New Music Playlist: The Best 8 Songs This Week

The latest batch of fresh tracks is ready for your ears, on Crave’s recurring new music playlist. No matter how devoted a sound junkie you may be, we’re inundated with so many new bands and songs, it’s easy to miss out on something amazing. There’s just too much damn music out there to keep up with all of it! But we’re here to help. Open your ears and feast on a wide assortment of goodness from Oddisee, James Blake, Klangstof, Mr Carmack and more.

If you see something you haven’t heard, that’s a good thing. That’s why we’re doing this. Trust us with your ears, and we’ll bring you the goods.As always, keep up with our weekly new music finds as they arrive by subscribing to the Crave New Music Playlist on Spotify.

Oddisee – ‘Brea’

Brooklyn rapper/producer Oddisee’s upcoming project The Odd Tape is another high-reaching achievement for an artist a decade deep into marching to his own beat. The new collection is literally the soundtrack to his life – on his Bandcamp page, he explains the concept: “The Odd Tape is meant to be a ‘Day In The Life’ piece set to audio. Each track is the theme music to my routine.”

Taken from the album The Odd Tape coming May 13th, “Brea” is a prime example of Oddisee’s robust capabilities to create jazz-woven architectures of lush, warm instrumentation prime for atmospheric immersion. With rich soul and a strong flavor nod to the golden era of hip-hop, this collection is about to hit heavy speaker rotation. Dig deeper here.

– Johnny Firecloud, Crave Music Editor

Mr Carmack – ‘Champion’

Mr Carmack is one of many producers that is often shoehorned as being a guy who makes a very specific type of music. Those who don’t know him all that well could easily make the mistake of putting him in a box with other trap producers, such is a large extent of his hard-hitting, snare-filled catalog of music.

Champion is a perfect example of just how talented, diverse and exploratory Mr Carmack can be. It’s the first new song he’s uploaded to his Soundcloud after taking everything down a short time ago, and is possibly a sign that he’s intentionally making a new start with this jam; filled with twinkling, glassy effects, and synths. Champion is also underpinned by some deeply captivating bass, pulsating like a heartbeat underneath glimpses of percussive build-up that tease and fall away back into the mix.

– Zanda Wilson, Crave Australia

James Blake – ‘Always’

“Always” is the penultimate track on James Blake’s latest album The Colour in Anything, a mellow R&B number that wears its Frank Ocean influence on its sleeve. Considering Ocean co-wrote the track, this is hardly a surprise, but the Channel Orange creator has helped bring to life Blake’s previously noted love of the genre in a more forthright manner than the artist’s previous output.

Blake said that he and Ocean became “very good friends” during the creation of the track, telling Pitchfork that “Frank was a huge inspiration for this record: his process, the way he writes, the strength of what he does, who he is.” ‘Always’ is one of the standout tracks on the new LP, and is perhaps a sign of things to come for Blake.

– Paul Tamburro, UK Editor

Klangstof – ‘Amansworld’

Klangstof burst onto our radar earlier this year with the fantastic “Hostage,” and now the Norwegian band has cemented i position as a band to watch in 2016 with the release of two more tracks, “Amansworld” and “Island”. It is the former that has piqued my interest, a mixture of vocals redolent of Amnesiac-era Thom Yorke that leads itself in with synths, before eventually losing itself in a crash of cymbals and trumpets.

– Paul Tamburro, UK Editor

Charlotte Carpenter – ‘Am I Alone in This?’

Charlotte Carpenter’s gentle, composed vocals are juxtaposed by a visceral blues guitar on the new track “Am I Alone in This?” Taken from her upcoming EP How Are We Ever to Know? Carpenter channels her raw energy through her musicianship, which takes center stage as her disconcertingly melodic voice repeats the titular chorus. As such it’s difficult to get a read on the emotion she’s conveying, making “Am I Alone in This?” all the more affecting in the process.

– Paul Tamburro, UK Editor

Charlotte Day Wilson – ‘Work’

Despite the fact that Work is all about working hard to succeed, this song is so lazily slow and simple it makes you feel like having a little mid-morning lie-down. It’s a beautiful three-chord wonder, stemming from her soul and gospel influences and her multi-instrumental musical upbringing. Hammond organ, breathy BV’s and sparse electro beats leave a hell of a lot of room for CDW’s voice to take center stage. But this 24-year-old Torontonian has the rare and mighty touch of a well-seasoned jazz vocalist.

She holds right back and makes every heartfelt word count. And to even better news, her EP is finished and is due for release in the near future. If CDW is already producing tunes like this, she’s obviously already done a hell of a lot of work.

– Zana Rose, Crave Australia

Thandi Phoenix – ‘Tell Me Where The Lovers Have Gone’

Currently receiving some well-deserved attention with a support slot on Rudimental’s Australian tour, Thandi Phoenix is a fresh-faced Sydney producer bringing some much needed new takes to the jam-packed electronic scene. Surrounding the omnipresent synth-focused sound (that every DJ and has dog has been punching out for the last few years) with her own style of RnB/Drum and Bass injected mayhem, Thandi should 100% be on your ones-to-watch list for 2016.

– Mitch Feltscheer, Crave Australia

Radiohead – ‘Desert Island Disk’

(Radiohead are prickly about streaming. Listen to the album track on iTunes)

The delicate rise of an acoustic guitar welcomes us into “Desert Island Disk,” a streak of unfettered light in an album of otherwise labyrinthian melancholy, the trademark sound of the biggest band in the world. “The wind rushing round my open heart, an open ravine,” Thom Yorke utters softly in a track surprisingly free of the technological dystopia and paranoid digital chill we’ve come to expect.

We first heard the track last December, when Yorke introduced it during a solo set at the Pathway to Paris show (above), and with the release of A Moon Shaped Pool, the full-flesh version does not disappoint.

– Johnny Firecloud, Crave Music Editor

Cover art taken from Klangstof’s release of ‘Amansworld’ & ‘Island’