Daine ft Ericdoa

Boys Wanna Txt

No music encapsulates the current teenage experience like hyperpop – an angst-ridden chiptune take on hip-hop made by people who are perennially online. It refracts the absence of hope felt by a generation having their psyches moulded by social media and entering a world with the odds against them. Which sounds like a total bummer. And yet this cut from the emo-influenced 17-year-old Filipino-Australian is a bop sent from pop heaven. The kids might not be alright, but they’re as tuneful as ever.

Sam Gellaitry

Duo

If summer is permitted this year, then it’s highly likely that Stirling-based Sam’s new banger will be the soundtrack. Like Daft Punk with a human heart, his bubbly electro is impossible to listen to without thinking of long days drinking cans in the park, frolicking in the public fountain and howling along with overexcited dogs in bushes. This is a compliment, just an excitable one.

Hail the Sun

Misfire

The singer in this Californian band wails like a ghost trying to evict new residents of its former abode. Whether the masses can tolerate such shrillness will dictate how far the group can go: a band that’s Muse-but-more-smug ranks somewhere between chocolate teapots and a ska punk revival in the long list of things the world doesn’t need. Yet there’s a frenetic energy here that’s not entirely without merit.

Terry Presume

Did Me Wrong

From Nashville via Florida comes a rap cut so gentle it’s unfeasible its creator recorded it standing up. Less a song than a daydream, here Presume (pronounced like “résumé” – remember that, his inevitable ubiquity will require it) has delivered a tune at odds with the chaos of the modern world. Lyrically he’s just wanging on about being dumped. Philosophically, he’s eating an ice-cream while the world burns.

Ida Mae

Road to Avalon

I don’t know what is at Avalon, but you won’t find me heading there in a hurry. There are many things I need after 12 months of a pandemic; tortured indie folk isn’t one of them. If songs smelled, this one would reek of wet hay.