Monthly Picks | March 2026
Sining Shelter
GABY'S PICKS
Worst Girl in America
ALBUM | Slayyyter
Deconstructing what it means to be a "pop girl", especially in this day and age, is always going to be an interesting talking point to me (see fka twigs, Poppy, Caroline Polachek, Addison Rae, and more especially Charli XCX, whose own magnum opus brat is bound to be a marker of comparison to WGIA despite some key differences.) Slayyyter's breakthrough release (at least to those who did not have a Tumblr phase, lol) is coarse and grimy and offputting in a very uniquely American way, and yet I never hit pause. Barely is vulnerability ever channeled through this much rage, lust, or whatever unpalatable emotion most of today's charttoppers try so hard wedge into overly clean, overly played lyricism. Check out Grace's performances of CRANK and YES GODDD at Coachella, seriously.
Tomorrow is Perfect
SINGLE | mark william lewis
A more contemplative listen; one that welcomes isolation instead of fears it. Consequently, being alone together with someone else is just as good for Lewis. He croons to an unknown recipient (Us? A friend or lover he once knew?) with nothing but poignant observation, mourning and celebrating life's goings on as ambient acoustics drone into nothingness.
PEPI'S PICKS
We Are Going To Make Love For A Thousand Years
ALBUM | God
Hums, buzzes, hisses, scratches, crackles, statics, pops.
A drone shifts and mutates. They scatter noises over it. This takes place for about an hour and thirty minutes. God’s feature-length affair takes this cold and minimal set of fundamental sonic units and draws from it something so sublime and so foreboding. Total hypgnosis. Very real chance this is the music that plays in purgatory.
Plays Well
ALBUM | Alan Licht
Plays Well is an album that had long been on my radar and finally giving it a listen made me wish that I’d hit it sooner. For its first half, Licht traverses his guitar over a simple two-note loop. And that alone is excellent. Kinetic cosmic bluesery. But he pulls a move so left-field on the album’s second half that I don’t even want to mention it to leave new listeners the surprise. Listening to Plays Well was the most musically shocked I’d been in a Certified Fat Minute, and even on multiple listens it still runs through me like lightning.
Sometimes you think that you’ve heard it all with music, then Alan Licht comes along to let you know that you have not.
INIGO'S PICKS
Louise
SINGLE | Acetone
Life recently. Gas is expensive and the general heft closes in from time to time for reasons na nakakagalit isipin. Things could be so much easier and there is always plenty to complain about for dignified reasons but it's good for you to take the little things. Major na minor, magiging major ulit sa huli. Let a thousand IG stories bloom.
My Aim is True
ALBUM | Elvis Costello
To clarify, I'm not completely in love with this album. Dings, scratches, bumps, and zits present in the form of things that snag on me and there are just some skippable songs. But I think about this album more often than I'm supposed to for something I'm not completely enamored with. So every good bar band should have at least a Modicum of Elvis (Costello). The real thing to pay attention here, for me, is how everything is just genre-soup to good lyrics. Power pop, punk, new wave, dub, mod, and he's RIPPING up the vocal booth over it all. Truly a generational whiteboy.
STELLA'S PICK
Zachshots
EP | Zachshots
Good biking music… But if you don’t have a bike, it’s good music for forgiveness… Please try listening to this cozy indie folk music on a moving vehicle and on a sunny late afternoon. The sun and trees making a unique visualizer you will never see again. There are days where I really need those things in that order. My favorite from this is Von Bismark because I like the guitar and I let go of pent up anger when I listen to it. Black cloud symphathizer energy he was always down and ditsy. You don’t care about me at all. I start thinking of everyone who has ever wronged me. I’m sorry but I cannot start a fight. I’m outside and I’m way too goaded now. I snap out of it.