Entertainment
Laurel Shells
featuring laurel, tomorrows tulips, and more of our fave music discoveries!
Is there anything better than finding your favorite new artist on a summer Friday? Meet Australian-by-way-of-Zimbabwe hip-hop star in the making Tkay Maidza, who spits lightning-quick rhymes over lava beats. Think: Azealia Banks's "212" meets M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." Sweet spot alert!
Lily & Madeleine - "The Wolf Is Free"
Indianapolis-born sisters Lily & Madeleine fold stunning harmonies into brushed drums, dreamy strings, and soft keys—and fade into you in the process.
We're not sure where this gorgeous video was shot, but if we find out that it was in the tiny U.K. town between Southampton and Portsmouth where 20-year-old singer-songwriter-producer Laurel is from, we're booking our flights, stat. Fresh and fuzzy, the scenes provide the perfect visuals for the 20-year-old's haunting mix of piano, strings, beats, and vocals that alternate between solid, liquid, and vapor in the span of one lyric.
Literary references abound in the work of Natalie Mering, who's worked with Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and Jackie-O Motherfucker. For one, her project's name is a not-so-hidden homage to Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's first novel. Her new album, The Innocents, out October 21 on Mexican Summer, takes its name from a 1961 gothic horror film that was based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. But the most obvious reference lies in her quavering alto, which floats above an intriguing mix of conventional instrumentation and electronics, tape collages, and delay effects to create a compelling update of '70s psyche-folk.
Tomorrows Tulips - "Glued to You"
When a song begins with a slowly exhaled lyric like "I am such a mess" overtop a drone-y, bass-y fuzz line that threatens to drop out at any second, you know things are about to get interesting.
