Tommy Cash
Little Molly
Essentially a meme-era update on Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker video, Little Molly finds the surrealist Estonian rapper’s moustachioed visage fused on to the bodies of a troupe of hula-hooping gymnasts, bored schoolgirls with high ponytails and a double-denim 80s nightmare. It’s the visuals that will make you hit repeat, but the song’s hypnotic basicness – essentially just “work” and twerk” rhymed over a mesh of splintered drum claps – creeps towards genius.
MNEK ft Hailee Steinfeld
Colour
What happens when you combine the majesty of MNEK – a man who has helped finesse sultry bangers for Beyoncé – with an Oscar-nominated actor-singer whose best song is about wanking? You get Colour, a Solero-ready bop with a Hallmark cards chorus: “Before you came into my life/ Everything was black and white/ Now all I see is colour”. Sweet, with a sickly aftertaste.
All Saints
Love Lasts Forever
It is worth remembering that All Saints, the “edgy” alternative to the Spice Girls that your mum reminisces over after a whiff of Smirnoff Ice, first split in 2001 over an argument about who got to wear a combat jacket. In 2018, sartorially speaking, they seem to have upgraded from camo lightweights to boxy tailored suits, while musically their icy harmonies keep this springy love fest about an inch away from full Emeli Sandé.
The 1975
Give Yourself a Try
Bold, divisive, risky, angular: just four words to describe Matt “Matty” Healy’s Chucky-esque, flame-red hairdo in the video for the 1975’s latest opus. Having dispensed with their INXS obsession, the lads segue into a streamlined amalgamation of Joy Division, the Strokes’ 12:51 and mid-00s pop-punk, with spidery guitar riffs and cheap drum machines. Beneath the music’s youthful zest is a lyric about getting old and that well-observed sign of late-20s living: buying seeds online.
TS Graye
MY2
Over eerie church organs, trap-adjacent beats and the luxuriant waft of early OTT Lana, 17-year-old newcomer TS Graye details that moment you see an ex with someone new and decide that rather than rising above it because, actually, working your way through Friends again on Netflix while drinking heavily is super fulfilling thanks for asking, you engage in life-ending tomfoolery. “Guess I’ll have to murder you, too,” Graye shrugs, while everyone backs away slowly.
