Charli XCX – ‘Spring Breakers’ ft Kesha
Four months on from its original drop and the lime green supremacy of ‘Brat’ is still serving at the rate of a top seeded Wimbledon champ. Not content with gathering an entire Met Gala’s worth of stars for ‘Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat’, now comes a bonus chaser that doubles up (drinking puns intended) as one of the record’s most fitting collabs yet. “Me and Charli, we’re the party girl gods,” intones Kesha, before instructing the haters to “suck [her] dick”. Tea and biscuits, Paul Mescal and short shorts – like all the best pairings, it just makes sense.
Sorry – ‘Waxwing‘
South Londoners Sorry have always had an uncanny knack for blending the sweet and unsavoury; mixing childlike wonder with darkness and an often unsettling edge. ‘Waxwing’, their first new song since 2022 second album ‘Anywhere But Here’, is one of the best examples of this duality yet. On one hand, it borrows from Toni Basil’s bubblegum hit ‘Hey Mickey!’, loading its accompanying press shots and video with Disney mouse hands. But Mickey, in Sorry’s world, is dangerous: “desire… the bomb… a drunk mistake”. Glitchy and uncomfortable, safe to say ‘Waxwing’ won’t be challenging ‘Let It Go’ in the family-friendly stakes any time soon.
Lambrini Girls – ‘Big Dick Energy‘
Heading into their just announced debut album ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’, ‘Big Dick Energy’ arrives as a fitting distillation of Lambrini Girls’ MO: feminist, furious, and resolutely not fucked about sugarcoating their message with metaphor. A largely two-chord punk rager, the point here is not to reinvent the musical wheel; instead, it gives vocalist Phoebe Lunny free rein to pour bile over the performative acts of solidarity that still leave her clutching her keys between her fingers getting home at night. About to head off on tour with IDLES, Lambrini Girls are the perfect match for the Bristolian’s plain-spoken, call-a-spade-a-spade ethos.
Ellie Dixon – ‘Renaissance‘
As drama teachers the world over will attest, the best way to really make a point is by following the mantra: don’t tell us, show us. It’s a theory that Ellie Dixon nails on ‘Renaissance’ – a self-described “musical phoenix from the ashes” track that wittily tackles being dropped from her label with medieval metaphors, fluttering whimsy and the sort of buoyant pop smarts that will likely make the board of execs rather regretful. Nodding to both Glass Animals’ breezy melodies and Remi Wolf’s sassy phrasing, it shows us in less than three minutes that Dixon is far from done.
Hope Tala – ‘Jumping The Gun‘
London’s Hope Tala claims that announcing February’s debut album ‘Hope Handwritten’ with ‘Jumping The Gun’ – a loose-limbed, groove-laden track built around the sound of a pen clicking – was pure coincidence. To that, we say a distinct “Hmm…”, however, whether canny marketing move or merely the throughline of a woman who really does not like iPhone notes, the warm vocals and gradually-built layers of the track arrive as a cradling aural hug. The sort of track, indeed, that you could imagine diary-writing to on a chilly autumnal morning. Maybe there’s something in it after all…
