Best New Songs (June 22, 2023)

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At Paste Music, we’re listening to so many new tunes on any given day, we barely have any time to listen to each other. Nevertheless, every week we can swing it, we take stock of the previous seven days’ best tracks, delivering a weekly playlist of our favorites. Check out this week’s best new songs, in alphabetical order. (You can check out last week’s songs here.)

Charly Bliss: “You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore”
The first new song in four years from New York pop quartet Charly Bliss is a moving, buoyant slice of pop perfection emphasized by bandleader Eva Hendricks’ eclipsing, awing vocals. She pointedly sings of closure and post-relationship freedom, as the chart-worthy instrumentals envelope around her. “Here’s your leather jacket, thought it’d sve me, but now / I gave myself a makeover and I’m blissing out,” she exclaims. Produced by Caleb Wright and Hippo Campus’ Jake Luppen, “You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore” is a perfect, definitive benchmark; a welcomed return for one of pop’s very best. —Matt Mitchell

Euglossine: “Pollinator”
Tristan Whitehill, the Florida artist who makes music as Euroglossine, describes the music on his forthcoming album Bug Planet is the Current Timeline as a stew of “biodub, digital fusion or mutant jazz.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. One of the two tracks he has dropped from the Hausu Mountain release touches on all three elements in a bubbly three-minute cut. The lovely instrumental suggests an Art of Noise remix of one of the more delicate tracks from David Sylvian’s opus Gone to Earth—a magical synthesis of cut and paste rhythms, electronic pulses and Whitehill’s flickering guitar work. —Robert Ham

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Faye Webster: “But Not Kiss”
Faye Webster is one of this generation’s definitional folk-rock voices. Her latest single, “But Not Kiss,” sees her at her tortured, saccharine zenith. “I want to lay in your arms,” she sings, “but not kiss.” Webster’s unique voice has a singular way of expressing emotion, and “But Not Kiss” flowers into an expertly woven request for the innocent, transparent love that we all desire and often find devastatingly elusive. Her signature, arpeggiating guitar accompanies a pretty, breezy piano riff as her sing-song melodies burrow their way unforgettably into your brain. —Miranda Wollen

Jaimie Branch: “take over the world”
The modern jazz community suffered a huge loss last year with the untimely death of trumpeter Jaimie Branch. The shock of her passing at age 39 was only compounded by the knowledge that her trajectory, which was trending up and up, had been permanently halted. The upcoming release of Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)), the final album by her ensemble Fly or Die, is cold comfort. Happy to have new music from this singular talent; devastated that there will be no more. The music, written during a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, is bristling with joy and fury at the current state of our planet. The first single lands somewhere between those two zones as Branch sings a kind of protest chant about taking over the world and returning it to the land, while her band crackles and stomps like a New Orleans second line on a tequila bender. —Robert Ham

Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog: “Soldiers in the Army of Love”
Guitarist Marc Ribot claims that Connection, the new album by his post-everything trio Ceramic Dog, is “the best record we’ve ever done.” Daring hyperbole from an artist who has blazed so many trails that are still smoldering and warming the pathways of generations of fellow musicians. It certainly feels like the group’s most timely work. This single is a scorcher of fist-pumping intent, rewriting some of our country’s most famous platitudes (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…, etc.) to be far more inclusive, leading to a storming chorus that repeats the song’s title with a softness that still feels like it could topple a palace. —Robert Ham

Nick Shoulders: “Whooped If You Will”
The lead single from his forthcoming LP All Bad, “Whooped If You Will” finds Nick Shoulders immersed in a hollering affair of doo-wop framework and mid-century outlaw dispositions. “Burnt out or burning at both ends / Impending doom? It all depends / You can’t win them all, but I hope you win a few / Damned if you don’t, damned if you do,” he sings. It’s a quasi-hopeful, post-chaos declaration of connection and support. Tapping into the survival of his Arkansas home and familial lineage, which are recurring themes and stories across his entire catalog, Shoulders offers some semblance of forward motion. Life might just be out to get ya, so count your losses fairly and relish in the sweetest victories. “Whooped If You Will” is another stroke of brilliance for country music’s warbling prince. —Matt Mitchell

Palehound: “Independence Day”
Palehound’s “Independence Day,” the third single off their forthcoming LP Eye On the Bat, is a cheeky, ruminative workshop on the what-ifs of a post-mortem romance. Inspired by the death cry of a relationship that saw singer/songwriter El Kempner through their 20s, the song is a soaring self-promise to not look back. It’s an in-your-face fight song, the victory flag soaring after endless months of turmoil and “living life like [you’re] writing the first draft.” A hypnotically continual guitar riff underlies Kempner’s self-assured alto, encircled by lightning strikes of electric hooks and scream-along choruses. —Miranda Wollen

Roísín Murphy: “Fader”
Roísín Murphy’s upcoming, DJ Koze-produced record Hit Parade is at the very top of our most-anticipated summer list—and for good reason! Every single the Irish pop legend has released so far is charming and irresistible, as she transcends even the richest disco-revival attempts. “Fader,” the follow-up to “CooCool” and “The Universe,” is unbelievably soulful and magical, as Murphy croons atop a looping vocal sample and smooth, brass and string arrangements that flirt with a slick, subtle guitar riff. “Take your hands off, hater / Of my baby’s fader,” she sings across the song’s hook. It’s not often that a press cycle for an album rolls out three immaculate singles in a row, but Hit Parade is batting 1.000% right now—and more than living up to the promise of its title. “Fader” now, “Fader” tomorrow,” “Fader” forever. —Matt Mitchell

Samia: “Charm You (Blondshell Version)”
Hypnotically effervescent rising star Blondshell has released a cover of Samia’s “Charm You,” a part of a reimagining of her acclaimed sophomore LP Honey. The version is imploring and poutily enamored, the lovelorn best of Blondshell’s vocal range. As the track crescendos, the song’s hook, “I don’t wanna charm you,” gets more and more convincing. Blondshell’s singing drips with as much sugared emotion as it does alt-rock grit, while an infectious guitar hook loops in the background, fading in and out of sparkling electronic riffs. —Miranda Wollen

Slowdive: “kisses”
The lead single from everything is alive, Slowdive’s first album in six years, “kisses” is pulsing and liquid-smooth, distorted and rhythmic. Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead’s recognizable melodies, soft as a whisper, float and sway above an ethereal synth track. It’s reflective and rich, as multi-layered thematically as it is sonically. “kisses” is a rumination of the Earth-shifting changes that Slowdive’s members have seen as they’ve entered their 50s, a continued exploration of the ethereal, spacey sound they have perfected for 30 years. —Miranda Wollen