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: Twisted Teens, “Florida Water Blues”

I grew up swimming in Wakulla Springs, sunbathing on the wooden platforms floating in the water then splashing away whenever an alligator clambered up beside me—and even though “Florida Water Blues” was ostensibly written about the popular New Orleans perfume of the same name, I’ve yet to hear anything that sounds so tailor-made for the Florida water of my home. “I need Florida water just to make me tough,” Caspian Hollywell growls out at the song’s end. “It’ll make me tough.” Damn right it will. The New Orleans duo is having one hell of a 2026, and as much as I love Blame the Clown—and I do love it—“Florida Water Blues” might be my favorite track Twisted Teens has put out this year. It’s Parquet Courts, submerged in deep-South algae, husky rock and roll slathered in country blues. The track begins with acoustic strums and the line “you’ve had about a hundred beers of solitude,” both a play on the famous Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel and, at least to my ears, a shoutout to David Berman’s final verse on “Trains Across the Sea” (“In twenty-seven years / I’ve drunk fifty thousand beers / And they just wash against me / Like the sea into a pier”). The texture alone is a thing of beauty: RJ Santos’ console steel bleats throughout, ballooning up and down in a smooth twang beneath Hollywell’s tell-tale rasp. It lives somewhere in the stomach; the counterpoint between the tight riff at the song’s core and the expansive warmth emanating from it does something downright somatic to me. —Casey Epstein-Gross

@: “Autosmile”

I didn’t like “Autosmile” when it came out in June, but some things just take time. Maybe I went into my first listen of “Autosmile” with too high of expectations, because the PR email said it was FFO the Roches, a band whose music is untouchable in my personal pantheon. But Stone Filipczak and Victoria Rose’s psych-folk flavor is very different than the sisters’, and “Autosmile” isn’t trying to be a 2020s “Hammond Song.” The song’s healing properties are practically medicinal and, at nearly seven minutes long, I don’t hear a second wasted. Filipczak and Rose crawl slowly into the “I don’t know how I belong to you, but I do somehow” chorus in a threadbare open fifth, pushing the looping, glitchy, halcyon days of “Soul Hole” and “Webcrawler” further into the past—at least for now. “Autosmile” is precise in its whispers, as fingerpicked guitar shapes settle into Filipczak and Rose’s interlocked voices. Love is medieval, love is God, love is craft, love is belief. “You are not an accident in any way,” Rose hums, her every syllable pretty as a spell. “You’re perfect for this world, your sweetness and your ugly doubt. If I wished we’d never met, I wouldn’t know the way I got here, and I’m in a lovely place.” There is no dialogue between the major and minor keys in “Autosmile,” only two instruments talking to each other amid tangles of tambourine and güiro. Someone on YouTube called the song a “rowrowrowurboat.” I say “Autosmile” is full of faith and blessed with structure, and now it has my full devotion. —Matt Mitchell

Beyoncé: “Morning Dew (Donk)”

If “Morning Dew (Donk)” sounds like vintage Beyoncé, that’s because it is. Recorded during the Beyoncé sessions in 2013, it’s appeared in a fair number of leaks over the years: snippets of its demo appeared in 2021 before a full version went viral on TikTok in 2023. All the hallmarks of that self-titled album are audible: the smooth, sensual melodies, the bouncing groove, and, of course, the sexually charged lyrics like “you know the sun rise for you / give me that morning dew.” The same youthful guilelessness permeates the verses—“I think I wanna go back to school and have my locker full of pictures of you,” she sings over a beat interpolating Cheeky Blakk’s 1994 “Twerk Something,” “so give me that ‘A’ in biology, I’m graduatin’ soon.” Like so many of Beyoncé’s songs from this period, this one is produced to precision. Pharrell Williams’s touch is audible and irresistible (that four-count loop always hits), and Beyoncé’s vocals are lithe and intricate. When she doubles over and surrounds herself in harmony, the sound blooms lusciously. At the bridge, the song shifts gears, synthesizing all its parts into a delectable whole. Listening to “Morning Dew,” it’s hard to believe it’s from a decade ago. But that is, and always has been, Beyoncé’s real power as a pop star: she’s usually a few steps ahead of the curve. It’s a fitting reminder that she has a shapeshifting flair that her greatest peers often lack. —Mariam Abdel-Razek

Sharp Pins: “Saturday Sun”

Does Kai Slater ever miss? I’m not convinced he does. “Saturday Sun” feels beamed straight from the sixties, sauntering and bouncing in equal measure through fuzzed-up vocals and hook-heavy riffs. The harmonies activate something gleaming in me, making me feel a concerted urge to sprint outside and take in the sun for myself. It’s summer through and through, the kind of song that feels tailor-made for eighty degrees and clear skies. The track slows to a waltz midway through, Slater crooning the title above distorted guitars and jangly percussion, before kicking back in with a bright, shining vengeance. I expect to see many Instagram photo dumps with this song as the soundtrack before the summer’s out. —Casey Epstein-Gross

Wishy: “All The Rage”

Endure enough breakups, and they start to feel routine. You remember the pain is temporary, that you’ve survived every heartbreak thus far, that it’s pretty much always for the best. Broadly speaking, it gets easier—all except for that pesky early phase of post-breakup withdrawal symptoms. Here’s where we find Kevin Krauter on “All The Rage,” the latest single from beloved indie rockers Wishy’s sophomore album Nature’s Pill. A heartbroken Krauter can’t be bothered to fill his gas tank; he certainly won’t be doing laundry any time soon, and he’s not even enticed to watch TV if there’s not a partner by his side. Wishy delivers all these laments via deceptively sunny guitar jangles Krauter says were inspired by fellow Midwestern indie pop bands Artificial Go and Good Flying Birds. It’s no shock that Wishy, whose 2024 breakthrough Triple Seven proved to be one of the most interesting interpretations of shoegaze in recent memory, wears those twee sensibilities just as well. Gently angsty and ultra catchy, let “All The Rage” soundtrack your deadbeat summer if that’s what you’re going for. —Abby Jones

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