Anxious have never seemed too interested in keeping their guitars at a reasonable volume, but “Secret Weapon” pushes that instinct into blown-out territory. The band’s latest single is a thick, riff-driven blast of alternative rock, pairing huge guitars with the widescreen melodic instincts that defined 2025’s Bambi. Rather than shaping their sound around the trends and metrics currently driving the industry, Anxious use the song to criticize the machinery behind modern music itself: guitarist and co-vocalist Dante Melucci describes its “secret weapon” as the industry’s reliance on statistics, trends, and formulas to determine what an artist should sound like. — H. Parada
Beach House have returned with their first new song in four years: a gorgeous cover of Robert Lester Folsom’s “April Suzanne” for his 50th-anniversary compilation Music and Dreams. In typical Beach House fashion, the song blooms patiently, embracing an ethereal presentation of Folsom’s open-road songwriting. The way the tones linger and dissolve adds a bit of tension, but with so much serenity all around, it’s hard not to surrender to the band’s sublime interpretation. — Paolo Ragusa
Bodywash have always known how to make their shoegaze and dream-pop feel weightless, but “Lapsang” gives that haze a distinctly lived-in quality. The Montreal duo’s latest single drifts between chiming guitars, soft vocals, and a gently propulsive rhythm, creating a song that feels both dreamy and grounded in place. Written as an ode to Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood, where vocalist and guitarist Chris Steward spent years waiting for the 55 bus, “Lapsang” turns an ordinary stretch of city life into something quietly cinematic. It’s an apt introduction to Laughing at Noise, the duo’s upcoming third album, which finds them reckoning with the passage of time, changing surroundings, and the complicated process of trying to build a life in the city that shaped them. — H. Parada
A year after Bleeds turned Wednesday’s knack for Southern-rock storytelling into some of their most expansive songs yet, “June 2 (Early Version)” offers a glimpse at the record before it fully took shape. Produced by Kenneth Blume, the early version begins with subdued vocals and a softer, more meditative arrangement, before gradually giving way to atmospheric feedback, distorted guitars, and soaring vocals. That slow escalation makes the track feel less like a polished alternate take and more like a window into Wednesday’s songwriting process, preserving the tension between intimacy and catharsis that made Bleeds so striking in the first place. The track appears on Bleeds Deluxe, a 20-track anniversary edition featuring demos, remixes, and early versions of the 2025 album. — H. Parada