Despite the ease of access that streaming has brought to the distribution of music, the volume that's released can make it a daunting task to find unique new stuff every week. In this recurring weekly feature we put together a short list of new songs from the past week that stand out amongst all the noise and deserve a spot in your rotation.
All songs featured in this recurring series can be found in our scrmbl selection 2026 playlist on YouTube, Apple Music or Spotify.
eill — “AFTER RAIN”
Patrick: A touch of Y2K retro-ness...but not too much to turn this speedy pop song into a museum piece. This is the latest collab between singer eill and producer ☆Taku Takahashi, with the latter sprinkling a little bit of m-flo magic onto this without going full revival, leaving space for eill herself to shine on the vocal front.
Hakushi Hasegawa — “Boss-Moire-FS”
Patrick: Nearly a decade into their career of treating music like Silly Putty, Hakushi Hasegawa continues to offer sonic surprises galore on newest full-length Honest Feeling Album. The whole set is full of sounds to get lost in, but the most surprising turn comes early on “Boss-Moire-FS.” Here, Hasegawa's creativity shines fully as they recruit saxophonist Kei Matsumaru to deliver a dizzying solo...while electronic artist tofubeats provides baseball-like play-by-play of the whole thing. Crazier still, there's more detours within.
Hedigan's — “Harinezumi”
Patrick: The return of Suchmos to the public eye has been exciting, and a chance for many to correctly observe the influence this acid-jazz-indebted project has had over the last decade. Funny enough, though, it's frontman Yosuke Kasai's other project that has been delivering the much more interesting new music in the 2020s. Hedigan's is a band allowing Kasai space to explore his rock fascination, and new song “Harinezumi” offers one of the trippiest dispatches from the project to date, with electronic touches and guitar breakdowns giving the whole thing an unpredictable edge.
mimi kiddy - “Madeline”
Ryo: If only melting in the summer heat felt as effervescent as how the new mimi kiddy song sounds. As “Madeline” swirls with micro future-bass beat explosions and garage-house bells and whistles, the idol group rides this dizzying spin cycle in a daze. They liken themselves to the titular butter cookie being cooked in the face of either a hot crush or the literal burning temperature. Whichever the perspective, it all sounds like sweet delirium when sung along to mimi kiddy’s glistening electropop.
ukaihi - “In the Center of the Blue”
Ryo: Pillow-soft breakbeats, soothing piano keys and wispy synths make for tranquil electropop in an ukaihi track, whose vibes evoke the digital dreaminess of a Windows XP screensaver—a visual reference also not lost on the Vocaloid producer. But “In the Center of the Blue” is fragile as it is tender, its delicate production opening the floor for Hatsune Miku to get vulnerable: “as natural as breathing / I wanted to disappear just now,” she sighs with that signature warble in her voice, and Miku continues to casually confess dark asides over such serene music.
zerobansen to yoakemae - “The Aquarium Children”
Ryo: Imagery of spending one’s entire day staring at a wall from an enclosure—or in this song’s case, a “waterless aquarium”—seems like fodder for a glum shoegaze record, perhaps made even more depressing by a brooding guitar drone. Zenbansen no yoakemae’s new one is full of these kinds of walled-in scenes, yet the shoegaze idols don’t sound doomed but rather anxious to escape their predicament, fast, as the woozy guitars play just as urgently. They give a good struggle, and their resistance turns a supposed palette for inward-looking music into something more extroverted.
