Summer Staff Pix: May

The Milk Crate staff takes a break from their sun-soaked summer breaks to select their favorite songs released during the month of May. Listen to our choices for the perfect poolside playlist!

Karenna Umscheid

Mango Sticky Rice by MILLI

Thai rapper and pop singer Milli made headlines across the country for eating mango sticky rice - a very popular Thai dessert - onstage at Coachella, so much that my grandma heard about it. In her recent single, she raps about coconut milk, dumping her ex, and how the best mangoes in Thailand are right in her backyard. Her hyperpop beat and energetic lyrics makes this the perfect summer hype song - and in terms of popular music today, it really puts Thailand on the map. 

Sophie Severs

The Neighbors by Raavi

Have you ever had annoying neighbors? Well, Raavi has too — and they wrote an entire diss track about them in their song, “The Neighbors.” Raavi formed in Boston after meeting at Berklee School of Music, and has been masterfully creating songs within the unique genre of “plant rock” ever since. Their newly released EP, It Grows on Trees, is five tracks of blissful indie rock that anyone can get down and groove to. The aforementioned track, “The Neighbors” is the first track on the EP, and presents listeners with two minutes of a heavier rock sound, with a killer guitar solo to boot. Lead vocalist and guitarist Raavi Sita’s smooth vocals effortlessly blend with the band’s lush rock arrangements, leaving fans longing for more and more Raavi to come! 

Julia Norkus

Home by Now by MUNA

MUNA continues to make me feel as though they pulled a page out of my journal and set the entry to music. In their latest single “Home by Now,” MUNA acknowledges the difficulty of a break up — you know, the questioning and the overthinking part that makes you wonder, “If I did this one thing differently, would it have had the same outcome?” With elements of pop and what lead singer Katie Gavin (she/they) describes as “emo lyrics,” MUNA has carefully crafted a single for those heartbroken souls in need of a bedroom dance party/sobfest. Specifically, the line, “It feels so weird to not reach out and ask you how you are / I wonder if you’re moving or if money’s just that tight / These are the kinds of questions to which I’ve resigned my rights,” brings high wattage to the idea of knowing something has ended for a reason, but being unable stop wanting to know all of the things that used to hold so much value in a relationship. MUNA continues to keep their fans hooked on every word, and understood by every chorus, and their new album MUNA out June 24, is the soundtrack to the self-discovery summer we’re all in need of.

Sarah Fournell 

My Kink is Karma by Chappell Roan 

Chappell Roan made “My Kink is Karma” for the people like me, who secretly (or in the case of Roan, not-so-secretly) love to sit back and watch the downfall of those who hurt us. Whether it be sitting idly by as they ruin their lives with bad hair dye jobs or observing them crashing their car, Roan chronicles the satisfaction she gets from her ex’s failures in her latest electric single. With an irresistible chorus and deeply dark comical verses, “My Kink is Karma” has very quickly entrenched itself as my song of the summer. The single is accompanied by a campy music video starring Roan as a devilish exotic dancer crestfallen by a breakup. Roan established herself as an indie pop force in 2020 with “Pink Pony Club” and has continued to produce weird girl pop anthems such as “Naked in Manhattan” and “California.”

Will Ingman

Troglodyte by Viagra Boys

Best known for their Devoesque absurdism, Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys are a supremely weird band, mixing punk energy with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and a sense of divine whimsy. So when they released “Troglodyte,” the second single from their upcoming third album Cave World, a pointed, unobscure take-down of the ideologies behind mass violence, which flips right-wing primitivist rhetoric on its head and posits that no, actually, violence isn’t inherent to human nature, things felt a little different. Viagra Boys had played with social commentary before on tracks like “Sports”, an absurd satirization of hypermasculinity, but “Troglodyte” is the first time the band make a clear, direct political statement — if you want to solve your gripes with society through violence, you’re a loser. That kind of refusal to legitimize harmful thought by assessing it on its terms is a solution worth consideration, and it’s delivered with a heaping spoon of pulse-pounding groove to make it go down easier.

Lily Hartenstein 

Gibson Girl by Ethel Cain 

Selecting a favorite release from May feels impossible with all the exceptional choices, but if I had to pick the one album that struck deepest it would be Preacher’s Daughter. The concept album follows the tragic life of Cain’s persona, through her murder into the afterlife where she attempts to make peace with the traumas inflicted upon her. Lyrics are secondary to this narrative, as the haunting instruments and most of all Cain’s emotionally-charged voice carry the story of love and loss. With American Gothic imagery and Cain’s simultaneously witchy and rootsy sound, I’ve described the album to friends as what people want Lana Del Ray to be. “Gibson Girl'' is the beginning of the album’s descent into nightmare, a hazy, dark song with an entrancing guitar solo which makes it my current favorite track. It’s impossible to isolate one song on this powerful album—it’s truly a cohesive work of art best appreciated in totality.

Harry Bates

The Weight by Mavis Staples and Levon Helm

I could listen to this song thousands of times, and that’s not hypothetical because, well, I have. There’s a long tradition in American artistry which sees the Band’s infamous 1967 crowd-pleaser covered. Whoever decides to pick up the iconic tune always implements their own stylings, and the same is very much true with this newly released version from our very favorite Mavis Staples and the Band’s original drummer, Levon Helm. Originally recorded in 2011 at Helm’s recording studio in Woodstock, New York, listeners can now hear this version for the first time. Give it a listen, and you’ll be sure to experience the heart and spirit of this reverenced song firsthand. “The Weight” comes from Staples’ Carry Me Home album which was released on May 20, 2022. I can’t recommend an album more!