Today's Top Tune

Late last year, New Zealand multi-instrumental producer Fazerdaze released the EP Break!, her first output since her 2017 debut. Recorded at home during lockdown, living alone after the end of a long romantic relationship, Fazerdaze let herself accept it was time to let go. Take a spoonful of “Thick of the Honey” if you’re looking for cleansing audio.

Come the end of March, the bubblicious Ezra Collective will kick off their North American tour in Los Angeles in support of their latest album, “Where I’m Meant To Be.” We have been loving this new recording and are eager to share one of our favorite tracks from it, “Life Goes On,” featuring Sampa The Great.

In honor of MLK Day, we turn to 1972, when 100,000 people gathered at the LA Memorial Coliseum to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles to help heal the community. The gig featured some of the greatest artists on Stax Records, The Staples Singers, The Bar-Kays, and Carla Thomas, to name a few. And, of course, the iconic Isaac Hayes headlined the night. Today we share a previously unreleased version of the soul-funk anthem “Theme From Shaft (Live At Wattstax, Los Angeles, CA / August 20, 1972 / Version 1),” from the forthcoming release Soul’d Out: The Complete Wattstax Collection, out Feb. 24.

If you are a fan of the Canadian instrumental band BADBADNOTGOOD, you are in for a treat by way of bandmate Leland Whitty’s debut solo album. Taking a DIY approach to the film scores that inspired the album, “Windows” invites you to float on a cinematic cloud.

Two-time Grammy award-winning artist Kimbra explores the circular thinking behind her new song “replay!,” saying: “This song is about the experience of being on loop. There’s this movie going around in my head replaying both the beautiful and the terrifying times during a relationship. But there’s also an inability to let go,” she explains.

To celebrate our visit with Compton innovator Channel Tres today on MBE, we share his new single “6am,” a driving, high-energy bounce intended to simulate a night out in his hometown that doesn’t let up until dawn.

Propelled by her electro-pop ukulele, the queer, first-generation Mexican-American artist Jackie Mendoza pays tribute to those she has lost with “Pedacitos,” or “Little Bits” in English, as a way to communicate some of the things she wishes she had shared with them.

At the end of the month, The Arcs will be dropping their first album in eight years, and if their latest preview is any indication, we’re in for a treat. “Eyez” was originally written in 2015 with contributions from each member of the group, including the late Richard Swift. The song ponders the impenetrable parts of people we think we know and that which is hidden in plain sight. Mounted on the sublime synths of Leon Michels and lyrics by co-producer Dan Auerbach, get ready to swoon over “Eyez.”

Reflecting on love and loss and looking for transcendence, Rayland Baxter’s fourth studio album closes out with a beautiful piano-driven ballad of raw emotion on “My Argentina.”