Songs You Need In Your Life This Week
Tracks we love right now, in no particular order.
Songs You Need In Your Life This Week

Each week, The FADER staff rounds up the songs we can't get enough of. Here they are, in no particular order. Listen on our Spotify and Apple Music playlists, or hear them all below.

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Kendrick Lamar, "tv off"

You can already picture it: About midway through Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance, the marching band spread across the field begins to play the ominous opening notes of the beat switch that kicks off midway through “tv off.” It’s the beginning of the most West Coast section of a song that is very West Coast, from an album that is West Coast through and through — you can hear the halftime show director cueing it up already. Then again, Lamar is still more than capable of keeping us guessing. The album did drop by surprise, and who could have predicted how he screams “MUSTAAAAARD,” the song’s producer, like Elmer Fudd at Bugs Bunny? —Jordan Darville

Jeff Parker feat. Anna Butterss, Jay Bellerose, and Josh Johnson, "Freakadelic"

Guitarist/composer Jeff Parker’s latest masterwork, The Way Out of Easy, is an album in four parts, featuring double bassist Anna Butterss, percussionist Jay Bellerose, and saxophonist Josh Johnson, out now in physical form and on December 12 digitally. “Freakadelic,” the project’s 24-minute opener, is a slowly building saga of understated, psychedelic funk fusion. Parker mainly plays a backing role here — his tastefully dissonant comping low in the mix compared to Butterss and Bellerose’s hypnotical pocket groove and Johnson’s electrified melodies. —Raphael Helfand

HiTech, "Shadowrealm"

Scrolling down the largely lifeless Coachella line-up poster last week, I was happy to see HiTech's name among the rising stars in small print. If anyone can inject some energy into the clumsily branded desert landscape, it is the Detroit group. “Shadowrealm” is another turbo-charged party anthem from the ghettotech crew, who are seemingly writing a thesis on ass-shaking, one banger at a time. Those influencers won’t know what’s hit them. —David Renshaw

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james K, "Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream"

There are so many adjectives stuffed in the title of enigmatic New York City-based producer james K’s latest release, and yet every single one of them applies. The track is the plushiest cascade of drum and bass club beats brought alive by a backing choir of clicking cicadas and james K’s eerie, windswept vocals. The biggest twist is that in the end it morphs into a cover of bôa’s “duvet,” its now TikTok-infamous melody gliding like a seamless shift in a dream. —Steffanee Wang

Knifeplay, "Spirit Echo"

Knifeplay’s 2022 breakthrough album Animal Drowning was lush and heavy, saturated with deep textures and thick layers of noise that felt like wading through a humid forest. Their latest cut, “Spirit Echo,” however is a nine-minute odyssey of ambient folk that is sprawling and delicate, reflecting the kind of quiet slumber that the end of the year brings. It’s an ambitious and beautiful track, starting off with sparse acoustic guitars and subtle drumming before ending as a crescendo of soft noise. —Cady Siregar

fakemink, "bite my lip"

The prolific U.K. rapper’s newest song is the latest in a string of heartsick, melodic rap ballads. A synth melody built for an underground rave threatens to overwhelm fakemink’s hushed vocals throughout, as he describes a standoff in the face of potential love: “My phone gon’ blow up the way she blowin’ it,” he brags at the beginning, before a bitter admission: “I love how you lie to me, so sweet.” —JD

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Pilgrim Raid, "High Positive"

The latest track from the experimental Vietnamese act has many faces. It begins as a cut of blown-out noise-rap before transitioning into a nu-dubstep/hardstyle barrage; a rimshot signals a brief intermission into a bed of synths, before the red-peaking synths come back harder than ever. Everything about the song resembles a car crash, its elements colliding against each other, warped and jagged and creating fusions where there shouldn’t be. —JD

Sakura Tsuruta, “Onyx”

A standout from Tokyo-based producer Sakura Tsuruta’s new album Gems, “Onyx” is a tight five minutes of broken beats and twinkling synths. Remarkably precise in her attacks and decays, Sakura commands the ebbs and flows of her electronics — inspired by “the symbolic depth of gemstones,” according to the record’s bio — in a manner that rewards both passive head bobbing and deep listening. —RH

Fabiano do Nascimento, "Feijoada"

Last summer, Rio-raised, Los Angeles-based guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento brought together a quartet of elite fusion players — saxophonist Sam Gendel, bassist Gabe Noel, and drummer Tamir Barzilay — for a seated show at L.A.’s Lodge Room. Solstice Concert, a live recording of the performance, is due out next February, and its lead single captures the ad-hoc interplay between the four world-class musicians. Gendel’s slinky soprano sax glides on Noel, Nascimento, and Barzilay’s polyrhythmic slipstream, while Nascimento delivers intricate harmonies on his seven-string, providing both engine and colorful setting for Gendel’s frantic ride. —RH

Oklou, "Choke Enough"

2025 will see the release of Oklou's eagerly-anticipated debut album. "Choke Enough" is the title track from the album (due on February 7 via True Panther) and finds the French vocalist and composer taking dramatic steps to bust out of a fugue state. "My foot doesn't know it’s on the pedal," she sings as synths gently lap at the edge of her words. Going a step further, she threatens to crash a car just to “take a photo.” The ambient textures of “Choke Enough” mirror the same feeling Oklou is getting at, the slipstream of life making you feel like a passenger in your own story. Sometimes all it takes to break the malaise is a great song. —DR

Glixen, "lick the star"

“Lick The Star,” presumably named after Sofia Coppola's early-career short film, finds Phoenix-based band Glixen crank up the volume and blast their way through life's debris. While many of Glixen's shoegazer peers are seemingly content with hiding behind the smoke and pedal boards, Glixen embrace the quiet-loud dynamism to create a coruscating noise. —DR

Songs You Need In Your Life This Week