Welcome to our weekly music post, where we spotlight our favorite new songs and albums. Hop in the comments and tell us: What new music are you listening to?
New Zealand power-pop band The Beths return with “Metal,” their first new song in two years, which sees the band embracing jangle-rock for the first time. Vocalist Elizabeth Stokes explained in a press release, “I think we ended up with an arrangement that embodies the frenetic intricacy of an engine in action. There’s a lot going on, until there isn’t.” The Beths also announced they recently signed to ANTI- and are about to embark on a new world tour. [Jen Lennon]
Hotline TNT frontman Will Anderson summed up the shoegaze band’s latest single about as succinctly as humanly possible in a recent press statement: “‘Candle’ is LIT.” The music video for “Candle”, which is a compilation of man-on-the-street-style interviews about the song and footage recorded during the band’s recent Japanese tour, only proves his point. “Just to make sure it was as good as we thought it was, we brought the song over to Japan, and this video documents the reaction from that experiment,” Anderson added. Hotline TNT recently announced their third album, Raspberry Moon, will drop on June 20. [JL]
Turnstile, “Seein’ Stars” / “Birds”
Turnstile has blessed us with two new songs this week, released as part of a double music video. The first, “Seein’ Stars,” is a dream-pop jam with backing vocals from Blood Orange’s Devonté Hynes and Paramore’s Hayley Williams. The second, “Birds,” is straight ’80s-style hardcore. Together, the songs represent the band’s ability to seemlessly infuse their hardcore sound into a wide variety of other genres—or just smash two disparate sounds together and chuckle while we’re all baffled at how they pulled it off. [JL]
Model/Actriz, Pirouette
After their acclaimed 2023 debut Dogsbody, Brooklyn-based band Model/Actriz is poised for a major breakthrough with their new album Pirouette. Inspired partially by lead singer Cole Haden’s love of pop divas like Kylie Minogue, the industrial sounds of Pirouette underscore the incredibly personal remembrances of growing up closeted in the 2000s and the newfound success the band has found in recent years. There are plenty of diaristic details to be found in the new project, but Model/Actriz still injects their sound with a terrific sense of humor that wholly avoids yuks. “Yeah, you could call me a small business owner living in America, while trapped in the body of an operatic diva,” Haden sings in the standout, almost nü-metal “Diva.” “Hmm, I’m such a soprano.” Not only are the tracks on Pirouette surprisingly danceable (perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, given the title) but they, like a lot of the best pop music, understand that artifice isn’t a dirty word, but rather the basis for a good performance. [Drew Gillis]
Briston Maroney, JIMMY
On his third album, JIMMY, Briston Maroney sought to reconcile the two distinct parts of himself shaped by the places where he grew up: northern Florida and Tennessee. The album embodies the free-wheeling spirit of northern Florida while also embracing Maroney’s more buttoned-up experiences attending Catholic school in Tennessee, merging these influences into a unique rock sound. Maroney is currently co-headlining a North American tour with Peach Pit after recently opening for The Kooks in Australia. [JL]
Lucius, Lucius
Indie pop band Lucius’ new self-titled album is entirely self-produced, something members Jess Wolfe, Holly Laessig, Dan Molad, and Peter Lalish say was necessary for capturing its more intimate vibes. “We saw the beginnings and endings of life cycles while making this record, the beauty and fragility of the human experience. So it’s only fitting that this album is self-titled, it’s our story, who we are now and how we got here. Welcome to our living room,” reads a statement from the band on Bandcamp. Though this is only the band’s fourth album, they’ve been making music together for nearly 20 years. You can hear the emotional and physical growth on this record—the sound of a band confidently evolving and starting a new chapter. [JL]
