Freshly Squeezed, Vol. 86: Niko, Joy Williams, Unbloom, Sara Diamond & more

Welcome to Freshly Squeezed, a weekly new music playlist: spanning country, pop, EDM and urban, mainstream and other.

Have you ever felt sexual tension with a song before? Well, you’re about to be floored with pop provocateur Niko‘s new EP, RMNC 21, and the appropriately titled “Sexual Tension” gets the fire of lust going into overdrive right from the outset. “I got some good intention,” he begs between the sheets of soul, R&B and funk-pop. He’s a devilish genre-bender who beckons you into his world, and you have no power over your decision. “I’m fighting with my decisions tonight,” he also confesses, his heart pouring forth into a smooth concoction. “Baby, baby, won’t you come save me!”

Of Indonesian heritage, singer-songwriter Jove Satara morphs into a dazzling, electric mermaid with his new song. “Out of Water” sloshes and bubbles and splashes against a craggy, sandy shoreline as he discharges a dark-pop potion. “I could chill and all with shivers down my spine / But I’d have to drink these tears, I doubt they’d dry,” he sings, wrestling to discover exactly where his existence locks in with the boundless stretches of earth and sky. The production flutters and tickles the nose before worming up into the eardrums for a cathartic, blissful state.

Tiger Darrow, classically trained cellist, snaps and cracks genres in her hands. And when the dust settles, such songs as the newly-issued “Bones” rise out of the ash and mix with paint samples of alternative, biting hard-rock and gooey pop. She drops all three into a blender and whips up a new cream, which she then slathers with a formless, celestial vocal. “You and I been making these promises / That we know we just won’t keep,” she sings, the bass falling away as cracked cement. Then, indie-rockstar Eric Coomer rips us back in our seats, driving his own Delorean into the power-pop sensibility of the ’90s. “Letting Go,” which features a heavy, full-chested belt and electric guitars woven into each other, anchors a new EP, The Vast Configuration of Things, expected this summer. “I wanna see the whole sky,” he bellows with a gravelly, salt-of-the-earth tenor. His presence is illuminating but strikes a rather organic chord (and it’s downright obsessive).

Shreya Preeti knows she shouldn’t feel these damn things, but she does. With “Think I’d Like to Be You,” a shiny pop tune with a whole lotta funk, the Minneapolis singer and songwriter wishes upon a star and wonders her worth in a music industry that’s as ever-expanding as it is constricting. It’s almost swallowed her alive, but she’s got a few life preservers to aid her buoyancy. “I don’t wanna be a bother / But I gotta, wanna say my feelings,” she opens up with a boldly vulnerable confession. Culling together slick soul music with a modern gloss, she’ll not only get your body moving in blue waves, detaching from the world, but she’ll refocus your attention to really think about the greater meaning of life. “I just wanna see what you did to get there,” she sings, peeking into greener pastures and lamenting the struggles of being a working musician. The beat is thick and reinvigorates the bones.

The lonesome highway whispers to him from across a desert storm. Iain Micah Weigert picks up his dusty cowboy hat, plops it upon his head and starts his journey. “Wishful Drinking,” a remarkable weeper from his new record Dust to Mud, rattles and writhes in time and laments its slimy clutch upon our lives. “The lights in this bar are slowly shrinking away / This ship I’m on is surely sinking / In the end there’ll be hell to pay,” Weigert grieves his life in stunningly tragic beauty. He’s a poet of the tallest order and knows the exact faucets to turn to well up the tears. An unnamed women mirrors the melody, almost as a ghost tossing his words back into his soul. It’s a brittle and downright chilling performance.

The new playlist also features new favorites from: Joy Williams, Sontalk, Unbloom with Connor Morand, Daniel Norgren, Kyle Daniel, The Head and the Heart, Guide Dog, Chiara Oldano, Sara Diamond, Rachel Wammack, Lauren Jenkins and countless more.

In all, we’ve got 50 new songs to bop along to as you ready for the impending three-day weekend. Leggo and let music.

Each playlist will be refreshed every Friday morning/afternoon. We reserve the right to update anytime during the week, so make sure you bookmark this page.

Take a spin:

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