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 subscribers on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)
yeule has a penchant for otherworldly sounds. "Hystérique" is billed as "a post-apocalyptic cyborgian romance," and it's a hazy, buzzing whirlwind with a pulsing, infectious beat. yeule utters the names of designer brands in icy breaths and paints surreal, cinematic scenes: "Atomic electronic girl, crying in the rain/ Let's just dance, dance, dance, dance/ Dance away the pain." "Hystérique" sounds like a rave echoing from another a planet. —Danielle
4
The Healing Power Of Horses - "xstick_xstick"
The Healing Power Of Horses don't quite make sense. Two reclusive weirdos holed up in an attic in the English countryside who call themselves t and c, they make songs that unfold with the warped logic of an inside joke between two people who spend way, way too much time together. As c deadpans evocatively surreal nonsense in a coolly detached sing-song, "xstick_xstick" rides a fidgety earworm of a groove straight into the deepest recesses of your brain. What does any of it mean? Don't worry about it. Just hop in the saddle and be healed. —Peter
3
nowhere else to be - "r1 (ripples)"
The members of the Montreal group nowhere else to be choose to remain anonymous for now. That won't last. It can't. For one thing, these folks aren't hiding their faces in their videos or anything. More importantly, people want to know things about you when you make this kind of overwhelming tide of melody. "r1 (ripples)," with its walls of fuzz and its underwater keyboard glimmers, could be considered shoegaze, but there's a melodic swagger underneath that suggests something bigger. And when the singer gets into his lower register, the humanity shines through and stands out. He can't hide it. —Tom
2
Factory Floor - "Continuation"
How have Factory Floor returned after a decade away? With a burbling, squelching, strobing synth pulse and murmured vocals that rightly assume this beat is more than enough to sweep us away. If you can stop your body from twitching and grooving while "Continuation" is on, you've got more self control than me. "So let's begin the continuation." —Chris
1
Trinket - "If Not Soon Then Now"
Sometimes bitterness is a blink away from sweetness. And sometimes those volatile stakes make the sensations all the more delicious. Brooklyn’s Trinket capture the fragility that’s always hovering over something that’s too good to be true — a new relationship or fresh spark — on "If Not Soon Then Now." The melody is sugary and bright, almost Froot Loops-sweet, while the guitars carry a subtle grit, an undercurrent of fear or latent anxiety. Synths act as an extra glint, lending the track a certain dewy, early-morning shimmer — jangle pop at its finest. But isolated, the thorny guitar strums might almost register as an alarm. It’s a lovely tension between brightness and unease, a harmonious urgency, all glistening surfaces and something quietly trembling underneath. —Margaret
