10 songs you need in your life this week

Nilsson’s excellent new album Extreme probes the limits of love’s powers, rarely finding a wall that cannot be bashed down. In that respect, “Avoid Heaven” is something of the album’s thematic centerpiece for how it prioritizes self-love. The music’s composition is deft enough to be vintage rather than nostalgic: synths glitter and swirl, peppy and impossibly warm, while Nilsson softly extols the radicalism in abandoning perfection and realizing your own power to change. “Avoid heaven,” she sings, “But prepare / For something even better / You can go anywhere.” In that moment, puritanical controls both internal and external seem just a little bit more fragile than they did before. – JD

Ivy Sole’s “Call Me” is full of references—there’s Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” in the chorus, Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” in the music video, and others for listeners to spot. The Philadelphia-via-Charlotte rapper switches between soft coos and hardened tough talk on a pivot, trying not to show bias to either side on this song, though their rapping wins out here. Ivy Sole has a calm, dexterous flow that stresses syllables so hard they end up imprinted in the beat. When the song goes drumless, their voice still snaps in the spot where the snares would land. It results in a lucid moment that feels more like a radio freestyle than a written song. —BC

I don’t care what “pushin P” means. Don’t send me your Urban Dictionary entries or claims that your cousin’s brother’s auntie is the one behind the slang. What matters is how the song “pushin P” makes me feel, and what it brings out of the rappers on the track. Gunna opens with “Pointers in the Patek and my piece, I'm pushin' P,” jabbing the alliteration with gleeful force. And while the ensuing verse would have been a memorable Gunna performance on its own, it’s his guests that take the song off the rails and into a different echelon. “She not lesbian, for P she turned Pesbian,” raps Future, before Young Thug introduces his verse with a bar of straight gibberish, then admitting “I just fucked a cup of water.” What does it all mean? Beyond definitions, “pushin P” sees Gunna, Thugger, and Future return to the unpredictable animation that helped make them great, too rarely emptied nowadays but still a joy to behold. – JD

Jenny Hval is full of surprises. With each new release — whether it be a novel, a song, an album, or a video — she changes her approach, continually proving herself one of the slipperiest artists of our time. On her newly announced album, Classic Objects, she’s revealed her latest twist to be radical simplicity, a shedding of the layers of artifice that have always coated her art. “Year of Love” follows through on this directive, with Hval recounting her wedding day — “I wore black jeans and codeine / I guess I wanted to make sure I seemed relaxed”; “‘It’s just for contractual reasons,’ I explained, signing the papers” — over an almost dubby instrumental. She goes on to muse about the “normcore institution” of marriage, her waxing inspired by a man who proposed to a woman in the audience as she performed on stage, “In the middle of a song I thought I knew what was about.” Though the logic of her lyrics still follows her spiraling trains of thought, the fact that they’re tethered to a familiar verse-chorus structure lends them a satisfying cohesion that — for better or worse — is normally absent from her work. —RH

On their latest single “Best Wishes,” Dublin alt-pop group find-joy steady their footing. Only the third song the trio have shared since they first began releasing music together last summer, "Best Wishes" finds each musician in a sweet spot of curiosity, unafraid to take chances within the smoldering lo-fi landscape before any singular musical identity latches onto them. What results is an experimental approach to the relationship between sound and songwriting with a sleek vocal performance from Colleen Conlon. – LP

With Boris’ 27th studio LP, W, dropping Friday, the three horsemen of Japanese heavy music — Wata, Atsuo, and Takeshi — shared “Beyond Good and Evil” at the top of the week. It’s a gorgeous, slow-burning track written from the perspective of a mushroom cloud watching nature reclaim Planet Earth after human life has been eradicated. Wata — who grew up in Hiroshima — whisper-sings throughout the track, never changing her volume or tone, even as walls of guitar feedback and crashing drums collapse around her. —RH

“Packs and Potions” is the first viral breakout of 2022 in which masked-up HAZEY delivers a flurry of soccer references and illicit money-making schemes through the thick soup of his Liverpool accent. Having started life as part of a YouTube cypher in December, HAZEY has turned “Packs and Potions” into a full track after TikTok picked up on his wordplay and the inevitable major label record deal followed. Stretch it out beyond a viral sound and “Packs and Potions” still flies, all sharp lyrical jabs and throat clearing delivery over a hypnotic beat. Call it what you like, fast-tracking, short cuts etc, HAZEY is riding the wave right now. —DR

When I saw MIKE on tour last fall in Chapel Hill, it was my time going to a show since March 2020. During Sideshow’s opening set, Mavi hopped up on stage, grabbed the mic, and began rapping along to one of Sideshow’s songs as they both cheesed and hyped one another up—it was like seeing two brothers reunite after time spent away. That same brotherly chemistry is present on “An Open,” where their verses are practically sewn together by an invisible thread. “I’m a bright light / The seeds I planted climb while it’s raining,” Mavi raps carefully over the crackling drums. In less than two minutes, they run through hard-earned lessons of survival, vows of protection, and celebrations of life. By the time the song rapidly evaporates at the end, you’re left wondering what more they could even say. —BC

Ruth B’s lovelorn ballad “If By Chance” is the latest track in her pensive discography to receive the slowed and reverb treatment. With the tempo slowed, a tale of the one that got away takes on an even deeper aura as the Canadian singer and songwriter’s vocal drops into depths much deeper than it’s normally found. While distinct from the original, which remains a stellar and orchestral encapsulation of heartbreak, “If By Chance (Slowed + Reverb)” seeps into an enthralling feeling of nostalgia. The violins that were once prominently centered against Ruth B’s voice feel as haunted here as she does as she ponders and questions: “I wonder what happens when you hear our song / Do you brush it away or do you sing along? / Do you talk about the future the way we did? / Is there room for me in it?” – LP

Iceboy Violet is a rising star in the experimental scene in Manchester U.K., appearing in the past couple of years on albums by aya, Loraine James, 96 Back and Blackhaine. Later this month Iceboy will release their debut mixtape The Vanity Project and “Vanity” is the first taste of what’s to come. The track is almost deceptively simple with Iceboy chanting the title over and over, bringing the walls ever closer to his face with each repetition. Blunted beats gallop throughout as the mantra “Beauty is pain and you look a real killer” cut through, as threatening as it is complimentary. —DR