Feel, Blood
By Baynk
Expat Kiwi now in LA, Baynk – Jock Nowell-Usticke – neatly takes his electro-pop into a dreamscape Californian glow with Feel and – coupled with the equally weightless, simultaneously released Blood single – drip-feeds two more tracks from his much-anticipated Senescence album, the follow-up to his 2022 groundbreaking Adolescence. Summer comes early with these songs. – Graham Reid
Please Please Please
By Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter has been dethroned from the top spot on the US Spotify charts... by herself. Her breakthrough single Espresso released two months ago has been streamed over 500 million times. Her follow up Please Please Please with a music video featuring her Saltburn star boyfriend, Barry Keoghan, is on track to do the same. Great marketing tactics aside, she nabbed pop producer behemoth Jack Antonoff for the track’s catchy, soft 80s synth production. She also maintains her trademark explicit, lyrical wit, crooning “don’t you dare embarrass me motherfucker.” She’s been in the pop game for 10 years now, but she’s finally on a trajectory to true mainstream stardom. – Alana Rae
Close to You
By Gracie Abrams
The bedroom pop singer-songwriter – the daughter of Hollywood heavyweight JJ Abrams – is taking a moodier route with her latest single Close to You. Opening with a heavy bass shudder, Abrams descends into an addictive, fast-paced chorus that hits the catchy pop spot while maintaining a cohesive story – the Taylor Swift effect, some may say. Abrams’ complete second album, The Secret of Us, arrives June 21. – Alana Rae
Hold On To The Dream
By Tiki Taane & Arli Liberman Ft. Louis Baker
The grand theme song from Ka Whawhai Tonu, the forthcoming film about the Battle of Ōrākau with soundtrack composers Taane and Liberman roping in Louis Baker to bring his elegant delicate vocal touch to the anthem’s beginnings before they thump the button marked “epic”. One to make sitting through the end credits a rousing experience. – Russell Baillie
Lost At Sea
By Courtnay and the Unholy Reverie
After their previous fuzzed-up raw blues on the single Mercy and Courtnay Low’s revelatory appearance as singer, guitarist and keyboard player in Taranaki’s blues rockers Mons Whaler, this acoustic folk-blues comes as a surprise. But it telegraphs the emotional breadth she and her band will be bringing to an EP soon. Helluva guitarist on prior evidence but here also showcasing a songwriter of great sensitivity. – Graham Reid
New Life
By Ringlets
More infectious, spikey-sparky, herky-jerky post-punk pop from Auckland’s Ringlets with the first new release since last year’s rather good self-titled debut album. There’s a touch of Talking Heads meets Belle & Sebastian about the song, though the guitar-powered sound is, as it was on the LP, a happily scrappy one. It’s out on an actual vinyl seven-inch single too. Huzzah. – Russell Baillie
Jacked
By Heartworms
Part motorik drive, part post-New Wave and a lot of poet-cum-punk Polly Harvey, South London’s Heartworms – Jojo Orme – tugs a lot of familiar threads here but makes good on the promise of her Cure/Goth-influenced debut EP A Comforting Notion. Someone to watch. – Graham Reid
In Time
By Reiki Ruawai
Raglan’s Reiki Ruawai follows up his successful All I Need co-write with Jordan Rakei with another co-write, this easy listening slice of intimate soul with producer Joel Jones who brings an impressive, widescreen backdrop to the gently relentless beat-driven material. – Graham Reid
Lully – Roland. Act iii, sc 6: II. ‘C’est Médor qu’une Reine si belle’ (Chaconne Et Choeur)
By Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset director
Jean-Baptiste Lully ruled French music with an iron fist. As the senior musical figure in the court of Louis XIV, Lully was arguably the most important musician in all Europe. And didn’t he just know it. He combined an immense ego, a vicious temper, control freakery and deep jealousy in one ball of detestable human. Lully got his come-uppance in the end. He used to beat time by bashing a long wooden staff on the ground. One day Lully missed the floor, hitting instead his foot. The subsequent injury became gangrenous, which did for the composer. Given his foot situation, it’s perhaps ironic that Lully wrote superb dancing music. You can hear this piece from the opera Roland performed when inventive Baroque group The Queen’s Closet holds its gala ball – complete with period dancing – on 22 June. With a superb programme of French and English music, and a tagline ‘party like it’s 1689′, anyone in Wellington is advised to pop along. See thequeenscloset.net for details. – Richard Betts
