Listen To The Five Best Songs This Week

There’s never too much respite from the musical output of London-based alt. pop star, FEMME. This summer, she put out a serialised EP entitled Covers and, yep you guessed it, it was full of covers. Spanning the 60s to the 90s with “Ring My Bell”, “Vogue” and more, Covers was an exciting burst of productivity that made us eager to hear what was next. With her side projects Ultraísta and Eckoclick also humming in the background, this week FEMME unveiled “High” and more than reasserted her pop prowess. The track is quintessentially FEMME with its spliced samples, square-eyed synths and voluptuous harmonies, nothing too far from what we’ve heard before but no less fantastic.

Tropical-pop lot Sundara Karma returned with “Indigo Puff” and we were delighted to premiere the band’s deluge of florid guitar lines and eddying choral flutters. The Reading quartet have at last finished school (they sickenly starting putting out tunes at the age of 14/15), so perhaps this is the start of more freedom, more gigs and more music? Let’s hope so.

BROODS, Paperwhite, GEMS, MVSCLES…is anyone getting tired of the onslaught of boy-girl electro-pop duos? With those pristine pop choruses, call-and-response singing and big-hearted melodies? Nah, didn’t think so. Another duo to watch out for is London-based twosome, LittleShoesBigVoice. Their debut release, “Nightfall”, was picked up by BBC Introducing and Huw Stephens but doesn’t have quite the audacious bite of new track “Blue Veins”. Released with an accompanying B-side in the coming weeks, “Blue Veins” is dotted with cascading harp plucks, rigid synth patterns and - wait for it - gorgeous vocal interplay between vocalist Emily Harvey and Jack Durtnall. What did you expect?

As if reminding us that summer unfortunately doesn’t last forever, Seyr shared the fruits of their nocturnal bedroom pop with “Tainted”. It’s actually perfect timing because temperatures dropped from about 28 degrees to a measly 15 this week, and you know what us Brits are excellent at: moaning about the weather. I digress. If you can accept the death of summer, stick “Tainted” on and let the cold in; it’s full of glottal echoes, barren electronics, crystal falsettos and stunning skeletal beats.

Tilly Scantlebury is an enviable talent. One of the chief songwriters in the superb lo-fi/gaze outfit Hella Better Dancer, Lazy Day is Scantlebury’s new baby and it’s unknowingly brilliant stuff. This time scraping the heady heights of dream-pop, “Oldest Friend” is reserved it its beauty with slow, knotted guitars and woozy reverb, tugged along by Scantlebury’s deliciously languid vocals. Layers congeal for the crescendo before sinking back into a sleepy lull that leaves behind a comforting residue. “Oldest Friend” appears on Beech Coma Vol. 2, a compilation cassette and digital download slated for a 1 September release.

Listen to our selection of the week’s best new music below: