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.)
ANOHNI and the Johnsons: “Why Am I Alive Now?”
The final single from her forthcoming LP My Back Was A Bridge For You To Carry, ANOHNI offers a six-minute epic that weaves in and out of various soul textures. She questions her own survival during a time when nature is collapsing around her and politicians, parents, hunters and neighbors want her and her trans loved ones wiped off the earth. “I don’t want to feel this aching color of our world,” ANOHNI sings. Martin Slattery provides an energetic, disarming percussion that snares and thumps, while ANOHNI bends her voice into a high falsetto—as she beckons her own desire within the clutches of environmental and personal fatalism: “No more footsteps in the sand, all of our memories are sinking into un-living. I don’t know.” —Matt Mitchell
Del Water Gap: “All We Ever Do is Talk”
Del Water Gap made waves in 2021 with his self-titled first album, a tender, roaring exploration of desperate young love. He’s carried that same urgency into “All We Ever Do Is Talk,” the latest single off his forthcoming LP I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet. The tune, replete with dreamy, electric guitars and full-bodied harmonics, explores the fleeting space of a new relationship and the frenzied liminality of its wonderful, terrifying uncertainty. “It was good, it was good,” Holden Jaffe sings over and over, trying to reassure himself more so than the listener. A sonic realization of that indescribable angst, “All We Ever Do Is Talk” is lush and self-propelled, the kind of shout into the darkness that doesn’t need a reply just to mean something.—Miranda Wollen
hinako omori: “foundation”
U.K. artist hinako omori released an acclaimed album last year that worked in modes of sound baths and healing, looking to highlight the therapeutic qualities that music can provide. The work she has released this year has been pitched as something of a departure as she works in more pop forms, but listening to this latest single, her ability to soothe and heal remains very much at the forefront of her productions. omori’s vocal hook alone works through the muscles and synapses like a gentle flood of warm water. But underneath the downtempo beat are drones and melodies that act like a weighted blanket, pressing down and calming with each gush and blossom. —Robert Ham
Locate S,1: “Go Back To Disnee”
Locate S,1’s “Go Back To Disnee” is a floaty, bossa-nova inspired track with a surprisingly invective impetus. A flying tour over the collective memory of domestic childhood, the tune’s unbothered instrumentals disguise a venom-tinged nostalgia, a tracing of the cracks along the outlines of Christina Schneider’s youth and the matrix of innocence. “I believe that we never really lived in America / Go back to Disnee, back to the palace stairs / Back to the hiding places that were never there,” Schneider sings. The breezy beauty which pervades her work serves to highlight the confusion of it all, emphasizing the thousand little stabs of an abusive upbringing in wavering pastels. “Go Back To Disnee” is poignant and multicolored, sweet without being innocent. It’s a balance Schneider strikes expertly. —MW
Margo Cilker: “Keep It On a Burner”
The latest single from her forthcoming LP Valley Of Heart’s Delight, “Keep It on A Burner” finds Margo Cilker crooning through a gospel-influenced, orchestra country arrangement. With horns cascading atop feather-light guitars, the Oregon singer/songwriter breathes new life into an alt-country tune that glitters as often as it aches. In a stream-of-consciousness reflection, Cilker began writing the story while whitewater rafting on the Salmon River. Surrounded by rattlesnakes and wildfire smoke, she laments: “I got sidewalks, I got sunburned, I got books I haven’t read / I got neighbors, telling neighbords, they’ll be burning up when they’re dead / I got wasted, I got waylaid, I got stuck in Lodi again / But I’ve got time now, I’ve got know-how, I’ve only got to write the end.” Cheeky Creedence Clearwater Revival nods and timely bookshelf imagery aside, “Keep It On a Burner” is one of the best country tracks you’ll hear in 2023. —MM