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Below, find 12 fresh songs currently on high rotation in EW’s music department — and stream them through our Spotify account.
Nicki Minaj, “Pound the Alarm” The perfect trunk rattler to blast from your pink Barbie Bentley, with booming synths that build to a brain-numbing epiphany: “Music. Makes Me. High.”
Gotye, “I Feel Better” Is the “Somebody” in his current No. 1 smash “Somebody That I Used to Know” secretly the Doobie Brothers? Because this groovy, imaginary — Big Chill — soundtrack throwback totally sounds like it.
fun., “Some Nights” Fun. know that not every July night looks like an LMFAO video — sometimes you just drive around looking for a fro-yo place. But those nights still need multitracked-to-infinity shout-alongs.
Electric Guest, “This Head I Hold” The Danger Mouse-produced L.A. soul duo’s new single, all winking falsetto and retro swagger, establishes “hammock funk” as the best new micro-genre of the season.
Santigold, “Disparate Youth” This dubby midtempo delight (with twitchy guitar bursts courtesy of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner) is like taking a pull of cold beer at a cross-cultural barbecue.
Jack White, “Missing Pieces” The lyrics could be a Raymond Carver short-story fever dream: His lady’s got her hands in the icebox! Why is his nose bleeding? But the sound is straight-up funky-organ boogaloo.
Schoolboy Q feat. A$AP Rocky, “Hands on the Wheel” L.A.’s Black Hippy crew flip a sample of Lissie’s lilting cover of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” and pay tribute to automotive fun that’s not DMV sanctioned or mother approved.
Marina and the Diamonds, “Primadonna” Picture Katy Perry’s kooky Welsh art-school cousin, twirling around her bedroom singing giddy sugar-rush pop songs about sex and fame and Warhol-starlet dreams.
One Direction, “Up All Night” Britain’s Next Top Boy Band supplies the ultimate slumber-party soundtrack, a hand-clap ode to grabbing your girlfriend and making the floor shake till dawn. (Because they’re dancing! Why, what did you think they meant?)
Japandroids, “The House That Heaven Built” If this house really exists in heaven, it must have a basement where the Vancouver duo’s indie-rock rager plays on repeat — and late, great punks from Kurt Cobain to Jay Reatard pound their fists to the “oh-oh-oh-OH-oh-OH-oh-oh!” chorus.
Alex Clare, “Too Close” Because all the cool kids get their new-music tips from Internet Explorer commercials, right? We’re not ashamed that the 60-second spot was our gateway drug to this shuddering electro anthem from Amy Winehouse’s onetime paramour. Bless you, Internet.
Perfume Genius, “Hood” A fragile Garfunkel-esque confessional breaks open into pure piano-pop gorgeousness on the Seattle songwriter’s two-minute masterpiece. If you don’t get chills, you need to see a doctor.
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