Erik Wunder, the leader of the black metal band Cobalt and the dark folk rock group Man’s Gin, has died. The news was shared by Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd and Abigail Williams’ Ken Sorceron yesterday. He was 42.

Lucy Dacus is living her best life on her Forever Is A Feeling Tour, officiating fans’ marriages, bringing out Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan, and covering Fontaines D.C. Last night she played Montreal’s Osheaga festival, and the singer-songwriter joined the Killers’ set for the Sam’s Town cut “Read My Mind.”

West Coast rap hero YG is building up to the release of a new album called The Gentleman’s Club. It’s the same album that kicked off its rollout with “2004,” the uncharacteristically vulnerable song where YG rapped about being sexually assaulted by a 30-year-old woman when he was 14.

Bay City, Texas rap animal That Mexican OT is building up to the release of a new album called Recess, and he dropped the Lil Wayne collab “Baby Mad At Me” earlier this year. Today, OT has a new song with his fellow East Texas rapper Peso Peso, a regular collaborator. If he wanted, Peso Peso could call himself That Mexican PP, but it wouldn’t really look right.

Some songs woo you into escape. Such is the case with the latest single from Hether — producer and multi-instrumentalist Paul Castelluzzo. A relaxed beat and hazy vocals usher us into something that feels like a mildly hallucinogenic daydream. “We can evacuate and escape from a world so gone,” he sings. “Let’s fly up to Jupiter/ See what we left back home/ Nothing but fear and repetition,” he continues over slippery guitar riffs (or maybe even pedal steel?). It’s a cozy getaway.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

Three years ago we named the Rochester death metal monsters Undeath a Band To Watch. We last heard new music from that crew last September, though guitarist Tommy Wall popped up in the new supergroup Blood Monolith back in March. Now Undeath have returned with two more blood-gargling churns of their own.

All those new Hayley Williams songs are officially out now — but no, they don’t constitute a new album. On Monday, the Paramore singer uploaded 17 new password-protected tracks to her website. Instead of organizing them into a tracklist or even a playlist, she made each one a clickable file, like the ones you might see scattered across your computer’s desktop. Today, those songs have all seen official release.

Last Friday, the iconic hip-hop producer DJ Premier and the underground-legend emcee Roc Marciano announced they were teaming up on an album called The Coldest Profession, due out Aug. 8. Today, with that release date looming about a week away, the duo has revealed details on the project and shared its lead single. The eight-song tracklist is available now, and lead single “Prayer Hands” is here for the listening. It’s an artful twist on the sort of blustery boom-bap you’d expect from this pairing, with some well-placed scratches from Premier and some verbal agility from Roc Marci delivered via slightly tweaked vocals.

Good lord, I guess I have to summarize this latest Sydney Sweeney ordeal. Sweeney, the actress who has become a culture war touchpoint because some conservatives decided her buxom figure represents the end of woke, appears in a new ad campaign for American Eagle jeans called “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” In one short commercial from the campaign, the camera traces across the figure of a denim-clad, reclining Sweeney as delivers this monologue: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.” When the camera reaches her face, she pauses, then says, “My jeans are blue.”