The 5 Best Songs Of The Week

The 5 Best Songs Of The Week

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.)

05

Katrina Ford - "Cry Wolf"

On many of TV On The Radio’s best songs — “Staring At The Sun,” “Wolf Like Me,” “Golden Age” — another powerful voice joins in with the already-powerful combination of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone. That voice belongs to Katrina Ford, a Baltimore indie rock veteran who’s led bands like Celebration and Love Life. Ford, who has a day job tuning churches’ pipe organs, knows how to turn her voice into a divine, eternal force, and that’s what she does on her solo single “Cry Wolf.” Synths tingle, guitars ripple, drums pound, and Ford hits a ritualistic goosebump register that elevates all the swirling sounds around her. May she howl forever. —Tom

04

Onsloow - “Brakes”

“Can I hold you now? Things aren’t the same anymore.” So goes the infectious chorus of “Brakes,” a song about “looking back on a relationship and struggling to remember how it felt in those intense moments.” The Trondheim, Norway combo Onsloow, new signees to Tiny Engines, translate that mix of “frustration and nostalgia” into urgent pop-rock, pulling bits from overlapping parts of rock history into their own dynamic sound. There’s a lot of Alvvays’ guitar-layering indie-pop in this one, but the pristine exterior is tinged with the hard edges and openhearted rawness of emocore. Helene Brunæs sings with delicate power, crafting gorgeous melodies that burst from the speakers, and the band’s hard-charging attack neatly mirrors her lyrical conceit about hitting the brakes. It’s a perfect gem of a song. —Chris

03

Ain't - "Teething"

You know the feeling. A wisdom tooth creeping through the gums; a twinge that burns with each attempted bite; a regular cleaning that gets a little too aggressive. There’s something uniquely excruciating about the teeth. London indie rock quintet Ain’t use them as a metaphor in their eerie new single “Teething,” a song that pleads for someone’s reciprocal attention to no avail. Over layered, swirling guitars, vocalist Hanna Baker Darch sings: “You don’t even notice me from the window/ I want to push at where you keep the pain,” evoking something like a stalker hiding in the bushes. Rejection in this case, Ain’t argue, doesn’t feel as much like a gut punch as a blunt, nagging ache. You can try to ignore its effects — but eventually, you gotta suck it up and get that bad tooth checked out. –Abby

02

High Vis - "Drop Me Out"

What a week for High Vis. Days after delivering the phenomenal Show Me The Body collab “Stomach,” the London punks rolled out an equally exhilarating single from their own new album Guided Tour. “Drop Me Out” is one of the most straightforward High Vis songs to date, barreling forward with power and an unstoppable sense of purpose. Graham Sayle, who often slips often into melodious Liam Gallagher mode over his band’s hardcore-adjacent churn, goes full shout-along punk frontman here. “I’m clawing back the wasted years!” Sayle yells, as if he’s leading the charge against the very concept of regret. Output like this suggests he really is making good use of his time these days. —Chris

01

Hey, ily - "(Dis)Connected"

Chiptune emo darlings Hey, ily have a knack for capturing the absurdity of the internet era. The clamorous Montana band has done it again on “(Dis)Connected,” the first taste of their second album, Hey, I Loathe You! “(Dis)Connected” is blown-out and frenzied, as overwhelming and ridiculous as scrolling Instagram reels feels. The hook just about sums up what they’re expressing: “I’m so connected that I’m disconnected.” Yet at the same time, the song is vivacious and liberated, transcending screens and making for some IRL fun. Thank god. —Danielle

more from The 5 Best Songs Of The Week