Ashden – Shoes
You might’ve missed this track from London-based rapper Ashden because it came out in late November, on his EP Grace, and isn’t technically a single (there aren’t any on the EP, he tells me). Ashden is somewhat enigmatic, both producing and rapping after starting out within a hip-hop collective years ago. Grace follows his 2017 EP Conversations with Myself and two 2022 collaborative EPs under the alias Benny Berlin, with rapper and friend No Baking Soda. Here, Shoes shoves you directly into the club, bodies heaving, as a skittering beat gives way to the thump of 4/4 bass. Think Vince Staples in his working-with-SOPHIE, Big Fish Theory days and you’ll be close. Parts of the production evoke a brooding, stripped-back take on Detroit techno and dub rooted in hip-hop, before the track suddenly swerves towards 90s house two minutes in. This is one of those irresistible songs that ends sounding nothing like it started – and begs to be replayed. Tshepo Mokoena
Brendan Hendry – Lonely
In Canadian singer-songwriter Brendan Hendry’s self-directed video for Lonely – made with “$2, a box of wigs, some friends, and a 90s music video dream!” – he starts by placing a battered cassette in an equally battered boombox. What follows is a frayed-around-the-edges post-bar house party featuring flying wigs, snogging and the briefest flash of a bottom encased in leather chaps. The throwback visuals are anchored by a song that fits perfectly with our ongoing obsession with bratty, emo-coded power pop, from Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts album to Kelly Clarkson’s viral chat show cover versions to the return of 00s UK pop-punkers Busted. Hendry also continues the video’s queering of that 90s aesthetic, pairing a lo-fi drum machine, earworm acoustic guitar and big crunchy riffs with his tale of gay dating woes – essentially men are flaky and freakout at the first suggestion of real emotions. If the early verses grapple with the choice between dispassionate sex or no sex at all – “every now and then I still miss you in my mouth” Hendry sighs at one point – then the pogoing, top-tier chorus, which ramps up the emotional catharsis as the song grows sweatier, reaffirms the idea that being alone is better than being a fool. Michael Cragg
Aiko Tomi – Monolids
A school yard taunt becomes a rallying cry on this topical, irresistibly catchy track from Aiko Tomi’s 2023 debut LP Animal’s Awake. The Chinese and Japanese descended Toronto hyperpop newbie is broadly relatable on the Monolids chorus, extolling the virtues of being “weird” but “cute”. That, along with producer Andrew Rasmussen’s swaggering guitar sample, will instantly inspire anyone to defiantly flaunt their individuality. Tomi also rewards repeated listens with subtler personal verses. Over a sci-fi Chinese guzheng harp-sounding synth, Tomi sings affirming line after line about embracing her naturally “monolid” Asian eyes, racist childhood bullies be damned. Anyone who misses those finer points will be jolted from the all-too-hummable chorus by Tomi’s explicit spoken word outro. Given the unrealistic beauty standards and plastic surgery pressures heaped upon Asian women – which makes us friends and family fret – Monolids is a meaningful anthem. It’s also an inspiring metaphor for anyone suffocated by gauzy social media filters. Kyle Mullin
Katsy Pline – I Guess I’m Always Leaving
There comes a time in early adulthood when you realize that everyone you know is getting married, becoming a parent, or training to run a marathon – except for you. Personally, 2023 was the year I realized the friends I planned to spend my 20s messing around with are now fully-formed humans who I’ve lagged behind in big-life-updates. So it makes sense that one of my favorite tracks of this year would be I Guess I’m Always Leaving, a nostalgic country song from the delightfully-named Katsy Pline. The song’s listless narrator sings about how all of her drinking buddies have settled down, found true love, and a “reason to stay in town”. But for some reason, she can’t get there herself as she yodels through verses about changing seasons and becoming someone you don’t recognize. Mainstream country music properly sucked in 2023, from Jason Aldean’s vigilante anthem Try That in a Small Town to Luke Combs’ passionless cover of Fast Car, impressive only because it made one of the most beautiful songs ever written sound like the soundtrack to a truck commercial. It’s been a hard year for the genre, but Katsy’s pretty melancholia exemplifies country’s highest purpose: making its listener feel less alone. Alaina Demopoulos
DJ Jeeh FDC – Faz o Sinal do Alfa
It’s been an incredible year for Brazilian baile funk, which gets ever more adventurous, minimal, distorted and, yes, funky (while the phonk style it heavily informs took over streaming and basically every gaming or driving-based TikTok vid). Rio producer DJ Jeeh FDC embodied all those qualities with this track that opens his five-star stunner of an album, Alcateia: the incandescent groove is cobbled just from strummed strings, handclaps, and bass notes, the latter admittedly so penetrating it could dangerously undermine the foundations of your home, or at least your neighbourly relations. Over the top MC W1 raps in a startled full-throated holler like a man repeatedly touching an oven he forgot he left on. Don’t miss Jeeh FDC’s left-brained sampling elsewhere on Alcateia: Pouco Papo e Muito Vapo!! is by far the best and most chaotic of many recent flips of Diddy’s I Need a Girl Pt 2, while No Automático covers Mario Winans’ I Don’t Wanna Know with a much sharper edge than the recent Weeknd/Metro Boomin version. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Osees – Die Laughing
With a bass line like a battering ram, a synth part like a dentist drill and a guitar riff like a hacksaw, Die Laughing declares all-out war on the eardrum. Luckily, this assault thrills as much as it brutalizes. Would we expect anything less from the reliably perverse John Dwyer, leader of Osees? Over the last twenty years, Dwyer has shot out albums like bullets from an AK 47, nearly 30 so far, in a riot of styles, from garage-rock to synth-punk to prog and krautrock. To make matters more overwhelming, Dwyer keeps screwing with the name of his band, including The Oh Sees, Thee Oh Sees, The Ohsees, and his latest guise: Osees. The new album, Intercepted Message, prioritizes a loony array of synthesizers. In its most rampaging track, Die Laughing, synths slash across a truncated funk bass, a maw of no wave guitar, two thuggish drum kits and a vocal that sounds like the guy’s having a tracheostomy while trying to sing. If Die Laughing was indeed one of 2023’s most underheard songs, it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. Jim Farber
Devan – Shut Me Up
Sometimes you happen across a song that presents itself as far bigger than it really is and Spotify’s hit-and-miss curation often helps to fool you, a barely heard gem nestled next to something taken from a supermarket soundtrack. When I heard Canadian singer Devan’s to-the-point barnstormer Shut Me Up, I assumed it was yet another Big Deal I had little knowledge of, sounding as slick and satisfying as some of the year’s most overplayed songs. But instead, it’s been unfairly fluttering under the radar, a crime given how replayable it is, having lodged itself in my head ever since I heard it. It’s a smart, sharply worded plea to a soon-to-be ex, begging them to make a break-up easier by creating conflict (“I wish you’d give me lines to cross and I’d be at the border in a heartbeat”) and while it’s paced with enough energy to have one dancing around their bedroom (not me though, not a few times this week, not at all), it’s tinged with a difficult kind of sadness, for a relationship that will end with a goodbye rather than a good riddance. Benjamin Lee
Marissa McKaye – Found It
Culling through one of the 40,000 new songs uploaded to streaming services daily, every once in a while one finds an earworm diamond in the rough from a fresh and rising voice. Such is the case with Marisa McKaye’s Found It, a deliciously repetitive laidback pop treat that proves impossible to dislodge from your brain once it’s embedded in there. An independent singer-songwriter based in Nashville with a burgeoning following, the 19 year-old McKaye has been a fixture on the local scene for a large portion of her life; at just 12 she became a regular performer at the legendary Bluebird Cafe. Combining country sensibilities with shadows of 80s pop, a driving guitar hook and achingly tender vocals, McKaye sounds like a curious mixture between Miley Cyrus and Sting. Above all, she seems to be blossoming into an artist all her own. Rob LeDonne
Mug – Who Makes You Laugh
Mug, aka Melbourne siblings Lily and Sam Harding, make unsettling, sexy minimal wave music that nods to classic European artists like Stereolab as well as closer-to-home influences such as chilly synthpop vocalist Karen Marks and the underrated Dragon spinoff Scribble. Who Makes You Laugh, from a 7” Mug released earlier this year, is like a walk through a deserted fairground. Lily’s warm deadpan floats through a maze of disembodied samples and synth noises, her discombobulated lyrics seemingly following total dream logic. Where Mug’s debut EP was warm and relatively straightforward, drawing on folk and post-punk, Who Makes You Laugh is totally poised – if not a complete reinvention, then at least a heavy refinement. In a scene where mystery and ambiguity are in short supply, Mug’s heady, avant-garde approach is a welcome tonic. Shaad D’Souza
