Daine

Angel Numbers

This dirge-saturated slice of fractured emo should come with a warning: DO NOT LISTEN IF YOU’RE HAVING A MOMENT. “Broke myself to have nothing left / I was reborn through collapse,” sighs 17-year-old newcomer Daine, while PC Music’s Danny L Harle swaddles all that glorious anguish in static-heavy guitar squall and emotionally broken beats. It feels healing and painful; like looking directly at a solar flare.

Haiku Hands

Suck My Cherry

This unholy racket sounds like a Daphne and Celeste album track playing at double speed while three drunk cheerleaders shout really excellent T-shirt slogans over the top. I’d definitely buy one that reads “I’m so done with Dave and Steve, they’re dumb as a brick”, for example, although “I’m a mother, I’m a boss, I’m a pervert” could be risky at the family Secret Santa.

Lil Nas X

Holiday

Having terrified the country music community with Old Town Road, young master X is now coming for Christmas. Well, sort of. While the video, complete with Missy Elliott-levels of hyperreal WTF-ery, imagines a futuristic festive playground, lyrically the X-man focuses on setting the record straight vis-a-vis bedroom Olympics: “I might bottom on the low, but I top shit.” So now we know.

Cosha

Berlin Air

Can we allow ourselves a glimmer of optimism as we start to towel down following 2020’s shower of excrement? If we can, I think I’ve found just a second of pure joy. It arrives at the 1:44 mark of this statuesque, soulful belter when Cosha (FKA Bonzai) coos “I’m in love again” and the music glides away momentarily. I have decided to live in that moment for all of 2021.

Punkband

Abcabcabcabcabc

Last year, Sex Pistols cosplayers Punkband released Shit Or Bust, in which they sang about the problems of mistiming your trip to the cafe for brunch only to find “it’s fucking lunch”. RAGE!!! Abcabcabcabcabc isn’t as unintentionally hilarious, although the lyric “just a fucked-up liver” does conjure up images of another restaurant-based tantrum.