Fresh Rotation | 4 songs the JME team is listening to right now

Each and every week the JME team handpicks the juiciest new tunes from local, regional, national and international artists to add into our tasty, tall-glass-of-a-listening-experience that is our monthly Fresh Squeeze playlist. Each song is chosen with intention. And so we often feel like they are worthy of a broader discussion (or at least a bit of context).

Here are four songs that the JME team is listening to this week (all of which appear on April’s Fresh Squeeze playlist).

“Struck By Lightning” by The Chats

I guess we’re not on “smoko” anymore! The Chats’ singer and bassist Eamon Sandwith has shaped up his iconic mullet and slapped us with “Struck By Lightning,” the newest single from the Australian shred-punkers. Consistently short and sharp, The Chats are faster and trashier than ever in the one-minute and forty-second single, their first new release since the band’s 2020 debut full-length High Risk Behaviour. New guitarist, Josh Hardy, has no problem keeping up with the rowdy nature of the drunken dummies and fits his own feral noise to the group. Infectious as their music is, The Chats have become their own epidemic, spreading feral punk to anyone with a humorous lust for life. The band is currently on tour in the UK and the crowd will 100% be punching each other in the face to this song.–Rain Henderson 

-Stream on Apple Music

-Stream on Tidal

-Stream on Spotify

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“Body Clock” by Harkin 

Katie Harkin is a beautiful creative enigma, popping up sporadically from the depths of her own paradise bringing to the surface hopeful but moody bops like “Body Clock,” a song that graciously opens a window to the ruminations of the UK-based multi-instrumentalist. “Body Clock” is the first single off of Harkin’s second album Honeymoon Suite (out June 17) on Hand Mirror, a record label she owns and operates from her Leeds home. Harkin has made a name for herself in the US playing in the touring bands of powerhouses like Sleater-Kinney and Courtney Barnett, but she isn’t anybody’s deuteragonist. “Body Clock” brings something familiar from her first self-titled record, then takes it up a notch with dark-wave synth rhythms that ride the line between industrial and dream pop. “Tell me,” she croons, “Who are you putting yourself in harm’s way for?” Her lyrical one-liners offer perfectly ambiguous prompts for listeners to find themselves in. Like an autostereogram, the lush and colorful track is begging for you to discover the picture beneath the surface.–Glenn Michael Van Dyke

-Stream on Apple Music

-Stream on Tidal 

-Stream on Spotify

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“How The Story Goes” by Big K.R.I.T., Wiz Khalifa, & Girl Talk 

Where do I start with “How The Story Goes,” a new collaboration from a trio of established voices in hip-hop? It’s a great introduction to hit-making DJ Girl Talk. It also feels like 2010 all over again, as it features two artists who emerged from that year’s stacked class. A topnotch roster putting it all together over sunny production makes “How The Story Goes” a perfect precursor to the spring madness that everyone is patiently waiting to fall into. The song has a tendency to inflict old feelings, but also anticipation for this trio’s collaborative full-length (Full Court Press, out April 8 on Asylum/Taylor Gang). Hopefully a tour is in order. Oh wait, there is a tour! Wiz Khalifa and Big K.R.I.T. will join Girl Talk for a handful of dates on his upcoming North American tour. Apologies for this winding review. But this is the jam. Hit play!–Al Pete

-Stream on Apple Music

-Stream on Tidal

-Stream on Spotify

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“Cannibal Capital” by Guerilla Toss

Upstate New York art-rock trio Guerilla Toss paints in expressive, abstract strokes on “Cannibal Capital,” a single from the group’s newly released Sub Pop debut Famously Alive. Opening with a splatter-paint job of dissonant noise, “Cannibal Capital” is an enjoyably surrealist experiment in pop, built upon acrylic layers of plucky bass-and-guitar motifs and watercolor smears of synth lines and bleep-blop samples. “Anti health, wealth of happiness stolen / No one else feels ever this broken,” Toss lyricist Kassie Carlson sings, smiling through gritted teeth to lament an economy of emotions that can feel increasingly inequitable in our modern digital age. Full of surprising twists and turns, “Cannibal Capital” is a useful escape for anyone feeling especially taxed by both the monotony and tedium of being alive.–Matthew Shaw 

-Stream on Apple Music

-Stream on Tidal

-Stream on Spotify