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.)
The Tubs - "Narcissist"
Grief sure is a bugger, innit? The Tubs frontman Owen “O” Williams wrote a whole album, the March-bound Cotton Crown, about grappling with his mother's suicide. Despite that deeply tragic subject matter, the previews we've heard of the record so far sound less about the loss of a particular person and more about the person you, in turn, become in their sudden absence. And sometimes that person makes ill-informed decisions. Beneath all its peppy, Marr-indebted guitar jangle, "Narcissist" finds Williams' narrator exasperated as ever, attempting to date in the midst of his grief. But he's not seeking out true love or a one-night stand to ease his pain; he's looking for someone who possesses something evil enough to eclipse that grief completely. Misery loves company, and when there's misery to be felt, "Narcissist" makes for shameless accompaniment. —Abby
The Convenience - "I Got Exactly What I Wanted"
Not many bands can convincingly pull off Spoon's particular brand of swagger, but the Convenience do it on their new single. "I Got Exactly What I Wanted" is a tight and wiry rocker built around sharp-edged chords, driven along by pointed, less-is-more bass and narrated with a casual edginess that complements the track's neurotic rhythm. The band's Nick Corson says the titular phrase creates a "discomforting mental friction" for him, and the song taps directly into that sensation, even (especially?) when all that pent-up tension explodes outward. —Chris
Samia - "Bovine Excision"
As Samia explains it, she's spent her whole life trying to impress an abstract concept of God and the male gaze, to the point that her true self is inseparable from those efforts. "Bovine Excision" finds her longing to find out what might be in there if she could ever untangle herself from all that. "I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction," she writes, "this clinical pursuit of emptiness." It's a thought-provoking topic, and Samia's elusive-yet-evocative lyrics only stir further contemplation. Yet the delivery system for this heady personal download is immensely approachable: a kind of big-tent singer-songwriter alt-rock fit for world domination in the age of Wednesday and boygenius, moving with a grace that belies such knotty subject matter. —Chris
Perfume Genius - "It's A Mirror"
“What do you get from the stretching horizon/ That you’d leave me spiraling with no one to hold?” This is the first line of Perfume Genius’ Glory lead single "It’s A Mirror," and it’s the first line of the album. “It’s A Mirror” is a twangy, melancholy epic that’s as catchy as it is wistful, the guitars buoyant as Mike Hadreas offers more loaded, poetic questions: “Can I get off without reliving history/ And let every echo just sing to itself?” It’s a riveting preview to the new LP, and considering the following track features Aldous Harding, it’s only a sliver of the poignant beauty that’s to come. –Danielle
Lucy Dacus - "Ankles"
Four years ago, Lucy Dacus released "Thumbs," a song about fantasizing about all the violence that you could commit against someone who has done a loved one wrong. "Ankles" is another Dacus song named after a body part, and it's also about a violent fantasy, but it takes a very different form. On "Ankles," she's horny. She wants something that she cannot have: The type of physical excitement where you throw each other all around the bedroom and then return to domestic bliss in the morning. The music is gentler and more restrained than the lyrics, with Dacus' voice softly floating over murmuring strings and curlicues of guitar. That's the Lucy Dacus way. Few songwriters are better at finding beauty in the visceral. —Tom
