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Jun 16, 2017 By Christopher Roberts Everything Everything

So many notable new tracks this week! To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last seven days, we have picked the seven best this week had to offer. Coldplay, Queens of the Stone Age, Arcade Fire, and The Killers, among others, all shared new songs this week, but none of them made our Top 7. But below our main list we have also highlighted those songs, along with other notable new tracks shared this week.

1. Wolf Alice: “Yuk Foo”

Britain’s Wolf Alice released their amazing debut album, My Love Is Cool, back in 2015. It made it to #3 on Under the Radar‘s Top 100 Albums of 2015 list and landed frontwoman Ellie Rowsell on the cover of our Best of 2015 print issue, in a joint cover with Father John Misty. This week the British four-piece announced their sophomore album, Visions of a Life, and shared a lyric video for the album’s punky and profanity-laden first single, the two-minute long “Yuk Foo,” in which Rowsell declares in the chorus “you bore me, you bore me to death, well you bore me, no I don’t give a shit.” The song is angry and defiant, which befits our times. It’s also unrelenting and a ton of fun.

Rowsell recently sang guest vocals on the new alt-J album, Relaxer, singing on the opening track, “3WW.”

2. Everything Everything: “Can’t Do”

This week British art-rockers Everything Everything announced a new album, A Fever Dream, and shared a video for its first single, “Can’t Do.” The album is due out August 18 (via RCA in the U.K.). Holly Blakey directed the creepy “Can’t Do” video, which features intense interpretive dancers in a cave, some wearing strange masks featuring the faces of the band members (Everything Everything are known for their weird and wonderful video). Below is the video.

Singer Jonathan Higgs had this to say about “Can’t Do” in a press release: “‘Can’t Do’ is about trying to bend to the world and fit into it. Nobody is normal, nobody knows what normal is. ‘I can’t do the thing you want’ - we don’t care we just want you to dance.”

Higgs had this to say about working with Blakey on the video: “We saw some of Holly’s work and particularly loved the video she did for Young Fathers - ‘Shame.’ We wanted a choreographer as we felt dance was really important to realizing this song on camera. She totally ‘got us’ once we got talking so we knew we were in safe hands.”

As for the video’s concept, Higgs explains: “We came to Holly with the idea of mutants dancing in a sewer but over time this became masked weirdos dancing in a kind of lava palace. She really wanted a sense of naughtiness and humor to shine through which definitely came out well. I see the video as a window onto freaks and outcasts, those who can’t fit in, ‘can’t do’ what the world wants them to do, and the masks are them trying to fit in, but you’d have to ask Holly why they ended up in the centre of the earth!”

Higgs also added this: “We’ve never worked with dancers or a choreographer so that was quite interesting, Holly shot a lot of takes and the dancers were exhausted. Mike our drummer took the place of one dancer for one shot, wearing his own face mask, it’s a little Easter egg that’s prrrrreeeeetty hard to spot. He got cold quickly though.”

Can’t Do (Official Video) by Everything Everything on VEVO.

3. Algiers: “Cleveland”

Algiers are releasing a new album, The Underside of Power, on June 23 via Matador. They have previously shared the album’s title track, “The Underside of Power.” This week they have shared another song from the album, “Cleveland.” The song references Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old African American boy who was shot to death by police in Cleveland in 2014 because he was playing with a toy gun in a playground. The song also mentions other “victims of state sanctioned violence,” as a press release puts it, including Kindra Chapman, Andre Jones, Lennon Lacy, Sandra Bland, Roosevelt Pernell, Keith Warren, and Alfred Wright.

Algiers’ frontman and lyricist Franklin James Fisher had this to say about the song in a press release: “A recurring theme in our music is the idea of injustice and the bitter understanding that obtaining justice in this world is all but impossible-particularly for black and brown people. I wanted the song to sound like the Final Judgment in the Bible, wherein the wicked are judged and condemned by the righteous with all the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth,’ of the damned when justice is finally realized. This translates in the ‘solo’ section of the song. It consists of various recordings of people inconsolably crying and weeping while the guitar and lead vocal mirror their contortions. If you’ve ever witnessed something like that in real life, sound of a person’s sorrow is equal parts frightening and musical.”

4. Trailer Trash Tracys: “Eden Machine”

This week London-based duo Trailer Trash Tracys (Susanne Aztoria and James Lee) announced their sophomore album, Althaea, and shared a video for its first single, “Eden Machine.” Althaea is due out August 11 via Double Six (an imprint of Domino) and arrives five years after their dream pop-leaning debut, 2012’s Ester. Lee directed the video, which centers on a night out, seemingly in some East Asian city.

A press release describes the album as such: “With Althaea, the band continue their investigations into the farther flung reaches of pop music. Spanning 10 deeply esoteric tracks, Althaea sees the band drift further afield from traditional song structures to create a new aural lexicon of their own, one as influenced by Filipino carnival music and Latin rhythms as it was by Japanese tropical music from the ‘80s. Even at their most outwardly pop - the pristine ‘Eden Machine’ for instance, or the swooning ‘Kalesa,’ there is a baroque splendor, and heightened sensuality. The interplay of light and dark, the foreign and the familiar, brings forth an album with manifold pleasures, one which rewards repeated listening and further exploration.”

5. The Horrors: “Machine”

A brand new song by British five-piece The Horrors surfaced online this week. It’s entitled “Machine” and is likely the first taste of the band’s fifth album, the follow-up to 2014’s Luminous. The band recorded the song with Paul Epworth (London Grammar, Florence and the Machine, Bloc Party, Adele) at the Church Studios, in North London.

6. This Is the Kit: “Bullet Proof”

This Is the Kit, the project led by British-born, Paris-based singer/songwriter Kate Stables, are releasing their fourth album, Moonshine Freeze, on July 7 via Rough Trade. It’s the band’s first for the iconic British label and seems set to finally be their breakthrough album, or at least one that garners them a wider indie audience. John Parish (PJ Harvey, M. Ward, Perfume Genius) produced the album, which also features a guest appearance from The National’s Aaron Dessner. Previously This Is the Kit shared a live video for the album’s title track, and this week she shared another song from Moonshine Freeze, delicate album opener “Bullet Proof.” They should really get this song on season 2 of Netflix’s Luke Cage (the main character is bulletproof after all).

Other notable new songs this week include:

Arcade Fire: “Creature Comfort”

Baio: “DANGEROUE ANAMAL”

The Clientele: “Lunar Days”

Coldplay: “All I Can Think About Is You”

Cold Specks: “Wild Cald”

The Drums: “Mirror”

The Fresh & Onlys: “Wolf Lie Down”

The Killers: “The Man”

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: “When I Dance With You”

Prince: “Father’s Song”

Queens of the Stone Age: “The Way You Used to Do”

Rostam: “Bike Dream”

Stars: “Privilege” and “We Called It Love”

Sharon Van Etten: “Not Myself (Hercules & Love Affair Remix)”

Washed Out: “Hard to Say Goodbye”

Chelsea Wolfe: “16 Psyche”

Young Ejecta: “Build a Fire”

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