Next month, our recent Band To Watch GIFT will unveil their new album Illuminator. So far the psych-pop outfit has released singles “Wish Me Away,” “Going In Circles,” and “Later,” and now they’re back with the otherworldly offering “Light Runner.”

We named the sleek New York psych-pop combo GIFT a Band To Watch ahead of their upcoming LP Illuminator for Captured Tracks. Today the band offers up another preview of the record. “Later” is as crisp and aerodynamic as we’ve come to expect from GIFT, setting TJ Freda’s glowing melodic whisper against a hard-cracking beat and lush post-Madchester textures.

To echo one of the most contentiously discussed articles on this website, GIFT are a band. But that wasn’t as apparent on the New York outfit’s 2022 record, Momentary Presence, a solid debut that more or less functioned as a solo project for vocalist-guitarist TJ Freda. Not that Freda necessarily wanted to isolate himself to make that album, but it was more so born out of, to put it euphemistically, extenuating circumstances.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

In 2022, the NYC band GIFT released their debut album Momentary Presence, a set of shimmery and psychedelic songs that sometimes raced ahead with the propulsive post-punk/krautrock momentum of bands like DIIV. Today they announced that they’ve signed to Captured Tracks for the next one. We don’t have new album details yet, but new single “Wish Me Away” portends good things.