Listen To The Five Best Songs This Week

It’s a rare and wonderful experience to come across a song that instantly hits you in the heart. The frequency at which this happens is in some ways woefully lacking, but conversely works to strike harder upon impact. Step forward “Phoenix” by the enviably talented, Laura Doggett. We know next to nothing about this artist except that she’s from the UK and has enlisted SOHN on production duties, but we do know “Phoenix” is one of the most powerful debuts we’ve heard this year. Piano samples pirouette gracefully beneath Doggett’s deep and omnipotent singing, as SOHN quietly thickens the glut of soulful hums and hallway clicks. It quietly builds and builds and, seriously, we don’t want it to stop.

GEoRGiA’s “Digits” boasts the kind of beefy synth hook that could easily cater the needs of sweaty festival clubbers, but it’s far too interested in its off-kilter malfunctions to be a substantial feed. Not that we’re complaining. In fact, the track’s skittish beats sound like they belong to an entirely different song, turning sounds that could easily feature on a radio-playlisted trap hit into something far more restless and interesting.

This week saw London-based songwriter Sivu follow the lead single from his forthcoming EP with the passively beautiful, “Particles”. Plumped with the open-chord guitar slides associated with some of his earlier work and lifted by his quivering coo, “Particles” is simple acoustica that needs nothing more added to it. As ever, we are treated to James Page’s fluttering range and playful designs. Lovely stuff.

Echo Lake’s 2012 debut, Wild Peace, was everything and more that you could want from a band who mellifluously blended shoegaze, dream-pop and alternative rock (arguably the best genres) on their gorgeous debut. After some very sad news that put them on hold for a few years, the quartet returned this week with “This Year” and reminded us why they’re so special. “This Year” is a slightly more lucid with its introducing 90s college rock guitar, though delay and buzzy drone soon moves it into the multi-layered territory we love drifting off into. Echo Lake know exactly how to architect the type of escapism that we, well, never want to escape from.

Over the past few weeks, alt. pop’s unsung heroine FEMME has been releasing tracks from her serialised Covers EP. From exploring 70’s disco with “Ring My Bell” to 80’s Madonna (“Vogue”), her final installment was in the form of 90’s juggernaut, “Killer”, by Adamski and Seal. Blurring the lines of the original’s acid house leanings and with juicy afrobeat and token “nah nah nahs”, “Killer” is yet another fine example of how FEMME takes what she’s given and makes it completely her own. An unfathomably bright talent. ​

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