no takes just tunes (for now)
the week's best feat. sextile, ruby joan, isabella lovestory and more
Helloooo Unskippablers, how are you? Last week I went extra long on flavormaxing in music, and ironically I’m looking to do the flavorminimum as I save up for next week’s essay.
Soooo to make up on word count, we’ve got an extra big set of Good Links this week. Deal? Deal!
No word on his salesman teeth – This SSENSE feature combines two things I enjoy – Matthew Schnipper’s writing and Cameron Winter’s music.
Andre 88 – Andre 3000 dropped a surprise EP of piano sketches last night
To Quit, To Stream No More - A deep guide on how to bail on Spotify and the best alternatives depending on your sonic priorities.
Vertically Integrated Monopoly, Explained! Leave it the Wall Street Journal to do the best deep dive into the government’s case against Live Nation, and how LN take money out of the pockets of fans, artists, and venues in service of a shittier concert experience
Henry Rollins on Bill Hader on Henry Rollins meeting Diamond Dave – We love a spoken word CD fact check!
Commercial A-Peel – If you’ve wanted to dig into John Peel’s legendary BBC live sessions but didn’t know where to start – Bandcamp Daily has you covered!
Fuck this – Amidst the bozo horrors of the Trump admin, the relentless attack on the rights of trans people sometimes falls through the coverage of the more ridiculous clusterfucks, but it’s worth reading Grace Byron on how the government is making trans people’s lives harder daily
Anyways here’s the best of the week. As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update (usually) every Tuesday along with the newsletter. Enjoy!
Sextile – Freak Eyes
Sextile’s yes, please does a lot of the things I wish any of the “indie sleaze” records would do, which is dig deeper into the garish, fucked-up side of 00’s electroclash nights. “Freak Eyes” is aimed squarely at those of us who thought Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR was actually quite good and yearn for a fucked up Planet Mu 12”. Their whole 2nd LP leans on the gaudy, uncool side of the bloghouse era and not a slick, nostalgia-softened reinterpretation – the songs demand attention with unusual BPMs, stupid-smart choruses, and beautifully ugly sonics.
Myapp – Fairy
Andrew Noznitsky’s monthly (and yearly) rap mixes are essential listening if you want a look at the truly strange and emergent sounds in rap in 2025. I found Myapp’s “Fairy” in his April mix, and it sounds like a Jersey club beat playing over Ocarina of Time dungeon music, with Myapp’s verses riding between the straight-ahead 8 bit arpeggios and syncopated bass. The song is incredibly disorienting, but there’s a thrill in hearing the song’s joyful mishmash of influences and loose, playful sense of time not hold back as it barrels through its two minutes and twenty seconds.
Ruby Joan – Hey Pretty
The barely contained fury of a young woman is a sound that never goes out of style. Ruby Joan’s debut single “Hey Pretty” seethes and stalks, circling around an addictive faux-catcall chorus. There are 90’s-checking sonics, sure, but Ruby the narrator is what makes the hypnotic song work – you’d happily have her sneer at you all day long, and she just happens to do it with a killer hook that’s addicting as it is acerbic.
Isabella Lovestory – Telenovela
My first introduction to reggaeton – or, honestly, any Latin dance music – was thanks to La Kalle coming to the Bay Area airwaves in 2005. It instantly became my go-to car radio station with its promise of “(airhorn) REGGAETON Y MÁS.” Isabella Lovestory’s latest single, “Telenovela,” is a spot-on track from the early 00s reggaeton – simple snap music synth hooks, a relentless beat, and a playful hypnotic chorus. Five out of six airhorns.
Jake Worthington – It Ain’t The Whiskey
“It Ain’t The Whiskey” is an incredible time warp of a country single, from the two-punch chorus to Worthington’s Randy Travis-esque phrasing. The whole song is played straightforward almost to a fault, but I still found song, and especially the chorus, oddly irresistible.
throwback
The Rolling Stones – Worried About You
This Tattoo You deep cut became a favorite Stones song of mine after hearing it wash out from a local record shop. The track, like the rest of Tattoo You, was pulled from unused instrumentals from older sessions, with Mick Jagger adding vocals in the studio alone. “Worried ABout You” came from the Black And Blue sessions, and actually features Billy Preston on keys and Alabama guitarist Wayne Perkins playing on the track. The transition from falsetto-laden weird late 70s Stones into the walloping chorus gets me every time – even if the track feels stilted and stitched together, it only adds to the tension leading into the satisfying, swinging hook.