Magdalena Bay are bringing back the heady concept album. Much of contemporary pop music is concerned with past trauma, astrological signs, and capital-V Vulnerability, and it feels like ridiculously conceptual pop music has fallen to the wayside in lieu of self-mythologization and not-so-subtle autobiography. On the other hand, the pop duo comprising Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin made a record about a character named True, whose body rejects a “disk upgrade” forced into their forehead by aliens, designed to bridge the speculative connections between humans and apes. Or something like that.

Magdalena Bay’s new album Imaginal Disk is coming in a few weeks. The two singles we’ve heard from it so far, “Death & Romance” and “Image,” have both been fire. They’ve got another new one out today called “Tunnel Vision,” which is also pretty fire.

Magdalena Bay’s great debut album Mercurial World earned them a spot on our Best Bands Of 2021 list. Their May 2024 single “Death & Romance” was declared one of the Best Songs Of The Week. Today, the goodness continues: The Los Angeles electro-pop duo’s sophomore album Imaginal Disk arrives in August, and a new single “Image” is out now.

Is chaos really chaos if you summon it on purpose? A few years ago, former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello went about the business of being a pop ingenue with determined seriousness and as much trying-hard as possible. She gave interviews about how she’d rather go out to dinner with her mom than attend an awards-show afterparty and how she never swore in her songs because she wanted to be a good role model for her sisters. Her singles, even when they didn’t sound theatrical, nevertheless had Broadway-audition energy: lots of effortful belting and vocal runs and romantic-lead scenarios. She was cast as Cinderella, which made sense. Now Cabello is showing up to Fallon interviews with Donatella Versace hair and telegenically irreverent stories about weekslong debauchery. More shockingly to pop heads, she pureed her showy, X Factor-trained voice into hyperpop goo on a blown-out, Gucci Mane-interpolating lead single that many people found genuinely offputting. (It has yet to crack the Billboard top 80.)

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.)

Magdalena Bay, the Los Angeles-based pop duo made up of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, have shared a new single, “Death & Romance.” It’s their first official single since the release of 2021’s Mercurial World, though they’ve kept busy in the years since then with extracurriculars, including a deluxe edition of that album and one of their mini mixes.

Right now, the experimental LA pop duo Magdalena Bay seem primed for a major breakout moment. Their 2021 debut album Mercurial World stirred up a whole lot of excitement, and they followed it with the seven-song EP Mini-Mix Vol. 3 last year. Earlier this week, Magdalena Bay posted a cryptic social-media teaser, hinting that they’ll drop a new album this summer.

Magdalena Bay, the giddy experimental pop duo from Los Angeles, blew up on the strength of their 2021 album Mercurial World. On the strength of that LP, Magdalena Bay toured with acts like Charli XCX and Flume, and they play Coachella for the first time tomorrow. Last year, Mercurial World got a deluxe edition. Before Mercurial World, though, Magdalena Bay found a cult audience with short EPs like 2019’s Mini Mix Vol. 1 and 2020’s Mini Mix Vol. 2. Today, with the duo’s Coachella set looming, they’ve dropped a third Mini Mix.

We knew Lil Yachty was a weird guy, but we didn’t know he was this weird. Yachty, the Atlanta rap eccentric, has always pushed his voice in as many different directions as possible — a tendency that’s led him from projects that range from Michigan Boat Boy, a 2021 mixtape where he teamed up with rappers from the Detroit and Flint underground scenes, to the movie based on the card game UNO that he was supposedly developing. A few months ago, Yachty had his biggest hit in years with “Poland,” an 88-second rap goof that became a viral sensation. So now Yachty has naturally followed that song with a full-on bugged-out psychedelic rock album.

Los Angeles electro-pop duo Magdalena Bay put out their full-length debut last fall, and in June they announced Mercurial World Deluxe out September 23 via Luminelle Recordings. It’ll feature new songs, remixes, alternative versions of album tracks, orchestral arrangements, and more “secrets” to be announced. At the time of announcement, they shared a remix of “Chaeri” by former PC Music affiliate Danny L Harle. Now, we’re getting the band’s first new music of 2022: “All You Do.”

Only in the past few months has seeing shows become a viable option once again. Thus, just like last year, it’s been difficult to figure out which new artists hold up on the road, or which ones have such a spectacular live show that it forces you to reconsider their recorded output. But we here at Stereogum are still as determined as ever to compile our annual Best New Bands list, in order to provide a look at the musicians that make us most excited about the future and organize them all in one place.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week (the eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight). This week’s countdown is below, and you can listen to a playlist of all our 5 Best Songs on Spotify.

Later this week, Los Angeles electro-pop duo Magdalena Bay will release their long-awaited full-length debut Mercurial World. Thus far, we’ve already posted the early singles “Chaeri,” “Secrets (Your Fire),” and “You Lose!” Today, the band has shared a bugged-out video for one more song, the loping/swaying “Hysterical Us.”

Magdalena Bay are releasing their impressive retro-pop volley Mercurial World in a few weeks. The duo has shared “Chaeri” and “Secrets (Your Fire)” from it so far. Today, they’re back with “You Lose!,” a thumping and distorted track that they say “is about trying to be a musician and feeling like time for success is always running out.” “It’s definitely melodramatic, describing ourselves as aging and nearing death, but sometimes it really feels that way,” they add. Watch a video for the track below.

The retro-pop duo Magdalena Bay are releasing their proper debut album, Mercurial World, in a couple months. They announced it with the dreamy “Chaeri” and today are back with another new track, “Secrets (Your Fire).” It’s gliding and smooth, another impeccable blend of a whole lot of R&B/pop tropes. “Secrets is about interconnectivity, privacy, and digital anxiety,” the band said in a statement. “It’s also about a need to keep sharing, to keep giving up more and more of yourself to faceless strangers in the hopes of making friends or fans.” Watch the track’s music video, in which the band rocks out inside a very ’00s desktop, below.

The Los Angeles pop duo Magdalena Bay has built up something of a cult following over the last couple years with a string of mixes and singles, the most fully-formed of which came in the form of 2020’s A Little Rhythm And A Wicked Feeling EP. Today, they’re announcing their debut full-length, Mercurial World, which will be out in October. “We spend all of our time together, and in some ways Mercurial World is about that particular sense of madness in containment,” Matthew Lewin, one half of the duo, said in a press release. “We live together and make art together; this immerses you in our creative, insular universe.”

The prolific Jordana is back. After she spent last year rolling out the dual-EP-turned-LP Something To Say To You, we named her one of the best new artists of 2020, as well as ranking the first half Something To Say as one of the year’s best EPs. All of that music was already a quick followup as is to her 2019 debut Classical Notions Of Happiness, and she’s not slowing down in 2021. Earlier this year, she returned with a new single called “Doubt Of Revival,” a collab with Ryan Woods. Today, she’s back with another.