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.
Björk, “The Gateâ€
What’s better than Björk performing an autopsy on a murdered heart with her single best album to date? (Don’t fight me.) Björk putting back on the gloves and piecing together that which she’s so masterfully dissected. She’s said her next album, Utopia, will try to express how it feels to rewire the part of that organ that’s capable of accepting love after it’s been ripped from the body. Of course, there are no words to translate this process, and so, like many Björk songs about such alien sensations, some of the song’s lyrics are unintelligible. She instead uses the universal language of sound (here, an expansive, atmospheric, solemn piece co-produced with her muse Arca) to emote what can’t be said. But when the words do come to her, they prove to be the most challenging (and necessary) sections to have to hear: “My healed chest wound / Transformed into a gate / Where I receive love from / Where I give love from … Didn’t used to be so needy / Just more broken than normal / Proud self-sufficiency / My silhouette is oval / It is a gate.†—Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett)
Teen Ravine, “Hall of Horrorsâ€
For a song called “Hall of Horrors,†this track from Teen Ravine is super-chill, but the lyric “a mirrored hall of horrors, I’m lost without you†feels like a really apt metaphor for the confusion and distortion (emotional or otherwise) that follows a separation. The song also sounds like aimless wandering, which is also just so right — and somehow so soothing. —Jordan Crucchiola (@jorcru)
Wizkid ft. Future, “Everytimeâ€
Wizkid continues his 2017 Afrobeat takeover with a brand-new track called “Everytime,†featuring none other than Future. Mixing hints of pop, R&B, and dancehall with Wizkid’s Nigerian roots, this song is the perfect soundtrack to the last days of summer. It features production by fellow Nigerian artist Shizzi, who is also known for his work with Davido, along with New York legend Salaam Remi. Joining Wizkid’s long list of rap collaborators, Future’s melancholy, Auto-Tuned vocals may not be the best fit for this bright, poppy track, but they certainly increase its crossover appeal. —Corinna Burford (@coriburford)
Son Little, “O Me O Myâ€
Recalling R&B singers of the ’50s and ’60s (but especially Ray Charles, and most especially Ray’s “I Believe to My Soulâ€), Philadelphia singer Son Little’s powerful, self-searching lament “O Me O My†comes from his sophomore record, New Magic. The first verse “Feel the death grip fear wrap a claw around your petrified heart / Ain’t no way to make you stay, you want to run and make a brand new start on Mars†is delivered over a strikingly vintage organ, though when I first heard that line I thought of a very contemporary “Space Program.†Whether or not the reference there was intentional (there’s a reference later to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruitâ€), the wildly antique, muted cry of the choir makes this track sound like it could have been written anytime in the past 70-odd years. In this case, the vintage feel works, and it also suggests a powerful message: that making your feelings known is itself a timeless form of resistance. —Gabe Cohn (@gabescohn)
Ella Vos, “Rearrangeâ€
I don’t know if I’m experiencing empathy SADs while the rest of the country transitions into autumn — unless there’s such thing as anti–seasonal affective disorder in L.A. — but I am really feeling some melancholy vibes lately. On “Rearrange,†Vos sings about molding herself to fit a partner, while that person doesn’t change one damn bit, and it’s all just very pretty, flowy pop music. —JC
BTS, “DNAâ€
We won’t talk about the fact that K-pop megastars felt the need to allow the Chainsmokers into their orbit on their new album. Dammit, I just did. Anyway, on to more important matters: BTS dropped an album this week and the only single you need to care about (in fairness, the Chainsmokers collab is fine), “DNA,†is absolutely not a Kendrick Lamar cover, but the sound of a boy band headed in a new direction plotted for crossover domination. I would venture to call this a pop emergency. Unlike so many of the songs that made them an international phenomenon, it’s barely rap and it moves away from trap and the plague of “trop-pop.†“DNA†recategorizes BTS by shrugging off genre entirely; it’s like acoustic(ish)-synth-house, or whatever. Definition aside, all you need to know is “DNA†is one of the better singles of the year, breaking sales records across the planet, and, if this country has any clue left, will make for the band’s biggest American break yet. —DL
San Cisco, “The Distanceâ€
The very beginning of this song is reminiscent enough of Taylor Dayne’s “Tell It to My Heart†that I had to get over a minor spell of cognitive dissonance before I could get into it. That passes quickly, though, and “The Distance†becomes its own very nice little song. It’s a kicky jam about the possibly unbridgeable gap between two people. “If I change for you, then will you change too?†Sounds like a big gamble, but at least there’s a good soundtrack for you personal evolution. —JC
Sego, “Whatever Foreverâ€
This song sounds like beach rock-pop and the 2000s. In other words, it sounds like it would have worked great on an episode of The O.C. and my nostalgia for those soundtrack compilations is burning bright. —JC