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Jun 05, 2026 By Mark Redfern (with Andy Von Pip and Caleb Campbell)

Welcome to the 21st Songs of the Week of 2026. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, and Dom Gourlay helped me decide the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 14.

Our long-awaited The ’90s Issue Part 2 is out now. Find out more about it here. Order it here. 

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In recent weeks we posted interviews with Bedouine, Julia Cumming (a digital cover story), Ladytron (a My Firsts), Kevin Morby, Eaves Wilder (a My Firsts), Broken Social Scene, Tori Amos, deary, Brown Horse, Modern Woman, American Football (a digital cover story), Kneecap (a digital cover story), Jessie Ware, and more.

In the last week we reviewed some albums.

To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 14 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.

1. Beth Orton: “Otherside”

British singer/songwriter Beth Orton is releasing a new album, The Ground Above, on June 26 via Partisan. This week she shared its third single, “Otherside,” plus a live performance video for the song.

Orton had this to say about the song in a press release: “I heard that the first birdsong of a new day is the sound of the birds letting it be known they are still here, that they have made it through the night alive and safe…. With ‘Otherside,’ what began as a not so simple tale of sleeplessness went on to have me turning over bigger themes, those of resilience in the face of loss, what freedom means to the individual and the collective; the ability to start again and make beautiful a life when it has been torn apart. An embodiment of what it feels like to implore a loved one home, to make it through the night, or to make it through a day, to make good what we dare to dream.”

Of the live video, Orton adds: “I can think of no better way to introduce some of the musicians who worked on my upcoming record than by way of this live recorded video directed by Iain and Jane Pollard and Joseph Lynn.”

Iain and Jane Pollard had this to say: “Filming Beth felt like catching an artist mid-transformation. Once a patron saint of fragility, now she’s like an astronaut exploring the vast orbit of her own soul. There’s a moment when an artist pushes past their limits and something shifts. Being there for that is rare. Capturing even a piece of it felt like a privilege.”

In March Orton shared the album’s eight minute long title track (also its opening track). “The Ground Above” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. Its second single, “Waiting,” also landed on Songs of the Week at #1.

The Ground Above follows Orton’s acclaimed album Weather Alive, which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2022. Like Weather Alive, Orton self-produced The Ground Above. The album features multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, Vernon Spring’s Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro (Antibalas, Radiohead), Vishal Nayak (Nick Hakim), Paul Butler (The Bees and Michael Kiwanuka), Trumpet player Christos Styliande, bassist Tom Herbert, and Dave Okumu (The Invisible).

The press release describes the themes tackled on the album: “Throughout the album, Orton documents survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing choice to stay—in love, in art, and in the world.”

Read our interview with Beth Orton on Weather Alive. By Mark Redfern

2. Emma Ruth Rundle: “Powerless”

This week, Emma Ruth Rundle shared “Powerless,” the lead single from her forthcoming sixth album These Killing Times, out September 18 via her own imprint, Errant Child.

The track sets the tone for an album described as a reactive anthology of anti-patriarchal feminist rage, while retaining the tenderness and vulnerability that defined her previous album, Engine of Hell (2021). These Killing Times returns to a full-band setup, with a more direct vocal style and a brighter, more urgent sound. The record features Jess Gowrie (Chelsea Wolfe, Mrs. Piss), Troy Zeigler, Patrick Shiroishi, Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos), Gina Gleason (Baroness), Marissa Nadler, Lukas Frank (Storefront Church), and Amelia Baker (Cinder Well).

Of “Powerless,” Rundle says: “This song was initially titled ‘Noam Chomsky is Dead to Me’—as his relationship to Epstein and the billionaire class was being exposed—just another massively disappointing headline in a time where we are incessantly confronted with an onslaught of news and headlines which are endlessly demoralizing and dehumanizing.

“This song—like most of the songs on These Killing Times—is a reaction to the horrors we are seeing laid bare on a daily basis—the clear and painful reality of the myriad injustices levied upon the working class people of earth—from climate collapse to genocide to the miscarriage of justice on a scale—the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes—the collapse of empire, the demise of democracy, the erosion of women’s rights and LGBTQIA+ rights and black rights, the attempt to dehumanize immigrants and people of color, the concentration camps in the USA—the list is so long I don’t think I can accurately cover it all here.

“With ‘Powerless’—I invoke the hammer; both to destroy and to build—something better. I want people to know they are not alone—they are not insane—I wanted to name the thing that has been causing me so much mental, emotional and spiritual anguish. Sometimes singing—especially repeating phrases—can work to fortify one’s self and I think that’s where the bridge of ‘Powerless’ comes in—I refuse to let my agency and resolve become corrupted or diluted by the powers that be and I want others to feel empowered too.” By Andy Von Pip

3. Weezer: “We Might As Well Be Strangers” (Feat. Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman)

This week, Weezer announced a new album and shared a new song from it, “We Might As Well Be Strangers,” which is a duet with Karly Hartzman of Wednesday. In the band’s long tradition, it’s another self-titled album, but will also be known as The Gold Album. It’s due out August 21 on Reprise/Warner Records. Jasper Graham directed the song’s video, which also features Hartzman. Check out the album details and the tour dates for the “Weezer: The Gathering” tour here.

Weezer (The Gold Album) is the band’s 20th album. They recorded it with Klas Ahlund and Kenneth Blume (FKA Kenny Beats), with Blume declaring he wanted to make “the most violent Weezer album ever.” For the first time since the band’s debut album, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and drummer Pat Wilson wrote a song together. Three-fourths of the band wrote songs for the album.

The album includes “Shine Again,” a new song the band shared in April.

In March, Weezer announced an extensive North American tour for September and October. The Shins and Silversun Pickups will be the support acts on the “Weezer: The Gathering” tour.

In 2024 the band embarked on the “Return to the Blue Planet” tour, in which they performed their self-titled debut album (aka The Blue Album) in its entirety for its 30th birthday.

Weezer’s last full-length album was 2021’s Van Weezer, released by Atlantic. In 2022 they released four EPs, each tied to a different season.

Wednesday’s last album was 2025’s Bleeds. Read our 2022 interview with Wednesday. By Mark Redfern

4. Margaret Glaspy: “Michigan”

This week, Margaret Glaspy announced a new album, I Am Both, and has shared its first single, “Michigan,” as well as a live performance video for the song. She’s also announced some tour dates. I Am Both is due out this August 7 via ATO. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as her upcoming tour dates, here.

“I was in Michigan a couple years back and had a really beautiful time, and thought about how New Yorkers sometimes fantasize about the countryside as a retreat from the intensity of the city,” Glaspy says of her new single, in a press release. “It turned into a song about someone going through a bad breakup, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”

I Am Both follows Glaspy’s 2023 album, Echo the Diamond as well as her 2024 EP, The Sun Doesn’t Think, and her 2025 EP, The Golden Heart Protector.

Joe Henry (Aimee Mann, Joan Baez) produced I Am Both. Glaspy wrote the album longhand and on a typewriter.

“I wrote the title track a while ago; the story is based on a female character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing reality very clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find that embracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.”

She adds: “When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back - to walk the walk in terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter. At first it was really hard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’d gotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions. It was life-changing.” By Mark Redfern

5. Dogwood Tales: “McMemories”

Harrisonburg, Virginia-based indie alt country outfit Dogwood Tales traces plaintive stories with an unmistakable sense of place. Their music is indelibly shaped by the contours of life in the Shenandoah Valley, where childhood friends Kyle Grim and Ben Ryan grew up and started the band, alongside drummer Jake Golibart and bassist Danny Gibney. The band debuted with their 2018 album, Too Hard to Tell, followed by their 2020 sophomore album, Closest Thing to Heaven, and a handful of EPs over the subsequent years.

Fans last heard from the band earlier this year with Destination Heaven, their collaborative album release with Euphoria Again, the solo project of singer/songwriter and Knifeplay guitarist John Klein. Later this summer, the band are keeping that momentum up while getting back to basics with another new album, Every Star in Rockingham County. The full album is due out on August 28th via Born Losers Records, and this week the band accompanied the album announcement with its lead single, “McMemories,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

“McMemories” occupies the same intersection of bleary alt country and hangdog indie rock as MJ Lenderman or Wild Pink. If you like your sunswept small town tales delivered with layers of blown-out distortion or your winding pedal steel tempered with road-worn grit, you’ll find a lot to love with Dogwood Tales’ latest effort. The band ping-pongs between hazy contrasts, leaning into their meandering lo-fi country melodies before pivoting into a volcanic rock jam in the latter half of the track. Similarly, their lyrics tour through distant childhood memories, zooming in on details like cutting class for McDonald’s Coke, teenage makeouts, and tiny keepsakes. That intimacy turns dreamy and widescreen with the chorus, spiraling into fantasy as the guitars churn out gnarled hooks: “I had a dream / That you were a light beam / Coming down through / The darkest night I had ever seen.”

The band says of the track, “‘McMemories’ came from a reflection on a relationship in my life that has felt informative to all relationships I’ve experienced since; one that feels like the center of all my loose ends, always in my peripheral. We started playing this song live a few years ago, and it felt like a missing piece that we had been looking for as a band, kind of mirroring how the lyrics felt for me personally. This song was a realization that a distant memory can be the beacon of light that brings all the scattered pieces together, and it takes remembering to see the path ahead with more certainty.” By Caleb Campbell

6. Belle and Sebastian: “It Only Takes One Lion”

This week, Scotland’s Belle and Sebastian shared a new song, “It Only Takes One Lion,” which is the Scottish World Cup anthem. It was written after the team’s 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark. The band’s Stuart Murdoch co-directed the song’s video with Marisa Privitera Murdoch.

Stuart Murdoch had this to say in a press release: “It’s a personal song about following the travails of Scotland’s national team for the last 50 years and it came out naturally the day after the game against Denmark. The song tries to encompass the experience of the whole country following Scotland.”

Pete Ferguson co-wrote and co-directed the song.

Belle and Sebastian are currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Tigermilk, and second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister, both released in 1996, on a tour that sees them performing both albums. They are performing two nights in each city, the first night doing Tigermilk and the second night If You’re Feeling Sinister, along with other songs from across their catalogue each night. Check out all the dates below.

Belle and Sebastian’s last album was 2023’s Late Developers, on Matador. It was the quick follow-up/companion album to 2022’s A Bit of Previous album. In 2024 the band shared Late Developers outtake “What Happened to You, Son?”

In 2024 frontman Stuart Murdoch released his debut novel, Nobody’s Empire.

Read our interview with Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch on How to Solve Your Human Problems.

Read our interview with Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch on Days of the Bagnold Summer. By Mark Redfern

7. Modest Mouse: “Speak ‘N Spell (Or Not)”

8. Spacemoth: “Telepathic Butterflies”

9. Sandhouse: “Pollyanna”

10. Fenne Lily: “Uh Huh”

11. EYRE LLEW: “Oban”

12. Death Cab for Cutie: “Stone Over Water”

13. Bedouine: “One Thing Right”

14. TENGGER: “Blue”

Honorable Mentions:

These songs almost made the Top 14. There are even more on the Spotify playlist.

The Afghan Whigs: “Jungle Roux”

The Avalanches: “Every Single Weekend (feat. Jamie xx)”

FIGHTMASTER: “Minotaur”

Peter Gabriel: “A Hard Lesson (Bright-Side Mix)”

Ibibio Sound Machine: “Concept of Love”

LA Priest: “Into the Sky”

Modest Mouse: “Impossible Somedays”

Mouth Ulcers: “Space”

No New Lovers: “Lay Them Down”

of Montreal: “Take the Form”

Anton Pearson: “Teeth to Cut the Grass”

Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 14 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions and some additional songs:

Also, here is our ongoing 2026 Songs of the Week playlist, featuring each week’s main top list and select honorable mentions. (The embed cuts off after 100 songs, so go to Spotify for the full playlist.) It will be updated each week throughout the year:

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