The 10 Best New Songs

Featuring Sky Ferreira, Alex G, MUNA and more

Music Lists Best New Songs
The 10 Best New Songs

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 below.

Alex G: “Blessing

Alex Giannascoli, the Philadelphia singer/songwriter and producer best-known as Alex G, has released his first proper single since 2019, “Blessing.” Giannascoli produced the track—out now on Domino, along with a music video—alongside his longtime collaborator Jacob Portrait. Dark and abrasive, “Blessing” begins with blaring synths that knock you off balance from the get-go. Suddenly, a resolute 4/4 beat replaces them, over which Giannascoli whispers, “Every day is a blessing / As I walk through the mud.” The track’s abrupt gearshifts are jarring by design, as if in an attempt to render its lyrical conceit as instrumentation: They say “every day above ground is a good day,” but there’s never any telling when things will take a turn for the worse. And life, like “Blessing” itself, can end without warning—no good, no bad, just gone. —Scott Russell

Chat Pile: “Slaughterhouse”

There’s something about the Midwest that breeds such dark, twisted music. Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile can be added to that roster. “Slaughterhouse,” the scathing lead single of their forthcoming debut God’s Country, is breathtaking. Vocalist Raygun Busch’s desperate wails and growls evoke an ugly, gruesome transformation scene. Chat Pile stare in the face of God and spit into it, taking upon the gritty nihilism of hardcore legends Man is the Bastard with the chaotic sonic inclination of The Jesus Lizard and Daughters. “All the blood / And the fuckin’ sound, man / You never forget their eyes … There’s more screaming than you’d think,” paints a bleak, gruesome picture of American life and monotony that is most honestly captured in dispatches from those existing on society’s margins. Chat Pile turn the repulsive into something tangible, and it’s as nostalgic as it is wholly original. —Jade Gomez

Ganser: “People Watching

After releasing one of Paste’s top albums of 2020 in their sophomore record Just Look at That Sky, Ganser are back with word of their new EP, Nothing You Do Matters (Oct. 5, Felte Records), produced by Angus Andrew of Liars. Ahead of the record, the Chicago four-piece shared the cinematic music video for lead track “People Watching,” which uses an immersive virtual “green screen” technology employed on productions like Disney+ hit The Mandalorian. In the course of their “People Watching,” Ganser see a dire state of affairs: “No one is asking / Everyone’s taking / No one is giving / Maybe you’re faking,” Nadia Garofalo sneers over dance-punk thrum, with backing vocals and keys orbiting her acerbic observations. Suddenly Ganser’s guitars fall away, the track collapsing into murky synth, uneasy drum patter and Alicia Gaines’ almost taunting inquisitions: “Where you gonna go? / No destination.” As the song finally spirals out, Garofalo intones, “Talk until your words lose meaning,” as if urging the people she’s watching towards both futility and freedom. —Scott Russell

Gold Panda: “I’ve Felt Better (Than I Do Now)”

Don’t be misled by the downcast title of “I’ve Felt Better (Than I Do Now),” our first preview of Gold Panda’s fifth album, and his first in four years—the composition itself is an entirely different story. The ??East London-based electronic music producer has lived through intense personal highs (read: a daughter) and lows (read: a brain hemorrhage) in the years since 2018’s On Reflection, and his new tune spans that gamut. Chopped vocal samples lead the way, whooshing past over a brisk, but easygoing breakbeat until the song takes a breather in its midsection, bright koto plucks tumbling into earshot. Synths like the streaks that follow comets enter the mix afterwards, as if the song is stronger for having taken a few beats off. Gold Panda, too, is back and going strong, delivering a euphoric, quietly optimistic dance jam in a dark moment. —Scott Russell

Mother Nature feat. Renzell: “Don’t Worry”

Mother Nature are an unstoppable force in Chicago rap. The duo, composed of TRUTH and Klevah, stand tall and defiant in their pursuit of making incredible hip-hop. “Don’t Worry” sounds like a breezy summer drive, and Renzell’s thumping bass rattles underneath vivid bars. Whether it be Klevah boasting, “I been to heaven and back / Ain’t too competitive there,” or TRUTH asserting, “Don’t hold space for no idle time,” the two put every expectation into a blender and leave the motor running. In the same breath, they talk about sex, money and building empires. Mother Nature present a compelling argument that it’s possible to have all three on the same track. —Jade Gomez

MUNA: “Home by Now”

On their new single, “Home By Now,” MUNA find that life might not be as fun as they initially thought it was on “Silk Chiffon.” The latest from their forthcoming self-titled album (which will be out June 24), the band wrestles with a million “what if’s.” A muted electro-pop bop, Katie Gavin is stuck questioning her decision to part ways with a former partner as she spins hypothetical scenarios where she stuck it out with them a little longer. The song is glossy with punchy drum machines and an easy groove even as Gavin recalls, “said I didn’t know if it’s enough to make it last / you said if I even had to ask / you had your answer.” The sort of song you dance to with tears in your eyes, as she wonders what life would’ve been like with “the one that got away,”; you can’t help but contemplate the same thing. —Samantha Sullivan

Pool Kids: “That’s Physics, Baby”

This week, Pool Kids dropped “That’s Physics, Baby,” the first release from their forthcoming self-titled album, out July 22. Following the release of 2018’s Music To Practice Safe Sex To, the Tallahassee-based band announced their comeback in a big way with a single that sounds like math-rock meets mid-western emo. Lead-singer Christine Goodwyne’s lyrics serve as a snapshot of the dizzying circles someone spins her in as she belts, “can’t quite tell what you’ve ever been after / clockwork motor, you wind me up again / crumple me up like a candy wrapper / throw me away, I’d rather not pretend.” While the song expresses her frustration with the situation, the accompanying music video captures the band’s quirky side as they pose as a down on their luck nature documentary crew. —Samantha Sullivan

PVA: “Untethered”

After delivering one of 2020’s best EPs and picking up a 2021 Grammy nomination, PVA are back and “Untethered.” The London electronic trio describe their new single as “a song about release,” with “lyrics [that] follow a character being freed from imaginary tethers and experiencing the earth under their feet again.” Over spiraling cattle-prod synths that scream Yeezus, Ella Harris is demure in assessing her narrator’s newfound freedom, only declaring, “I feel new,” after the song’s skittering momentum has surged. PVA counterpoint the track’s central catharsis and liberation with an inescapable tension, deploying industrial bass pulse, dubstep-adjacent drone and Harris/Josh Baxter vocal juxtaposition to that end. “Untethered” might as well describe the rising trio’s sound as they continue to assert themselves, but even so, it feels, thrillingly, like the peak of their powers is still a long way off. —Scott Russell

Sky Ferreira: “Don’t Forget

It’s been nine years—in other words, a lifetime—since Sky Ferreira released her decade-best 2013 debut album, Night Time, My Time, and three years since her last proper solo single, 2019’s “Downhill Lullaby.” But today is a new day, and Ferreira is back with “Don’t Forget,” described in a press release as “a tantalizing glimpse into her forthcoming album Masochism.” Ferreira co-produced “Don’t Forget” alongside her longtime collaborator Jorge Elbrecht (Ariel Pink), recording at Capitol’s historic Studio B in Hollywood, California. Like “Downhill Lullaby” before it, “Don’t Forget” demonstrates that Ferreira hasn’t lost her flair for dramatic, effortlessly elaborate pop music. But where that 2019 track was dark, dissonant and orchestral, “Don’t Forget” is a stylish and immediate synth-pop jam that masks a vengeful intensity. Horns and huge floor toms set the stage for a syncopated dance beat that Ferreira bobs and weaves around, making a kind of peace with the apocalypse: “Tears of fire in the sky / Makes me feel good to be alive,” she sings, swearing in the choruses, “Oh no, I won’t forget / I don’t forgive.” A cyclone of electronic noise and guitar distortion swirls as Ferreira, larger than life, towers over any misfortune that dares cross her path: “It’s such a raw deal world / I don’t need to deceive you, I am the real bad girl.” —Scott Russell

Tony Molina: “The Last Time

Bay Area guitar-pop maverick Tony Molina has announced In the Fade, his first new album under his own name in four years, coming Aug. 12 via Summer Shade, a new Run for Cover Records imprint curated by Madison Woodward (Fury, Object of Affection). At 18 minutes, the record is Molina’s longest yet, and it “offers something from every phase of his catalog, almost like a Tony Molina greatest hits, except with all new songs,” per press materials. Molina went about fitting those different sounds together exactly how you’d expect: “The main thing I was trying to tie everything together with was just really good melodies for the entire record, all the way through,” he says. Lead single “The Last Time” evokes early, Dissed and Dismissed-era Molina more than it does the lighter touch of his last album, 2018’s Kill the Lights. Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies bookend the track, 84 seconds of fuzzed-out power-pop in which Molina’s narrator swears off a flawed relationship, but harbors doubts about what kind of life he’ll lead without it—all conveyed in the space of a single four-line verse. ”’Cause when I tell her that I need her / Will she still judge me for who I am?” he wonders over power-chord thrum, his uncertainty soon supplanted by the song’s return to riff-rock nirvana. —Scott Russell

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