5 songs you need to hear this week
Featuring Aldous Harding's rococo pop labyrinth, Loraine James' IDM portal, and Scout Gillett's glowy, honky-tonk wisdom.
Photo of Aldous Harding by Kate Ellen Meakin
Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one entry a “Song of the Week” designation. Check out last week’s roundup here.
Song of the Week: Aldous Harding, “One Stop”
Three years ago, Aldous Harding pronounced herself the “Jim Carrey of the indie world” and her humor remains a salve in 2026, especially on the deeply peculiar, trilling “One Stop.” The single is unruly and sparse, as it laughs at Harding’s encounter with “the real John Cale.” A piano quiver phases into a faint, knocking bass groove. “He had no words, but I don’t mind,” Harding sings, landing on a punchline: “I packed the stage while he ate rice.” Producer John Parish must’ve dragged his finger up the wrong fader, as a sputtering, syncopated folkster chug pops in like an epiphany. Harding goes full rococo, substituting any and all predictable time signatures with snare rat-a-tats, sunny guitar wiggles, and her twisty, peacock vibrato. “One Stop” is a dramatic labyrinth that ignites a fuse to the heart’s strangest energies. —Matt Mitchell
Greg Mendez: “I Wanna Feel Pretty”
“I wanna feel pretty and lay in my bed,” Greg Mendez sings at the top of his new single, even-keeled and achingly sweet—and man, don’t we all? The Philly singer-songwriter has always had a gift for making devastation sound offhand, as if mildly recounting the worst year of his life while people-watching out the window. Over strummed acoustics and subtle orchestration that builds throughout, Mendez runs through a laundry list of miseries, his voice both tender and blunt: starting a shitty job, getting mugged on the street, getting blackout drunk alone on New Year’s, checking into rehab. And then, right when you think you’ve got a handle on the song, he slips into this gorgeous little fugue state, escaping rehab through a hole in his sock, feeling free except for the gleam in his eye where he sees “the places I would be if I wasn’t me.” It’s a quiet kind of heartbreak, but its echo is loud, replaying in your mind long after the song ends. —Casey Epstein-Gross
The new Loraine James single isn’t huge like “Gentle Confrontation” was three years ago. It’s more Aoki Takamasa than Lusine, favoring minimalism and convention over dance levers or dramatic expanse. “In a Rut” is supposed to be James’ “IDM popstar” turn, because she’s putting her mix higher in the mix than normal. But structurally, the track is full of sparse keyboard fills, percussive clangs, and glitchy moors. It has a click-and-cut atmosphere, pull-apart echoes vibrating from bonny synthsounds, skittering low-ends, and Sydney Spann’s plush, floaty vocal. “In a Rut” moves without ambush or discombobulation—it’s textural, cavernous. James, one of the most necessary producers currently working, spins two voices into light when her singing enters and Spann’s recedes, when “In a Rut” opens a portal to someplace overwhelming. —Matt Mitchell
There’s a particular kind of wisdom that only sounds right delivered over a slow, boots-on-the-bar honky-tonk sway, and Scout Gillett knows it. “Gonna Change,” the final single ahead of her sophomore album Tough Touch, opens on a truth most songs would treat as tragedy—nothing lasts, not love, not the version of someone you built in your head, not even the grief of losing them—and proceeds to make it sound as comforting as a weighted blanket. Gillett’s voice drifts through warm, unhurried country guitar like smoke through a screen door, airy but deliberate, turning “I’m giving up this dream I had” into something closer to a toast than a concession. And where her earlier singles from this record favored volume and distortion, “Gonna Change” goes the other direction entirely, opening up space for her band to fill with color: Jason Frey’s horns swell in like a second sunset, and Omar Schambacher’s guitar solo in the back half is so beautiful it borders on rude. By the time Gillett arrives at “existing inside the grey where nothing ever stays,” it doesn’t sting. It glows. —Casey Epstein-Gross
During her reunion with guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and bassist Jason Roebke on dance! skip! hop!, cellist Tomeka Reid lands in a strange, improvised pocket. Brushed rhythms, talkative, guitar lines, and a pizzicato cello solo lend this taut yet spontaneous brightness to the title track, a driftless bebop song powered by Reid and her quartet’s strange, polyrhythmic impulses. As she and Halvorson dance around and into each other, on-the-fly ideas go every way but parallel. Fujiwara’s textural drum scatters alone will have you asking, “How did they do this?” The only answer I can come up with is that the Tomeka Reid Quartet begins at infinity. —Matt Mitchell
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