Editors' Picks

It’s the year for Lizzy McAlpine – with a new album underway and an upcoming performance on the Ellen DeGeneres show. On top of all that, the artist released a brand-new single in anticipation for the aforementioned album, ‘Five Seconds Flat’, titled ‘All My Ghosts’.

Is there such a thing as ethereal folk? If there isn’t, then AURORA can be given all the credit for creating the genre, especially with her newest single ‘A Dangerous Thing’.

There’s both a thousand ways to describe ‘Sent From Above’, Rivi Tiber’s newest single, and no way; it’s a true work of art that takes many liberties with very few components while also being packed with some of the most exciting song writing written in a long time, akin to legends such as Cody Fry, Jacob Collier, and Daniel Ceaesar.

Continuing with the momentum the band built up from their latest 80’s pop inspired 2018’s ‘Simulation Theory’, Muse takes a look back and dials the volume to eleven with possibly one of their heaviest singles in the band’s career, ‘Won’t Stand Down’.

Electronic musician, producer and DJ Simon Green has been creating music under his ‘Bonobo’ moniker for more than two decades now, and in that time has built up a cult following, swapping his native Brighton for LA along the way. Fragments is his seventh studio album in that time and follows on from his last effort Migration, and as is explained on his official website, it is an album “born first out of fragments of ideas and experimentation”. 

Since indie rockers The Maccabees disbanded five or so years ago, former frontman Orlando Weeks has been through some big life changes, and not just of the lockdown variety. In 2018, Weeks and his partner welcomed their first child, a landmark event for anyone. Weeks, though, took this colossal life event one step further, infusing his debut solo album The Quickening with his thoughts, feelings and anxieties about impending fatherhood.

“I belong with you / you belong with me / you’re my sweetheart” went ‘Ho Hey’ by indie folk duo The Lumineers in what was one of the most infectious pop songs of the last decade. The only possible reason for having not heard it would be that you’ve been living in a cave in some remote mountain range since 2012, completely cut off from civilization. But even then, I’d have my doubts. 

Very few artists specialise in the cover version as emphatically as Chan Marshall, otherwise known as Cat Power, the soulful singer songwriter whose first covers record, released in 2000, was about as perfect as a covers collection can be. That record included interpretations of tracks by artists including The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, Moby Grape and Bob Dylan, among others. It was an almost uniquely rich dive into the meaning these songs carry, and a quite stunning set of sparse musical arrangements that linger long in the memory.

Liverpool trio The Wombats are a staggeringly impressive success story. From their founding in the early noughties after meeting while studying at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts to the Spotify-conquering, hard-touring outfit that has shifted more than one million albums worldwide, their journey has been an incredible if curiously unrecognised one, thanks in part to their curious status as somehow the ‘uncool’ indie kids on the block.

“Just got to keep your head up / And the lights on / That’s all you can do”, coos Twin Atlantic’s lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Sam McTrusty on ‘Keep Your Head Up’, the opening track to the Scottish indie rock duo’s fifth album Transparency. It feels like the mantra we’ve all lived by over the last couple of years, and for an album that had its own troubled genesis, it’s also perhaps been something of a rallying cry for McTrusty and bassist Ross McNae, the only remaining members of the band after the departure of drummer Craig Kneale last year.

In the career of Green Day, there are many defining moments, a roll call of defining tracks, events and breakthroughs that propelled them on their way to becoming the stadium-conquering global behemoth they are today. If you were forced to narrow this list down to just a singular point though, to settle on ‘the’ Big Bang moment that transformed them forever and irreversibly from California punk upstarts to A-list stars, it would have to be the release of American Idiot in 2004. Nimrod nearly did it, Warning couldn’t, but American Idiot nailed it.

FKA twigs is back from her opus ‘Magdalene’ with the powerhouse that is ‘The Weeknd’, fresh from his own opus ‘After Hours’, with the trap banger ‘Tears in the Club’.

Lights has returned with her newest single, Real Thing, which is a fun play on slow R&B jams with a mix of 80s instrumentation.

Sometimes, a cup of coffee just isn’t enough. You need that boost of energy that caffeine just can’t achieve, which is where Bloc Party comes into play. ‘Traps’, the band’s newest single, is all the energy you need for that picker-upper.

Babe Rainbow, through the newest single, ‘Smash the Machine’, reminded the world once again of an era of music long lost but never forgotten.

Embracing R&B and Jazz roots, Areej delivers a beautiful slow-jam ‘Bloodshed’ filled with ambitious instrumentation and raw delivery.

There’s nothing quite as warm as hanging around a group of talented musicians jamming together, playing in blissful harmony. Benee encapsulates that feeling beautifully with her newest single, ‘Doesn’t Matter’.

Enveloping the listener in an esoteric aura of calm in an almost chaotic way, the seven-piece group consisting of Greg Spero, Joel Ross, Marquis Hill, Makaya McCraven, Irvin Pierce, Jeff Parker and Darryl Jones show an underappreciated portion of jazz done in a both traditional and modern style in their new single, ‘Cloud Jam’.

It’s that time of the year again, and everyone is feeling jolly. What better way to help those who need a hand in joining the others in this festive mood than with a slow Christmas song, such as ‘It’s Christmas’, by ‘Katie Garibaldi and Joseph Metcalfe.

Protest songs aren’t uncommon by any means, but a protest song against music is, well, quite daring. That’s what One Cure for Man, a musical project made by James Parkinson, very successfully did with his newest single ‘Too Many Songs’.

The vibes are always immaculate whenever a Moonchild song comes on, and such as is the case, with the help of Alex Isley, with their newest single ‘You Got One’.

For a while there, it seemed like Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket might well have called it quits, so focused were all their respective components on their own side projects and other pursuits. Even when new My Morning Jacket material appeared, as with last year’s The Waterfall II (the followup to 2015’s The Waterfall), it was composed of recordings from sessions made in 2013 that also yielded its predecessor. 

It’s hard to convincingly blend styles together in music without sounding either tacky or forced, but Kali Uchis and Ozuna do a wonderful job in their newest single ‘Another Day in America’ doing just that.

In an interesting play on musical contrasts, Alice Glass’ newest single, ‘FAIR GAME’, finds a way to both soothe and hype the listener all at the same time.

Milan Ring is one of those musicians and songwriters that it’s really hard to pin down to any particular genre. On her debut album ‘I’m Feeling Hopeful’, released the other week, the Sydney-based artist moves through R&B, soul and hip hop influences to weave tracks that are sultry, smooth and modern all at once.

In a very vulnerable and raw performance, Alicia Keys spills her heart with nothing but her voice and a piano in her newest single, ‘Like Water’.

The king of modern easy-listening, vocal jazz, and traditional pop is back with a new gripping preview, released as a single, titled ‘First Listen’, that will certainly catch you off-guard on a “first listen”.

Following traditional power-ballad tropes mixed in with modern ideas, Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi team up to provide a long-awaited return to form for the former in one of the most inspiring tracks of 2021.

LA-based trio Kills Birds got the kind of boost most new bands can only dream of when none other than rock and roll royalty in the form of Dave Grohl started championing their cause.

Bury’s finest four-piece are the latest outfit to drop the lockdown album; a record constructed remotely over the course of the pandemic, backdropped by the sizable tilt of unreality it brought with it. It’s no surprise then that, straight away, what hits you about ‘Flying Dream 1’ is its haunting quality, a gentle otherworldliness that is rich and compelling.

Step forward Fred Durst, the now 51-year-old(!) who as the frontman of Limp Bizkit spearheaded the nu metal charge of the late 1990s, and receive your award for most on -brand lyric of the year. Because, on the perfectly named Dad Vibes, Durst raps that “Hot dad ridin' in on a rhino / Got the roll-under-rap with the dad vibes / Now everybody bounce with the franchise, come on”. Limp Bizkit are back. Close your eyes, turn your baseball cap around, and it’s like we’ve gone back in time twenty years. And my word, it’s fun.

Nineties BritPop troubadour Richard Ashcroft has been in the news of late for his stance on Covid-19, pulling out of the Tramlines festival in Sheffield back in the summer after announcing on a now-deleted Instagram post: “Apologies to my fans for any disappointment but the festival was informed over 10 days ago that I wouldn’t be playing once it had become part of a government testing programme.”

Born in Sheffield, figurehead of the 90’s Britpop movement, longtime BBC radio presenter: Jarvis Cocker, were you to not know any more than this about him, wouldn’t seem the most obvious candidate for releasing a covers album of classic French pop songs. But Jarvis Cocker, the sartorially beguiling, Michael Jackson protesting, lyrically inspired flaneur: yes, actually a dozen French songs reworked by that Jarvis Cocker suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Album’s have all sorts of interesting and varied origin stories. From the tumultuous and difficult times that saw Fleetwood Mac crafting Rumours against all the odds, to Justin Vernon holing up in his father’s remote cabin for the winter to come to terms with a breakup and recording For Emma, Forever Ago in the process, the stories of how records come into being are often as rich and engaging as the album’s themselves. 

AYLA’s newest single. ‘Ride Along’, is a force not to be reckoned with – a driving energy that’ll inspire you to conquer your day.