Black Belt Eagle Scout, Lil Uzi Vert, Wild Pink: Here are 6 new songs to start your weekend

Star Tracks compiles the most interesting new music from a broad range of established and emerging artists. This week’s playlist features tracks from Black Belt Eagle Scout, Lil Uzi Vert, Madison Beer, Wild Pink, Lolo Zouaï and Caroline Polachek.

Click here to listen along to the Spotify playlist.

Black Belt Eagle Scout: Don’t Give Up

Back in 2019, Black Belt Eagle Scout — the moniker for Swinomish/Iñupiaq singer Katherine Paul — almost single-handedly restored my faith in indie rock with the release of her second album “At the Party with My Brown Friends.” There was something uniquely vulnerable and beautiful about Paul’s songwriting — the light-as-air vocals, the unvarnished but absorbing guitar-playing, the delicately evocative expressions of resistance.

Three very long years later, Black Belt Eagle Scout has returned with “Don’t Give Up,” a moving new single that explores how Paul and her community rely on connection with the natural world for spiritual healing and fostering mental health. “Slow, important love / It keeps me alive,” she sings over a softly strummed acoustic guitar, as the music builds toward the track’s rousing outro, in which Paul repeats: “The land, the water, the sky.”

“I wanted to sing it like my late grandfather Alexander Paul Sr. sang in our family’s big drum group,” she explained in a statement. “From the heart.” — Richie Assaly

Lil Uzi Vert: Just Wanna Rock

If you’ve been on TikTok lately, you’ve probably heard this song a million times already, but only for about 30 seconds. As a snippet from a leak of “Just Wanna Rock” has already been through it’s dance craze and has been fully realized into the Jersey Club banger it truly is. The slow-mo breathing, lyrics and production during the first 10 seconds to preview the rest of the track is a stroke of brilliance. When the twinkling keyboard and cinematic synths strike, reinforced by 80’s deep synthwave stabs, I’m already yelling “let’s go!” The first 30 seconds of this track is a grand entrance in pure sonic form. The snaps and drum kicks throughout are what dragged dancers in front of their phone on TikTok and it’ll do the same to listeners and the dance floor.

Uzi is wise enough to let the production breathe as he mostly offers ad-libs, spits a handful of lyrics in a verse and breaths sharply on the track. Despite its newness, “Just Wanna Rock” also hearkens back to early versions of Uzi’s work from the original “Love is Rage” project from 2015, like “Banned on TV” and “Safe House.” The electronic production to create a grand entrance is a hallmark of Uzi’s music and “Just Wanna Rock” is a dramatic return. — Demar Grant

Madison Beer: Showed Me (How I Fell In Love With You)

Ah, to be a cis/heterosexual male and experience the public reverence that comes from being in a romantic relationship — receiving “that’s you?” or daps in support of being with a woman, particularly if they mimic the beauty standard. The scales are definitely tipped in their favour and Madison Beer doesn’t shy away from acknowledging this in her latest single, “Showed Me (How I Fell In Love With You.” Beer, the 23-year-old Justin Bieber protege (he claims to have discovered her through YouTube), quickly won our attention during the release of her first single, “Melodies.” The song was fun and she was unique and bubbly. From 2013 to the present, Beer has carried her listeners through and advised us on both the highs and the certain lows of love and relationships. “Showed Me” is sure to find people that can relate — she’s confident in her ability to convince listeners she has the upper hand, but in a world subdued by patriarchy we are all sadly aware she just might not. — Annette Ejiofor

Wild Pink: ILYSM

It feels a bit silly trying to choose a single song to highlight from Wild Pink’s extraordinary fourth album, “ILYSM.” Partially written and recorded after guitarist and vocalist John Ross was diagnosed with cancer, the immersive, genre-traversing project grapples with big themes — fear, love, and the new perspective offered by the sudden reality of death — and deserves to be listened to front-to-back.

Indeed, what makes “ILYSM” special is its subtle dynamism and unpredictability — the heart-rending slowcore of “Hold My Hand” diverges significantly from the soaring heartland rock of “See You Better Now” (which features a typically dazzling solo from Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis) or the sludgy shoegaze of “Sucking On The Birdshot.”

What binds these songs together, though, is a gentle sense of optimism that bubbles throughout the album’s one-hour runtime, and finds its strongest expression on the title track. “I reached out my hand to touch you/ And it went right through,” Ross recalls over a pulsing bass line and exuberant drums, the surreal memory giving way to a simple mantra before the song blossoms into a reverb-drench guitar solo: “I love you so much.” — RA

Lolo Zouaï: Crazy Sexy Dream Girl

From the echoed, carefully placed keys to the jungle-inspired percussion, “Crazy Sexy Dream Girl” seems like a bit of a fever dream. Amid the torrid pace, Lolo Zouaï’s airy vocals skate across the beat as she laments no longer being able to feel love, at least for her ex. “The Crazy Sexy Dream Girl” is dead and with cybernetic vocals Zouaï says “Never gonna get me back (Crazy), Never gonna get me back (Sexy), Never gonna get me back (Dream), Never gonna get me back (Girl).” It’s hard not to believe her. Although “Crazy Sexy Dream Girl” is a track about distance, Zouaï’s sultry vocals still makes it alluring. She wants people close, but never too close because the person they’re looking for doesn’t exist anymore. — DG

Caroline Polachek: Sunset

The last time I wrote about Caroline Polachek, following the release of “Billions” in February, I compared her dramatic avant-pop sound to Kate Bush. But with the release of “Sunset,” the former Chairlift singer sounds more like Shakira, thrusting her voice into a high trill amid bright Spanish guitar and a twitchy flamenco rhythm. The track marks a strange, slightly random new direction for Polachek, but she pulls it off through the sheer charisma of her vocals and the self-possessed quality of her personality — she remains one of pop music’s most endearingly weird shape-shifters. — RA

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