5 songs you need to hear this week

Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one entry a “Song of the Week” designation. Check out last week’s roundup here.

Song of the Week: Westside Cowboy, “Pin Up Boys”

I’ve been on the Westside Cowboy train ever since I saw them live at Nightclub 101 last December (and then chatted with them over Chinese food for a Best of What’s Next feature the next day), and at this point, the train’s moving so fast I’m not sure if I could get off even if I wanted to. Their upcoming debut record was already one of my most anticipated of the year based solely on their excellent January EP, So Much Country ‘Til We Get There, but apparently that wasn’t enough for the Manchester quartet: each single from their forthcoming debut, It Goes On, manages to up the ante even further. “Kick Stones (The Boys)” cracked the top ten of our best songs of 2026 list—for good reason—and today’s “Pin Up Boys” proves that it was anything but a fluke.

The band has lived with the song a long time now, having played it at shows for over a year (I can confirm that it absolutely rules live), and that comfort is audible. It fits like a well-worn glove, but it punches like a boxing mitt. “If nothing else, at least I looked alive,” Reuben Haycocks ekes out at its start, emotion pulling at each syllable. Despite being so early in their career, Westside Cowboy are veritable experts at the art of dynamics, coaxing feeling from each pregnant pause and achieving catharsis with each percussive smash. The song winds through classic quiet-loud indie-rock fare without ever feeling formulaic: each shift in tenor and tempo feels not only earned but instinctive, so organic it’s as if it’s the intention of the song itself and the band is simply facilitating the music’s desire. And fuck, if those last thirty seconds—when every sound cuts out save for Paddy Murphy’s crashing drumline, Aoife Anson O’Connell’s clear, keening vocalizations, and Haycock’s sneered chorus—don’t give me chills every time. —Casey Epstein-Gross

FKA twigs feat. Lil Yachty: “On Your Mind”

FKA twigs is no stranger to dancing through the pain, or more often, using dance as a conduit for emotional inquiry. Throughout last year’s EUSEXUA and its accompanying B-sides collection Afterglow, the dancefloor was fertile ground for breakthroughs. Her latest single sees her continuing to plumb new depths of connection and understanding, revealing emotional layers with each pulsating beat. twigs and featured guest Lil’ Yachty play out a lovers’ quarrel as a dance battle, moving through a maze of punchy percussion. twigs penned “On Your Mind” after a dance rehearsal where she learned that due to visa issues, she would have to drop off the 2025 Coachella lineup (she would go on to play the festival the following year). Before “On Your Mind” officially released, it made its live debut on twigs’ Body High Tour in a full-circle moment for a song born of unexpected challenges. In true twigs fashion, her instinct was to keep dancing despite it all. —Grace Robins-Somerville

Gary Stewart: “Woman Will Tear The Heart Right Out Of A Man”

“Woman Will Tear the Heart Right Out of a Man” is old, borrowed, and blue—a picture of Gary Stewart, clean-cut and new in town from Fort Pierce, Florida, taping demos for Cedarwood Records in Nashville. The tune was recorded sometime between 1967 and 1972 but wasn’t officially released until now, and it captures what Gary Stewart sounded like before he became Gary Stewart, author of “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Double)” and “Empty Glass.” This may be one of the recordings that convinced Roy Dea to sign Stewart to RCA, but “Woman Will Tear the Heart Right Out of a Man” undeniably stands out as a prized, early-career rarity: a honky-tonk great before drugs and depression made him a honky-tonk Dracula. It’s the voice of a twenty-something Appalachian boy scratching out a living on Music City’s songwriting circuit—a place where a Treasure Coast transplant like Stewart could thrive but never love. It’s a genuine country-music artifact that, as Stewart’s biographer Jimmy McDonough would put it, is “another rabbit coming out of the hat.” Stewart sings as if he has timelessness on speed dial, and “Woman Will Tear the Heart Right Out of a Man” sounds like a prophet rejecting Babylonia. —Matt Mitchell

mary in the junkyard: “Blood”

From the title of their new album Role Model Hermit to the spellbinding, strings-embellished indie rock that comprises it, mary in the junkyard are big fans of subtle juxtapositions. There’s a delicate urgency to the London trio’s latest single “Blood,” inspired by the early stages of falling in love before the cracks in its foundation start bearing too much weight. The track roots itself in a steady slacker groove and a mathy guitar line that push things onward even as the destination feels uncertain, meanwhile bandleader Clari Freeman-Taylor seems to know exactly where she’s going: “There is nothing to see here except sweetness / And I’ve got nothing to hide in your mattress,” she coos, all sorts of potential devilishness and double entendres hidden in her beatific delivery. Most of us know love can get ugly in real life; luckily “Blood” never does. —Abby Jones

Nirosta Steel: “BOSS TRIX (BENNY’S SONG)”

Forty years ago, Steven Hall began assembling an album for his songwriting project, Nirosta Steel. It was to be his statement of “queer love songs, nightlife hallucinations, and post-rave comedowns,” and it arrived this week as My Skyscraper. You may know Hall, but you also may not. He collaborated with Arthur Russell until Russell’s death in 1992, after receiving an introduction through Allen Ginsberg twelve years earlier. Some of the material that later surfaced on Russell’s Love Is Overtaking Me collection came from an abandoned album the two made together. But My Skyscraper is phenomenal (full review TK), and one of its lead tracks, “BOSS TRIX (BENNY’S SONG),” spills light like a rapture. Hall swoons and swivels through a house groove rigged with Drop Out Orchestra’s hot, decorative programming, Nell Shakespeare’s chopped-up vocal passages, bursts of impulsive horns, and a spank of guitar. Penned about one of Hall’s former boyfriends, “BOSS TRIX (BENNY’S SONG)” is a nocturnal, capering strain of disco that’s been lovingly deconstructed and revised. We should all be envious of such a devoted tribute. —Matt Mitchell

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