Jaime Wyatt
Rattlesnake Girl
When it comes to coming-out songs, Jaime Wyatt’s approach is singular. Pulling on her finest rodeo suit and stubbing out a cigarette with a perfectly polished cowboy boot, the sophisticated twang of Rattlesnake Girl sees Wyatt putting the straight life – as well as jail time and addiction issues – behind her to join the new wave of LGBTQ+ artists demolishing country music’s lingering conservative leanings.
Clean Bandit and Mabel ft 24kGoldn
Tick Tock
Try as Clean Bandit might to convince us that this tropical-popper is about clockwatching while mooning over your crush, we all know the truth: this is a shameless grab for social media superiority. Tick Tock is a hollow anthem for the nation’s lockdown little ’uns, who have swapped school for six-second videos of them lip-syncing to Megan Thee Stallion while you try to sneak courgettes into their pasta sauce.
Father John Misty
To S / To R
Taking a break from social distancing on the deck of his mid-century modern Californian treehouse in Gucci loafers, Father John Misty has decided to grace the embers of the millennium’s first pandemic summer with a fresh pair of ballads. Coyly occupying the middle ground between Randy Newman and Nietzsche suggests it’s business as usual for chamber folk’s most elegant misanthrope.
Phoenix
Identical
This kicking-out-time-at-the-Haçienda thud of retro electro-pop is set to feature over the end credits of Sofia Coppola’s upcoming film On the Rocks, marking Phoenix’s fifth movie collaboration with the director, to whom frontman Thomas Mars also happens to be married. Nepotism never sounded so catchy.
BTS
Dynamite
Breaking the record for the highest number of views ever for an online video premiere, BTS’s first single totally in the English language is already bigger than the budget for a Grand Designs in which an overly confident man decides to build on a crumbling Cornish clifftop. Expect Dynamite to grow in size until Christmas, by which time you’ll be able to wrap it round the Earth six-and-a-half times.
