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.)
Anika - "Hearsay"
Anika and her band recorded her upcoming album Abyss at Berlin's historic Hansa Studios. On "Hearsay," a song about a parasitic mass media, they conjure the dreamy dread of the albums that David Bowie made at that same studio long ago, as well as the Joy Division and Bauhaus and Cure records that Bowie's Berlin records directly inspired. Some basslines conjure dank rooftops, empty allies, and the smell of rain and concrete late at night. Some songs have a mood, and others have a texture, a taste, a smell. "Hearsay" is one of those. —Tom
Destroyer - "Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World"
"Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World" is a title befitting a monstrously good song. Fortunately, Dan Bejar and John Collins were up to the task. The track finds Bejar's lizard-poet enmeshed in a hard-crashing dream, surrounded by blurry synths, "la la la" backing vocals, and a beat that will not relent. "Fools rush in, but they're the only ones with guts," Bejar opines, just before a gnarly electric guitar careens into the mix at unforeseen volume. It's one of many lines I look forward to pondering, along with the whole damn first verse: "I lie to myself, I lie down on the breeze/ I whisper, 'Hey, breeze, where ya going?'/ Does the wine or the whiskey miss me? No/ At night cats get smashed in the snow, I don't mind/ We are gathered here today to have a real nice time/ Absent friends, where'd you go?" Canada's poet laureate and his trusty producer continue to not miss. —Chris
Sleeper's Bell - "Bad Word"
“Looking back at the heartache/ God, what a lovely pain,” Blaine Teppema lulls as the opening line of “Bad Word.” On the devastating but gentle song, Sleeper’s Bell capture the pain of on-again, off-again romances, especially when someone else is involved: “We got right back together/ Now we treat her name like a bad word/ Feeling light as a feather/ Til I think about her,” she confesses over acoustic guitar. Though the two and a half minutes are hushed and delicate, with a fiddle and saxophone eventually coming in to add to the tranquil air, “Bad Word” grapples with the heaviness of jealousy without ever naming it, Teppema instead longing for the simplicity of heartbreak, laughing off her pain, and pouring another drink. —Danielle
Rocket - "Take Your Aim"
Forget romantic heartbreak — sometimes, the dissolution of a bloodsucking friendship leaves way more emotional damage. But there aren't as many songs about that, which is part of what makes Rocket's new single "Take Your Aim" special. The grunge-filtered tune finds vocalist and bassist Alithea Tuttle struggling to break free from a friendship that, in her words, was "built upon them taking more than they give." Her voice coolly glides over the track's boisterous, beefy guitars, evoking resentment, grief, and self-determination all at once. "You say that I'm all to blame/ Why don't you come and take your aim?" she taunts in the chorus, a gruff, assured threat that simultaneously begs for release. —Abby
Lady Gaga - "Abracadabra"
Lady Gaga is in the nostalgia zone now, reaching back to the mechanistic, theatrical dance-pop that she first brought to the game a decade and a half ago, when she was signed to Akon's label. Back then, her provocations carried a charge, a sense of surprise and rupture. That's gone now. Lady Gaga is a known quantity, and "Abracadabra" will shock nobody. That's fine. When Gaga is wailing euphoric nonsense over severe club beats and melodramatic strings, things are as they should be. She delivers the most ridiculous hooks in the most straight-faced ways, and she knows exactly when to let her voice soar, when to let the booming arena-rock drum fills and hammering keyboards take over. In its own way, "Abracadabra" is as big and hammy as any Meat Loaf song. It's a great excuse for Gaga to get weird in the video, and she did that, too. Whenever Gaga threatens to float off into adult-contempo prestige, she comes back with something as beautifully silly as this. It's inspiring. —Tom
