5 Songs We Can't Stop Listening to is a collection of our newest favorite songs. And Every week we ask an artist that we love to tell us about the music they love.
Listen to the whole thing in the player below.
1. Electric Guest picks “Lying Has To Stop” by Soft Hair
This is 5 Songs We Can’t Stop Listening To. Every week we kick it off by asking one artist that we love to talk to us about a song that they love. Electric Guest is a band out of LA. They’ve only got 2 albums out but we’ve played songs from both and we love both of them. They are on tour with Portugal. The Man right now. Their new album is Plural. I’m here with Asa Taccone, lead singer of Electric Guest.
Justin Barney: Asa, what is one song that you can’t stop listening to?
Asa Taccone: Terrible question. It’s crazy how difficult that is.
Justin Barney: Dude, I know, I know. You can take your time.
Asa Taccone: Can I look at my phone?
Justin Barney: Yeah, I’d like to see what’s last played on your Spotify.
Asa Taccone: Oh, you know what? A group called Soft Hair – “Lying Has to Stop”
Justin Barney: What does it sound like?
Asa Taccone: I mean, it’s kind of his take on 70s soul, drippy funk stuff, but it’s done in really good taste.
Justin Barney: What’s the part of the song that really gets you?
Asa Taccone: We were just in the car yesterday and we were listening to all of these classic songs and how difficult it is to just get a groove that just is compelling…people are like, “Oh you just play the drums”…it’s extremely difficult even to get 3 people in there killing bass, drums and a shaker part and just, it’s super groovy. I think he does it well.
Justin Barney: Totally. Sometimes I’m thinking, like, you know songwriters – you just write songs and you know, there’s so many songs. Once you get into the craft of making a song it’s like, dude, it is hard.
Asa Taccone: Oh yeah. Like, literally 99% of my stuff is terrible and the world will never hear it. You pick the 10 best songs from the 45 that you wrote and they were mostly subpar. It’s a trip.
Justin Barney: And so this is in that, like, 0.1% that makes it?
Asa Taccone: It’s a solid song. It’s the last thing on my Spotify. It’s the last thing I was “feeling”.
- “Lying Has To Stop” was released in 2016 off Soft Hair’s self-titled debut.
- Listen if you like: Tame Impala, Electric Guest, groovy grooves
2. Ibeyi – “Away Away”
This segment is indebted to Ibeyi. That “Bum bum bum bum bum” that plays after my name, that’s from an Ibeyi song, “River.”
Ibeyi consists of two sisters Lisa-Kainde and Naomi Diaz. The music that they make, and this song have this transcendent quality to it.
Like somehow they pull back all the layers of music and when everything is laid bare there is this essence. Like something that has been there all along. Inside.
- Listen if you like: something organic, something simple, something incredibly complex
3. Amy O. – “Sunday Meal”
“Sunday Meal” is 2 minutes and 18 seconds long. It deals with the death of Amy O’s grandma. A whole lifetime together condensed into this one, beautiful two-minute memory.
It starts wistful and slow. Remembering the weirdness of saying goodbye to a body and afterwards driving home.
Then, in the middle it doubles the tempo, almost realizing its own time constraint and speeding forward in double time, cramming in all the memories, inside jokes, and anecdotes before it too reaches an inevitable end.
- Amy O.’s new album, “Elastic” will be out on August 4th via Winspear.
- Listen if you like: Girlpool, Waxahatchee, Frankie Cosmos
4. Kacy Hill – “Hard To Love”
Justin Barney: I’m here with Alyssa. Alyssa, what do you do at 88Nine?
Alyssa Feuerer: I’m the Marketing Director here at 88Nine.
Justin Barney: And also a big music lover. So what is one song you can’t stop listening to?
Alyssa Feuerer: The song that I cannot stop listening to right now is “Hard Love” by Kacy Hill.
Justin Barney: Okay, I know Kacy Hill, but I don’t know this song. What do you like about it?
Alyssa Feuerer: I love all things electro-pop with strong female vocals. Naked and Famous, Chvrches, Mates of State, and I feel like she falls into that genre as well.
It’s such a great song for the summer for me. I love songs that have a really strong build-up with a pounding melody. And this one delivers.
It’s a song that I blast in the car in the morning when I need a good energy boost or I feel like singing. So it’s a good upbeat, give-me-some-energy type of song.
- Kacy Hill’s new album, “Like A Woman” will be released on June 30th via Getting Out Of Our Dreams Inc./Def Jam Recordings.
- Listen if you like: Chvrches, electro-pop with female vocals, upbeat energy songs
5. Slaughter Beach, Dog – “Building the Ark”
I love having bands that are like, my band. You know what I’m saying?
You feel like no one else in the world knows about this band but you and maybe a small group of loners and weirdos that are like you.
Slaughter Beach, Dog is one of those bands for me. Their music is specific and has feeling, but their lead singer delivers it so plain and monotone.
Others might hear it and say it’s too slow or boring, or that he can’t sing. And that’s fine with me because I love it.
This song won’t be everyone’s favorite song, but it’s mine. And maybe it will be yours too.
- “Building the Ark” will be released on Slaughter Beach, Dog’s new EP, “Motorcycle.Jpg”
- Listen if you like: Modern Baseball, low key deliveries, great songwriting
5. Fleet Foxes – “I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar”
This is the first song off the new Fleet Foxes album, and the first time that I heard it I was blown away. Blown away at how it moves; From these tiny nooks and crannys to these huge walls of beauty.
Recently, I was able to interview lead singer and songwriter Robin Pecknold.
I asked him how he was able to write a song like this, and this is what he said:
Robin Pecknold (Over the telephone): I took the whole idea, like, quote-on-quote “writing songs” very literally and I would write songs without music or lyrics attached. It was as if I was describing, like, if you played me a song and I had to write words that were just describing that song.
Justin Barney: Could you give me an example of what you were writing?
Robin Pecknold: It would be like, a paragraph just using abstract language or “this instrument comes in here and everything falls away” and “a new plateau”.
Justin Barney: That is so interesting. So, like, a literary way of writing a song. That’s crazy.
That’s lead singer of Fleet Foxes, Robin Pecknold, on how he was able to write this song. This is “I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar” by Fleet Foxes.
- Fleet Foxes new album, "Crack-Up" is out now.
- Listen if you like: big soundscapes, found sound, true beauty
5. Girlpool – “123”
Girlpool’s music is like an inner voice externalized. Part lullaby and part anthem, “123” bass line humms you off into a dream as its guitar twinkles over your head and the drums, a new addition for Girlpool, crash in and throughout giving a heartbeat to a song that already has so much heart already.
Girlpool reaches perfection in “123”
- Girlpool’s new album, “Powerplant” will be out on May 12th.
- Listen if you like: Frankie Cosmos, Alvvays, the song “Only In Dreams” by Weezer
