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.)
Nihilistic Easyrider - "Getaway Plan"
Nihilistic Easyrider is the moniker of indie rocker Jacob Duarte, though the Narrow Head frontman maintains that his band and his solo endeavor are both equally important aspects of his life. "Getaway Plan," the lead single to Nihilistic Easyrider's forthcoming debut album Deluxe Edition, shows what sets the two projects apart. While Narrow Head employ beefy chords and grungy production, Duarte says that these songs are the type of music he dreamed of making growing up, when '90s and '00s emo comprised a lot of his listening habits. "Getaway Plan" doesn't have those noodly Midwest guitars, but it's a freewheeling, caffeinated anthem that feels like, for lack of a less corny phrase, rocking out with your inner child. —Abby
Editrix - "The Big E"
Wendy Eisenberg's whirlwind of musical projects never really dies down, but a new Editrix album still feels like a welcome return. "The Big E," the new LP's title track, is an anxious rumble that reminds me of Deerhoof's collision of pop with the avant-garde. It feels like barely contained chaos, topped off with a piercing vocal melody from Eisenberg that amplifies the out-of-control sensation. "This song is about alien visitors — hoping they’re friendly and curious like the best of us humans,” Eisenberg says. "It’s also about aging, which feels like you’re an alien to certain generations, including your younger selves, and the impossibility of being understood." Such communication breakdowns are inevitable, but "The Big E" vibrates with an intensity that seems bound to get the point across. —Chris
Pool Kids - "Easier Said Than Done"
The level-up moment has arrived. Pool Kids were already a great band -- Florida emo prodigies with sharp hooks and big feelings and fluid, complex musical interplay on their side. On "Easier Said Than Done," their first single for bigger label Epitaph, they're still recognizably the same band, but everything hits just a tiny bit harder. The looks are a little more direct in their bittersweetness, and the keyboards and vocal effects sweeten things slightly without overwhelming the things that brought Pool Kids to the dance in the first place. Those tiny tweaks make all the difference, and Pool Kids sound like they're ready to take on the world now.
Water From Your Eyes - "Life Signs"
What a weird band (complimentary). "Life Signs" is another unexpected turn from Water From Your Eyes, a group that always manages to wrangle its outré impulses into something catchy and immediate. The lead single from new album It's A Beautiful Place moves at off-kilter angles through an oft-morphing landscape. The main guitar riff, a surprisingly blown-out descending power-chord meltdown, feels like Tool locked in Sisyphean struggle, tumbling down the hill again and again only to rise back up. There's also some pleasantly gnarly surf guitar and a dreamy, jazzy chorus that seems to have been patched in from a different song yet somehow fits perfectly. "We wanted to present a wide range of styles in a way that acknowledges everything’s just a tiny blip," the band's Nate Amos has explained. They're off to a good start. —Chris
Addison Rae - "Fame Is A Gun"
When Addison Rae sings about the glamorous life, the obvious allusion is to the one that Sheila E. and Prince described on their 1984 pop classic. But "Fame Is A Gun" summons the ghost of a different pop-life moment. Like Addison Rae, Britney Spears was a young blonde bombshell who rocketed to global fame so quickly that she left heads spinning, including her own. Addison will never have to face the hurricane of Britney-level stardom and scrutiny and demonry, as she didn't come up in the same tabloid-monoculture time, but she still bears the cross of TikTok mega-celebrity. On "Fame Is A Gun," she steers right into it, indulging in trashiness-as-art and mocking an obsessed, horny, disapproving public like Britney circa Blackout. And like Britney circa Blackout, Addison has access to the greatest bleepy-slinky production available, courtesy of collaborators ELVIRA and Luka Kloser. "Fame Is A Gun" is a forbidding purr of the highest order, a sticky evocation of the seductive, perilous black hole of mass attention. Crash and burn, girl, baby, swallow it dry. —Tom
