Norwegian band GISKE shared their new single "August Came" today, and the music instantly triggers that highly specific, slightly panicked realization that summer is already decaying even as you stand in the afternoon sun. https://open.spotify.com/track/6kH1Q940HqJU58unxSTO04?si=78c697a4b2cd40b1 The group consisting of former Margarets members Alex Rinde, Rune Berg, and Ronnie MAG Larsen draws heavy inspiration from their namesake, a small island where isolation is an unavoidable geographic reality....

With "A Piece of Me," Western Australia’s Bailey Perrie offers up a pop rock grenade with the pin already pulled, cleverly disguised as a twisted love song. It thunders forward with a cinematic, arena-ready confidence that makes its raw, emotionally brutalist core all the more disarming. The effect is something like finding a tear-stained diary page taped to the side of a massive firework...