Songs of the Week - 09/11/2026

These are the essential tracks you need to check out this week!

Photo Credit: Errol Rainey

Christine and the Queens - 'Rendez-vous in your arms'

"I have a rendez-vous with you, tonight. I have obsessed about it since the morning. With the devotion of someone who only waits for you, and the meaning you give to life itself by your mere presence. I’ll come starred with music - the new interstellar traveling of Christine and the Queens, I did it for you. In secrecy of frequencies, in genius musicians, in New York Jazz, in Moroder Groove, I kept on obsessing about this celebration, this big night found again, and I leapt into my dream. Names, boxes, they never defined what we share together. The electricity remains eternally mysterious. We’ll dream together of the blue flower, of this signal that keeps pinging from another planet that we don’t even know of yet; we’ll dream peace, peace with a common story, one way bigger than the one they taught us."

Chris on the track

Kaylee Bell - 'Me for Me'

"We wrote it over summer while Pheobe was back from London, where she is a full-time songwriter, and Tom was back from Nashville. We wanted to write a love song about waiting for your person so that you're not settling for less. It's basically about finding your person later in life after waiting, something a lot of my friends and women I know can relate to. It's that age-old story that, these days, you're better off being on your own than settling and ending up disappointed."

Kaylee on the track

CATTY - 'Me for Me'

"Tax Evasion was born from a conversation in the studio about how the music industry has become unbelievably difficult for anyone who doesn’t have the gift of nepotism or generational wealth. It’s not a drag, being a nepo baby is ok if you’re talented! This is me saying I’d probably be very different if I wasn’t worried about my next pay check and I had that leg up."

CATTY on the track

Anya Alchemy - 'Big Girls'

"I wrote Big Girls after watching a TikTok video about growing up chubbier and the difference in how men treat you when you’re bigger versus smaller. I related to that HARD, especially reflecting on my experience of how I was treated as a chubbier, awkward teenager compared to when I grew into my skin and accepted my body as an adult. Boys that jeered me in high school were now trying to match with me on dating apps. It felt like whiplash, and I wanted to write something about that experience."

Anya on the track

Bec O'Malley - 'Homeward Bound'

"I wanted this EP to sound like where I come from and where I’m trying to go. It takes a classic Nashville country sound and blends it with my natural British and Irish influences - the guitars, melodies and attitude I grew up listening to. The songs are about home, love, ambition and the people and places that shape you along the way."

Bec on his new EP of the same name

Alfreda - 'Moth'

"Moth is about a big old mess I made in my early twenties, getting involved with someone I shouldn't have. Turned out to be a horrible man, and I wasn't aware of the mess I was getting myself into. I've done many chaotic things I regret now. But I find comfort in making a horrible situation into a song you can dance to. It feels like a fitting introduction to the TEASERAMA mixtape announcement, which is full of unfinished business and the chaos of an artist's brain. Things I keep returning to and figuring out what to do with it."

Alfreda on the track

Kaleia - 'ROSE'

"Written on the Vancouver SkyTrain, 'ROSE' started as an attempt to unpack why something as simple as a bouquet of flowers can carry so much weight in a relationship. I’ve heard my male counterparts challenge its necessity, cost, and even the sentiment of the gesture itself, often writing it off as shallow or materialistic. Ironically, what we’re often asking for from our partners costs far less than a bouquet and is much less complicated to give: affection, attention, and respect. I decided to turn the sentiment on its head. I started my writing with a sarcastic approach, but as the song unfolded, the sarcasm gave way to what I would describe as the song’s thesis: 'on the day you go and pull trigger / is the day I’ll do you one better / it’s never been about a desolate vase, but a desolate heart / it ain’t flowers I want!'"

Kaleia on the track

Juli von Lou - 'Empire State of Confusion'

"Empire State of Confusion is a love proclamation without actually stating the dangerous words. At least not until the very end. It’s about when it’s blatantly obvious to everyone, but you keep dancing around those words. Even when the song was written, I had the words of the outro from the get go, but I didn’t even dare to say them out loud. But at the end of the day, letting the words out was the best thing I’ve ever done"

Juli on the track

Maddie Grace - 'Annabeth'

"Lines like 'I didn't cheat, I didn't lie, I paid my tickets right on time, made my bed perfectly right, but what did you do with Annabeth last night?' paint a picture of someone trying to maintain order and perfection in their life whilst everything falls apart around them. It is a song for people with a perfection mindset, the ones who do everything right and still get blindsided. Written in real time, on the morning everything changed, it is a song that sounds exactly like what it is. The chapter that closes the book. And the moment that made the whole EP inevitable."

Maddie on the track

Dalia - 'What if I look up?'

"'What if I look up?' is about witnessing domestic abuse as a child and the fear of becoming like the person who caused it. The song captures the confusion of loving and fearing someone at the same time, and the lasting impact of seeing someone you’re supposed to feel safe with become someone you’re afraid of. At the heart of it is the question, 'What if I look up and look like you? - a fear of carrying those same traits into my own life. It’s about confronting the parts of my childhood that still scare me, and the fear that what we witness can become part of us."

Dalia on the track

Ruby Duff - 'Kill U While U Sleep'

“This is basically about loving someone but also finding them so annoying at times that you could happily kill them in their sleep (comedically, of course!). They snore, steal the duvet, get on your nerves over the smallest things, and yet you still absolutely adore them. It’s that funny, frustrating side of being in love that nobody really talks about. Because loving someone isn’t about thinking they’re perfect all the time. It’s about putting up with each other’s shit, having ridiculous arguments, learning to compromise and forgiving each other when you’re both being annoying. There’s something quite lovely about being able to laugh at those little imperfections rather than letting them get in the way of something good and learning to accept our differences, even with the people closest to us."

Ruby on the track

Quinton Barnes - 'THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ'

"THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ is about inheriting the radical desire of free jazz with the understanding that its forms and gestures may have become hollow, institutionalised, and compromised by complacency. It's a record that seeks to locate the spirit of free jazz while disavowing belief in its form."

Quinton on his upcoming album of the same name

Alnev - 'a little more'

"'a little more' is a delusional little love song I wrote about ignoring all the red flags and diving headfirst into the best parts of a situationship (it's basically an avoidance anthem). It's about knowing deep down that something probably won't work out, but having way too much fun to care. You see all the warning signs, you know exactly where things are headed, but you convince yourself that the consequences are a problem for another day. It's about dancing around the inevitable heartbreak and enjoying every second while it lasts."

Alnev on the track

Marta - 'Make It a Vibe'

"I feel like I’ve been having an existential crisis for as long as I can remember, and the more I think, the worse it gets, so sometimes the answer is: okay, whatever, let’s just have some fun. We’re in this together, so at least there’s that."

Marta on the track

Alexandra Leaving - 'Screw It'

Alexandra has entered a new era, building up to the release of upcoming EP ‘Girl, Departed’. 'Screw It' is the first release from the project.

“Screw It is about burning the fairytale and becoming the woman i was told not to be”

Alexandra on the track

Liv Dawn - 'Always You'

"‘Always You’ is probably one of my favourite songs I have written recently. It is about being drawn back to someone and feeling like there is a connection that never really disappears, no matter what happens or how much time passes. I explored more celestial and almost mythical imagery in the lyrics, writing about the moon and mountains to represent that journey. I also wanted to push myself musically with this song. It starts of with my folk-pop sound before taking a different turn towards the end, bringing in more indie and prog-rock influences."

Liv on the track

Justine Beverley - 'Til It Crashes'

"I wrote “Til It Crashes” after going to an Open Mic with someone I had fancied for a long time – we sang a duet on stage, and in that moment it felt like you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. I knew neither of us would ever act on our feelings, but by then I had a fair guess that my interest was reciprocated. Back then, I was also watching The White Lotus on TV, and it felt like the series was reflecting a lot of what was happening in my own life. I loved how the sea was used to embody the tension rising in the plot between the characters, like drama was always looming on the horizon, waiting to happen, and that inspired my songwriting."

Justine on the track

Lauren Mikki - 'All On You'

"This song feels like running in the rain at dusk. It features my best friend on viola, someone who I have to thank for pulling me out of the darkness many a time, and helping me make light of the situation. That’s what All On You is about. Making fun of the darkness in an attempt to escape it. I wrote it after a therapy session that revealed just how much self blame and responsibility I had been carrying for things that simply weren’t mine to carry. The song became my tongue-in-cheek response to that realisation: a whimsical, almost playful attempt to poke fun at the ridiculous thoughts that had been taking up so much space in my head."

Lauren on the track

MoniQ - 'Dirty Minded'

"This song makes me feel like a bit of a creep. We wrote "Dirty Minded" when I was a bit delusionally obsessed with someone and it's truly an honest representation of how crazy I felt at the time because frankly, I didn't even understand why I was so fixated. My favourite thing about the record is how it's such a confident and sexy song but if you listen to the lyrics, she's proper mental"

MoniQ on the track