Every Friday, EW runs down the five best songs of the week with Pop Shop. Today’s edition features new Haim, a funky synth-pop supergroup, and the return of the best hip-hop boy band on the planet.
Haim — “Summer Girl”
If you need an excuse to roll the windows down, crank the stereo, and cruise the block this season then look no further than this jazzy slow-burn from sister trio Haim (not to be confused with LFO’s Abercrombie & Fitch love letter “Summer Girls,” nor Leighton Meester’s Country Strong soundtrack single “Summer Girl”). Despite its freewheeling groove, “Summer Girl” originates from a place of anguish and uncertainty, following lead singer Danielle’s discovery that her partner, Ariel Rechtshaid (who co-produced the song with Rostam), had cancer. “Whenever I would come home in between shows I wanted to be his sunshine — his summer when he was feeling dark,” she said in a statement about the song, a sentiment she shares on the second verse: “Lightning in your eyes, you can’t speak/Falling from the sky, down to me/I see it in your face, I’m relief I’m your summer girl.” For Haim, joy abounds, even in the face of uneasiness. —Alex Suskind
Lauv feat. Anne-Marie — “f—, i’m lonely”
In a more just world, this team-up should set the internet ablaze, but such is the steady slow burn of Lauv (and “2002” singer Anne-Marie for that matter). The 24-year-old’s songs rip open bandages and expose universal wounds but never without the catchy uplift that has made his expressions of anxiety so singular. On the collaborative front, this xylophonic Anne-Marie joint (off his upcoming debut studio album) may even outshine his earlier earworms with Julia Michaels and Troye Sivan. But it’s no secret that Lauv’s single strongest collaborator is the little voice inside his head, an apprehensive antagonist whom Lauv doesn’t expose so much as hand-deliver a hook, a mic, and precisely the right lyric to express itself. —Marc Snetiker
Raye — “Love Me Again”
If you don’t recall Raye from her subtle vocals earlier this year on David Guetta’s “Stay,” this fresh tune is an even better introduction to the 21-year-old Brit (who will open for Khalid on his European tour leg this fall). “Love Me Again” is simply fantastic, with its surprisingly sprightly use of organ chords and a breezy hook set up by the gasp-inducingly gorgeous, “Hello, how you doing, I was wondering if there’s something I could do to make you love me again.” Consider her officially on the Raye-dar. —M.S.
Brockhampton — “I Been Born Again”
The idiosyncratic hip-hop boy band is back with its first new music since 2018’s chart-topping Iridescence. The lead single off upcoming album Ginger is a sparse and nervy track in the vein of last year’s minimalist “Where the Cash At,” a song that featured member Merlyn Wood spitting about robberies over a woozy bass line. Wood makes an appearance on “Born Again” — this time talking “diamond dentures” and “golden rubbers” — but it’s the group’s de facto leader Kevin Abstract who steals the show with his rhymes about God, Hollywood, and… Dennis Rodman? Like anything Brockhampton does, it’s random, weird, and wonderful. —A.S.
Red Hearse — “Everybody Wants You”
This quasi supergroup (featuring producer/Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, go-to TDE producer Sounwave, and singer-songwriter Sam Dew) has been quietly releasing super catchy synth-pop tracks over the last two months. The newest drop, the R&B-indebted “Everybody Wants You,” may not have quite the same punch as their lead eponymous single, but it’s still got heart, thanks to Dew’s catchy hook about pining after someone who doesn’t reciprocate the feelings. —A.S.
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