It’s impossible to be across all the new music out each Friday. Luckily, PAPER is here to help you out: each week, we round up 10 of our favorite new songs from artists — emerging and established — to soundtrack your life. From the surreal to the sublime, these songs cover every corner of the music world. The only criteria: they all have to absolutely rip.
Subscribe to our Sound Off Spotify playlist here and check out this week’s tracks, below.
Song of the week: Lana Del Rey – “Henry, come on”
“Henry, come on”, the first single from Lana Del Rey’s forthcoming country album The Right Person Will Stay, isn’t exactly a country song, but it certainly indulges in a lot of country tropes, including a line about country singers. (The track was co-written by Luke Laird, a Nashville lifer.) It’s a typically beautiful Lana ballad that builds slowly, and seems slight at first, but actually packs a punch once you get to the end of its five-minute runtime. Sweeping, grand, sublime.
Bon Iver – “There’s A Rhythmn”
Justin Vernon is fully on his Hornsby shit on his new album Sable, Fable, and “There’s A Rhythmn” is an indisputable highlight, a gorgeously raw R&B track that charts heartbreak and joy as two inseparable forces.
Mamalarky – “Won’t Give Up”
This is rich, studious synth-pop – oddly shaped, a little unnerving, and satisfyingly huge all the same.
Smerz – “Roll the dice”
I am increasingly bored by what I’ve come to term “cunty doll music” – like, the kind of rote, arch techno-pop made by washed up former viral stars looking to make a quick buck off middle-aged gay guys – and “Roll the dice” functions, in a certain light, as a send up of that kind of pop: it’s a strut-worthy track about being A Girl In The City that’s also dark and weirdly off-kilter.
Stereolab – “Aerial Troubles”
First new Stereolab in 15 years! Funky and deeply weird, a little troubled, vibey and sexy all the same.
Porches – “Lunch”
Kinda Porches-goes-ska, but still in Porches house style, meaning that this is a winsome, sun-dappled synth-pop song that’s going to go crazy once the weather gets a little better.
LSDXOXO and Cobrah – “QT”
The first single from LSDXOXO’s new mixtape DGTL ANML utilises Cobrah’s sultry, scary vocals for a horned-up club track that’s ominously sexy.
Turnstile – “NEVER ENOUGH”
They’re gunning for arenas, folks! Absolutely massive, skyward-soaring stuff from the post-post-post-hardcore innovators.
Cola Boyy – “Walk Again”
An ambling R&B strut from Cola Boyy’s posthumous album, “Walk Again” is blissed-out and beautiful.
Yeule – “Evangelic Girl Is A Gun”
Yeule’s new one presents a refinement of the agonized maelstrom of their last album, fitting all that angst into a new tech-house framework.
Photography courtesy of Sony/RCA