Video & Audio: At night I think of you

You do not shush me in the pines

New Jeans: “Ditto”

Cotton-candy vocals that could be blown into the clouds by a light breeze over a drum-machine happy to be overtaxed. Hey, it worked for “My Boo”, and this might be comparably beautiful.

Panic Shack: “The Ick”

I’m sure Sarah Harvey and I wouldn’t get along. I don’t shush anyone in the cinema, but if someone I knew was chattering away after the trailers are over I would be passive-aggressive to them until they ghosted me or slapped me in the face or something. Anyway, I don’t think major punk vocalists are distinguished by my wanting to go to the movies with them, I’m pretty sure Lydon and I would end up fighting each other before the second hour of The Lion in Winter.

Kaitlin Butts: “In the Pines”

Just when you thought Cobain turned the song into something inescapably material, Butts re-mystifies it by making it into a conversation with a ghost, while singing loud enough to keep it tied to the physical. Wuthering.

Silvana Estrada: “La Corriente”

A few years ago I found her little staccato hops super-annoying a few years; now she sounds like a major singer. Either the Palacio Real is swaying me or singing’s getting worse.

Todrick Hall: “Gay Gangsta”

Takes two of the genres most known for self-serious outlaw bullshit, country and rap, and queers ’em up, doing a terrific job showing up definitions of manliness that depend on dominance as fundamentally puerile. Also you can dance to it.

Anxious: “Call from You”

Firstly, congratulations on winning the emo band name sweepstakes. They live up to their moniker (there’s no way he’s the one who’s going to call) as well as  their genre, constructing an uproar that can be released in controlled situations: on record, on stage, maybe before the beep in a voicemail box.

Key: “Killer”

One reason why many of us pop diehards have turned to Korea is the standard of singing: here’s the most nondescript member of SHINee combining top-of-chest semi-belting with a smooth falsetto, all with a naturalism that would be unimaginable from most of the West’s top male stars. 

Tim Bernardes: “Fases”

Bernardes is not my guy—too genteel, too art dude, bad haircut that reminds me of my past bad haircuts—but I’ve gotta admit he can write a melody that suits his voice to a T: dig the little rising bit at the end of the chorus that suggests he has a whole high end left unexplored. (He doesn’t, I think.)

Football, Etc.: “Howler”

I forget if this longstanding emo trio counts as fourth wave or fifth wave (it’s whichever wave it was where women started to get back on stage again.) Still death-obsessed, but professional about it.

Bizarrap & Shakira: “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53”

The last time Gerard Piqué got burned so badly was by 2021 Mbappé. At this rate he might have to retire from heterosexuality too.