Every week, Vulture and friends highlight the best new music. If the song is worthy of your ears and attention, you will find it here. Read our picks below, share yours in the comments, and subscribe to the Vulture Playlist for a comprehensive guide to the year’s best music.
Mudcrutch, “Trailer”
Like all Tom Petty enthusiasts, I just about lost my shit when he and his pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch dropped an unexpected single, “Trailer,” last week, as well as announced an upcoming sophomore album. (They’ll also be on tour this summer, so keep an eye out for me at both of their Webster Hall shows in June.) This track has everything I love about Charlie T. Wilbury, Jr. — an overall nostalgic buzz, with a dash of good ol’ fashioned harmonica and a hint of electric guitar. It’s this type of breezy folk-rock that makes me want to lie outside in the sun and … relax. —Devon Ivie (@devonsaysrelax)
Zayn, “TiO”
Call me creepy, but there’s just something so satisfying about watching a 23-year-old dude come of age. Or at least think he’s come of age. On his solo debut, Mind of Mind, Zayn is sure he’s reached his sexual peak. Anyone older than 23 knows he hasn’t, but he’ll learn. What’s great, though, is that Zayn’s probably always harnessed this sort of sexual self-confidence; he was just never able to drop the F-bomb when singing about it with One Direction. Sex always sold that band (especially Harry and Zayn), but it was all in coded euphemisms — never in forward,”you’re a freak like me” terms. But that’s the kind of language Zayn overstuffed his debut with, and it works in every shameless way, like a premature ejaculation in album form. Suggestive as this thing is, it’s never actually that NSFW. Even “TiO” — one of the record’s many titillating slow burns — isn’t about sex. Zayn just wants you to think it is, so he’ll throw in lines like “push me up against the wall, don’t take it easy,” when he means those metaphorical walls we build around our hearts. It’s a boyishly fake-deep song every 23-year-old will try to get laid to — probably even Zayn himself. —Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett)
Sebastian Kole, “Love’s on the Way”
Lyricist and producer Sebastian Kole (née Coleridge Gardner Tillman) comes with a burgeoning pedigree, most recently helping Alessia Cara with her debut album. Now writing for himself, Kole has a second single that is a roaring soul-pop tribute, calling out the everyday violence experienced by people near and far. There may be anger in his lyrics, but hope takes center stage. “No, the world won’t change till we try / Hey, love, we’re on the way,” he sings. “And if you’re ready, follow me.” In order to move forward, we have to practice the change we want to see. The song grabs your attention and lets its message develop across the course of it. You don’t feel like you’re being preached to, just experiencing an earnest man’s call for the future, and it’s glorious and sad and something that needs listening to. —Justin McCraw (@JustinMcCraw)
Young Thug, “Memo”
Sadly, we’ve reached the end of Thugger’s Slime Season series, and what a crazy prolific run it was (three tapes in six months!). For a lot of people, it’s the run that put him on the map. It’s certainly the one that slapped some sense into my stubborn rap-head that I needed to quit resisting him. Slime Season 3 is the best; it’s part savage, sappy, and slimey. Weirdly, my current favorite, “Memo,” is barely any of those things. It’s Thugger at his most assertive — a straight-to-the-point manifesto about how he’s practically untouchable, even at this still-young point in his career. Kanye finds the kid “super inspiring,” so Thugger’s not exactly exaggerating when he makes such bold claims. This song also has a shout-out to the late Bankroll Fresh, which is always a nice touch by my standards. —DL
Jillian Jacqueline, “Kids These Days”
Kids these days (shakes fist). Jillian Jacqueline’s song about growing up a product of the digital revolution is a country-panged ode to coming of age. How’s a kid supposed to succeed with all the celebrity, ecstasy, and expectations bringing us down? It’s not a particularly adventurous song. But its slow culmination provides the lazy kind of listening that shrugs off the haters because they’re too “quick to forget they’ve done just what we’re doing.” —JM
A$AP Ferg ft. ScHoolboy Q, “Let It Bang”
This year we might get new albums from both Ferg and Q, which is literal music to my ears. Their latest collab comes off Ferg’s sophomore album (out next month), and it’s yet another song about Ferg’s crazy uncle Psycho, who, we now learn, once impregnated two sisters just to make one would be jealous of the other. (What a life.) If that anecdote isn’t enough to sell you on this baby, would you believe Q has an equally wild story about his uncle to share, too? Like the title says, it bangs. —DL
Frenship, “Carpet”
L.A.-based Frenship’s been strewing musical treats across the internet for a few years now, and the duo’s latest single from their upcoming EP is no less delightful. The song’s a summery trip down memory lane, dust playing in the light of a window as it cuts across two bodies conversing on the carpet. There are enough feels throughout the song to get rug burn on, but the meat is the echoing chorus lines that resonate intensity, stressed enunciation and all. —JM
