Top Song of the Week
Song of the Week: Indianapolis Hip-Hop Trio 81355 Bury the Past in Hope of a Better Future on “Capstone”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, hip-hop trio 81355 return with the second single off their upcoming, full-length debut. If there’s any initial impression to be gathered from hip-hop trio 81355, comprised of three staples of the Indianapolis music scene (Sirius Blvck, Oreo Jones, and Sedcairn Archives), it’s that great music can come from anywhere. It’s commonplace to see artists emerging from the expected staples — Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville — and, so often, it’s harder to find gems like 81355. This collaborative effort has alre...
Song of the Week: BROCKHAMPTON and Danny Brown Call Out the Haters on Return Single “BUZZCUT”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, BROCKHAMPTON make their epic return with the help of Danny Brown. “BUZZCUT” marks the first official release from BROCKHAMPTON, the sprawling 13-member hip-hop group, since 2019. After dropping a series of limited-time songs throughout 2020, the band have now made an official return with the assertive single, along with some help from Danny Brown. The undercurrent of the track is one of frustration, focusing on false dreams, haters and detractors, and dysfunctional family dynamics. Member Kevin Abstract leads the first verse and c...
Song of the Week: SABA Stays Fresh as Ever on the Reflective “Ziplock”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Chicago rapper SABA returns with a double-single, his first new music of 2021. Chicago rapper SABA has returned this week with another set of double singles, “Ziplock” and “Rich Don’t Stop”, continuing the dual-drop format he established throughout 2020. “Ziplock” was produced by D. Phelps and Coop the Truth and marks the first new music from the emcee in 2021. (He can also be found on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated film Judas and the Black Messiah, appearing on “Plead The .45th” alongside Smino.) A recent press release st...
Song of the Week: Lucy Dacus Delivers a Wrenching Ballad with “Thumbs”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Lucy Dacus delivered a wrenching ballad that left all of us speechless. Some songs end and sit in the pit of your stomach for the rest of the day, so visceral and affecting that they can’t be shaken. Lucy Dacus’ raw, devastating new release, “Thumbs”, is such a song, offering a gothic revenge fantasy that lingers long after the four and a half minutes have passed. Extremely minimal in production, “Thumbs” is also nearly formless, unfolding more like a whispered secret, twilight confession, or piece of local mythos than traditional...
Song of the Week: Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak Play It Smooth as Silk Sonic on “Leave the Door Open”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak dropped their first single as Silk Sonic. Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak have teamed up under the name Silk Sonic, which seems to have been a good name choice. Their first single, “Leave the Door Open”, is nothing if not luxurious, velvety goodness. The full-length project, An Evening with Silk Sonic, reunites the two artists who previously toured together with .Paak as an opening act on Bruno Mars’ 2017 “24K Magic World Tour”. Sonically, “Leave the Door Open” is a return to form for Bruno Mars, who ha...
Song of the Week: Jay Som and Palehound Choose the Bachelor’s Life and Debut “Anything at All”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, two longtime friends form a new band and find a new sound. The past year of our lives has taught us that loneliness comes in several shades of blue. It can feel like total isolation, separation from dear friends, or even the tedium of seeing the same faces every single day. Those among us who have fared best have either found ways to beat the loneliness (a little Zoom went a long way there for a while, didn’t it?) or embrace it as a chance to remain in the moment and accomplish something. Jay Som (Melina Duterte) and Palehound voc...
Song of the Week: serpentwithfeet Gains Traction with Soulful “Same Size Shoe”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, serpentwithfeet gains traction with “Same Size Shoe”. There are two types of hype in the music business. One type makes it feel like an artist has the primal forces of nature behind them, controlling all media and advertising to make it seem like their next album will not only be the next canonical masterpiece to change music forever, but also the antidote to all that ails our suffering species and planet. And, then, there’s the type of hype that seemingly finds root in the tiniest speck of soil imaginable and slowly grows from th...
Song of the Week: Haviah Mighty Channels Her Jamaican Heritage on “Obeah”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, rapper Haviah Mighty channels her Jamaican Heritage on “Obeah”. Multiculturalism asks us to acknowledge and embrace the diversity within our own communities. Most of us try to live out that idea, recognizing that others experience the world (even the same community) differently than us and draw from different sources and traditions to cope with the daily challenges that we all face. That’s the crux of “Obeah”, the latest song by hip-hop artist and 2019 Polaris Prize winner Haviah Mighty, who our own Wren Graves describes as “one o...
Song of the Week: boygenius Reunite on Julien Baker’s Confessional “Favor”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. While several stories over the past few weeks have reminded us that the entertainment world can still be very much a boys’ club in the worst ways imaginable, on the artistic side of matters, we’ve seen an undeniable shift in the recognition women are finally beginning to receive within the music industry, especially in the rock genre. Studies have shown that young women are not only picking up guitars at the highest rates ever, but they’re actually learning to play them in larger numbers than their male counterparts. No doubt it’s been partl...
Song of the Week: FKA twigs and Headie One Unite Social Movements in “Don’t Judge Me”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements may have different origins, but they share certain goals: among them, making certain that those who suffer sexual abuse and racial injustice, respectively, are acknowledged, listened to, and believed. Only when those things happen can healing begin, changes be implemented, and true justice attained. In this week’s Top Song, British artists FKA twigs and Headie One bring their own survival stories together and, in doing so, unite these movements under a common anthem. This collaboration, which ...
Song of the Week: A Pixilated Rico Nasty Earns High Score in “LiLBiTcH” Video Game
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. Take a deep breath … we have a sane president, a history-making veep, and “Individual-1” banned from Twitter … exhale. That’s not to say that life is all good or that all the problems we face as a nation are suddenly solved. No, it takes a lot of work to undo a four-year con job. That said, it won’t hurt if we take a measly two minutes and sixteen seconds out of our stressful, cooped-up lives to relax and, in the parlance of my time, take a chill pill with, well, chillpill. For those unfamiliar, chillpill is the name of the 15-year collabora...
Song of the Week: Danny L Harle Urges Us to Dance and Heal with “On a Mountain”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. It feels significant that British producer Danny L Harle chose to file his latest banger, “On a Mountain”, under his DJ Danny alias. Because, let’s face it: DJs need a win right now. Yes, our favorite spinners have found ways to keep busy behind the scenes over the course of the pandemic. Harle, himself, aside from prepping his upcoming solo album, Harlecore, has remixed no less than Georgia and 100 gecs and produced for 2020 standouts Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama in addition to longtime collaborator Caroline Polachek. That’s damn-good work ...
