"Pop music shouldn't always get a bad rap," says
Top Pops!, a recurring selection of indie pop highlights across a selection of styles, updated every month to keep you on your dancing toes. This month, we rope in a lot of notable artists with new songs on the horizon... be it the
Micachu-produced
Tirzah, R&B vocalist
Jessy Lanza, 18-year-old Brazilian-French producer
Dream Koala, or the tried-and-true sounds of
BRAIDS and
Julia Holter. Also included are tracks by Foxygen member
Diane Coffee and
Arts & Crafts artists
The Darcys.
+++ FULL POST + ALL TOP POPS! COLUMNS + ALL MUSIC COLUMNS
Jessy Lanza - "5785021"
As a hardcore lover of R&B in the '90s, I'm a fucking hard sell when it comes to the indie R&B revival that slinketh around these days. I need more than just a pretty voice; that helps, but a hook needs to
catch me, and not in a shallow way, either. On "5785021", probably the best track on Jessy Lanza's upcoming release,
Pull My Hair Back. Tender vocal melodies that slink and out of upper registries couple with background synths reminiscent of Art of Noise's "Moments in Love", without being
actually derivative.
Pull My Hair Back comes out September 10th on
Hyperdub; stay tuned for a full album review.
Tirzah
I can recall a time far, far away... back in 2009, when my musical playlist was dominated by tUnE-yArDs and Micachu and the Shapes, in their lo-fi heydays. Since then, Micachu has been back here and there in small doses -- though with nothing as earthquaking as the debut
Jewellery record, I would argue. So it is with great delight that I stumbled upon the
I'm Not Dancing four-track EP from Tirzah, which was produced by Micachu and features some of her distinctive drum sounds and general aural simplicity. The EP is out now on
Greco-Roman.
The Grant Amour-directed music video for "I'm Not Dancing" is also delightfully awkward and fitting for the album title.