Alice Glass - Stillbirth
"I want to start again," screeches Alice Glass, on her first new track since quitting Crystal Castles last year. The cover photo shows the 26-year-old singer in shackles, while, in an accompanying statement, Glass alleges she endured years of psychological and emotional abuse in an unspecified former relationship, which she says ended recently, but dated back to her teens. (Glass first collaborated with Crystal Castles' Ethan Kath when she was 17.) As score-settling solo comeback singles go then, this one will take some beating... Zayn Malik, the ball is in your court!
Trouble Knows Me - Trouble Knows Me
Future Islands' Samuel T Herring - a.k.a. Hemlock Ernst - has teamed up with hip-hop producer Madlib for a new rap project. Trouble Knows Me is the title track from a forthcoming five-track EP. The song is based on a sample of Sunny & the Sunliners' Should I Take You Home? and the indie singer's rap skills are (surprisingly) not terrible.
Hinds - Chili Town
Hinds are an all-female, Anglophone Spanish garage rock band named in homage to Irish actor Ciaran Hinds. (Not all of that is strictly true.) Chili Town is their breezy summer ode to stealing cigars, swimming with sharks and flirting with the sky.
5 Seconds of Summer - She's Kinda Hot
In the boyband scene right now, Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer are basically Eve Harrington to One Direction's Margo Channing. That is to say, friendly understudies to the biggest act in the world with fiendish plans to shortly usurp that position. To be fair though, this single combines cartoonish lyrics and fuzz guitars in a manner as reminiscent of Dookie-era Green Day as it is of any of 5SOS's boyband forbearers. There's also more than a hint of casual misogyny in the mix. But in the ephemeral world of dumb teen pop, this too shall pass.
