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.)
Oklou - "Viscus" (Feat. FKA twigs)
You've heard of trauma bonding. This is something adjacent, I guess: oklou and FKA twigs, two of the brightest lights in left-leaning pop music, forged a connection over their mutual experience with stomach pain. "I kind of go through all of these sources of anxiety and talk about my body as a conflicting relationship," Oklou explained in a press release this week. That shared suffering led to "Viscus," the lead single from Oklou's forthcoming deluxe edition of choke enough, one of this year's most essential LPs. "Thе body is a temple," Oklou sings. "Am I worshipping too hard?" Within the wispy, synth-led environment created by Oklou and co-producer Danny L Harle, twigs' trembling vocal sounds right at home. Together, they've created a track that'll hit you in the gut. —Chris
Lande Hekt - "Favourite Pair Of Shoes"
Everything changes when the chorus comes in. Before the hook, former Muncie Girls leader Lande Hekt's new solo song "Favourite Pair Of Shoes" is a perfectly nice piece of blissfully bummed-out old-school indie rock. It's got all the fuzzy feeling that you need from that sound. It's warm and comforting and familiar. On the hook, though, the melody downshifts just slightly, and a fuzzy, heavy guitar riff comes in. The changes are slight; that riff, for instance, is pretty deep in the mix. Somehow, though, it completely reorients the feeling of the song. Hekt's smothered, multi-tracked voice takes on doomy intensity, and it suddenly feels like something is at stake. Where did that come from? And can we get some more of it? —Tom
Joyce Manor - "Well, Whatever It Was"
As often as they've shared bills with their peers in Midwest emo and Philly pop-punk, don't you dare forget it: Joyce Manor are Southern Californian through-and-through, worshipping the Beach Boys as much as Blink-182. That's as obvious as ever on their new single "Well, Whatever It Was," which frontman Barry Johnson says "has got to be one of the most Southern California sounding songs ever recorded." Don't just take his word for it. Listen to those clean vocal harmonies, that sunny guitar jangle, and that laissez-faire attitude in Johnson's lyrics: "Lost my job at Little Caesars/ Drinking whiskey 'cause my teeth hurt/ My tuxedo was a T-shirt/ But, you know what they say!" Add this to the ever-growing list of Joyce Manor songs to throw on when life hurls another shitty day your direction. —Abby
Sorry - "Today Might Be The Hit"
On "Today Might Be The Hit," it seems like Sorry’s Asha Lorenz has achieved a resilient indifference. Yada-yada-yada-ya! A chorus of vocal cheers and "blah blah blahs" push her through the day’s unknowability. Despite the news growing more absurd, despite mass violence being ignored, despite our growing screen-triggered serotonin addictions, we carry on. The drumbeat is jubilant and animated like the ‘60s girl group classic “Baby Love” by the Supremes or Katrina And The Waves' "Walking On Sunshine." The guitar revs with teasing aggression. At one point Lorenz' voice crackles to a halt like a dying star. It’s unclear if "the hit" in question is the point of self-destruction or personal victory: "Today might be the hit/ Or it won't be shit." Her vocals are magnetically withholding; is she shrugging off the absurdity or ready to give into the end? "Today Might Be The Hit" is a lenticular print; it’s an animated track of contradictions. If there’s the possibility of a dismal end might as well make a catchy song to sing along to. —Margaret
Hatchie - "Only One Laughing"
In 2018, Robin Guthrie remixed Hatchie’s song "Sure." The Australian artist has always offered sprawling dream-pop landscapes, but it’s never been as Cocteau Twins-indebted as it is on this Liquorice single. Harriette Pilbeam explained the track was written so she could "air my frustrations with the state of the world and the position I found myself in at the time," but the jangly guitars have that magical quality of erasing any sense of doom that could’ve existed. It’s a blissed-out four minutes that feel taken straight from the '80s. —Danielle
