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.
Kacey Musgraves, “High Horseâ€
If you were expecting Kacey Musgraves to stick to the same old tricks, you don’t know Kacey Musgraves. Her new album, Golden Hour, is set to shred the rule book, one she never really abided anyway. From when we first met her, Kacey was a joint-toking, sex-positive pistol. Country music wasn’t built for a woman like her, which might explain why she’s losing interest in making just country music. Her sound has always leaned pop, but on “High Horse,†Musgraves has pulled a Maren Morris and gone Full Pop. Big Bright Pop. Pop So Good I Wanna Bottle It. It’s a saucy disco-indebted middle finger that’s too irresistible not to soon become a crossover hit and, though the sonic references seem completely outside her comfort zone, she sounds right at home. That shoes off, feet up, bra flung across the room type of chillin’. Pop stars (lookin’ especially at you, Joanne), watch your thrones. —Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett)
Chloe x Halle, “Happy Without Meâ€
Chloe and Halle’s debut album is replete with good, girly riches. The sisters’ voices sound so honeyed and delicate, like they’ve descended from a cloud on high and have grown up at the right hand of Beyoncé. Their voices pirouette in and out of one another, eventually melting together to give us visions of youth and hopefulness. “Happy Without Me†is the lightest, brightest breakup song: They’re recounting memories — after-school kisses, staying up late, dreaming aloud — that are now bittersweet to the taste. “And it breaks my heart, it breaks my heart,†Halle sings. It’s half hymn, half a promise: There’s a sense that they’re grateful for these aching growing pains. —Hunter Harris (@hunteryharris)
Let’s Eat Grandma, “Falling Into Meâ€
Love poetry has always been a teenage habit, and if this track is any proof, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth excel at it. Performing as Let’s Eat Grandma, the adolescent tandem from East Anglia crafts electronic music enlivened by a keen eye for lyrical images. “Falling Into Me,†a lead-in to their upcoming sophomore album, I’m All Ears, shows off the assurance of their art. The lyrics depict the evolution of a romantic affair from uncertainty to assurance; the sonics, progressing from a jittery bounce to a firmly blasting horn, deftly play along. Teens they are, but immature? Not a chance. —Frank Guan (@frankophilia)
Courtney Marie Andrews, “Rough Around the Edgesâ€
Arizona-born, Seattle-based singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews released her latest album, May Your Kindness Remain, last week, and like 2016’s Honest Life, it is a well-balanced collection of Andrews’s acutely perceptive songwriting. Using observations from her years on the road, Andrews expertly captures the loneliness of touring, the ups and downs of everyday life, and the difficulties of maintaining healthy relationships. On “Rough Around the Edges,†she turns her keen eye inward to reflect on her own self-perceived shortcomings. “Pulled into meet you, windows down. Duct taped mirrors, exhaust pouring out / Always late, never unwound. When will I learn to shut my mouth?†she begins. If you’ve ever had days where you feel like you’re struggling to hold it all together, you’ll definitely connect with moments in this song. —Corinna Burford (@coriburford)
DJ Esco ft. Future and Nas, “Walk Thruâ€
Move aside, Khaled: The coolest DJ-engineered conjunction of the season comes courtesy of Esco, Future’s tour DJ and longtime friend. Nas spits a trio of lavishly worded verses about drug dealing, and Future lays down an experienced-hardened hook. Nas’s history as a purveyor of narcotics may be more imagined than real, and Future’s dealer bona fides are beyond dispute, but with Esco’s production beaming over them both, it’s a compelling vision in any case. –FG
Erin Rae, “Can’t Cut Looseâ€
Another very perceptive lyricist and skilled Americana songwriter, Tennessee’s Erin Rae, is set to release her new album Putting on Airs, this summer. It was recorded at the Refuge, a former Franciscan monastery turned studio space and music conservatory in Appleton, Wisconsin, and the results of the recording process can be heard in the warm, reverberating sound of “Can’t Cut Loose,†the third release from the record. According to the East Nashvillian, the album’s drum tracks were recorded in the the Refuge’s wood-paneled conference room, and the guitars were recorded in the historic chapel, giving them a natural, open-sounding quality. —CB