Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)
DIIV - "Return Of Youth"
Having spent over a decade in the indie spotlight, writing a turbulent life story for better or for worse, DIIV frontman Zachary Cole Smith approached the band’s 2024 album Frog In Boiling Water with an overarching theme in mind: hope. Newly married, approaching 40, and no longer reliant on hard drugs, he was ready to settle down and start a family. After finding out he was going to be a dad, he wrote “Return Of Youth,” a song where he pictures himself through the eyes of his son — one of the few people to see Smith entirely without the context of his beleaguered past. Then in January 2025, while Smith and his wife were expecting their second child, they lost their Altadena home and everything inside of it to the Los Angeles-area wildfires. After his neighborhood had turned to ashes, Smith revisited “Return Of Youth” and found that lyrics like “Running through the yard, simple and wise/ Playing in the mud, watching the sky” suddenly took on a whole new meaning. With that in mind, the song raises new questions: How much does planning for the future really matter if you can lose it all instantly? And are we ever any less vulnerable, really, then we were when we were children? “Return Of Youth” doesn’t land on any definitive answer, and to do so would oversimplify its backstory. Instead, it finds value in naivety and posits that love is the most important survival tool we have. Little kids don’t stop running around just because they tripped and fell one time; they keep getting back up on their feet, over and over again. —Abby
Turnstile - "Look Out For Me"
Turnstile’s Never Enough comes in two weeks, and it’s not easy to follow up an album with as much impact as 2021’s Glow On. But the hype is real on the hardcore outfit’s new single "Look Out For Me," which explodes with earth-shattering hooks and atmospheric guitars drenched in the tremolo effect, making the tune feel almost underwater. A triumphant crescendo brings the music to a transcendent place, where the music meanders into an unexpectedly house-inflected territory. Charli XCX was right: It’s going to be a Turnstile Summer.—Danielle
Pulp - "Got To Have Love"
Before Jarvis Cocker even arrives, we're looking at something special here: ghostly guitar spangles, filmic strings, backup singers howling out a disco refrain with enough conviction that it radiates a certain wisdom ("Got! To have love! You got! To have love!"). This is Jarvis Cocker's message, and when he breathily flounces his way onto the track, he makes sure you understand that he means it in the corniest, most literal way. The man has been in the same band for nearly 50 years. He has lived some life. If he is going to impart anything to you, it is this: You got to have love. When the music slows down and Cocker goes into breathless monologue mode, he throws all the gravitas he's earned into that message, and then he repeatedly spells out the world "love" just to make sure you get it. Maybe the big-money band reunion is a cynical ploy, but it's possible that Pulp have returned to us less cynical than they've ever been -- as idealistic grown-ups who just love love. They're also two for two on reunion-album bangers. Miracles are in short supply these days, but Pulp's return, thus far, has been nothing but miracles. —Tom
MSPAINT - "Drift"
"We were never free/ Just cost-effective/ Paid in dirt/ Bound to debt." Dee Dee goes hard from the jump, and he never lets up. "Drift" is a song about the crushing, paralyzing financial situation many Americans find themselves in, and how easy it is to slide into that kind of emergency. In plain language, with his usual sledgehammer syllables, MSPAINT's vocalist spells out a desperate scenario with little hope of improvement. "You would never fall so far/ But it's no so far off," he warns. "There's no escape from debt!" he exclaims. Backed by a fittingly apocalyptic spin on the Mississippi band's unique synth-hardcore — the kind of mutant sound that could only emerge from a tech-addled dystopia like ours — his doomsaying takes on an epic quality. It stirs up feelings so intense that you'll want to tear this whole thing down and start over. —Chris
Wednesday - "Elderberry Wine"
On “Chosen To Deserve,” the tearjerking centerpiece of Wednesday’s 2023 album Rat Saw God, Karly Hartzman argued that love was written in the stars. Even after confessing to her partner all her adolescent fuck-ups, she seemed convinced that this relationship was simply a matter of fate, that it was what both parties deserved. But if you’re a Wednesday fan, you probably know that the relationship Hartzman was singing about didn’t last forever after all. A couple of years later on Wednesday’s country-fried new single “Elderberry Wine,” Hartzman acknowledges that fate alone can’t keep love afloat; you have to tend to it as it evolves, carefully striking a balance of relying on one another without ever taking that security for granted. Elderberries might be known for their inflammation-fighting properties, but “Elderberry Wine” serves as a reminder that the sweetest liquors — or romances — often yield the most painful hangovers. “Everybody gets along just fine,” Hartzman repeats in one of her best vocal performances yet, realizing that the world will march on even as she’s agonized. Sometimes, it’s annoying to watch other people be happy while you suffer in silence. Other times, it’s a remedy in itself. —Abby
