Every week Vulture highlights 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.
Selena Gomez ft. Gucci Mane, “Fetishâ€
The best thing about Selena Gomez’s sublime new song has very little to do with the song, except for it’s what she’s mouthing along to. It’s minute 1:59 of the song’s lyric-ish video — that nanosecond where Selena forces the right corner of her upper lip into quiver. A sexual spasm, if you will. Blink and you won’t catch it. But “Fetish,†both the song and this video, are not the stuff you can turn away from anyway. What Selena Gomez has always gotten right about performative sensuality is that it can never be too on the nose. Imagine Katy Perry with a song titled “Fetish,†and we’d have a video with the singer tied up in the Red Room. Selena’s quietly become a master of subtlety, crafting a song about something that can’t really be fetishized — love isn’t taboo — only to sneak in naughty whispers of temptation: “If I were you, I’d do me.†“Fetish†tingles, curls its toes, arches its back, and makes its glossy lips shake in all the right spots. This is the best song about foreplay that doesn’t want you know to know it’s about foreplay in a long time. I’d like to believe it’s her homage to D’Angelo’s “Untitled†and that’s the Weeknd down there out of frame. *wink* —Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett)
Chance the Rapper ft. Young Thug, “Big B’sâ€
You know those hypnotic salt-water taffy machines that stretch the taffy on an endless loop? When I see those, I think about Young Thug’s rapping ability. He molds his voice so effortlessly to any beat that comes his way, and it’s always worth listening to. His collaborations with Chance tend to be a cut above, though. On “Big B’s,†the two rappers trade verses over organ jabs, and like every great collaboration in rap, they sound like they’re trying to one-up each other. This song was exclusively released on SoundCloud, which means it’s guaranteed to be somewhat ephemeral, but try not to forget it. —Sam Hockley-Smith (@shockleysmith)
Lana Del Rey ft. A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti, “Summer Bummerâ€
As a wise colleague once told me, “The problem with Lana songs is they sound awful the first two or three listens, but once it sinks in you’re like, ‘This is the greatest thing since ice cream.’†Me, a soft-serve fanatic, won’t go that far. But Lana’s new song “Summer Bummer†is a true grower, a song you crave only when the humidity is making everyone irritable and you just need to chill the fuck out. (For New Yorkers, that’s right now.) “Summer Bummer†feels like what you think heroin hitting the bloodstream probably does: utter sedation, the state of being lost under a fog. —DL
Japanese Breakfast, “Road Headâ€
We’ve all been there: At the end of the road of a relationship with two lanes veering apart, further away from each other in the distance. But most of us wouldn’t cop to caving to the desperate, nonsensical things people do when we think there’s still something worth saving. Maybe you force a baby to find something to love together again. Maybe you blow money you don’t have so they feel spoiled. Or maybe on the ride home, you pull over and give him head and wait to see if everything’s solved. It’s not. And Michelle Zauner isn’t trying to pretend like it is. Her brutal honesty disguises nothing, tells no fantasies — even when the music she builds around it sounds fantastical (an update from the original release, off her stunning new album). The distraction from reality didn’t work; the road simply came up short. So it goes. —DL