STAFF PIX 10/24: NEW RELEASES!
“There Is No I” by feeo
This track is the aftermath to the apocalypse on the rest of Goodness. Static hangs upon the air like fallout in a deserted city. A slide guitar weeps notes that veer in and out of tune. feeo’s voice emerges breathy and high, like a beam of light: “You keep the darkness from my door/ And I watch the light keep on burning bright behind yours.” The delicacy of her voice and spare accompaniment recalls early FKA Twigs. She and the guitar arabesque around each other, starting high then going low at turns. She repeats a simple sentiment with quiet determination: “When we’re together/ we’re better together.” The track is lucid yet gently dizzying, the kind of desperation that makes the rest of the world fall away. — Christian Jones
“Dread Architect” by Machine Girl, Drumcorps
If music is a weapon, then the listener is fully armed with the latest from Machine Girl. Dread Architect is a bullet in sound. It’s an industrial cadence sawing through your brain throughout the track; splitting your membrane in two when it’s all over. I appreciate music that’s straight to the point, even better when I can feel lead vocalist Matt Stephenson’s voice drill a hole in my temple (as it always does). After only being an edition to live performances for so long, its digital release comes in tandem with the project’s newest album: PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X coming out October 24th! — Salem Ross
“CRANK” by Slayyyter
Slayyyter’s made quite the comeback this year after spending the first half of the decade toiling in IYKYK-gay-guy-C-list fame. Her last record, 2023’s “Starfucker” was excellent, but with these last few singles, Miss YYY is really upping the ante. On her new single “CRANK,” Slayyyter blows up her sound with her most abrasive single yet. Slayyyter’s been known for talking her shit since 2019’s “Daddy AF,” but “CRANK” is straight up deranged. Over grinding synths, guitars, and alarm sounds, Slayyyter lets off simultaneously hilarious and genius couplets like “I get so gay off that tequila / I need some dick for Tuesday, let me go put out some feelers,” or “He wanna fuck Slayyyter / Richard, we should link-later.” Sheer brilliance. Essential. — Bennett Himmel
“Hot Shot (David Wrench 2025 Mix)” by Blondie
New Blondie in the year 2025? Two words: hell. yeah. Ever since Blondie’s guitarist Chris Stein teased a new Blondie record later this year, I’ve been agonizingly awaiting a new release from the group. Previously only available in Japan as a rare bonus track, “Hot Shot (David Wrench 2025 Mix)” makes its worldwide debut as a single on Blondie’s upcoming remastering of their 1999 album “No Exit,” an expansion coming October 31st. “Hot Shot” didn’t disappoint my high hopes, at. all. Debbie Harry’s vocals are addictive as they soften when she croons, “I need a hot shooooot.” Seriously: the way Harry’s voice tilts to carry out “shot” requires at least two replays every time I listen. The disco is utterly uplifting for the track’s entire duration and enough to have me salivating for Blondie’s remastering of “No Exit” coming out next week. — Heather Thorn
“Starburst” by Danny Brown
The most iconic voice in rap music is back with production to make your head spin. The deranged game soundtrack sounding beat, stops in it’s tracks about 2 minutes in to start the next phase of the boss fight. The beat remixes into echoey gibberish, repeating the phrase “I’m gonna jump, hey-yo” over and over till the end. Sounds weird right? Remember it’s a Danny Brown song so he’s also rapping over the pixelated goodness. While it’s been a couple years since his record Quaranta, the start of starburst gets you right back to the Danny Brown vibe with a ridiculous (but hard) opening line. “Better shape up and get them squares up out ya circle.” — Sam Shipman
“Good Luck, Good Night” by Silvana Estrada
I did not pick Geese. Even if that is – or was – the obvious answer, I’ve talked and written about that band too much, and if it weren’t for last Friday’s round of releases, I almost certainly would have folded and you would be reading about Cameron Winter and his nonsensical warbles right now. But thank God that the best singer-songwriter in Latin America decided to drop, because now I can annoy everyone I know by talking about Vendrán Suaves Lluivas instead. As if Estrada’s immaculate 2022 record Marchita wasn’t already one of the most tragically underdiscussed releases of the decade, it would be a travesty if Suaves Lluvias suffers a similar fate. It’s pure Latin folk magic, full-stop, ten tracks and forty minutes of some of the lushest, most evocative singer-songwriter music this side of Nick Drake, and on “Good Luck, Good Night,” the Mexican singer-songwriter taps into a particularly potent vein of feeling. Over the course of the track’s four minute runtime, Estrada slowly elbows forward the emotional and dynamic intensity of the song, the arrangement becoming more elaborate with each verse, her golden-voiced delivery increasing in desperation and intensity until “Good Luck, Good Night” finally reaches its dynamic and emotional boiling point. Estrada’s poetic meditations on heartbreak and loss punctuate the song like an exclamation point, her final howl of “good luck, good night” at the track’s apex – the only English lyric on the whole song – hitting like a gorgeous shock to the nervous system. — Lucca Swain
“A War With Time” by Brandi Carlile
The fourth track of ten on her upcoming album Returning To Myself, Brandi Carlile’s “A War With Time” is a hauntingly vulnerable meditation on mortality. The song’s minimalistic instrumental arrangement leaves room for Carlile’s vocals to really resonate, supported the whole way through by her longtime collaborators, The Hanseroth Twins. A soft, catchy guitar riff is fingerpicked throughout the track, providing her with a strong undercurrent as she sings “I could still reach out and touch you, and I wish I didn’t know the things I know.” Carlile’s voice aches with honesty, breaking in just all right places to reveal the emotion behind the lyrics. — Emeline Chopin
“joey knows” by dance arts center
I was doing my nightly scroll through my last.fm recommendations and once again, I was blessed by the algorithmic gods which bestowed upon me a gem of production, danceability, and pure groove. From that initial flood of synth, dance arts center’s “joey knows” woke me up from a sleep-induced daze of exhaustion, grabbed me by my hands and pulled me out to the dance floor. The entire track maintains its momentum and situates itself between layers of airy, electronic synth elevated by one voice which is reminiscent of a younger, lighter Grimes. Its electronic dance influences are manifested in its seamless ability to create such an animated atmosphere. Suggestive of all of the best melodic elements of Magdalena Bay and even some Daft Punk, DAC are just beginning to establish themselves in the scene with their first album coming out on October 24th. All the listener has left to do is just dance! — Sophie Parrish
“8” by Eartheater
There’s a rumbling in the earth. It’s the sound of revolution. Not the kind that takes to the streets, but the kind eartheater moans as she descends from whatever planet she resides on before dropping down to eat the earth. She whispers a war cry of techno-spirituality and pseudo existentialism. “Harness the yang of the big bang…harness the yin of the central nervous system” The alien we know as the electronic prodigy claims she’s from Queens, yet speaks with assertive nonsensical wisdom of the secretary of the Galactic Federation of Light. This song feels like you are stepping into an upside down 7/11 at the witching hour. The girl behind the counter has purple hair, green lipstick and holds a cosmically colored slushy with 3 arms. She tells you “every solution exists within infinity” as you hand her a $15 dollar bill. She gives you your change in Canadian money and you leave through a worm hole questioning not if but when the revolution is coming. She “8” but she’s still hungry. — Avery Piazza