6 songs you missed this week
You've already heard new songs from Fall Out Boy, One Direction and Carrie Underwood this week. Now check out these tracks that may have slipped under your radar:
Beach House, Somewhere Tonight
The last song on Beach House’s surprise new release, Thank Your Lucky Stars, borrows the riff of Santo and Johnny's doo-wop classic Sleep Walk for a woozy waltz, complete with organ arpeggios that punctuates the song’s gauzy reverie with a stray, darkly humorous off-note. Thank Your Lucky Stars is a less consistent effort than its two-month-old predecessor Depression Cherry, but it couldn’t have ended on a dreamier closing note. —Maeve McDermott
MØ, Kamikaze
Is there anyone who's shaped mainstream dance music more than Diplo this year? Justin Bieber has ridden a comeback wave on the super-producer's warm, wonky beats: scoring Top 10 hits in Where Are Ü Now and What Do You Mean? But we're partial to his collaborations with Danish singer MØ, whose intoxicating Lean On was Spotify's most-streamed track of the summer globally (and let's not forget their first song, XXX 88). This latest pairing is the first single off MØ's second album, a followup to her underrated debut No Mythologies to Follow last year, and it doesn't disappoint. A bright, breezy night-out anthem bursting with Diplo's signature honking horns on the hook, we are "never gonna get enough" of fall's best new pop song. — Patrick Ryan
Neon Indian, The Glitzy Hive
On the latest single from third album VEGA INTL. Night School, Neon Indian (aka Alan Palermo) eats Ariel Pink's lunch (and gives Toro Y Moi a singing lesson) with four minutes of disco that’s as glitzy as its title suggests. VEGA is Palermo’s first full-length in four years; from the sounds of the new collection’s late-night technicolor glow, he’s spent most of that time listening to Prince. —McDermott
BØRNS, Dug My Heart
When his infectious Electric Love failed to get the kind of airplay it deserved earlier this year, we were afraid BØRNS could fade away into the background with many other indie-pop stars, whose songs you totally recognize from TV ads but have no clue who they actually are. But if his new album Dopamine, released this week, is any indication, the singer's commanding falsetto should have plenty more opportunities to make a run at the charts. Dug My Heart is a particular standout: a dark and offbeat ballad about lost love, accentuated by glittering keyboards and a throbbing bass line. — Ryan
Deerhunter, Duplex Planet
One of their generation’s most prolific bands, Deerhunter have spent their last few records forming their textured textured guitar rock into poppier, more melodic molds. Duplex Planet is a highlight from their seventh album Fading Frontier, showing off the Stereolab inspiration that frontman Bradford Cox hinted to in the freewheeling map of influences map he hand-drew to accompany the record. —McDermott
Radiator Hospital, Night Out
Philadelphia foursome Radiator Hospital have produced some of the best power-pop of the last few years, and on a new split with UK pop-punks Martha, the band makes swift work of three sub-two-minute tracks that still boast the smart, vivid writing and tight melodies that have made them such an exciting act to follow. The best is Night Out, the EP’s first track, featuring a characteristically next-level-awesome opening line that’d be the lyric of a lifetime for less talented bands—“I think a bomb went off the day you were born.”. —McDermott