{"id":269941,"date":"2026-02-06T02:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T02:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/269941\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T02:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T02:17:09","slug":"5-songs-you-need-to-hear-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/269941\/","title":{"rendered":"5 songs you need to hear this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one entry a \u201cSong of the Week\u201d designation. Check out last week\u2019s roundup here<\/a>. Follow @pastemagazine<\/a> on TIDAL for weekly music playlists.<\/p>\n

\"\"Across six minutes and several continents\u2014Oslo glass towers, Tokyo turnstiles, garbage-slick New York canyons, Melbourne suburbs that feel like eternity\u2014Aussie indie-rockers Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever keep spotting versions of the same thing: old empires, new money, friends in the street, ghosts in the hills, that nagging sense of being \u201cnostalgically fucked up\u201d no matter where you land. The band\u2019s guitars move the way memory does, looping and layering, a bright jangle that slowly blurs at the edges while the rhythm section keeps nudging the song forward, a long tram ride you don\u2019t quite want to get off. Vocally, Tom Russo\u2019s delivery is almost conversational\u2014half travel diary, half confession\u2014until the repetition and multi-tracked vocals of \u201ceyes aren\u2019t dry\u201d turns into something closer to a spell, leaving an almost hypnotic haze in its wake. By the time they \u201cwind it back to the start,\u201d you feel exactly like the song\u2019s title: a little scorched, a little dazzled, a little dazed. \u2014Casey Epstein-Gross<\/p>\n

Friko: \u201cSeven Degrees\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cSeven Degrees\u201d somehow sounds like it\u2019s been around forever, some campfire standard tucked away in the back of your mind. Over gently blinking acoustic guitar, Niko Kapetan sings about \u201cseven ties between us and anyone we\u2019d ever wish to meet,\u201d reworking a childhood bit of half-remembered wisdom into a full-blown cosmology of almosts and not-yets. It\u2019s quiet and keening until it isn\u2019t\u2014until the chorus swings wide open, all voices and open sky. As the song builds, echoes of the Beatles can be heard lingering in the sound of the new four-piece lineup, as John Congleton\u2019s production keeps nudging Friko toward something bigger and less fussy. The arrangement starts as small-room folk and keeps quietly inflating, like a balloon you\u2019re sure will pop but never does, only getting larger and grander with each puff of air. By the final climb, \u201cSeven Degrees\u201d has stopped pretending it\u2019s anything but an anthem, the kind you can already imagine drunkenly sung back at them in some overheated venue months from now, every person in the room briefly convinced that the next stranger they meet might actually change everything. \u2014Casey Epstein-Gross<\/p>\n

Mandy, Indiana feat. billy woods: \u201cSicko!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The depth of feeling, conveyed through Valentine Caulfield\u2019s tangible presence, is one of Mandy, Indiana\u2019s defining traits. On URGH!, they dial up the intensity by heightening and embellishing their core sound rather than delivering a simple reiteration. Through this methodology of escalating their industrial grit until it becomes almost unbearable, the album utterly shatters expectations. And it blasts when Caulfield steps aside for New York rap legend billy woods\u2019 knotty verse on \u201cSicko!,\u201d channeling the clipping. remix of \u201cPinking Shears\u201d for one of the most adrenaline-inducing moments on the record. As he is often wont to do, woods cooks up a pot of phonetic soup, busting out of the gate with \u201cSeasick in the soundbath \/ Ambulance sirens, soundclash, nerve gas at the opera, the paparazzi at the copter crashed.\u201d A great time to be a sicko, indeed. \u2014Grant Sharples<\/p>\n

Nashpaints: \u201cBoyfriend First\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cThree people will die listening to this album,\u201d the Bandcamp description of Nashpaints\u2019 first record since 2020, Everyone Good is Called Molly, reads. \u201cZzz they will endup in the same place.\u201d There\u2019s no backstory to Finn Carraher McDonald, only mystery and angelic voicings spread across decaying pop tapes with a butter knife. Lead single \u201cBoyfriend First\u201d is this seven-minute mass of swirling noise with guitar streaks you\u2019d have to break your nails just to make. There\u2019s a lot of color in here even as the static fattens and the synths undress, because McDonald has melodies coming out the eyes. \u201cBoyfriend First\u201d sounds more like Natalie Imbruglia covering Deerhunter\u2014or maybe it\u2019s Deerhunter covering Natalie Imbruglia\u2014in a sewer tunnel than the Duretti Column, my bloody valentine-type guitar reverb sewn into most of Blindman the Gambler five years ago. I\u2019m just typing words now. Go listen to Nashpaints and find out if you\u2019ll live to say you did. \u2014Matt Mitchell<\/p>\n

The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis: \u201cDeface the Currency\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cDeface the Currency\u201d: where punk elders and avant-jazz twisters meet as one colossal, terrific monster. The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis first linked up in 2024, put out a great debut, and I\u2019ve been hooked ever since. We\u2019re talking about ex-Fugazi guys dropping pummeling rhythms that sound like fists tearing through paper, all while Lewis\u2019 saxophone spirals like a bebop corkscrew and Anthony Pirog\u2019s red-hot guitar talks in blistering power chords. \u201cDeface the Currency\u201d is robust, and the chemistry between the Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis is intense. It\u2019s flesh and blood\u2014a pile of prog-jazz intuition mixed with heady depth. These are tremors you can put in your pocket. \u2014Matt Mitchell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-269941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}