Now Hear This: New music from Slipknot, YBN Cordae, Marika Hackman and Taylor Swift, plus spotlight artist Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard

Brits do strange things in hot weather. Some of them are funny, like the hero who took a full-sized fan onto a train and plugged it in so he could stay cool during his journey. Then there’s whoever signed “Glastonbury Alex’ to 3Beat Records and had him release his debut single. I mean, I’m assuming they were suffering from heatstroke. I can’t think of any other good excuse for unleashing the monstrosity that is “What Ya Kno ‘Bout That Bro?” on the world.

Others are using the weather to raise an important point about the climate crisis. I’ve not always been full of compliments about The 1975 in this column, because unlike some I don’t think they’re infallible – as a band or as individuals. But I do appreciate what they’re trying to do with the self-titled opening track from their forthcoming album, Notes On a Conditional Form. By enlisting climate change activist Greta Thunberg to give a speech over their ambient instrumentation, the band are using their platform to give her a voice, when so many would try to drown her out.

This week, it’s not actually the heat that’s making me swoon. It’s YBN Cordae’s new album The Lost Boy, which includes the sizzling Anderson .Paak collaboration “RNP”. I’m not going to pretend to have known about YBN for long – I actually heard about him from *namedrop alert* Common, when we were talking about new music during an interview. He said I should check YBN out, so I did, and now I love him.

Subscribe to the Now Hear This playlist!

There’s plenty more swooning to be had, too: Marika Hackman has an extraordinary new track “All Night”, where she somehow manages to sound cool and consumed by lust at the same time. Biig Piig (Irish 21-year-old Jess Smyth) is back with the aptly titled “Sunny”, a soulful hip-hop-influenced track with a deep bass groove and her sweetly lilting vocals gliding overhead.

If you’re looking for something a little livelier (understandable since the sun is so good at sapping the energy right out of you), you could try Feet’s rapid-fire new track “Outer Rim”, which is accompanied by their best and most adventurous video to date. I’m obsessed with “Visible” by Sans Soucis (Italo-Congolese, London-based singer Giulia Grispino). It’s supremely catchy with some hypnotic vocal hooks, gorgeous melodies and a really great bass line. Certainly a contender for one of my favourite songs of the year so far.

Taylor Swift’s new single “The Archer” is the best to date from her forthcoming album Lover. My reaction to her releases so far is exactly what happened with Reputation – although I’ve warmed to those tracks now, I wasn’t immediately keen on “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Gorgeous”… butI loved the third single, “Call It What You Want”. “The Archer” is similar to “Call It What You Want”, going heavy on the atmospherics, albeit with a more Eighties synth theme (hi, Jack Antonoff), and the immediacy and simplicity of it. It’s a rush of feeling that doesn’t linger or hang back in an attempt to figure out exactly what that feeling means.

On completely the other end of the spectrum, I love Slipknot’s single “Solway Firth” from their anticipated new record We Are Not Your Kind. It’s a relentless, pounding track that flashes between visceral bursts of hatred to frontman Corey Taylor seeming to make demands upon himself – to take responsibility for his own past.

PS I like the new Blink-182 track and I don’t care who knows it. Just let me be 15 again, OK?

Oh, and if you need some new reading material, definitely check out Hannah Ewens's new book Fangirls, an oral history about female fan movements through the years, from Beatlemania to One Directioners. A former fangirl herself, Ewans takes a far more sympathetic and appreciative look at various fandoms in contrast to their treatment by the media. There are personal anecdotes, moving interviews and contributions from critics who analyse the close bond between so many young female fans, and what drives them to be so dedicated to their favourite bands or singers.

My spotlight artists this week is the band Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, a Welsh four-piece making some beautifully dreamy, Seventies-influenced rock. Their new track “Love Forever” has a psychedelic slacker vibe with a very nice groove to it, and uplifting lyrics urging the listener to be a bit nicer to their fellow humans. I caught up with them to chat about the single and what else they have lined up for the rest of 2019.

Hey guys! How's your summer going?

Our summer is going great! We’ve been hitting some very cool festivals so have felt really lucky to have the summer we’ve been having. We’ve just got back from Latitude after playing Glastonbury a couple of weeks before, so it’s all feeling pretty surreal, but surrealist summers are usually my favourite so it’s all rock.

Tell me about your new single, when did you write it and what's it about?

Our new single is called ‘Love Forever’, which I probably wrote a couple of years ago now. I wrote it a couple of months after Trump got elected, which in these times I’m sure is a bit of a musicians platitude, kind of an easy way out for song writing, though at the time I was toying with the idea of writing a song that looks at all those platitudes, whilst trying to write a love song as well. I’ve never been too keen on writing about loving a specific person, so thought it would be interesting to look at writing a song about loving everyone.

Your music has a bit of a slacker vibe but the lyrics are actually about making things happen: do you think that's a natural reflection of the simultaneous apathetic/angry emotions among younger generations?

I think it’s suffice to say that music is a great reflection of younger peoples attitudes, and think at the moment there is a certain apathy amongst us, as I think it’s hard not feel apathetic when we’re experiencing a kind of faded British dream that was handed to everyone in the early 2000’s. This being said though I think it’s a non-traditional apathy in the way that it reverts to love as opposed to anger. I wouldn’t say the younger generations are angry, in fact one reason why I think this song bares significance to me is that I think we’re offering love instead.

What do you have lined up for the rest of 2019?

We’re still rolling out on a couple of festivals like Neighbourhood Festival in Manchester and Tenement Trail in Glasgow at the end of the year, and we’re hopping on a few dates with Otherkin too, we’ve also got a couple of hot dates we’re excited to announce, but have to keep that under our hats for now!