MUNA, I Know a Place
If May’s Loudspeaker EP hadn’t already confirmed MUNA as this year’s most important purveyors of switched on pop then this ought to do it: a song for “queer folks, for people of colour, for immigrants, for those who have been made to feel unsafe in their own skin” that took on extra meaning in the wake of Oakland’s Ghost Ship tragedy. Music to dance, cry and love each other to from the L.A. three-piece.
Austra, Future Politics
Here’s something you don’t read every day: a song inspired by Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, David Harvey’s Brief History of Neoliberalism and Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. Blimey! Austra’s Katie Stelmanis knows which side her radical bread is buttered. Good song too.
Jaden Smith, Fallen
Better out than in, that’s what his parents always said. We like to imagine that here we find Jaden dancing, stumbling and sicking all over Disney World’s Frontierland after a particularly turbulent ride on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
Diana Gordon, Woman
“This song, that is rock & roll reincarnated, that celebrates your mother, my mother, your sister, and my sister is just my way to stand up for the woman next to me and all those unseen,” says Beyonce collaborator Diana Gordon on her appropriately titled new single Woman. “We need each other and the world really needs us right now.” There’s been roughly 200,000 years of the patriarchy and the best we could come up with is Donald Trump. She’s not wrong, folks.
Smerz, Thrill
Next up, it’s those Norwegian girls again with another lo-fi but intimate home movie in which they get ready to go out. Like their music, it’s understated but really, really, really great.
Sweat, Stay
Some late night melancholia to soundtrack your drive home now from Peckham’s Sweat. We were confused as to why the vocal was delivered in an Australian accent at first but turns out the singer is, in fact, Australian. We just weren’t koalafied to make the distinction (sorry).
Young M.A, EAT
Young M.A is the openly gay rapper brewing up a not so Quiet Storm and OOOUUU she goes so hard. We’re obsessed.
Martin Creed, It’s You
Turner Prize winning artist Martin Creed delivers his take on the Christmas song with a video currently showing in the window of the London’s Hauser and Wirth gallery. “It’s you in the front and it’s you at the back,” he sings. “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you”. Weird and strangely moving.
ThisisDA x Eyedress, The Sufferbus
21-year-old Bristol MC teams up with producer Eyedress and animator Antonia Blakeman on a dark, surreal dreamscape full of flipping coins and angry Anglerfish. Set to the tune of track 7 from ThisisDA’s debut 21 & Done EP, it’s kind of like The Magic School Bus on acid.
Cosima, South Of Heaven
Either Cosima is a big fan of Slayer’s fourth studio album or she’s referring to hell itself. At just 23 years old, her heavenly voice stirs the soul, inspired by long conversations with her mother as well as the music and films of Brazil. “I want to make people feel okay about feeling things,” the Peckham singer told i-D the other week. And rather aptly, her debut EP does just that.
Dua Lipa, Be The One
Probably the best Albanian-English popstar of all time, Dua Lipa’s latest music video features a car that’s straight out of Tron, barefooted actor Ansel Elgort showing a full range of emotions, and Dua getting abducted by aliens. The end.
Credits
Text Frankie Dunn and Matthew Whitehouse