Listen Up
Electronic collaborations, super-funky remixes, new indie-rock and more music from the week
Hiatus Kaiyote: Get Sun (Georgia Anne Muldrow Remix)
A match made in heaven, Hiatus Kaiyote has been remixed by Georgia Anne Muldrow. With soaring synths balanced by a murky, squelchy bass line, the reimagined “Get Sun” sounds like it’s from another era—maybe another planet. The super-funky rework will appear on the upcoming Mood Variant—a collection of remixes from the Australian band’s Mood Valiant album—which is set for an April release.
Raavi: Lazy Susan
Raavi—a Brooklyn-based act helmed by queer, Desi singer-songwriter Raavi Sita—recently announced their upcoming EP It Grows On Trees (out 13 May). From it comes the single “Lazy Susan,” a vulnerable piece about being exploited in the workplace. Gliding forward on Raavi’s typical blend of melodic and classic rock guitar tracks, the latest song crafts a palpable, moving soundscape.
Flume feat. Caroline Polachek: Sirens
The second single from Flume’s forthcoming LP, Palaces (out 20 May), “Sirens” features ethereal vocal contributions from Caroline Polachek set atop an electro-industrial soundscape. The collaborative track was co-written and produced remotely by Danny L Harle, who played Flume “a voice note from Caroline with some very early stages of vocals,” the recording artist says in a statement. Polachek adds, “I was living by myself in London and it was the darkest time in the pandemic. I was really going through it, feeling so small, unable to control anything in the world, and the lyric ‘sirens’ was in reference to constant ambulances I was hearing.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Magenta Mountain
Prolific Australian rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard craft another immersive, expansive soundscape in their latest track and video “Magenta Mountain.” In the eight-minute video (taken from the band’s live performance in Melbourne), the neon-pop single starts off with an inviting melody before bursting with robust percussion and a mesmerizing guitar solo. The song appears on the band’s forthcoming album Omnium Gatherum (out 22 April), the band’s first album not centered on a specific theme.
Warpaint: Stevie
Off the forthcoming album Radiate Like This (out 6 May) from the LA-based all-women quartet Warpaint, the cosmic song “Stevie” debuts as both a mesmerizing fixed-focus music video and an immersive 3D “Stevie” experience for Oculus created by the Chris Holmes-founded art-meets-technology collective, Fascinated by Everything. “Thinking of visuals for ‘Stevie,’ we weren’t seeing a story or a performance, but a kind of ‘Tunnel Of Love’ image kept coming to my head, more like waves of serotonin, what love feels like,” Warpaint guitarist and vocalist Emily Kokal says in a statement. “Right around that time Chris showed us what he was working on and it was like, ‘Whoa, this is way more “Tunnel Of Love” than we could’ve imagined!'”
NAKAYA: Fire Becomes Me
LA-based singer-songwriter NAKAYA returns with the stunning four-track EP Fire Becomes Me, a captivating collection that ranges from thoughtful R&B-infused folk (“Climbing Down”) to soulful electronic soundscapes (“Try”). Within, the artist deftly addresses love, identity, resilience and perseverance. “In alignment with my personal growth, Fire Becomes Me is a record that celebrates strength and perseverance,” NAKAYA tells CH. “There are songs that reference heartbreak—I have always written about heartbreak and continue to do so because it’s so visceral but I write to myself with a new gentleness that I couldn’t access in the past. I released my first EP, Out of Breath, in April of 2015—I love those songs from seven years ago, but I am glad to have evolved into a more complex individual, which I think the music mirrors as well.”
Patrick Watson: Height of the Feeling
Montreal-based recording artist and composer Patrick Watson returns with “Height of the Feeling,” the melodic and at times experimental first single from his seventh full-length studio album, Better in the Shade (out 22 April). Composed with frequent collaborator Mishka Stein, the track “is about using intimacy as a compass when you feel out of your skin,” according to Watson. La Force vocalist Ariel Engle contributed lyrics, as well. “She’s so much fun to work with” Watson adds. “We just did loads of improv takes on one mic and giggled together the whole time.”
Friedberg: Never Gonna Pay The Rent
Friedberg—the London-based all-women desert-rock outfit helmed by Austrian singer-songwriter Anna Friedberg—returns with the vibe-y pop tune “Never Gonna Pay The Rent.” Friedberg originally conjured the sound for her band in the middle of the night in room number eight at the Joshua Tree Inn. “The Friedberg story continued in the same desert on my return trip there the following year when a friend and I revisited some places of the Beat Poets on a road trip and ended up in Joshua Tree again,” Friedberg says. “My friend was particularly frustrating on this trip, so I decided to slip into his mindset and wrote ‘Never gonna pay the rent’ through his lens of the world.” She continues, “In a way this song is my attempt to get out of this toxic skin (even if it doesn’t quite work out just yet within my song). I hope it can be an anthem toward a route of togetherness rather than individualism.”
Listen Up is published every Sunday and rounds up the new music we found throughout the week. Hear the year so far on our Spotify channel. Hero image courtesy of Flume
