Best New Music (22/5/26)
We’ve got another packed week of new songs for you with a strong lean toward crossover sounds. Guitars are still here, but they’re colliding with club textures, industrial edges and global influences more than ever. Below is a curated roundup of new releases worth your time with a particular focus on emerging and forward-moving artists.
Mould – “Lucid”
This final preview of the band’s upcoming debut album “Hoping As a Coping Mechanism” crackles with wiry intensity, fusing punk abrasion with an almost hypnotic melodic pull. Every riff feels tightly coiled and urgent, giving the track a thrilling immediacy that never loosens its grip.
Westside Cowboy – “Kick Stones (The Boys)”
Westside Cowboy announced their debut album this week too, it’s called “It Goes On,” and they also dropped this song which barrels ahead with the ragged charm and garage-rock swagger of previous releases, sounding gloriously loose without ever falling apart. Beneath the scuffed guitars sits a sharp instinct for hooks and communal release.
Waves Crashing – “Circles”
“Circles” surges forward on shimmering guitars and tidal emotion, unfolding with the patience of classic indie rock. There’s such a beautiful weightlessness to its melody, evoking the late 80s/early 90s baggy and slacker periods even as the song aches with longing beneath the surface.
Gurriers – “Nobody’s Coming To Save You”
Gurriers return with this glimpse at their second album and it hits with clenched-jaw urgency, channeling frustration into a fierce, cathartic noise-rock assault. Its pounding rhythm and shouted refrains feel designed for packed rooms and collective emotional release.
They Are Gutting a Body of Water / Horse Jumper of Love – “charter spec”
Two bands on mission as they make music that drifts through layers of haze and slow-burning tension, finding unlikely beauty in distortion. The collaboration feels immersive and intimate, like overhearing a dream slowly unravel in real time.
Jehnny Beth – “No Good For People (Sextile Remix)”
“No Good For People” was full of brooding tension on Beth’s recent album and here Sextile transform that self effacing track into a hard-charging pulse of industrial dance energy. The remix sharpens the song’s menace while pushing its physicality thrillingly to the forefront.
Blondshell – “Heart Has To Work So Hard”
Sabrina Teitelbaum aka Blondshell balances bruising honesty with towering alternative-rock melodies, delivering vulnerability without self-pity. Its emotional precision gives every line real weight, while the chorus lands with undeniable force and clarity.
mmj – “nobody knows”
Purity Ring’s vocalist Megan James goes solo on this new project as she explores a less oblique sounding style while retaining all the dreamy mystique and restraint she’s cultivated thus far. It’s crazily beautiful and the missing capital letters nod playfully to her writing past in the dreampop duo.
Xiu Xiu – “In Heaven (David Lynch Cover)”
Xiu Xiu reframes a familiar Lynch classic as something eerie, fragile, and deeply unsettling. The performance leans into atmosphere over nostalgia, uncovering new emotional shadows within an already haunting song featured on the duo’s album of Eraserhead reinterpretations in their inimitable style.
