song many readers may not be aware of: the breezy Confidence by Sydney band Ocean Alley.

The northern beaches group are currently plugging a gap previously filled by cruisy coastal mainstays such as the Cat Empire and Xavier Rudd: reggae-tinged music that breathes salt air and smells like sunscreen. They’ve built a solid national audience through strong Triple J airplay and ceaseless live shows: the band have done four national tours over the past two years, with another set to start next month, along with a few successful overseas jaunts. (Don’t underestimate the international vote; the Hottest 100 calls itself the world’s biggest annual online music poll, after all.)

The band’s second album Chiaroscuro was released last March and was voted second in Triple J’s top 10 Albums of 2018 – a solid sign of Ocean Alley’s popularity with the voting crowd.

Also likely to put up a fight for the crown is Childish Gambino’s racially charged This Is America. Released last May, during a week in which Kanye West infamously called black slavery a choice and Donald Trump spoke at the annual NRA rally in Texas, Donald Glover’s track inspired instant praise and widespread thinkpieces. Both somatic and intelligent, subtle and blunt as a police baton, the song was inextricably linked to Hiro Murai’s shocking, artful video clip, and Glover’s own Atlanta series, the season two finale of which aired the following week. An indictment of gun culture, police violence and the inequalities of American life, it will go down as a vital and urgent piece of protest art.

As a standalone song, This Is America is catchy, vicious and brilliant – and if it wins, it’ll be the second time the poll has been won by a person of colour, after Kendrick Lamar made history last year.

(As an interesting side note, Ocean Alley’s Confidence bears more than a passing resemblance to Childish Gambino’s Redbone, which came in at #5 in 2016’s countdown. Everything is cyclical.)

The only other song with a real chance of taking #1 is Amy Shark’s I Said Hi, a blistering kiss-off to record label executives who rejected her music during the early days of her career. Coming off the back of three 2018 Aria wins and a No 1 album, and with half a dozen of her songs still enjoying regular Triple J rotation – including previous Hottest 100 hits Weekends (#25 in 2017) and Adore (#2 in 2016) – it’s hard to see I Said Hi coming in any lower than the top five, unless of course her fanbase spread their votes evenly over her 13 eligible tracks, thus diluting her power.

Elsewhere in the top reaches, expect to hear Losing It by festival favourite Fisher; Sicko Mode by future-Kardashian Travis Scott; Mantra by the most American-sounding Brits since Bush, Bring Me the Horizon; Turn by the Wombats; I Miss You by Thundamentals; Ocean Alley’s Knees; and the soulful Be Alright by Dean Lewis. Quite a varied list of songs.

Finally, the track that will take out the newly appointed award for Song Most Like God Gave Rock and Roll To You By Kiss is Trophy Eyes’ anthemic You Can Count On Me.

The Newcastle punk band have written a stomp-along classic, which should safely make the top 20 of the Hottest 100 and, more importantly, help usher in a new era of lighter-waving rock’n’roll songs written about lighter-waving rock’n’roll songs.

• The 2018 Hottest 100 is broadcast on Triple J on Sunday 27 January