Songs You Need In Your Life This Week
Tracks we love right now, in no particular order.
Songs You Need In Your Life This Week

Each week, The FADER staff rounds up the songs we can't get enough of. Here they are, in no particular order. Listen on our Spotify and Apple Music playlists or hear them all below.

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urika's bedroom: "Circle Games"

"Circle Games" is the gloomy and brittle lead single from the forthcoming urika's bedroom album Big Smile, Black Mire (due November 1). "I'm still here when you get lonely," they sing over pillowy drums and guitars that have been digitally disintegrated. They continue, "Hold my heart just like a gun," firing a gentle warning shot from the gauzy depths. — David Renshaw

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Katy J Pearson: “It’s Mine Now”

The twangy, avant-garde synth-pop of Pearson’s track, taken from her album Someday, Now, is the sound of a deep, wounded sigh of acceptance. “This tragedy’s mine now” she sings, her voice fluttering between rattlesnake-bit country and Kate Bush-style vamping, as the music gradually swells like an orchestra from a half-remembered dream. — Jordan Darville

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Advance Base: “The Year I Lived in Richmond”

A new Advance Base song signals the changing of the seasons. Maybe that’s because of the extraordinary wealth of Christmas music Owen Ashworth has released under the moniker over the past twenty-plus years, his snow-globe keyboard and bitter-cold realism capturing the season’s bleakness. A new album, Horrible Occurrences, is out December 6 — all adds up — and “The Year I Lived in Richmond” is its opening track. A twinkling murder ballad, it is plainspoken but vivid, delivered in Ashworth’s effortless drawl, cut up by tiny falsetto howls. However chilly the story, Ashworth never loses his warmth. — Alex Robert Ross

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Tom Carruthers: “Salsa”

Tom Carruthers’ “Salsa” is a funky, reverb-heavy production, chock-full of sensual stringwork and the sort of soft crooning you’d expect to hear at a New York house club in the late ‘80s. The difference though is Carruthers’ use of discordant piano lines and clattering high-hat cymbal against the trusty four-on-the-floor rhythm, which also manages to morph into an era-appropriate homage to the Harlem ballroom scene via a classic vogue beat. — Sandra Song

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HiTech: "SPANK!"

Is there anyone making music with more fun and life than HiTech right now? "SPANK!" is the Detroit ghettotech group's ode to butts, bums, and asses around the world. Cheeky and unrelenting in its horniness, it's a rolling, fast-paced, piano house joint built to get as many booties shaking as humanly possible. — DR

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The Underachievers: “Megatron”

The Underachievers first emerged in 2013 with Indigoism, a gem of the blog era for its kinetic, trap-influenced production and the chemistry between its two members, AKTHESAVIOR and Issa Gold. Their decade-plus bond is the subject of the new boom-bap-influenced single “Megatron.” Both rappers don’t flow as feverishly anymore; their voices are rich with maturity as they flex creative and personal growth, and their individual successes are more apparent when they come together. — JD

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Astrid Sonne: "Give My All" (Blood Orange edit)

EDITS is an accompanying album to Astrid Sonne's excellent 2024 album Great Doubt that features a host of remixes mainly from her friends in the Copenhagen music scene, including ML Buch, Fine, and Smerz. Dev Hynes isn't from Denmark but his take on "Give My All" stands out, with additional percussion giving the song an added bounce to underwrite the melancholy. Hynes and Sonne are both looking back with a hint of regret, their not quite gelling so much as drifting past each other. — DR

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Alex E Chavez: “Catalina”

The final single from this author-turned-songwriter’s debut album Sonorous Present is only two minutes long and sparsely produced; a humming organ and a guitar playing the most basic chords are the only accompaniment for Chavez’s measured melodies and a woman’s contrapuntal voice. It sounds heartbreakingly lonely in Spanish, a language I don’t understand. In translation, it is gutting, a dedication to his older sister, the victim of fatal domestic violence at the age of 18: “Inside of me, everything falls apart without you; rather than my own reflection, I see you in the mirror.” — ARR

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet: “AS Disco”

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Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet's “AS DISCO” comes out swinging with an aggressive introduction that brings a powerviolence violence to a speedy gabber track. But with an ultraprecise rhythm and some subtle breathing room, it never ends up feeling chaotic or messy, even when it suddenly switches into a slinky production with the fluidity of an early Arca-style deconstructed club track. — SS

Manu Chao: “La Colilla”

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The devil on Manu Chao’s shoulder is hungering for a bit of class warfare on “La Cotilla,” a song from Viva Tu, the Spanish singer-songwriter’s first album in 16 years. The track is buoyed by effervescent flamenco guitars and dotted with spacey chirps as Chao mutters out an inner monologue urging himself to throw a cigarette butt from his balcony onto the wealthy pedestrians congregated below. Eating the rich feels more and more like a pipe dream, the song implies — these days, we may have to settle for simply staining their freshly dry-cleaned suits. — JD

The Convenience: “Postcard”

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The two new songs from this New Orleans post-punk duo do completely different things. Where “Routiner” is all jagged edges and staccato guitars, “Postcard” is soft at its edges, melancholia underpinned by a fluttering violin and only accentuated by the occasional eruption of noise. — ARR

Nídia & Valentina: “MATA”

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Nídia and Valentina Magaletti prove to be the ideal partnership on “MATA,” a pulsing combination of pinpoint syncopation, propulsive percussion, and sprinkles of whiny synth. Weaving together a complex assortment of conga drums and sharp bongo slaps, it’s a dynamic dance number packed with writhing arrangements of organic instrumentation, which bring a raw scruffiness to that signature Príncipe Discos sound. — SS

Songs You Need In Your Life This Week