Diving into this Pounding Sound and Dancefloor Alt-Rock of the Band Ashnymph and This Week's Top Fresh Music

The two singles released so far by Ashnymph resist simple labeling: their own description of their work as “subconscioussion” doesn’t offer many clues. The first single Saltspreader married a heavy mechanical drumming – member Will Wiffen has sometimes been seen on stage sporting a shirt that displays the emblem of industrial metal pioneers Godflesh – with old-school electronic keys and a guitar riff that subtly echoes the classic Stooges track I Wanna Be Your Dog, before transforming into a wall of disquieting noise. The planned result, the band has indicated, was to conjure highway journeys, “the endless movement of vehicles all day long over huge distances … nighttime orange glows”.

The subsequent track, the song Mr Invisible, sits somewhere between club music and left-field alt-rock. On one hand, the song's beat, strata of mesmerizing synths, and vocals that arrive either trippily blurred or hypnotically looped in a way that brings back Dubnobasswithmyheadman-era Underworld all point towards the club floor. On the other, its intense performance-style shifts, near-anarchic character and fuzz – “getting that crisp distortion is a lifelong ambition,” Wiffen has said – mark it out as undeniably a band creation rather than a solitary home producer. They’ve been playing around the independent music circuit in south London for a short time, “anywhere that will turn the PA up loud”.

But both are exciting and different enough – mutually and other current music – to prompt questions about Ashnymph's upcoming moves. No matter what it is, on the basis of these two singles, it’s probably not dull.

This Week’s Best New Tracks

Dry Cleaning – Hit My Head All Day
“I absolutely need experiences”​, vocalist Florence Shaw states on the group's captivating comeback, but across six minutes – with exhales setting the pace – you get the sense that she's unsure of the reason.

Azimuth by Danny L Harle with Caroline Polachek
Merging gothic intensity to classic 90s trance – even the words “and I ask the rain” – Azimuth suggests digging out your Cyberdog attire and heading south west to rave, immediately.

Robyn's Acne Studios mix
The music by Robyn for the Acne Studios' spring/summer 2026 presentation hints at her next record, including driving guitar parts à la Soulwax, pulsating rhythms in the Benassi vein and the verse “my body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive”.

Jordana – Like That
Listeners adored her soft rock album Lively Premonition last year and the Stateside musician further demonstrates her impressive hook-crafting ability as she expresses unrequited feelings.

Get a Life by Molly Nilsson
The one-woman Swedish pop operation put out her new album Amateur this week, and this song is extraordinary: a synthetic guitar line surges ahead with punk speed as Nilsson demands we grab life by the scruff of the neck.

Artemas – Superstar
Following tales of weary romance on his smash I Like the Way You Kiss Me and its underrated parent mixtape Yustyna, the musician of mixed heritage is wretchedly in thrall to his latest lover amid driving coldwave beats.

Jennifer Walton's Miss America
From one of the year’s standout debuts, a soft synth lament about the artist hearing of her father's passing in an hotel near an airport, mapping the strange setting in gentle refrains: “Shopping plaza, illegal trade, anxiety episodes.”