15 Best Songs of the Week: Fontaines D.C., Nilüfer Yanya, Silverbacks, Peel Dream Magazine, and More

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15 Best Songs of the Week: Fontaines D.C., Nilüfer Yanya, Silverbacks, Peel Dream Magazine, and More

Plus Wild Pink, Katy J Pearson, Charly Bliss, MEMORIALS, and a Wrap-up of the Last Two Weeks’ Other Notable New Tracks

Aug 16, 2024 By Mark Redfern

Welcome to the 26th Songs of the Week of 2024. This week’s list covers the last two weeks, as at the end of last week I was on a mini vacation after finishing up our new print issue. This week Andy Von Pip, Matt the Raven, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humphires helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 40 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 15.

This week we are attempting to streamline Songs of the Week, as it’s a whole lot of work to put together and post it each week. So we won’t be including a text write up on every song, maybe only on the #1 and/or #2, which we hope will free up more time to focus on future print issues. 

Recently we announced our new print issue, The ’90s Issue, featuring The Cardigans and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth on the covers. Buy it from us directly here.    

In recent weeks we posted interviews with Hamish Hawk, “Weird Al” Yankovic, 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 15 best the last 14 days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.

1. Fontaines D.C.: “Here’s the Thing”

Irish five-piece Fontaines D.C. are releasing a new album, Romance, on August 23 via XL. Last week they shared its third single, “Here’s the Thing,” via a cinematic and unsettling video. Luna Carmoon directed the video.

In a press release, the band’s Grian Chatten says the new single is “an anxious tune that twists and turns in what it wants, back and forth between pain and numbness.”

Previously the band shared the album’s first single, “Starburster,” via a music video. “Starburster” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. Then they shared its second single, “Favourite,” via a self-directed video. It was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Then they announced a fall North American tour. The one-month trek runs from September 20 to October 20 and NYC band Been Stellar will be the opening act.

Then they performed “Starburster” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Romance is the band’s fourth album, the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed Skinty Fia (which was #1 on both the UK and Irish album charts), 2020’s Grammy-nominated A Hero’s Death, and 2019’s Mercury Prize-nominated Dogrel. It finds them working with producer James Ford for the first time.

The band was formed in Dublin but is now based in London and features Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass), and Tom Coll (drums). Ideas for the new album started to form while they were touring the U.S. and Mexico with Arctic Monkeys. Then the band members went their separate ways for a while, before reconvening for a three weeks of pre-production in a North London studio and one month of recording in a chateau near Paris.

In a previous press release, Deegan said of the album title: “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as Dogrel. The second album is about that detachment, and the third is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

Chatten relates the theme of the album to Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s 1988 anime movie classic Akira, where, as the press release put it, “the embers of love develop despite a maelstrom of technological degradation and political corruption around its characters.”

“I’m fascinated by that—falling in love at the end of the world,” he said. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger Armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes.”

O’Connell added: “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy—the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”

In 2023 Chatten released his debut solo album, Chaos For the Fly. Read our interview with him about it here.

2. Nilüfer Yanya: “Mutations”

Nilüfer Yanya is releasing a new album, My Method Actor, on September 13 via Ninja Tune. This week she shared its fourth single, “Mutations.” Yanya’s sister, Molly Daniel, directed the song’s visualizer video.

Yanya had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Mutations’ deals with change brought about by circumstance. This is not the phoenix rising from the ashes but the subtle change that happens constantly as millions of tiny decisions and actions shape your being. It’s kind of like survival, for me. Less of a transformation and more something that’s born out of your environment and surroundings, that you need to do to survive. Mutation is just something you have to go through—you have to evolve.”

The album features “Like I Say (I runaway),” a new song Yanya shared in April via a music video in which she is a runaway bride. Yanya’s sister, Molly Daniel, directed the video. “Like I Say (I runaway)” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. When the album was announced, Yanya shared its almost title track “Method Actor.” It was also #1 on our Songs of the Week list. Then she shared its third single, “Call It Love,” which also landed on Songs of the Week.

My Method Actor is Yanya’s third album and follows her 2022 album, PAINLESS, and her 2019 debut album, Miss Universe, (both released on ATO).

Yanya worked on the album with her regular creative partner, Wilma Archer, in isolation. “This is the most intense album, in that respect,” Yanya said in a previous press release. “Because it’s only been us two. We didn’t let anyone else into the bubble.”

When writing this album, Yanya was grappling with hitting her late 20s and dealing with the pressures of being an established musician. “For me, writing is definitely problem solving—in the way they say that dreaming is like problem solving,” she said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, that sounds good. That looks good. That makes sense.’ But you don’t really know why. You’re kind of using that part of your creative brain that doesn’t have to make sense.”

Yanya also announced some fall tour dates in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

Read our in-depth interview with Yanya about PAINLESS here.

Read our rave review of the album here.

Yanya was also one of the artists on the cover of our 20th Anniversary print issue.