Ten Tracks, Two Simultaneous EPs, and One Ad-Lib That I Can’t Get Out of My Head

Track 1: Stripper Song – Paris Texas

The Sword and Gun dual EPs are a lesson in absurdism and recklessness. The LA-based duo seems to revel in being frenetic, somehow maintaining clarity while bombarding the listener with so many competing sounds and genres. In the span of six songs and fifteen minutes of run time on TLMWAG, they go from a funky interstellar intro on “Superstar” to the droning synths and saturated bass anchoring “Stripper Song” and land at the project’s final resting place, an intimate ballad titled “No Strings,” where you can hear fingers sliding along the frets of an acoustic guitar. “Stripper Song,” in particular, follows the protagonist as he falls for a sex worker. He outlines the secretive nature of their relationship at the outset with the lines, “I can fall in love with ya shame/Never eye-to-eye in the day/Only get along in the shade.” Operating under the guise of this shadow allows him to act on his indulgences, eventually turning an amorphous relationship into a work of art to be marveled at, a piece of “Swayze pottery,” if you will. It is the imperfections within this arrangement that make it special, but it always feels like one sudden movement away from collapsing in on itself.

They released these projects while opening for Tyler, the Creator, on his Chromakopia tour, and one does not have to go too far to see why Tyler recognizes the fit. Paris Texas’s in-your-face attitude reminds me of “DEATHCAMP” from Cherry Bomb or “I Ain’t Got Time!” from Flower Boy. However, these projects feel more focused and edgier but also have more consistent flows than Cherry Bomb. Maybe it is the way they approach songwriting, as Louis Pastel and Felix often devise a visual palette and a story before composing beats or lyrics. And given their name is inspired by a Wim Wenders film of the same name, it’s apparent they take world-building very seriously.

Themselves, however? Not so much. I mean, they use a sniff as an ad-lib. Pour that sound into my veins…

Track 2: Genius – Ravyn Lenae

I think it’s very appropriate that “Genius” is the opening song on Ravyn Lenae’s 2024 album Bird’s Eye. The R&B artist might just be describing herself in this moment, which means I can already move on, maybe?

For real, though, I find this song both lovely and infectious. The arrangement is simple but elegant, with an eighth-note pattern on the drums and some wispy background vocals. Her words seem to be dancing along the snare, always in active communication with what is going on around her. This song structure establishes “Genius” as a definitive tone-setter for the rest of the LP, whose main thesis surrounds managing and contextualizing the ups and downs of a cyclical relationship. This song attempts to normalize how love is not as picture-perfect as people make it out to be, as she posits that sometimes door slamming or *metaphorical* knife throwing can carve out a space for productive conversations. Lenae stresses how moving on from conflict and going to bed happy cools these tempers with the line, “Kiss good night, never mind what we said last night.” These moments may help build a paradise from the ashes, even though some embers might still be glowing as bright as this song is in my mind.

Track 3: family and friends – Oklou

I stumbled across the French artist Oklou while on Pitchfork’s top albums of the year, and I’m so thankful I was pulled in. I don’t know what compelled me to open this project out of the others on the list…was it the avoidant look on Marylou’s face on the cover? Was it the vintage blue computerized text that felt like it could be in Lucy or The Matrix? Or was it the little (scarily accurate) description of her style, “making memes about Enya while also genuinely loving Enya“? I might never know, but that’s what makes this song even more mysterious to me. Right away, you hear a marimba and her paced vocals set the fast, 180 BPM song in motion, which never ceases to slow down. It catapults into a chase against the forward progression of time and the expectations people place on others by singing about pleasure and pain. She yearns to “Lie forever in bed/Blessed by family and friends/Start life at the end,” which is both static and dynamic, an oxymoronic existence. Oklou positions herself as a boat beating against the current, literally born ceaselessly back into the past. This theme is all the more relevant when watching her music video, where the beginning and the end repeatedly and regularly pause as if the film is trudging through molasses, only to get unstuck when she and her friends begin to run. This feels like the early and late stages of life mirroring one another, marked by similar vulnerabilities and difficulties.

The curious case of Marylou Mayniel is unfolding in front of us, and I’m very much here for it.

Track 4: Firebird – Common Saints

After listening to this for the first time, I was shocked to learn that I knew another Common Saints song by the name of “Idol Eyes.” You put those two songs in a room together, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you they were related. Diverging away from the more psychedelic chimes and mentions of drug use on “Idol Eyes,” this group leans heavily on the message in “Firebird.” They distinctly tell the listener, “Young mind/Hold your head up high/You’re on your way” while questioning “How we’re gonna turn it around?” This song is made for people in my generation who feel lost and that they are constantly letting down the people around them. They provide comfort and reassurance, which can go a long way to transforming someone’s self-image. The groovy guitar and the vocal swells make me feel as if a phoenix is rising right in front of me (or maybe within me??).

Track 5: mad love – PARTYOF2

WHO’S MAD AT ME??????

This is an ode to your enemies and a pretty damn good one at that. They do not hold anything back with the lead single off of their new EP we owe you an explanation. An explanation for what, you may ask? Well, this duo used to be a trio called grouptherapy. before the abrupt departure of TJOnline, otherwise known as Tyrel Jackson Williams (or Leo Dooley for those Disney fans out there). The remaining members, SWIM and Jadagrace, rebranded as PARTYOF2 and used their first release as a way to cope with separating from their creative partner and friend. If you haven’t heard of grouptherapy. before and you are a fan of underground hip-hop, please check out their album there goes the neighborhood. A girl I was crushing on one summer showed me this album and I don’t think I’ve been the same since.

The chemistry between SWIM and Jada is as vibrant as ever. The first half of the track sounds like you would find it on an old copy of NBA Street, with all of its nostalgia still intact. Jada pulls off a seamless beat switch into a more Caribbean carnival-inspired second verse around 2 minutes in, which vaults the song into its harsher vitriol and biting lyrics. This reorganization seems to have caused a personal metamorphosis as well, with Jada rapping, “Chronic people pleaser turned narcissist, I admit I’m in love with all of it/Compliments, talking sh*t, long as it’s about me then we all G.” They are reveling any hate shot their way, wearing the glares with pride on the runway, but they also have some choice for TJ, saying that he can’t be trusted and he’s been removed. This doesn’t feel very amicable to me, and the associated promo video for the EP confirms this to be the case. Lucky for us, we got a banger out of it.

Track 6: Feisty – Smerz

Another Pitchfork find, Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt of Smerz (which comes from the Norwegian word for heartbreak) capture vignettes of a night out. With their monotone delivery, you feel like they are dragging you along for the ride, memories fading in and out throughout the night as the tequila starts to flow. Pre-game in Bed-Stuy at 9. Uber to LES at 10:30. The Delancey. Saw my ex at Pianos. Group shots at Wiggle Room. DFMO at Mr. Purple with a stranger I’ll never see again. These are the moments that stick, that make you feel alive and present, while everything else fades into an inebriated static. Smerz ends the song on a more somber note, however, with hangxiety about missing love and connection looming. We can only imagine how they are feeling the next morning.

Track 7: Touch Me – The Doors

Seeing this song make my list, my Jim Morrison poster from my childhood bedroom must be smiling at me. In May of 2025, no less. I got a text from one of my very best friends asking me, at 8:14 on a random Tuesday morning, “how do u feel abt the doors?” I then immediately sent her my dad’s and my seven favorite Doors songs as I waxed poetic about my childhood being defined by their lyrics. This conversation sent me down a Doors rabbit hole for two weeks. I can’t do better than her description, so I’ll just let her tell you how good The Doors are…

• Soul Kitchen and Love Her Madly were the ones that made me want ur recs in the first place!!!
• LOVEEEEE Touch Me it’s so funky!!! And that OUTRO?!
• Peace Frog was an automatic save
• Moonlight Drive was just such a chef’s kiss, tens from me
• Please tell your dad thank you for his deep cuts and ESPECIALLY for the absolute trip that When The Music’s Over is!!! Those 11 minutes felt like 1, I was so shocked

She’s right. “Touch Me” does have an awesome outro. There’s a killer saxophone solo. Need I say more?

Track 8: Cowboy – Lily Meola

I found this song while driving back from a weekend trip to the Poconos with some friends from grad school. Once the chorus hit, I immediately put down my windows and started singing at the top of my lungs. In the opening song of her EP Heartbreak Rodeo, Lily describes herself as a hopeless romantic chasing after an emotionally unavailable, wild individual she likens to a cowboy. This person has come into her life for a brief time and went on their merry way, leaving her behind yearning along with the dust and the tumbleweeds. She hoped this time would be different, but she ultimately resigned this behavior to something innate and inevitable within her one-time partner.

On her Spotify page, she describes her influences as Carole King and Joni Mitchell, which makes a lot of sense. She also feels like a nice blend between Maggie Rogers and Noah Cyrus, but slightly more upbeat and folkier than both.

Track 9: Add up my love – clairo

I might be in my indie pop girl era right now, and I am certainly not going to complain. I am a sucker for stripped down, lo-fi arrangements with misty and subdued vocals talking about crippling desire and longing. Sue me.

If this trend continues, Clairo might be at the forefront of the movement. I thought the production value on the entire Charm album was stellar, with the addition of jazz and soul producer Leon Michels to the credits list unlocking a new dimension in Clairo’s style. She makes abundantly clear the growth and maturation in her instrumentation since her bedroom pop “4EVER” and “Pretty Girl” days, even though a lot of the same themes and motifs appear in her storytelling. That said, “Add Up My Love,” along with “Sexy To Someone,” are the tracks I keep coming back to on this project. The former talks directly to an ex, asking if the love she was giving was ever enough to satisfy them. Clairo continues to interrogate the intended audience to see if they miss certain things about their relationship that she holds dear, like the way she would hold the back of their neck or the way they said her name. She gets caught up in all this mental math, which leads her back at the same place she started, no matter the amount of love she inputs into the equation. Clairo is the number stuck in the Collatz Conjecture, applying simple arithmetic to only ever get the same, small result in the end. For every 3n+1 addition, there is a division happening in the background that reverses her progress. I hope she finds her way out of this numerical labyrinth one day (but keeps making music about it, please and thank you).

Track 10: rush – Marco Luka

Marco Luka’s song “Rush” is very simple in its delivery and its message. He can’t get enough of the way this person makes him feel, comparing his emotions in their presence to a rush. Whether that is a rush of adrenaline or a rush of something more illicit, he’s clearly hooked. The emotion is heavily laden through this song, with the lyrical delivery itself feeling heavy and weighty. Additionally, the ascending and descending riff the background guitars play during the chorus signify the peaks and valleys of his relationship while deepening your feelings towards the song structure. It has me coming back, time and time again.

Best of the Rest:

• man in the mirror – MIKE
• Don’t speak – Loaded Honey
• Miss – Erika de Casier