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.)
Melaina Kol - "Lifeheart"
Melaina Kol’s “Lifeheart” opens with a hard-knocking metronome that locks into a rhythmic sweet spot, splintering into cascading guitar melodies. It’s shimmery, gorgeous, and organic. Cracking open a dirt-caked geode to uncover a crystalline web beneath. Nashville musician Logan Hornyak fractures and splices vocal fragments from Lowertown’s Olivia O., creating a shower of sound that feels both immersive and intimate. The track wraps around you like a weighted blanket of hypnosis, marrying charming harmonics with soothing repetition. It feels good for my very tired brain.
knitting - "I Wasn't Fully Cooked"
When a song begins with crashing guitars, I'm all in. So knitting's "I Wasn't Fully Cooked" had me hooked from the very start. From there, the Montreal indie rockers create an eerie, almost horror movie-like atmosphere with the track, as vocalist Mischa Dempsey sings mysteriously of fossils, fallen trees, abandoned houses, and "a secret that never got out." Am I allowed to say they're cooking? —Danielle
Charli XCX - "SS26"
Charli XCX may be the finest topline writer of her generation. She's too creatively restless to beat us over the head with "I Love It"-grade hooks every time out, but proper pop melodies seem to spill out of her almost by accident. Whatever you think of "Rock Music," the hard launch of the current quasi-rock album cycle she seems to be in, it was psychotically catchy. "SS26" is just as endlessly replayable. Her voice is a beam of beauty, doing curlicues against a subtly propulsive backing track that shifts shape just often enough to add new layers of ache to her voice. The lyrics may are blunt to the point of satire, but the genuine feeling in these tracks is not hard to spot. —Chris
Olivia Rodrigo - "The Cure"
When Olivia Rodrigo first announced 'The Cure," a few weeks after name-checking "Just Like Heaven" on her last single, you could hear the sound of my eyes rolling from outer space. It was like: We get it. You love Robert Smith, and also you are friends with him, and also he thinks you're a talented musician. That's very nice for you, but also you don't have to keep reminding everyone.
Thankfully, "The Cure" isn't about the Cure. It doesn't sound like the Cure, either. Instead, Rodrigo continues to combine her melodramatic heart-squished balladry with the '90s alt-rock that she so loudly reveres, coming up with a grand and sweeping take on arena-pop that's just ragged enough to avoid getting too obvious. This time, she delves into the sad reality that even a healthy relationship won't prevent you from living inside your own head, building webs out of intrusive thoughts. Even the central mixed metaphor — there's no antidote for being unraveled — makes sense for a narrator who's just figuring out that a human being is not a ball of yarn. —Tom
Wild Pink - "Round Of Applause At The End Of The World"
You might expect a song titled "Round Of Applause At The End Of The World" to be bleak. But Wild Pink are aiming for something different. Armed with collaborators like MJ Lenderman and other Wednesday associates, the band turns post-apocalyptic feelings into a raucous, thoroughly enjoyable alt-country anthem. Misery takes form in conspiracy theories relayed over guitars that shred too hard to let the listener be upset, even as John Ross sings in a resigned drawl. Round of applause, indeed. —Danielle
