Welcome back to the Playlists, Racket’s (formerly weekly, as of 2025 a more reasonable biweekly) compilations of the best new music, as I hear it. It’s always fun to start the year with an empty playlist and start to toss tracks in, so let's get to it.
Local Picks
Favourite Girl, “Not Going Back”
Katy Vernon’s new band already released one of my favorite singles of 2024. Now they’re gearing up for 2025 with this bright and defiant anthem and sentiments such as “I don’t even wanna know whatever ‘new normal’ is/I’ve already been there.”
Prim Woes fans who’ve been yearning for more are directed toward this solo joint from PW’s Jay Simonson, which offers similar roughed up, echo-laden retro romanticism. The album Big Things releases in February, but you can hear the whole thing here already. I don’t even know what release dates mean anymore!
Yonder, “Oil Light”
Oliver Gerber’s fancy guitar lick, flashy but not wanky, is what hooks you. Harmonies from Hattie Peach and Emma Jeanne are what keep you. And Peach’s violin break is an unexpected treat. They’ll celebrate the release of their EP, Memento Mori, at Can Can Wonderland on the 24th.
Your Smith, “Change of Heart”
I’ll admit, this perky number didn’t wholly snag me till the horn break, courtesy of Hippo Campus’s DeCarlo Jackson. But consider me snagged, and spare some credit for Jackson’s bandmates and Smith’s new collaborators, Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker.
Zora feat. Jaemy Paris, Piela Melendez, “Sick Sex”
With that tweedling synth hook and filthy synth bass, Zora doesn't even need to talk all that dirty, let alone toss in a Vanity 6 quote, to let you know she's a nasty girl. Her new album, BELLAdonna, comes out this Friday.
Non-Local Picks
Bad Bunny, "Baile Inolvidable"
Puerto Rico’s crossover angel looks homeward on his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, a project that integrates older musical styles into the already genre-spanning sound we call “Latin trap.” Here Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio proves he knows his way around a lovelorn salsa number.
Rap critics would like you to know that just because you (and they) enjoy this "viral" (when can we just go back to saying "popular") LiAngelo Ball jam doesn’t mean it’s good. Because his bros are pro ballers, or because they’re media hogs, or because the track is inauthentic, or derivative, or something. Fortunately, dopes like me have no such reservations. His dad ain’t wrong when he says it sounds like Nelly.
These three Chicago Anglophiles aren’t exactly given to fits of enthusiasm, but neither do they brood, and here the Velvets-y propulsion has them singing la-di-da-di-da.
James Brandon Lewis Trio, “Prince Eugene”
Any rockers who got their first taste of saxman Lewis on last year’s Messthetics collab should check him out on his home turf, over a loping groove from Chad Taylor and Josh Werner, augmented by mbira, as he repeats riffs, toys with their structure, and follows the melody where it leads.
The aging, ageless anarcho-traditionalists get their Life’s Rich Pageant on as they detail the travails of the Irish being shipped off to Wales during the potato famine. All that march through history must still mean something to ’em.
Worst New Song
Dirty Projectors and s t a r g a z e, “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One”
One theory of political art is that it should irritate you, make itself impossible not to notice, jolt you from your comfort zone. If so, this is a classic of the form. Not that Dave Longstreth and his crew have ever gone in for standard rock cacophony—this is more like someone tripped over a chamber ensemble and each member picked up the wrong sheet music, while vocalists conduct warm up exercises nearby. The singers happen to be relating a series of climate change myths that I’m less likely to notice here than I would as a meme. None of us know what to do about this crisis, all of this was crafted with the best of intentions, and I hope they convert whatever skeptics their fanbase harbors. But I’d rather give up cheeseburgers than listen to this again.
Wanna get a local song considered for the playlist? To make things easy on both of us, email keith@racketmn.com with MONDAY PLAYLIST in the subject header. (Don’t, as in do NOT, DM or text: If I’m in a good mood, I’ll just ask you to send an email; if I’m in a bad mood I’ll just ignore it.)
