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.
ANOHNI, “Drone Bomb Meâ€
“Drone Bomb Me†is either the weirdest metaphor for love or perhaps the only overtly anti-drone song. “Blow my head off / Explode my crystal guts,†ANOHNI (f.k.a. Antony and the Johnsons) broods in her distinctly sentimental, yet somehow sanguine, voice. She continues a few lines later, “Let me be the one / The one that you choose from above / After all / I’m partly to blame.†The song reads like a drone strike from the victim’s perspective. A laser glints her eye before a bomb detonates her body from the mountain. Kind of like love and heartache. It strikes from nowhere — both sides “partly to blame†— and it can leave you just as discombobulated. —Justin McCraw (@JustinMcCraw)
Bat for Lashes, “In God’s Houseâ€
Weddings are meant to be happy occasions, but that’s just not how the darkest crevices of Natasha Khan’s mind allow her to see the world. In Natasha’s idea of a love story — which will be told on Bat for Lashes’ new album, The Bride — the groom never even makes it to the altar. Instead, he’s killed in a car accident on the way to the church, leaving his would-be widow to grieve on their honeymoon alone. It’s all very macabre and typical Bat for Lashes (she’s even performing the new songs at churches, asking fans to wear wedding attire), but it’s also deeply moving. “In God’s house I do wait / For my love on our wedding day / Dewy eyes and lashes long for my love,†she sings, foreshadowing the tragedy about to knock our titular bride’s world off its axis. Natasha’s voice is always so striking, and that’s even more true now that she’s singing in character, channeling unspeakable pain. —Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett)
LANY, “Where the Hell Are My Friends?â€
LANY, those three rascals behind last year’s “Made in Hollywood†and “ILYSB,†bring us the FOMO anthem “Where the Hell Are My Friends?†“40 million in California / No one cares if I stay,†they pout, another Friday spent home alone with a glass of wine and the vastness of the internet. It’s an ode to not only the loneliness social networks can engender, but also a love of L.A., with all its social qualms and lack of water. “40 million in California,†they sing. “But, God, I’m so in love with this place.†It’s the love-hate relationship of everyone who’s tried to make it in a big city rolled up into a catchy earworm. —JM
Ariana Grande, “Dangerous Womanâ€
You have to appreciate Ariana Grande’s focusless career; it allows for constant experimentation with little risk. She’s never quite settled into one sound — big vocals and mush-mouth are her music’s only sonic fingerprints — so there’s no upsetting fans when she switches gears. For Dangerous Woman, she seems to be aiming for the smoldering temptress both the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj have summoned. Speaking of Abel, the album’s title track, which she performed on SNL, is practically a carbon copy of “Earned It.†It has all the suggestive erotica fit for a cabaret show, with Ariana swinging from the rafters like Satine in Moulin Rouge. It’s also unlike anything on pop radio right now (Guitar! Vocoder!). Let’s just hope this single sticks longer than “Focus†ever did. —DL
Robert Glasper and Miles Davis ft. Bilal, “Ghetto Walkin’â€
Miles Davis would’ve turned 90 on May 26, which means this year we’re getting both Don Cheadle’s biopic and a tribute album dedicated to the jazz legend, from a man deeply influenced by Davis’s work: Robert Glasper. It has a ridiculously stacked list of guests — Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu, Ledisi, and more — all reinterpreting the music of a legend. (Glasper also worked on the soundtrack for Cheadle’s biopic.) “Ghetto Walkin’†is built off a sample of Davis’s “The Ghetto Walk†and it features Bilal’s entrancing voice. There’s so much emotion, so much grit, so much soul — everything Miles stood for. —DL
Slingshot Dakota, “Youâ€
A classic first song! The song comes out of the gate fast and furious, and just keeps the energy throughout. The highlight is a synth that is distorted in such a way that I’m nervous it might actually be a guitar. Pretty sure it’s a synth, though. Also, the band’s two members are married. Aww. —Jesse David Fox (@JesseDavidFox)
Corinne Bailey Rae, “Green Aphrodisiacâ€
Well, would you look at that: Corinne Bailey Rae’s back in our hearts and on SOTW, for a second time in two weeks, which can only spell good things for her first album in six years. While “Been to the Moon†was a funky space dream, “Green Aphrodisiac†shoots for higher than the moon, to the heavenly elevated feeling of falling in love. It’s lit from within, burning with passion and uplifted by Rae’s immaculate honey-smooth vocals. It was written with KING’s Amber and Paris Strother, who are now obligated to make a full collaborative album with Rae after blessing us with this gem. —DL
Empress Of, “Woman Is a Wordâ€
Gender, much as it means everything to so many, has never meant much to me. I sometimes bleed from my vagina once a month, I sometimes don’t. I might get pregnant one day, I might not. And yet being assigned female, by some stranger, has defined and controlled every single facet of my life since birth. It’s a reality so disheartening and outdated (particularly as we become more open to gender fluidity), that Lorely Rodriguez, who you may know as the beyond-her-years singer Empress Of, has written a new song to fight the gender binary. “I’m only an image of what you see / I’m only a woman if woman is a word,â€Â she sings, backed by steel drums. “I’m only a struggle if I get in your way / You made the road, only made it one way.†Like Lorely tells The Cut, “It comes with the territory of being a woman.†Whatever woman is. —DL
Domo Genesis ft. Anderson .Paak, “Dapperâ€
The Odd Future oeuvre is a vast and scattered one, but it’s finally about to add a proper debut album from one of its less-talked-about dudes, Domo Genesis. I can’t say I’d ever classify OFWGKTA as explicitly stoner rap, but Domo is certainly a guy in love with his kush, and man, “Dapper†has the air of a great cloud-filled chill session. This song is like a brochure for California nights, rolled to perfection with the help of Anderson .Paak (music’s new favorite Cali hook man; sorry, Miguel). Summer can’t come soon enough. —DL