Each month our critics pick 20 new songs for our Spotify playlist. Read about 10 of our favourites here, including Thelma Plum, The Native Cats and Holiday Sidewinder
Holiday Sidewinder – Ripe
For fans of: 80s Madonna, Prince, Ladyhawke, Liz Phair
Holiday Sidewinder, teenage sensation turned pop perfection. Photograph: Thom Kerr
Born into showbiz and a teenage star with the brilliant Bridezilla, you could say Holiday Sidewinder, now 32, is “ripe for the picking”. She says so herself on this lascivious, playful piece of electro-funk. There’s a lot going on here: a calypso rhythm underpinning heavily treated guitars and spikes of strings to create a monstrous dance groove. The lyric is overtly sexual, but as knowing and daring as anything by Liz Phair; there’s no question about who’s in control here. – Andrew Stafford
For more: Sidewinder is currently on tour in the UK with Sophie Ellis-Bextor; her third album, The Last Resort, is slated for release in March 2024.
Fig – Our Night
For fans of: Bruce Springsteen, Soft Cell, Brandon Flowers
‘Perfect 80s pastiche’: a new cut from Fig’s album No Need to Rest. Sydney six-piece Fig began as the solo project of frontman Tim Burnett, whose voice is plain anachronism – a showboating, Springsteen-y caterwaul that just as easily dissolves into a diaphanous falsetto. On this track – a single from the band’s second album No Need to Rest – Burnett ascends high above a synth buzz and a stampede of percussion, eulogising the sort of night with a lover that’s destined to become mythology. It’s perfect 80s pastiche. Cue the montage. – Michael Sun
For more: Listen to the rest of No Need to Rest, and watch the music video – a kitschy Halloween terror.
Thelma Plum – We Don’t Talk About It
For fans of: Tia Gostelow, Stella Donnelly
Thelma Plum’s new single is a companion of sorts to her 2019 song Woke Blokes. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
Thelma Plum’s slinky new single will be familiar to many women, describing the fear of seeing an abusive ex with someone new, and the protective urge of sisterhood. “If it happened to me, it’ll happen to her / It doesn’t make it better that I went first,” the Kamilaroi musician sings. We Don’t Talk About It is a companion of sorts to her 2019 song Woke Blokes, which took aim at toxic masculinity and performative allyship. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
For more: Thelma Plum’s latest EP, Meanjin, was released in 2022.
