Unfortunately, Ken Carson failed to impress us with last year’s More Chaos, but the Opium artist has a chance to redeem himself with Xperiment, his new album he’s announcing today. And we don’t have to wait too long; it arrives in just two weeks.

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Justin Cary, bassist for the Texan alt-pop band Sixpence None The Richer, has passed away. Cary suffered a stroke last week. Earlier this week, bandmate Leigh Nash shared the news on Instagram, as well as a link to a GoFundMe page to raise money for Cary and his wife Linda. Yesterday, Linda announced that Cary had passed away peacefully that morning. Cary was 50.

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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 subscribers on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

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Tierra Whack can really, really rap. The Philadelphia artist is a super-inventive visual stylist with a ton of bright art-pop ideas, so it can be easy to overlook the fact that she’s got bars. It’ll be a lot harder once you hear her new record Whack’s Museum. When she announced the impending release a couple of weeks ago, Whack referred to Whack’s Museum as a “rap mixtape.” She wasn’t kidding.

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You know what you’re getting with Desire. Together, Montreal vocalist singer Megan Louise and former Chromatics leader Johnny Jewel make shimmery, whispery, glamorous synthpop. They’ve been doing it ever since their self-titled debut came out in 2009. Desire haven’t exactly been the most prolific act over the years, but they released their album Games People Play last year, and they’re already planning on following it with another LP this year.

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It’s diss track time. Quicksand release their new album Bring On The Psychics next month, and so far we’ve heard “Get To It,” “Regenerate,” and “Crystallize.” Today, the grunge greats are picking fights on their latest single “Cool Guy.”

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You might recognize the name daine from her work with rising underground electronic artists Ninajirachi and Underscores, if not from her already impressive amount of releases, including 2022’s Quantum Jumping and 2023’s shapeless. A couple days ago she released a new single of her own called “PQC,” and it’s both sugary and explosive, like pop rocks.

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Since Saturday night, seemingly the whole of New York City has been heartily enjoying the Knicks’ first NBA championship since 1973. People were out in the streets all night after the team’s series-clinching win in San Antonio, and many of them were belting out Alicia Keys’ chorus to Jay-Z’s “Empire State Of Mind.” Keys herself sang the song Saturday night at the Tribeca Film Festival, where the documentary Alicia Keys: Girl From Hell’s Kitchen had a well-timed premiere last week. Unsurprisingly, she was on hand today at the victory parade as well.

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Inspiration can strike at any moment. For Canadian quartet Gizmo, their latest single “Gift Shop” was born in the place where memories and commerce converge. “Usual tourist hanging around in a gift shop shaped like a circus clown/ Settled away in the past tense rolling on the strip,” frontman Julien Kitson sings over guitar distortion and a steady drumbeat. “Gift Shop” announces the Charlottetown group’s debut album All Your Worships, out October 2.

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Earlier this year, Nikki Nair collaborated with the Avalanches on the single “Together.” Now he’s back with new music of his own. Yesterday, he announced that he had joined George Daniel’s dance-focused Dirty Hit sublabel, dh2, and said he attempted to make house music but failed. Still, he “ended up with four mistakes that I will package as an EP,” he deadpanned in a funny social post.

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