Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)
Love Rarely - "Will"
On the bus home, there is a group of maybe five brash teenagers flinging water bottles and fast food cartons in the seats behind me as I listen to Love Rarely’s punchy new single "Will." The song is a relentless math-rocky oeuvre with kick-flipping guitars, brilliantly sparring vocals, and car break-slamming percussion. It strikingly maintains a sense of invincibility. I can’t help but laugh when a light blue paper box whips into my lap from behind me. I flinch but am not surprised. "I bet you thought you were gonna scare me/ Oh no," vocalist Courtney Levitt wails in my ears. Although I'm sure Love Rarely were not thinking about antagonizing kids when writing "Will," their emo/post-hardcore hybrid is the exact don't-fucking-underestimate-me banger I needed. —Margaret
Fred again.. & Young Thug - "scared"
Good things happen when forward-thinking dance producers play around with Young Thug's vocals. Eleven years ago, Jamie xx combined Thug's delirious, euphoric rapping with an old doo-wop sample, some spare fingersnaps and bouncing pianos, and a passionately growled Popcaan hook to make the absolutely transcendent pop confection "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)." Fred again..'s recent live-set favorite "scared" doesn't reach those heights, but it mines Thug's voice for a certain unhinged vulnerability that nobody else could conjure. Chopping up an eight-year-old Thug leak, Fred again.. and his co-producers build peaceful swells while Thug lends weirdo gravitas to the sleek propulsion. If only Thug could find this sense of freedom in his own post-prison music. —Tom
RIP Magic - "5words"
The London band Sorry are known for making off-kilter, art-y pop-rock, not all that unlike the music member Marco Pini makes under his solo moniker RIP Magic. But RIP Magic takes things a step further into the dance-punk zone, and Pini's latest track "5words" evokes the type of discerning steez LCD Soundsystem began to master two decades ago — rightfully so, considering James Murphy produced it. But "5words" also has a refreshing grit to it, indicating an earned passing of the torch more than mimicry. —Abby
Accessory - "Calcium"
For years, Chicago’s Dehd have been a solid source of ebullient, surfy garage rock even when singing about heartbreak or sadness. Jason Balla's side project Accessory is of a whole different world. "Calcium" is a sprawling piano ballad "about living while the world burns," according to the musician. He delivers bleak lines in a resigned monotone reminiscent of Elliott Smith if Elliott Smith were alive to lament the numbing reality of "content doom." A soaring viola adds a feeling of hope, or a deeper melancholy, depending on how you decide to view it. —Danielle
Stuck - "Instakill"
"Instakill" is about a depressingly common experience: feeling hopeless about financial and career prospects, desperately seeking solutions, and toying with the ones offered up by "huckster gurus." Greg Obis from Stuck has been there, and he converted his bleak amusement with the online self-help industry into a song that might marginally change your life for the better. The lead single from Stuck's new album Optimizer brims with color and nervous energy. Like so much of the best post-punk, it hits hard, but in a fun way — 21st century duress translated into 20th century cartoon violence. —Chris
