London's Lloyd Wayne used to operate under the name Compton White and released music that veered between trap and industrial on the underground label Tri Angle. "Saviour" arrives with a name change to accompany a complete artistic makeover, with Lloyd Wayne delivering breezy and melodic guitar-driven pop a world away from the sub-woofer shaking aesthetics of the "bass music" scene in the mid-2010s. Wayne has worked with Westerman in the past and there are echoes of his lush, unspooling approach to songwriting in "Saviour." It stands on its own two feet, though, with panpipes and synthesizers lending the whole thing a slightly wobbly air to offset Wayne's pained desire for the attention of someone to "carry me away." — David Renshaw

The title track of L.A. four-piece Agriculture’s next project, Living Is Easy, is seven minutes of guitar-led, white-knuckled “black metal.” Already quite upbeat for its nominal genre, the song explodes into the utter ecstasy the band are constantly seeking near the two-minute mark, a reaction catalyzed by a stadium solo with a melody more fit for a Civil War battlefield than a Metallica concert. As the track continues, the band play a supercharged game of self-oneupmanship, inducing in the listener a state of non-stop catharsis. (Be sure to watch the killer song’s music video, co-starring Chat Pile.) — Raphael Helfand

Every day we choose what we invest our time in, and few things are more satisfying when we decide to ditch something – or someone – undeserving of our days. There’s a line on Yaya Bey’s new single where the degree to which she relishes the dismissal of a former flame bubbles into her cadence: “I swear to God, you gon’ feel it in your bod-ay-ay / When I leave you behind to go and part-ay-ay.” Her voice seems to play hopscotch with the words, taking the unspoken invitation of the song to stay awhile and revel in its silken, soul-bar jam. It’s an offer that’s hard to refuse. — Jordan Darville

John Glacier is a shapeshifting artist whose dextrous lyricism has sounded equally enthralling on ambient electronica and direct from the New York rap underground. On her latest single the London-based artist looks backward to the sparse and uncompromising post-punk sound to air her thoughts. Produced by Kwes Darko and featuring additional vocals from Eartheater, the spaces between the dubby guitars on "Money Show" are filled with wordplay ("Leave like the summer trees") and stark confessions ("Long days 'cos I talk about pain"). The accompanying video appears to shed some light on the trickier lyrics, showing Glacier in contrasting situations at home and in the glamorous world of fashion and music she has been adopted into. Proof, perhaps, that versatility doesn't necessarily breed comfort, "Money Shows" puts that unnerving feeling front and center. — David Renshaw

A longtime fan favorite from Squid’s frenetic live set — returning to North America in early February with support from Water From Your Eyes — “Fugue (Bin Song)” has now been committed to wax. The studio version, recorded by the Bristol band with prolific London producer Dan Carey and re-mixed by Tortoise’s John McEntire, captures the intensity of a Squid show with contrapuntal guitars and siren-like supplemental strings that bristle like the onset of an anxiety attack, even before Ollie Judge’s razor-sharp drumming and sinisterly charismatic vocals enter the fray. The sum of these elements, dashed through with an unhealthy dose of disorienting stops and starts, is something dangerously close to post-punk perfection. — Raphael Helfand

There’s something instantly gripping about half-mumbled, half-whispered, lightly-Auto-Tuneful bars delivered in a low vocal register above a soulful beat. It’s part of what makes Keef and Kanye’s “Nobody” (2014) so much more compelling than Chance and Noname’s “Lost” (2013), despite their use of the same guitar sample. On “hope ulike me,” postmodern Huntsville, Alabama-born rapper YhapoJJ scrambles sentences that seem to ooze out of him like plasma over a sublimely simple beat from feardorian, centering a pair of twinkling arpeggios over the IV, I major-seventh synth chords that seemingly appeared behind every viral slow jam of the mid 2010s. The formula isn’t entirely original, but it’s executed beautifully here, activating a secret dopamine pathway into the brain’s nostalgia center with effortless efficiency. — Raphael Helfand

"Deer Teeth," the latest solo single from regular Shygirl and Caroline Polachek collaborator Sega Bodega, is a deathly and pitch-black stream of consciousness. "Keep me down with all your deer teeth," the Irish producer sings through a digital filter. From there his focus remains on the morbid, with hunted prey, rapid aging and being buried six feet under all making its way into the ghostly production. A string section offers a brief moment of beauty in the middle eight before the hypnotizing beat returns and it all turns into digital dust. A fitting metaphor for such macabre thoughts of the afterlife. — David Renshaw

One of Maxo Kream’s greatest assets as a rapper is how comfortable he sounds on just about any style of beat he’s tried. He recently headed down to Florida for a dreamy collaboration with Luh Tyler just after tearing through Memphis with Key Glock; now, he’s trying on plush sample drill cloud-rap courtesy of producer evilgiane, and it fits him like a chinchilla coat. On the song, however, he’s not entirely suave: over a clipped sample of Frou Frou’s “Let Go,” Maxo raps through sexual frustration (“She got me waitin', it's been two weeks / I could have been fuckеd bout ten freaks”) and paints the picture of a sexy party in a sprinter van. I would never have imagined that a song that appeared on the Garden State soundtrack could ever be associated with something this hype. — Jordan Darville

It’s been a few days since “Hiss” dropped, and the initial shockwave of the diss track’s landing left the entire internet lost for words, including one of its targets. After a weekend’s worth of reflection (and one very lukewarm response), it’s safe to say that “Hiss” is the best diss track since “The Story of Adidon,” and arguably surpasses it in terms of technical skill, force of impact, and sheer stakes. Whereas Pusha T’s song was petty in the classic rap tradition — an attempt to end someone’s career just because you don’t like them for vague, undefined reasons — on “Hiss,” Megan is defending her reputation. She raps with the kind of fierceness of a cornered predator while maintaining an unconcerned air, tossing off artfully crafted allusions to her opps that can be either immediate or require a little research, doubling the punch upon subsequent listens. To the song’s greatest credit, though, it transcends the specifics of who Megan is targeting and why, rejecting mere gossip fodder for something more universally cathartic. — Jordan Darville

Buffalo-based hardcore band Spaced race through the speedy riffs and joyful bounce of "Landslide" like they, too, are slipping off the edge of a cliff. A sludgy breakdown in the middle only acts as a brief respite before the band once again succumbs to the gravitational force and dives headfirst into another round of chanted vocals and unbridled catharsis. — David Renshaw

"Stay With Me Through The Night" was written after the end of a long-term relationship and is about adjusting to there no longer being another person in your life. Palladino softens her self-lacerating lyrics about feeling unmoored and being bad at recognizing her own flaws with a funk-laced tune that nods to Chaka Khan and Patrice Rushe. There's more than a hint of Jessie Ware's sophisticated disco material at play here, too. The raw emotion stands out above the smooth basslines and percussion though, as Palladino pleads "What can I do to make you stay with me through the night?" The song will appear on her self-titled debut, due for release on April 5 via Paul Institute/XL Recordings. — David Renshaw

Listening to 1010benja induces (in me, at least) a puzzling cognitive dissonance. His music sounds like a lot of music that I very much don’t like, and yet, somehow, I like his music very much. “H2HAVEYOU” — the first new single he’s shared since dropping his second EP, Three Times, in 2021 under his erstwhile moniker, 1010benja SL — centers the sugary titular refrain, “Happy to have you,” repeated ad nauseam in technicolor, multi-tracked harmony with melismatic, Auto-Tuned (or Auto-Tune emulating, at any rate) vocal runs gushing out over the top. These runs are so persistent and over the top that a colleague of mine who asked to remain anonymous likened the sound to Eamon. Still, against all odds, 1010benja makes it work. He pulls off the trick via the verses, in which he rhymes “Greasy Ms / We See em / GCL” and “BBL / CCL / Flow your scale” in a tone that evokes early Smino but bristles with a specific yet elusive anxiety, adding equal amounts of individuality and un-self-seriousness to the mix. Thusly, he pulls the song back from the precipice of cringe for a narrow win that’s all the more exciting for its proximity to epic failure. — Raphael Helfand

Thom Yorke, Tom Skinner, and Jonny Greenwood’s sophomore album as The Smile culminates on its penultimate track, the eight-minute vehicular self-slaughter anthem “Bending Hectic.” The latest addition to Yorke and Greenwood’s considerable car-crash canon, the track begins in balladic reflection and ends in Ballardic chaos. In the song’s first half, Yorke sings a full octave below his preferred falsetto register as punctuated plumes of percussion, detuning guitar, and orchestral strings blossom and decay behind him. As the song’s momentum picks up and its narrator’s suicidal resolve sharpens, though, Yorke’s voice rises in pitch and a steadier pulse develops. “I’m letting go of the wheel,” he sings before a massive, Scott Walker-esque string swell floods the instrumental, giving way to a sludge of power chords, heavy drum fills, and screeching feedback. — Raphael Helfand

Malice K is very good at what he does. Like 2022’s “Changes” (also a Song You Need), his new track “Radio” harbors several hackneyed cliches — “Radio plays my favorite song,” “I’m trying hard to be someone else, but / Someone else is already taken” — but follows them up with clever, pithy lines that are themselves twists on old tropes but still somehow make the more straightforward ones feel fresh and poignant again (“My life’s a cup, one drop away from spilling over,” “I’m only seven days away from one-week sober,” and “I never needed you, please come over” in the former case; “So I hit my head, I hit it, so hard and hope that something / Breaks and I can just start over” in the latter). From the lyrics to their hyper-annunciated, breathy delivery, the half-arpeggiated acoustic strums to the string swells that rise up behind them to saturate the mix, “Radio” could easily feel trite or arch in our post-irony epoch. But Malice K manages to walk the tightrope between these pitfalls with a striking clarity of purpose, never tipping too far in either direction. — Raphael Helfand

Ella Smoker is only 21, but she’s written an album about looking back on a difficult adolescence (The Garden Dream, due out March 29). On “Do You See Me Different?” Smoker’s hazy and whispered delivery is complimented by Kamal, a fellow U.K.-based purveyor of big feelings at modest volume. Here, they trade delicate verses about faltering relationships and the search for belonging. — David Renshaw

“Good Stuff,” the lead single from Bnny’s sophomore album One Million Love Songs, is a breakup song. Rather than dwelling on the pain of lost love, though, Jessica Viscius looks back on the good times. “I still remember the first time you said you loved me / Texted me at 2 a.m. from across the country,” she sings in a gritty alto over fuzzy power chords and a slow-marching kick-snare. “I still remember the first time that it felt real / Oh, to love again, to feel.” It’s an emotional opening, but the tension dissipates on the song’s dreamy hook as the drums and guitar pick up the pace, launching into a playful trot. “I’m hangin’ on to the sunshine / I’m hangin’ on to the next time,” Viscius sings, the specks of sadness that gathered around the edges of her voice during the verse falling away completely as she enters a higher register. “Yeah, I’m hangin’ on to the good stuff / Yeah, I’m hangin’ on to my big love.” — Raphael Helfand

“Messages” is the solo debut by Jane Penny of the terminally pensive Montreal synth-pop group TOPS. Penny stays in a similar musical lane here, gliding languidly over a shimmering ’80s backdrop while singing about a text that never arrives. “Look to the stars, find out what it means to be free,” she sighs as the notifications that fill her screen only add to the disappointment. — David Renshaw

Jim White has played drums for a striking number of indie rock darlings — Cat Power, PJ Harvey, Bill Callahan, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Mary Margaret O’Hara, et al. — and contributed to transcendent experimental creations as a third of Dirty Three, half of Xylouris White, and a quarter of a new group led by saxophonist Zoh Amba (also featuring Steve Gunn on guitar and Shahzad Ismaily on bass) that’s been making the rounds in New York of late. On “Names Make the Name” — the lead single from the 62-year-old Australian artist’s debut solo album, All Hits: Memories, coming March 29 via Drag City — a brooding collage of percussive elements cascades across the surface of a slowly denaturing low drone until, around the two-and-a-half-minute mark, a warped keyboard sample peeks out through a crack in the mix and then disappears as quickly as it came. — Raphael Helfand

The kitschy orchestral arrangements that undergirded the glut of “middle of the road” music saturating ’60s and ’70s radio have been largely disdained for the past half-century by the gatekeepers of “high art.” But, when tempered by creative ingenuity, they’ve helped create some of the best songs ever (see Scott Walker’s first four albums). Joe Wong captures a bit of that magic — albeit with a few contemporary twists — on “What Have You Done.” With sumptuous production and idyllic acoustic guitar from the incomparable Mary Timony providing the wings, Wong’s baritone croon soars to chamber-pop heaven, selling improbably ornate lyrics and even a familiarly goofy men’s chorus cameo in the hook by committing to the grandiosity of the moment. — Raphael Helfand

The indie rock album of the year to beat so far is plastic death, the long-awaited sophomore effort from L.A.’s glass beach. The math-pop quartet have an impossibly layered sound that reveals itself deeper the more you listen, and the vibrant mood that prevails across the latest project makes it an easy one to return to — even in the saddest moments, a smile can be heard not too far beneath. “Cul-de-sac” evokes a bittersweet nostalgia for the suburban upbringing that creates zombies: “Every single day, circling a cul-de-sac / Alligator eyes staring out of storm drains / Walking in your wake, circling the refrain / 'I know it's not gonna last.'" Escape may be crucial, but the invisible thread pulling glass beach back provides a potent source of tension in every anxious finger tap of the fretboard. — Jordan Darville

The opening piano chords of “small and horseless” immediately bring to mind Aphex Twin’s haunting piano lament “Avril 14th.” But where the mid-Drukqs classic drifts through several tonal and emotional states, the newly released closer from Nate Scheible’s forthcoming album, or valleys and — slated to be the inaugural LP from the new D.C.-based label Outside Time — explores a single moment in time. Resisting harmonic development, the new song is a slow, steady zoom-in on a frozen memory, revealing its most granular details. A twinkling organ drone creeps in early on and settles, carrying the track to its unassuming endpoint just before the two-minute mark, followed by 20 seconds of silence. — Raphael Helfand

No Windows are teenage duo Morgan Morris and vocalist Verity Slange. Their upcoming EP Point Nemo, due on May 3, is named after the most remote spot on earth and serves as a metaphor for feelings of loss and isolation. "Song 01"showcases Slange's wounded and bittersweet vocals, with the delicate edict "Too gentle I don’t fight" sticking out amid the squall as Morris turns the track from a polite indie-folk song into something a little more epic and windswept. — David Renshaw

Nairobi-based screamer Martin Kanja (a.k.a. Lord Spikeheart) first made cross-continental waves as half of the Kenyan-Ugandan grindcore duo Duma, whose explosive, self-titled debut LP crash landed via Nyege Nyege Tapes in 2020. “TYVM” is the lead single from his first solo album, The Adept, the inaugural release from HAEKALU Records — a label dedicated to Africa’s “ heaviest and darkest sounds” — with promised features from Brodinski, Backxwash, Fatboi Sharif, and more. The new song is a thrashing industrial cut, with Kanja’s possessed barks and hellacious roars set to a bruising beat by Japanese producer Saionji BBBBBBB that attacks from all angles, a siren-like synth soaring down from the upper reaches of the audible spectrum while uppercut kicks and warped sub bass rush up from below to mutilate your subwoofers. — Raphael Helfand

"Never in my life could I have imagined DJ Drama shouting ad-libs over a Baltimore club flip of “Thong Song,” but it’s a disarmingly effective pairing, as Drama functions as both hype man and wingman to Teck’s seductions." — Nadine Smith, taken from the January 19 edition of Rap Blog.

"Running," a collaboration between indie-pop artists Lutalo and Claud, was written about a strained relationship between a parent and child but could well translate to anyone who has ever felt ignored. "I used to break my back in two / to get a single look from you," Lutalo sings over crunchy guitars and perky synths. Claud's voice sits beneath their collaborator, not so much complimenting but underlining the hurt at the center of the song. Resolution for the pair comes in the form of outgrowing the negligent force holding them back. "Are you still running?" they sing, the path in front of them rolling out onto the horizon. "Try and catch me if you can." — David Renshaw

The lead offering from Ruth Goller’s forthcoming album SKYLLUMINA is a strange, searching single that makes me feel like I’m trapped under a microscope slide. Goller’s multi-tracked but unadorned vocals and the scratchy, uneven refrain of harmonic tones she strings together on her electric bass quake with unresolved tension, and the clusters of percussion and electronics from Tom Skinner (The Smile, Sons of Kemet) that slither beneath her seem engineered to induce trypophobia. — Raphael Helfand

“Saint” is an unruly parade of ideas jammed into a small package, a trick a lesser band than Tomato Flower would have trouble pulling off. The Baltimore four-piece enter on a flurry of drums from Mike Alfieri and bass (Ruby Mars), with a dissonant chord from Austyn Wohlers’s electric guitar finishing off the uneven lick in abrasive fashion. The group falls almost into step after a few repetitions of the riff, with Jamison Murphy’s jangling acoustic guitar joining the fray, and the group alternates between these two modes (with some significant variation) for the majority of the track before seeing themselves out on a dreamy skronk-jazz refrain. Instrumentally, the song feels like a fast ride down a mountainside in an old car whose wheels might fall off at any moment. But Wohlers’s placid vocal line sounds totally unphased throughout the run, from its jittery opening notes to its nervously confident finish. — Raphael Helfand

Elijah Maja is a British/Nigerian musician from south London whose new album, Chariot, is out on February 22. The album features production from King Krule and Joy Orbison among others but it is a lilting and glitchy beat by redLee that ushers in the tender "Gentle & Jeje." Maja sings seductively in a mix of English and Yoruba, whispering lines like "clutch me, touch me, and leave" as he melts into the track. He makes his intentions clear throughout, floating between tender mystique and explicit anticipation. — David Renshaw

The heady days of electroclash get a new coat of gloss on the new single from the shapeshifting Norwegian pop duo. Taken from their upcoming EP ALLINA, a six-track project that tracks a fictional flash-in-the-pan popstar’s brief experience with fame, “My Producer” operates as both a satire of pop convention and a genuine embrace of them. The lead vocals are winkingly hypersexual, the irony audible in the opening lyrics: “You’re my producer baby, I’m the star / You say ‘Sing it for me,’ I say ‘Your beat is hard.’” Of course, with a stripped-down instrumental, reminiscent of early Peaches in its searing and urgent danceability, there’s going to be something genuinely sexy to the song, too. — Jordan Darville

It’s a special thing when an electronic music producer creates songs that simultaneously demand to be savored with headphones and blasted recklessly through two-story-tall speakers. Joy Orbison continues to occupy such a space on “flight fm,” his first new song of 2024. It’s dominated by a monolith of a subbass that casts its descending obsidian tones like bombs for nearly the song’s entire runtime — it’s not hard to imagine feeling this thing deep in your chest on the right sound system. Occasionally the bass’s timbre becomes more ragged, like it’s been doused in leftover nuclear reactor water, and that’s one of a wealth of details that helps the song demand close attention. Even if you’re dancing your ass off. — Jordan Darville

Danish composer Astrid Sonne once released a live EP made up of juxtaposing audio files from two different cameras used to film a performance in Berlin. In contrast to such a high concept work, her upcoming album Great Doubt represents her pop moment. The album, due on January 26, is the first to feature Sonne's voice and finds her working in more traditional songwriting modes. "Boost" is an instrumental but one that builds into something foreboding and a little unsettling as the dazed synths and woodwind instrumentation glide into one another. It feels aligned with the claustrophobic vibe Tirzah operates in, as well as the stomach-churning peaks of John Medeski's The Curse score. Music to unsettle and calm the nerves in equal measure. — David Renshaw

Despite critical and commercial success, Young M.A has never received a suitable level of acknowledgement for her triumphs. Even prior to her 17-month hiatus from music that ended last month with “Open Scars,” M.A and her shadow over N.Y.C’s rap scene were treated as flukes, as tricks of the light. On her new song “Watch (Still Kween),” M.A is operating at a similar level as she did at her peak, but her extended break from music amid personal and health issues creates the context of a comeback. The struggles and hurdles she detailed so finely in “Open Scars” become part of a broader, flex-heavy tapestry on “Watch,” her boastful presence matching the twinkling beat from Mike Zombie bridging the brashness of drill and the AraabMuzik’s rave-inspired melodies. “I’m back in my Hefty, the money like ‘Come and collect me,’” M.A raps, sounding more eager to deliver than she has in a long time. — Jordan Darville

Modern rap is really noisy, and Kim Gordon is an underrated pioneer of the sound. As a member of the Sonic Youth side project Ciccone Youth, she stepped up to the mic for “Making The Nature Scene,” a skronky song with the temperament of a malfunctioning fax machine taken from their one-off project Whitey Album. And of course, there’s also the 1993 Sonic Youth/Cypress Hill collab “I Love You Mary Jane,” a song from that seminal document in the development of rap-rock, 1993’s Judgement Night soundtrack. So in context, her new single “BYE BYE” is part of a lineage. Recorded with Justin Raisen for her upcoming album The Collective, “BYE BYE” is styled in the mold of Playboi Carti’s Opium label, tapping out nuked 808s over flayed synths and noise guitar shredding. It’s far from a loosie from A Great Chaos, though, shifting and evolving under its weight as if spurred by Gordon’s deadpan recital of different products, her presence made all the more ominous when a door-ajar sound becomes the lead melody. As rappers search to redefine rock stardom, Gordon is offering a path forward simply by reasserting her pedigree. — Jordan Darville

Helado Negro’s songs are rivers that seem to flow from a singularly tranquil source. They’re deeply emotional affairs, but Roberto Carlos Lange delivers them so calmly that it can be difficult to feel anything but at peace while they’re playing. “Best For You and Me,” the third single from his forthcoming album Phasor, is a perfect example: There’s a deep pain behind lines like “Mom’s asleep, dad’s not home, it’s what’s wrong / And I’ll go outside, looking at the moon away too long.” But sung in Lange’s subtly tuneful voice over comforting piano keys and a subdued drum beat, with silky falsetto hums shining down from above, the song ebbs and flows like a gentle tide. — Raphael Helfand

Despite their 13-year age gap, TiaCorine and Luh Tyler are kindred spirits on the mic. On “Yung Joc,” the 30-year-old Winston-Salem rapper and the 17-year-old Tallahassee phenom meet halfway, but not in Atlanta. Instead, they each bring their own distinct flavors to Oronday’s cloudy beat. It doesn’t hurt that, although their flows are totally distinct, they rap in virtually the same register, giving the transition between their verses a surreal sense of seamlessness, like moving from one room to another in a dream. — Raphael Helfand

Deela is currently based in London but she shouts out her birthplace on "Lagos," a granite-tough ode to stacking cash and taking no prisoners. On the mic Deela is an uncompromising presence, hitting dismissive bars about her opps ("Watching you fight for a bone. That's looking tight, looky I got me a meal ") with ease. She packs enough charisma to always make sure the boastfulness sounds assertive and when she says she is "versatile just like potatoes," it shows she can throw in the occasional unpredictable moment. Fun, flashy, and self-assured, Deela is the perfect ambassador for her hometown. — David Renshaw

Surf Gang leader EvilGiane’s one-off collabs almost always hit: from the unreleased “Sights” with A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti, to the extremely released “The Hillbillies” with Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem, to “40,” a new one-minute speed run featuring two explosive, rising talents. xaviersobased and Nettspend each contribute a discrete verse about the wonders of underage drinking over Giane’s playful drill beat, the silliness of which makes it clear everyone involved is just kidding about all that stuff. The rappers both hold a Hennessy bottle in the video (and Nettsepnd drives a car), but one can safely assume this is a Nathan For You situation, in which the young men are allowed to own the alcohol but can’t actually consume it until they turn 21. — Raphael Helfand

Listening to Loukeman gives me a similar feeling to certain moments in the vast discography of Clark. Like Clark’s recent LPs Cave Dog and Sus Dog, both of Loukeman’s full-lengths — 2021’s Sd-1 and the just-released Sd-2 — have the emotional depth of diary entries transformed into electronic music productions. Genres aren’t sonic touchstones as much as life events that Loukeman reflects on, tries to make sense of, then assembles into songs that weave a picture of personhood. It’s most exciting when Loukeman pulls from the dancefloor, as on “Ride.” The sound of rave and jungle history being deconstructed in real-time, “Ride”'s percussion verging into glitch territory as the song leans heavily on the breathy sighs and entreaties of distant vocals — as well as a palatial, very Clark-esque arpeggio — for its unplaceable and undeniable soul. — Jordan Darville

London band C Turtle have been releasing music for a few years now, slowly transforming from an introspective and somewhat noodling DIY act into something more ferocious and primed for a breakout. "Shake It Down," their latest single, has a delightfully manic edge, with Cole Flynn Quirke's unhinged chorus offsetting Mimiko McVeigh's deadpan, not-quite-rapped delivery. There are shades of both Wet Leg and Pixies here, no doubt, but "Shake It Down" is its own creation, a bracing jolt from the indie rock underground. — David Renshaw

Fat Dog approach punk with a sardonic recklessness that immediately recalls the early days of Viagra Boys. Like VB’s Sebastian Murphy (and the vocalists of so many punk bands before him), Fat Dog frontman Joe Love attacks the microphone with an audible sneer. “You’re all the same to me,” he repeats emotionlessly in the hook of their second-ever single, but he can’t contain his rage for long; his voice contorts into a snarl as he delivers the final line of the chorus, “And the seed goes on,” which is followed by an ecstatic synth and guitar lick. Unlike VB, who flesh out their militant rock arrangements with Oskar Carls’ skronky sax, Fat Dog have a penchant for the grandiose. “All The Same” is propelled by a menacing techno rhythm in the drums and bass, but it’s at its best when that beat bursts open to reveal orchestral swells, industrial electronics, and, according to a press release, “eagle noises” (these are surprisingly subtle but not too hard to find if you know what you’re looking for). Though not as epic in scope as the band’s seven-minute debut single “King of the Slugs,” the new track’s punchier three-minute runtime trims the fat, making its soaring highs all the more exciting. — Raphael Helfand

Prize Horse make rock music within the tonal framework of grunge but with the majestic scope and crushing punishment of death metal. It’s an intriguing balance, and achieved convincingly on “Further From My Start,” the second single from the Minneapolis band’s upcoming album Under Sound. Vocalist Jake Beitel wears the song’s heaviness like a cilice, its despondent melody and enveloping distortion underlining his desperate plea for progress. As the song grows into a mushroom cloud of noise, the urgency becomes undeniable. — Jordan Darville

Syrian American producer and vocalist KÁRYYN first started writing songs a decade ago after losing two family members to bombing in Aleppo. On "Anthem For Those Who Know" she continues to offer a message of peace in an increasingly violent world. Co-produced by Hudson Mohawke, the icy and electric ballad places KÁRYYN's vocals to the front and frames her cry in HD clarity. "We will not be silenced ever," she sings with the defiance of someone with nothing left to lose. It's a dramatic and overpowering sentiment, with any degree of cliche batted away with a magnetic fearlessness. — David Renshaw

In his 1979 sci-fi classic Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky depicted a journey to "the Zone," a location in which your innermost desires can come true. NYC band Bodega year for a similar trip on their playfully chaotic new single "Tarkovski." The title also includes a nod to the winter sport and gives a hint at how seriously the band are taking themselves on the lead single to their upcoming album Our Brand Could Be Yr Life (due on April 12). Think of this as less of a philosophical quest for true meaning and more of a playful ode to going a little off-piste. — David Renshaw

The way they tell it, rap duo They Hate Change used their time touring in support of their club-ready 2022 album Finally, New as a global networking event. The pair, who produced the entirety of their debut themselves, were picking up producers and collaborators between shows and sleepless nights in discount accommodation. Their new EP Wish You Were Here, out on January 26, features work with south London's Wu-Lu and Odd Future affiliate Vritra among others they met on their travels. "Wallabies & Weejuns," meanwhile, arrives via studio time with Manchester-based 96Back, whose playful and wide-ranging sound has made him one of the most unpredictable figures on the U.K. underground. Together they have created a propulsive and slippery tune destined to be played on repeat. Vonne Parks and Andre Gainey go back to back, trading breakneck bars, impressively keeping pace with a fizzy beat that bursts out of the speakers like Sonic The Hedgehog zooming through a warehouse at 3 a.m. To some musicians travel represents a creative brick wall. They Hate Change are using it as fuel right now. — David Renshaw

The tri-brained Detroit beat machine that is HiTech has struck again with a brief, action-packed new single titled “Gasoline.” With an assist from like-minded rapper/producer Juan Michael OG — who hails from nearby Ypsilanti, Michigan — they set a chopped vocal sample to frenetic drums, raindrop keys, and, later on, a percussive effect somewhere between a record scratch and a wet fart. — Raphael Helfand