The FADER’s Songs You Need In Your Life are our picks for the most exciting and essential new music releases out there. Every day, we update this page with new selections. Listen on our Spotify and Apple Music playlists or hear them all below.
urika’s bedroom: “XTC”
The lyrics on “XTC,” an indie-rock slacker jam about loyalty and despondency, are largely abstract. The LA-based musician throws out images of luminous eyes, severed bones, and fields bathed in blue as he comes to terms with an unwanted break-up. It’s only as the song winds to a close and his delicate voice emerges through the fuzz that the unvarnished reality is delivered. “I can’t get over you, I don’t wanna fuck around,” he sings with a crack in his voice, proving that sometimes the most direct route can also be the most effective. — David Renshaw
Otha: “I Hate You In The Morning”
The latest single from the Norwegian artist is a rage room of techno-pop that gradually builds in size and scope, from the size of a bedroom into her entire world. Otha’s problems are as straightforward as they are all-encompassing: “I hate you in the morning and I hate you in the day / I hate you in the evening when the sun fades away / I’m not okay, I wish we’d never met / Yeah, get the fuck out of my head.” Nothing screams secular exorcism quite like a tune built to be belted out on the dancefloor. — Jordan Darville
Cal Fish: “Big Bad Blanket of Protection”
Cal Fish’s new album Indecision Songs is full of hallucinatory tunes that slide into your subconscious like sand through an hourglass. Some materialize as songs via the Hudson Valley artist’s AnCo-adjacent vocals, while others, like “Big Bad Blanket of Protection,” maintain their ephemeral quality throughout. For the track’s first three-and-a-half minutes, staticky drums leak in through a wormhole, underscoring — and, at times, overwhelming — synth stabs, chiptune keys, found sounds, and a binaural recording of a conversation between Cal and a friend. Then, suddenly, the song swims into focus — a dubby bassline entering below the muffled speech, a muzak melody floating above. But this momentary state of stability disintegrates as quickly as it arrives, slipping through your fingers like the kernels of a dream. — Raphael Helfand
