NPR Music - beabadoobee, The Rolling Stones, Four Tet, more

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

On her stellar new single, “Switchblade,” beabadoobee shreds ‘90s style. The Rolling Stones have still got it on their latest album, Foreign Tongues. And Four Tet surprises us with a new “wingdings” project. We’ve got all that and more as we share our picks for the best new songs of the week.NPR Music’s Sheldon Pearce joins host Robin Hilton.Featured artists and songs:(00:00) Intro(01:20) beabadoobee: “Switchblade” (08:31) Bonobo & Arooj Aftab: “Fire on the Water”(15:09) The Rolling Stones: “Ringing Hollow” (25:31) L’rain: “borderline”(33:02) Four Tet: "track 3"(40:35) Ela Minus and Nick León: “espiral”Support the show with a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from the NPR Music Podcast, your one-stop shop for all things and the music nerdverse. You get new episodes of all songs considered in this feed every Tuesday. Alt Latino, we've got that every Wednesday, and then we close out every week with New Music Friday. NPR Music, also, where you will find the much better than anything I could ever possibly do, reviews and writings of Sheldon Pierce. Sheldon. Hello, Robin.

This is when you're supposed to say, no, come on, man. It's actually true, isn't it? Hey, hey, I don't want to lie to the people. So, Sheldon, we just had, let's see, we did the best songs of the year so far. That was a week or two ago. We did a couple theme shows on road trip songs and Rose Wave. But it's been a minute since we just shared some totally new stuff. Yeah.

The new songs we're loving. So that's what we're doing on this episode. The Best New Songs Out Now. And I want to start with a song that just dropped from Bebadooby. Okay. In fact, this show is going up a little late today because I really wanted to play the song. It is so good. And we couldn't get it until noon Eastern.

So that's why the show is going up a little late. It's called Switchblade. And it is the second single from Beba Doobie's upcoming album, Pylon. I've only heard the singles that are out. There's this one and there's one other one called Sun is Set, but so far, I think this is some of the best stuff she's ever done. Oh. Again, the song is called Switchblade.

We'll check it out here and we can talk more about it when we come back. So good. Bibadubi did not need to level up, but really leveling up here, I think, on this one. So 90s. Yeah. An era I am always happy to revisit. Love the guitars. There's nice and gritty.

There's like an urgency, a drive in this song and in the other single, I think, that I've not quite heard in any of her earlier work. Just like a slightly sharper edge. I mean, this isn't an entirely new sound for Biba Dube, but the last couple of records definitely leaned more pop. Yeah, yeah. This sounds a lot more like the breakout stuff. Yeah. In terms of its almost grunginess, there's a scuzzy quality to this song that has. She has sort of distanced herself recently.

You say leveling up, I think of it as sort of like finding your center. It feels more like moving directly inward and having a greater understanding of what your music does and reaching your full potential that way. There is some quality to this song that feels inherent to all of her best music and like she is tapping directly into that, the balance of sort of light and dark, the way the vocal. sort of hover in the air, but the guitars are so heavy and they're just a little dirty, right? There's a rawness to it, and it plays with the idea that like vulnerability can be both sides of that coin. Yeah, I mean, that's what the song is about in some ways. Bibadubi has said that, you know, it's about trying to find your way in the world and like,

you know, when you're up against something, do you run or do you fight? How do you manage your anxieties and your doubts? You know, do you just live with blinders on or do you acknowledge what you see around you and maybe try to do something about it? And at the end of it all, it's about understanding that, you know, the path towards self-acceptance and happiness and, you know, self-actualization, whatever. Yeah. You will get there by first understanding that it's going to be awful, probably, the entire journey, that there will be paying. Yeah.

You know, there will be grief, there will be suffering and doubt and all that. And that's okay. It's part of this. Yeah, that kind of thing does feel inherent to her music. I think it's probably the core appeal of Bibadubi if you're a longtime listener. What's interesting to me about this is it's funny because they say that the reason why we have fewer rock bands is because there are less garages for people to play out of. And that's why we have so much bedroom pop because the. The young musicians are having to play in their bedrooms and they can't get loud in their garages.

I've never heard that. Yeah. I can't believe this is the first time I'm hearing that theory. But count me in. I'm going to sign on to that. But to me, this song feels like it's trying to marry those two different realities. There's an aspect of this that feels very of the 90s era, right, very angsty, very let's go to the garage and play loud and get our feelings out. But there is also still like the bedroom pop sensibility of the other stuff that she does where it is very in your own head, maybe in your closet, sort of playing quietly to yourself.

Yeah. And trying to self-actualize in a compressed space. Well, so an impressive list of collaborators on this album, again, the album's called Pylon. You got Haley Williams, Maddie Healy. Wow. Brendan Yates, turn Stiles Frontman, Brendan Yates, a bunch of others. pile on the album is out on September 18th, and that song again is called Switchblade. Really love the direction she's taking.

I'm going to take it a little bit of a different direction. Bonobo, the English musician, producer and DJ, who's now based in Los Angeles, has a new record coming out called Distance in Static this fall. There are two singles out, Me and You and Drift. But alongside Drift, he released sort of the same. centerpiece of this record and a song that sounds a little bit different than a lot of the stuff he's done. It's a collaboration with the Pakistani American artist Arouge Aftab. It's called Fire on the Water. I was like, okay, so this is going to, lots of electronics. Some of his

music can be pretty frenetic and always moving. But then I guess you named Jacka Rouge Rhofftop and then say, okay, well, we're in for something totally different. Right. That's why I sort of had to lead with, hey, if you know what Bonobo's stuff normally sounds like, this does not sound a lot like that. I mean, he's had more forays into jazz in recent years than in the past. You know, he started out doing a lot more trip hoppy stuff and he's embraced world music. He He does have a very expansive catalog, but to me, this song sounds like him migrating into the night rain space that Arrugge Aftab lives in. Yeah. This sort of atmospheric, almost otherworldly realm that her vocals sort of live in.

There's a disembodied quality to them that is just so ethereal that he really builds a world around in this song. I mean, that's the thing with her voice. You want to make anything more wondrous and mysterious and just gorgeous. Just add a Rouge out to the mix and it's instantly better. So have you heard the rest of the record or the other singles? Like, this is an outlier or no? He has said that they came and they recorded this song together in Neil Young's Broken Arrow Ranch Studio. And after he heard it, he had an idea for the record.

So it is sort of more muted in color, a little bit softer. less frenetic, as you said, but nothing sort of as spectral as this. So she's singing in her, do you know what the song's about? She has said that she took the lyrics from poetry written by her friend, Yazra Risvi, and that the lyrics live in that tender place where time keeps moving but desire remains, that there can still be fire on the water. I think you do get the sense of heat and fluidity existing in the same space. There is an aridness to the song, but also just a lightness.

And I think... Something, also the sense of something slipping away. Yes. Just like you can't quite... You're trying to hold on to whatever it is, and it's always like evaporating in your hands. There's an elusiveness to it. I think the idea of time continuing to move, and desire, holding on to desire, there is a clear tension there.

The idea that even though everything is sort of ephemeral in a certain sense, there is an aspect of everything that stays with you. And I think that is the tension in the title and in the way that the song sort of plays. Well, I totally miss that Bonobo has a new record coming out of it. So again, it's called Distance and Static. Yes. Yeah. And it looks like it is out on September 11th.

So I want to talk about the Rolling Stones. Oh, okay. Do you? I do. They just dropped a new album called Foreign Tongues. I'm sure you already know that. Yes. And I think if there's a top level headline, it is the Rolling Stones still got it.

Yeah. Still got it, which is extraordinary. And Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, they're both 82 years old, Ronnie Wood, Amir Puppet, 79. Yeah. And when I say they still got it, I'm not saying that they still got it for being in their 80s. or I'm not just giving them a buy because they're the Rolling Stones, and we'll listen to anything that the Rolling Stones and just conclude by default that it's amazing.

I mean, it is genuinely great. You listen to this album, again, it's called Foreign Tongues. I think it stands up against anything that they've done in the last, you know, in their 60 years of putting out music. So the Stones, you know, they've tried lots of different things. Everything from reggae to disco, right? This album, Four in Tungs, maybe in the band's most classic lane, the most classic sound, very bluesy, honky-tong kind of mix of rockers and ballads.

I want to play one of the more ballady slower songs. It's called Ringing Hollow. And have you listened to the album? I have not listened to it yet. So this one's called Ringing Hollow. And just for some context going into it, this is Mick Jagger's love letter to America. So at the top of the song here, when you hear him say, I fell in love with you before we ever met, he's talking about America. Right.

Again, it's called ringing hollow. I'm getting a little bit of like just waiting on a friend. They've got a song called Farway Eyes from the album, some girls kind of shuffles along like this. Even a touch of like at the end there, just a little bit of you can't always get what you want, that side of the stones. Yeah.

But can we talk about Mick Jagger's voice? Oh my God. Incredible. You know, like I will say like apart from the falsetto he had kind of, at the end there. He's keeping it in a slightly lower register for him. Yeah. But I hear this and I think, it sounds like he could record Beast of Burden right now. Like, it sounds like he could do honky tonk woman or even start me up.

Clearly not retiring anytime soon, right? Like, when you're still this locked in, there's no reason to take a step back. That's it, locked in. And still so inspired. You know, like I saw these guys, I went to this album launch party. a couple months ago up in New York and the band was there. And just the energy level that they had coming out on stage and joking with everybody and having fun with each other. Yeah.

It was like they were 25 years old and just starting out. Just the energy level was incredible and so inspiring. But, I mean, that's what keeps them going. Obviously, they haven't had anything that they've needed to prove to anybody for decades. Of course. But they still have that drive. They still want to create. There's something so poetic about a quintessential band like the Rolling Stones still clearly loving being a band, right?

Yeah. Like you listen to this song and you're like, these are guys who love to play together. That's why they have no intention of stopping. They love this. And that is what is radiating out of this song for me, first and foremost, the fact that these guys not just have it, but want to do it and want to do it because they, love being together. But then you go another layer deep. You talk about how this sounds like classic Rolling Stone stuff.

You listen to the message of the song and you're like, you couldn't do it any other way, right? This is a song about sort of like a loss of the American dream, essentially. They are performing in classic American styles that they built their catalog upon. And you hear it in the way that this song. plays out. There was a love of the culture of what America meant from across the pond, right? They embraced that with their music. And then to see what it's become, you can hear the shift to perform in those styles, to do it so well, and then to levy this critique against the ways in which the

nation has changed since they started. It feels like so many things are aligning with this song in And just perfect synchronization. You know, the funny thing about them, too, is 30 years ago, we were saying, gosh, just so lucky to still have them. Yeah. And here we are 30 years later. Yeah. It's still like, or I remember a friend of mine telling me during one of their tours,

I'm going to say it was like maybe in the very early 2000. It's like, gosh, got to see him while you still can, man. Yeah. And here we are. Well, I mean, you know, you know, with classic rockers, you can't take any amount of time for granted. No, but my God, if Keith's still going, if Keith's still going, we all got a chance. Truly. I'm going to go a bit younger, you know.

All right. A little bit younger. And I want to play something by Lorraine, that's L-A-I-N. She's a Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist and composer, who to me has become one of the most fascinating experimental artists of the 2020s. She's got a new album coming out called Fatta Morgana, and I want to hear Borderline. That's incredible. I mean, that build at the end there, I just like, what are you doing? And then it kind of got a little radio head just kind of just towards the end there in a really cool way.

So when the first single from the Solar Cycle came out, we played that on the show a while back. And that song's really like that just grabs you by the throat. Yeah. throws you to the ground, that song. Yeah. And I had read that this is maybe Lorraine's most intimate album yet. And I heard Soul Psycho, I thought, really? Is it?

I'm hearing it a little bit more on this one. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it gets big, but it is a little bit more of that intimacy. Yeah, I think this song, to me, is Lorraine at her psychedelic best. There is just so much detail in this one, so much nuance. You kind of get pulled into a... a riptide early on in this song. And you hear her faintly in the background

as all of this like shimmering music is happening like right in front of your face. But then to your point it like just explodes into like these glitchy electronics and then just crazy. But it's happening in this way. It's sort of like the frog in the pot of boiling water where you're like you're in it and then you suddenly realize, wait a minute, I'm completely on fire right now.

You know, like, it's incredible. Yeah, it's, it's just an unbelievable sort of disorienting kind of experience. It's like, what are the, what do they call those pictures where it's, it's like there's a hidden, there's supposed to be a hidden image. Magic, magic image. Yeah, there's like a, you're supposed to like focus really closely on a pattern and you'll see the image emerge. Magic eye or something like that. It's kind of like that where you can feel your eyes trying to focus in on the wherever this image is. And then by the time you lock out of that, you're, you are so disoriented.

I would say, you know, as different as the two singles are, what I'm hearing in Lorraine's music, the direction that she's taking here is they're both incredibly expansive songs. Yeah, the scale of this one does feel a bit grander than the previous ones. It's one of my favorite records of the year so far. I'm really looking forward to people hearing it. And that album, Fatima, so that's out August 14th, I think, Fathamorgana is? Yeah. Great album title, too. I think, isn't that the illusion where it looks like things are floating over the sea,

some optical illusion? Very cool. Well, I've got something that I think is going to fit perfectly with the Lorraine song. Did you see that Foretack very quietly released a new album? I mean, it's not, okay, so Fortet, it's technically not under the Fortet name. Fortet is the project of Kieran Hebden. I think it's fair to call him one of the most influential and revered electronic artists of the past 25 years or so. And he's released music under a bunch of different names, including one that nobody can pronounce because it's written, you know, entirely of a made-up font.

Yeah, people call the Wing-Dings fine. It's technically not Wing-Dings, but it's literally not wing-dings, but it's written. It looks a lot like it. Just all these little symbols. And that's what this new project has been released under the Wingdings name, I guess. You would call it. The album also in that font, all the songs in that font, if you look at it like a picture of it, you look online, it just makes your eyes cross. You talk about an optical.

You're trying to, like, lock in and see something. It's seeing it all laid out like that mush together is just completely disorienting. But anyway, in June, he very quietly released a vinyl-only edition of this album, and it's the first ever full-length album under the Wing Ding's name. Almost nobody figured out that the album was even out there, that it had been released on vinyl. But it's out now on streaming services. Just put it out on streaming services. It's pretty awesome. No idea what it's called.

No idea what the song is actually called. I'll just say it is the third track from the album. You talk about ear candy So much going on in that and all the channels and just flitting all around and And there are so many fakeouts in this song too like where you think some massive drops about to come or it's going to turn in a certain direction And then he'll like completely pull back or yank the rug out from under you while you're listening and Just such a gift for Infusing mystery in all of the music and wonder and and and just not knowing where anything and surprise

is genuinely not knowing where anything's going to go. Yeah, it's interesting because it sort of inches along the whole time. Yeah, yeah. Those little skittering drums. Yeah. But, man, you say there's no drop, but it just rips still, man. I hear that. There's a real undercurrent to it that is just throbbing the whole time.

Even as it draws your ear in all these little directions, there's sort of like the figure. pattern of like Simon tiles that go off in the background at certain phases. There's there are the little chimes that seem to just tinker around the edges. Yeah. But and sometimes it bottoms out, right? Yeah. And he brings it back into focus. But you never lose that undercurrent no matter which direct.

However far out he ventures, it'll always slow you, slowly draw you back. into that little. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing he does so well. Like, he has this great way of sort of turning your brain inside out while at the same time calming you. Like, it's so calming and transporting and meditative. But at the same time, your brain is just melting, listening to all the incredible sounds

that he has going on. The mix is just next level, too. But you're probably saying, but Robin, how can I find this thing if you don't know what it's called or what the album's called or even how to pronounce the band name. If you just search for Forte and Wing Dings, you'll find it. I bought it on band camp. Misheldon, you've got one more thing you want to play. Yeah, I want to stay in electronic music and I want to go out on a heater.

It's from Ella Minus and Nick Leon. And they've got a new collaborative EP that's coming out in August. It's called Ke la Paso Amigos. What Happened to My Friends? Minus is a Colombian polymath, probably one of the most interesting artists in electronic music right now. Leon, not far behind her, formerly a South Florida producer now based in New York. Both released great albums last year, Dia for Minus, a tropical entropy for Leon. They've come together, they're longtime friends, and they're releasing this EP.

And the first single called Esperal, it just, it just, hits you so hard. Well, I haven't heard this song yet. I think of a lot of L. A.m. Minus' stuff being a little dreamier, maybe, but you're saying this one's got a little more drive to it? Yeah. This is a balance between her sound and Nick Leon's sound, which he is a Miami guy. There's a sort of like island pop vibe to the electronic music that he makes, very clubby, very driving, but also very sort of like muted and mellow as befitting sort of like a tropical environment. That stuff really comes forward on his record that he released last year.

And it feels like they are meeting in the middle on this record. Well, we'll go out on this again. It's called Esperol and remind me the EP again. And that is out, August 7th. All right, thanks, Sheldon. Always a great hang. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. And you're listening to All Songs Considered from NPR Music.