HAIM
Want You Back ★★★★
Polydor
The lead single from Haim's Something to Tell You album is about restarting a bungled love affair. Yet it's overlaid with a brooding bass part that makes the song sound like one long outro almost from the opening notes. Meanwhile, on the single cover (which is the image that appears in the YouTube audio video) the sisters appear to have just smelled something intriguing. But what?
MILEY CYRUS
Malibu ★★
RCA
Four years after twerking with Robin Thicke, and less than two years since she recorded Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Pets – a mostly rubbish psychedelic double-album with The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne – former Disney starlet Miley Cyrus has seemingly come full circle. Her latest comeback video is so wholesome and vanilla, it looks more like a River Island advert than a pop video. Her sixth studio album is due later this year.
LANA DEL REY
Coachella - Woodstock in My Mind ★★★
Interscope
On the third track released from her forthcoming album Lust For Life, Lana Del Rey recounts the incongruity of performing at the recent hedonistic Coachella while her nation stood on the brink of nuclear war with North Korea. See, this is problem about writing anything topical when Donald Trump is president. By the time it comes out, the news cycle is like "Kim Jong… who? We're about 47 crises past that. Try to keep up, please…"
CREEK BOYZ
With My Team ★★★★
Cross Creek Records
Baltimore rappers Creek Boyz occupy an uneasy middle ground between ghetto thugs and boyband contenders in this supremely catchy new track, produced by A21Beatz. The four band members have their own individual characters, their own dance moves and guns. Think The Monkees – if Davy, Mikey and Peter paid tribute to their dead homies at the end of each episode.
