Machines

Each week, our Songs of the Week column highlights the best new tracks from the last seven days. Find our new favorites on our Top Songs playlist, and for more great songs from emerging artists, listen to our New Sounds playlist. This week, Florence + the Machine returns with the wild, cathartic title track to her upcoming album Everybody Scream.

Watching her onstage, you’d think Florence Welch has no problem giving her body to performance. As Florence + the Machine’s primary conduit, Welch aches and bellows during their now-arena-sized shows. She shuffles across the stage, barefoot, at a pace so quick you might worry she’ll trip over some stage wiring. She dances with pure abandon; she thrashes across songs like “Spectrum” and “My Love” with the force and intensity of a personal moshpit. Sure, she broke her foot 10 years ago for going a little too hard on Coachella’s main stage, but can you really blame her for acting on these theatrical impulses?

On “Everybody Scream,” the first song and title track off her forthcoming new album, Welch interrogates the physical and emotional cost of such abandon. In fact, it’s almost surprising to hear her paint these moments of performance with such dark intensity. On “Free,” a highlight from her last album Dance Fever, Welch summed up the transcendent power of her own act with a simple confession: “And for a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free.”

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It turns out that moment was a bit more fleeting than she’d hoped. In 2023, Welch underwent life-saving emergency surgery, which led to the cancellation of several Florence + the Machine shows and forced her to reckon with her body’s own limits. It was her journey toward recovery and healing that fueled Everybody Scream, but what immediately sticks out about its title track is its relationship between ecstasy and agony, the Jekyll and Hyde-esque possession that holds Welch captive before it sets her free.

“Look at me run myself ragged, blood on the stage/ But how can I leave you when you’re screaming my name?,” she asks in the first chorus, a reference to the physical toil of her shows being counterbalanced by the intense adoration of her audience. She can’t live without the stage — “Here, I can take up the whole of the sky/ Unfurling, becoming my full size,” she sings — but through its darkened lens and the horror-induced screams conjured, Welch also seems to acknowledge the very real possibility that she can’t live with it, either.

Fittingly, Welch helmed the song with two artists who have a lot to say about the strange dissonance and intangible allure of performance: Mitski and IDLES’ Mark Bowen. Though the song is miles away from Mitski’s current mode, she knows a thing or two about the cost and sacrifice demanded from a career in music, specifically from women in her field and from serving as a canvas onto which her fans project their knottiest emotions. As for Bowen, he’s proven in his work with IDLES that love songs can sound horrifying, that even our most joyous and uninhibited emotions can be infiltrated by searing doubt in the blink of an eye.

These co-writers, along with the ever-dynamic James Ford and Aaron Dessner behind the boards, help Florence + the Machine achieve their most intriguing, risky lead single yet. It’s maybe not the most accessible entry point for this new era, but when Welch commands, “Everybody Scream!,” it’s hard to resist.

— Paolo Ragusa
Live Music Editor

646yf4t — “i get it”

Canadian singer-songwriter and producer 646yf4t, pronounced Babyfat, is focused on one thing and one thing only: expansion. His new EP Growing Pains brims with a wide variety of sounds and genres, from dusky alt-R&B to glimmering pop to rough-hewn indie rock. Tucked near the top of the project is “i get it,” a slow-burner that thumps as much as it ticks, bumps, and grooves. Ostensibly, the song sounds like an acknowledgement of a failed relationship, but further inspection of the lyrics points toward another interpretation: faith. “Rain or shine, you clearing up my mind/ My third eye cries ’cause I see the silver lining/ Finally, finally, finally I know who I wanna be.” You can sense the vulnerability as 646yf4t repeatedly sings “I get it, I get it,” his vocals soaring as he processes life’s main lesson — in order to experience the highs of growth, we first have to feel the depths of change. — Kiana Fitzgerald

bloodsports — “Calvin”

Though it’s less than two minutes in length, bloodsports’ newest tune, “Calvin,” packs a heck of a punch. A shoegaze-adjacent ripper that’s just as melodic as it is rockin’, the single walks the line between energetic garage rock and dejected slacker rock, with an amped-up instrumental and ‘I’m so over this’ style vocals. It’s one of the best, most immediate tunes to come from the New York act yet. — Jonah Krueger

Flo Milli — “Perfect Person” featuring Coop

Since 2018’s “Beef FloMix,” Flo Milli has established herself as hip-hop’s bratty Alabama princess who makes crystalline hood bops. “Perfect Person” is the latest addition to her canon of prissy, candy-coated darts. Over a generous sample of Hoobastank’s 2003 mega-single “The Reason,” Flo Milli and her featured guest Coop admit: “I ain’t perfect, but he know I’m worth it/ Break his heart, do him bad, he deserve it.” Their interweaved verses project the importance of female empowerment, autonomy, and self-care — all through the lens of a Gen-Z rap girlie. — K. Fitzgerald

Good Flying Birds — “Fall Away”

Looking for some sweet-and-sour jangle pop to ring in the end of summer? Look no further than Good Flying Birds’ latest track “Fall Away,” a sublime slice of guitar-forward indie that moves at a runaway pace. The song features Wishy’s Nina Pitchkites and Kevin Krauter, serving a perfect compliment to Wishy’s unpredictable, sidewinding pop vision; though “Fall Away” also boasts a scrappy quality that’s equally endearing as it is rousing. With their upcoming project Talulah’s Tape coming on October 17th, Good Flying Birds have taken flight. — P. Ragusa

Purity Ring — “imanocean”

If you told me 12 years ago I’d hear a Purity Ring song with warm guitar and crisp, acoustic drums, I wouldn’t have believed you. But on “imanocean,” the duo embrace a clever tension between organic instrumentation and the otherworldly synths that rest upon it. It’s a bold reinvention, sure, but it also carries the various hallmarks they’ve championed over the years: melodies that ring out like sirens, an atmosphere as thick as fog, and emotions as wide as an ocean. After so much time, Purity Ring still wield the capacity to make music that sounds eerily familiar and gloriously unknown. — P. Ragusa

Shallowater — “Sadie”

Texas slowcore act Shallowater, one of our artists to watch in 2025, are officially following up their great 2024 debut There Is a Well. The new LP is called God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars (great name), and this week they’ve dropped the record’s second single, “Sadie.” The tune is a beautiful slow burn that spends its seven-and-a-half-minute runtime building to a mid-song, cacophonous explosion before settling back into its blissful status quo. If the record is half as good as the two tunes we’ve heard thus far, fans are in for a treat. — J. Krueger