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August 18, 2026

5 new songs I’m excited about

5 songs, 17 min 26 sec

	By Lindsay Zoladz

L’Rain Guarionex Rodriguez for The New York Times

Dear listeners,

Has this ever happened to you: An artist releases an album you love, but you totally disagree with their choice of singles?

Such has been my experience with Phoebe Bridgers’s excellent new album, “Lost Weekend,” which I reviewed and named a Critic’s Pick last week. “Lost Boys,” the buoyant if somewhat lyrically abstract lead single, didn’t win me over the first few times I heard it, and though I’ve since grown to appreciate it more, I still don’t find it quite representative of what makes this album unique and moving. When “Lost Weekend” dropped on Friday, Bridgers released a video for another single, the synthy and cautiously optimistic “I Can’t Wait” — which I mentioned in my review is a rare song on the album that doesn’t click with me.

Some of this is surely because “Lost Weekend” is a superbly sequenced album, flowing fluidly between elation and grief, that deserves and rewards a complete, front-to-back listen. But it’s also because I have my own personal pick for the song I would have chosen as the lead single — and it kicks off today’s playlist of new music I’ve been enjoying. You’ll also hear some impassioned punk (from Sweeping Promises), some sumptuously retro-leaning soul (from the Womack Sisters) and the most beautiful song I have ever heard about a character from the early ’90s children’s show “Tiny Toon Adventures.”

I saw you slow dancing alone in your room,

Lindsay

Listen along while you read.

1. Phoebe Bridgers: “Bobby”

This is a song about falling in love with the momentum and grace of someone falling down several flights of stairs. And it sounds like it, too — rushing, surging, a little calamitous. Those who know a thing or two about Bridgers’s personal life will pick up on some references to her boyfriend, the filmmaker and comedian Bo Burnham — the opening line gestures toward his pandemic-era experimental comedy special “Inside” — but there is also something universal about the infatuated ecstasy that courses through “Bobby.” Bridgers leans into the obsession, the neediness and even the delusions that can accompany the first flushes of love: “Bobby, this could be the end of wanting,” she sings with a quiver in her voice. “I exist only if you’re watching.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

2. Ultra Lights: “Diamond Dreams”

A few weeks ago, friend of the newsletter and occasional guest Amplifier Dave Renard suggested I listen to an album he thought I’d like: “Pleasure’s All Yours,” the debut LP by the Atlanta band Ultra Lights. Dave was indeed correct — I like this album a lot. (Oh, to be seen and understood.) Though Ultra Lights is a relatively new project, its 42-year-old frontman and chief songwriter, John Robinson, is a veteran of several other underground bands and has been around long enough to make the sneering disillusionment that seeps out of his vocals sound particularly convincing. There’s certainly some of Pavement’s sass on “Diamond Dreams,” one of my favorite songs on “Pleasure’s All Yours,” but the stomping, garage-rock percussion and that taunting lead riff amount to something uniquely satisfying.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

3. Sweeping Promises: “Shooting Shadows”

Another tip of my hat to a friend who knows my taste: Thank you, Matt, for finally making me listen to Sweeping Promises. The punk duo — the guitarist/vocalist Lira Mondal and the drummer Caufield Schnug — just released its third album, “You Say I Romanticize,” and the whole thing is full of taut ferocity. The versatile force of Mondal’s voice is particularly on display on this lead track, its edges as jagged as a rusty buzz saw.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

4. L’Rain: “Elmyra”

On her excellent new album, “Fata Morgana,” the experimental musician Taja Cheek, who records as L’Rain, moves through a vast terrain of different genres, filtering them all through her distinctly fractured perspective. “I just don’t want to be put in a box,” she told Marcus J. Moore in a recent Times profile. “I feel limitless, and I want to remain that way and bring people with me into that feeling.” She also told Moore that this dreamy single was partly inspired by — of all things! — Elmyra Duff, a character from the ’90s cartoon series “Tiny Toon Adventures” who is known to squeeze the animals she loves so tightly that it hurts them. Accordingly, Cheek said, the song meditates on the question, “What does it mean to love too much or too hard?” The world needs a mash-up between this and the “Tiny Toon Adventures” theme song, if you ask me.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

5. The Womack Sisters: “If You Want Me”

Finally, listening to the lovely debut album by the Womack Sisters feels like entering a time warp — you have to keep reminding yourself, in awe, that this is not some unearthed gem from 1967 but an album recorded and released right here in the present day. The Womack Sisters (BG, Zeimani and Kucha) are, indeed, those Womacks: Their parents are Linda and Cecil Womack, of the singing and songwriting duo Womack & Womack, which means that Bobby Womack was their uncle, and Sam Cooke was their maternal grandfather. Despite that lineage, though, the Womack Sisters’ self-titled debut comes after a number of setbacks, false starts and defiant rebuttals to industry advice to embrace a trendier sound. As you can hear on this lushly arranged highlight, the trio finally found a winning approach by sticking to their family legacy of warm, soulful vocals and good old-fashioned craftsmanship.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

The Amplifier Playlist

“5 New Songs I’m Excited About” track list
Track 1: Phoebe Bridgers, “Bobby”
Track 2: Ultra Lights, “Diamond Dreams”
Track 3: Sweeping Promises, “Shooting Shadows”
Track 4: L’Rain, “Elmyra”
Track 5: The Womack Sisters, “If You Want Me”

Olivia Dean Gilbert Flores/Billboard, via Getty Images

Bonus Tracks

Talk about rising to meet the moment. Last night I caught the third of Olivia Dean’s sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, and it was one of those a-star-is-born performances where you’re like, “Oh yeah, this person is going to be a presence in popular music for a very long time.”

As I said in an Amplifier in January, when I (correctly) predicted that Dean would win the Grammy for best new artist, there is something infectious about the sheer joy she exudes when performing. I first witnessed it when she was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” last November, but it was something else experiencing it in person last night. Even when singing her most serious ballads of heartbreak, Dean could hardly suppress that can-you-believe-it smile that spreads so readily across her face.

I’ll recommend one of those ballads for today’s Bonus Track: “Let Alone the One You Love,” from Dean’s breakout 2025 album, “The Art of Loving.” Her performance of it was a highlight of the show, but so was the heartfelt speech she gave leading into it, urging everyone in the audience to give and seek the sort of active, soul-expanding love that bell hooks describes in her book “All About Love.” (She also told everyone to read it. Twice!) A pop star with a killer voice and electric charisma who uses her platform to recommend that everybody read bell hooks? Olivia Dean is the real deal.

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