Neu This Week In New Music (13th April 2013)

One of the highlights of the past week was coming across the Self Righteous Band Twitter account (the USA Soccer Guy Twitter even more so, but that’s a separate topic), which quite tragically details the ins and outs of being a bunch of lesser-knowns who demand a bit too much. None of the below - our picks from the past seven days in new music - are at all self-righteous, or indeed lesser known. In fact, by the looks of things, they’re all either affiliated with a major record label or a surefire bet on being signed to one in the near future. Some might say we need to give the odd self-righteous band an extra nudge towards the public eye, but however big the budget is behind the below, these songs and videos and newly-coined arrivals are some of the year’s finest. 

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Wolf Alice - Bros
Escapism is a funny feeling. It means different things to different people. One listener’s form of musical escape will involve a Washed Out mixtape, while another gets by on the thrill of metal and all its grizzly ferocity. ‘Bros’, for many a Wolf Alice fan, means escape. Its timing has been remarkable, in that the one day so far in 2013 that the skies opened a little, and the Arctic chill buggered off for at least one fleeting moment, in arrived ‘Bros’. And the louder you play this single, the finer it sounds, the more it brings about this wild sense of a beautiful exit. 

VIDEO OF THE WEEK 
HAERTS - Wings
Director Emily Kai Bock is becoming something of a staple on this column. Last week we admired her Kenneth Welsh-starring clip for Majical Cloudz’s ‘Childhood’s End’. And this newly shot video for HAERTS’ ‘Wings’, while the entire opposite of the former’s snow-infested heartbreak, is a beautifully fitting tale of family togetherness and the excitement of growing up. It’s more childhood’s beginning than childhood’s end, but it’s an equally touching portrait. 

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Oscar
The opening, classical music sample that sees in Oscar’s debut track ‘Never Told You’ paints a familiar scene. Coupled with the good-lord-what-is-this mess of Oscar Scheller’s own bedroom that forms the artwork, you quickly think of the evil-as-sin protagonist in A Clockwork Orange, lifting his brow to the quaking sound of Mozart. Chances are Oscar isn’t quite the murderous runaway - we wouldn’t want to lump such a claim on the guy, he’s probably a sweetheart - but ‘Never Told You’ left many a newcomer for dead when they first stumbled upon it this week.