The Best Songs Released in July 2023

Happy end of July/beginning of August 🙂

Make sure you’re following our New Music Sunday playlist, updated weekly!

Noteworthy album & EP releases:

Disenchanter, Alaska Reid
Natural Disaster, Bethany Cosentino
Columbo, Bruno Major
The Loveliest Time, Carly Rae Jepsen
SAMSON: THE ALBUM, Chika
Good Now EP, Charlotte Sands
Supermodels, Claud
what we leave behind, Delaney Bailey
Alchemy, Disclosure
Sunburn, Dominic Fike
Got Him!, Ethan Tasch
Euphoric, Georgia
Starcatcher, Greta Van Fleet
I’m In Love, Haily Whitters
Big Bite EP, Hannah Cole
LFG, INJI
Mirror, Lauren Spencer Smith
i care so much that i dont care at all, Glaive
Slugs of Love, Little Dragon
Time Will Wait for No One, Local Natives
IRL, Mahalia
Nosebleeds, Misterwives
MID AIR, Paris Texas
Eye On The Bat, Palehound
Austin, Post Malone
Evergreen, PVRIS
hell is a teenage girl, Nessa Barrett
Look Now, Oscar Leng
Speak Now (TV), Taylor Swift
MY GOD!, Tessa Violet
tori, Tori Kelly
UTOPIA, Travis Scott
KLEPTO, spill tab
Welcome To My House, Yonaka

In chronological order:

“Sick” – Dominic Fike
Release date – July 7

“Sick” is the fourth track off of Dominic Fike’s latest album Sunburn that was released back on July 7th. Upon listening to the album for the first time, “Sick” was the first song to really grab my attention. I first was hooked on the track because I developed a liking for how it flowed and how fun and summery it felt, but if you look at the lyrics, the meaning behind the song is quite sad.

It tells the story of being addicted to a toxic and controlling relationship but in an upbeat and chirpy tune. To me, this is quite an interesting take on creating a song and plays with the conventional ways of songwriting. Dominic Fike is always pushing the limits and consistently brings surprises with how he creates his art. – Taylor 

“Letting Go” – Angie McMahon
Release date – July 11

Sometimes a song comes around that makes you dance and jump and so earnestly romanticizes the process of growing up. “Letting Go” by Angie McMahon does one of the best things a song can do which is giving you the space to relinquish some control to an artist and be guided through a feeling. I’ve felt like it’s becoming a rarity that I let myself have these driving emotional releases, so it’s important to recognize and fully embrace them when they come.

Angie’s textured vocals and quick tempo, piano driven instrumental work in congruity to build this song on a massive mountain, climbing tirelessly, and by the top you’re able to look out and scream for nobody other than yourself.
– Meleah

“Rush” – Troye Sivan
Release date – July 13

You know when a song first comes out and it feels so ‘on brand’ for the artist releasing it, it almost feels like destiny? Like their entire career thus far has led to this moment? That’s how I feel about Troye Sivan’s absolute banger of a single, “Rush,” which also happens to be the artists’ first release official release since 2018 (omitting non-album singles and features).The title of the track is quite the double entendre, “Rush” also happens to be the name of a popular brand of poppers. 

According to Sivan, the song tells the story of feeling “confident, free and liberated”, while being the “most connected to the music and community” surrounding him. Sivan’s third album, Something To Give Each Other, is out on October 13. – Kristin

“Sideways” – Misterwives
Release date – July 14

I never got into Misterwives’ music in the past for whatever reason – their sound never really clicked for me. But with the singles that came ahead of their most recent album, Nosebleeds, something suddenly made sense for me and now the band’s 4th studio album.

“Sideways” plays on the sounds of mid 2010s indie pop reminiscent of artists like The Naked and Famous, Foster the People, and even production choices like synthesizers that give it that feeling of nostalgia, without it sounding pastiche or overdone. Misterwives will embark on a co-headlining tour with Bishop Briggs later this year. – Kristin

“Route 22” – Palehound
Release date – July 14

Palehound released one of the best rock albums of 2023 this month, circling the nitty gritty feelings of love and sharpening their intense and obscurely specific world of experience. “Route 22” delivers El Kempner’s distinct deep rasp accompanied by a bluegrass riff and guttural bass lines, proving again that El’s musical limitations are minimal and exclusively self imposed. “Route 22” may offer the most conventional progression, the closest we get to a ballad from El, making it an outlier on an album full of playfully experimental breakup anthems.

I’m drawn to the exploration of teenage fantasies that ache throughout the song. I don’t often think of my sweet, weed addicted, sometimes inconsiderate high school boyfriend, but this song immediately felt like a song we would love together and then I would inevitably reclaim as my own. It’s got the teasing juvenile angst that I’m a sucker for and in the context of the album feels like a point of simple-minded nostalgia for a time right before The End. – Meleah

“Older” – Searows
Release date – July 25

Call your siblings, call your mother, call your childhood friends. That’s what I’m left with by the end of the nearly 7 minutes spent in the complicated and profound mind of Alec Duckart, known more familiarly as Searows, on his newest single “Older.” Alec is the artist to watch this year. I’m not sure enough people believe me, but I’ve been saying it since he started uploading TikToks masterfully reinterpreting Phoebe Bridgers and Harry Styles songs.

This single is Alec’s first under a label and it’s the first release of Matt Maltese’s Last Recordings On Earth, a subsect of Communion Records. Alec takes a sewing needle and meticulously punctures sores on the heart that hold resentment, nostalgia, fear, and loneliness, the malignancies that are undetectable to those without a trained eye. It’s painful but it’s such a relief to know the pressure points are being carefully tended to. The song doesn’t strain itself to follow any structural convention. Instead, a sequence of short verses, each offering a glimpse into a moment of childhood that acted as the early signal of something worse to come, are gently sung over mostly strings. 

“What’s a word for lonely, that doesn’t mean alone?” Alec poses the question and doesn’t propose an answer. Instead, he offers us the space to explore how burdensome it can be to grow up and face everything wrong with ourselves and those closest to us. – Meleah

“Psychedelic Switch” – Carly Rae Jepsen
Release date – July 28

Carly Rae Jepsen makes perfect pop. The best example of this has to be “Psychedelic Switch” off of her latest album The Loveliest Time. It’s a dance track begging to be played this Friday night in a gay club and every Friday night to come. It’s admittedly taken me longer than most to give CRJ her flowers, likely because of that one song that I (and every other 10-year-old) made my first homemade music video to, immortalizing my snarly blue dip-dyed hair and arrhythmic and on-the-nose choreography.

The production sounds like it was created in a lab, mixing just the right levels of each elemental substance to elicit a potent stimulation and ecstasy-driven trip on love. – Meleah