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.)
sadie - "Wash"
What's a hyperpop singer to do when she's pushing 30 and her decade-long relationship comes to an end? For sadie, the answer was to start coaching a high school girls' soccer team, mess around with acoustic instruments for the first time in years, and channel her emotional distress into a ballad that rocks. "Wash" is the latest proof that heavily processed vocals can provide a powerful emotional charge. Against woozy guitar strums, plaintive piano, and pounding drums, sadie lets loose with one of the catchiest melodies of the year, lamenting her partner's divergent life trajectory. The moment her voice shoots upward on the last word of "I think I've had it up to here" is a tender lightning strike. —Chris
Kacey Musgraves - "Dry Spell"
Kacey Musgraves plays the lone(ly) ranger on “Dry Spell,” a sparse, twangy pop track about the dull ache of going without sex. She delivers cheeky lines like “Lonely with a capital H if you know what I mean/ I’ve been sitting on the washing machine” with wry amusement, her silvery vocals floating easily over cursive guitar twang. When she shrugs, "And the last time it wasn’t good anyway," the joke turns philosophical: Is bad sex worse than none at all? Either way, Musgraves sounds ready to outlast the drought. —Margaret
Gouge Away - "Figurine"
Not many bands that started off screaming are still screaming, but Gouge Away are built different. Christina Michelle's outbursts are crisp and raw, as full of force as ever as she pushes her voice to the limit. It's even evocative in the quiet moments when she drawls about wanting to make art on the couch and someone pissing on a driveway. "Figurine" is also their first song with Ovlov and Pet Fox's Theo Hartlett on guitar, in case you needed a reason to love Gouge Away even more. —Danielle
Drug Church - "Pynch"
"A golden oracle read my face/ She said my paths were twofold/ Do right and know her embrace/ Or sleep on a park bench and die alone": It's the realest shit Patrick Kindlon ever wrote. If you're lucky enough to be in a stable and mutually supportive long-term relationship, you might know that feeling — the overwhelming sense that you'd be the world's deadest fuckup if you didn't make the right decisions to ensure this person would be in your life forever. Usually, Kindlon's acerbic lyrics and delivery contrast sharply from his band's fizzy forward energy; that's where Drug Church get their juice. On "Pynch," though, they work together. The words say that you'll be a dead fuckup one day anyway, but at lest you did this one thing right. The music lets you know that you're alive right now, that you haven't fucked anything up beyond repair quite yet. —Tom
Iceage - "Star"
Elias Rønnenfelt has sang of infatuation many times before, but on Iceage’s first new song in five years, he replaces his typical lugubrious lust of his earlier discography with full-bodied, unabashed adoration. "Star" struts along with a stylish dance punk jangle as Rønnenfelt professes his most heart-eyed desires: "Every inch of my earth and sky/ You can occupy." By the time the song reaches its downtempo implosion, you, too, might be convinced in love’s ability to span lightyears. —Abby
