Welcome to Future Sounds! Every Wednesday Ghettoblaster brings you a handful of singles from upcoming albums to excite and entice your ears. Below you’ll find songs that really stand out as essential listening. So please sit back, relax and treat yourself to some seriously great music.

Swet Shop Boys – T5 (Customs)

 
Swet Shop Boys is a very exciting new rap group made up of Indian American rapper Heems from Das Racist and British Pakistani rapper Riz MC, better known as Riz Ahmed the actor who portrays Naz in the fantastic HBO series “The Night Of.”  T5 is the first single from their upcoming album Cashmere out on 10-14 from Swet Shop Boys own Customs label.  The track begins with vintage Heems lyricism: so witty, so sad and so true.  What starts out as a party anthem as they are kickin’ it in Jaffa, Haifa and Ramallah “looking for love in Palestine” soon turns bleak when they are in an airport attempting to fly home.  “Oh no, we’re in trouble! TSA always wanna burst my bubble. Always get a random check when I rock the stubble” is the so sad that its funny hook in T5.  Donald Trump’s name gets dropped, obviously, and the super short song culminates in the refrain: “Terminal 5 / Terminal 1 / Think we’re termites / Wanna terminate us.”  It’s an unfortunate song for our times, but one that Swet Shop Boys were meant to create with irreverence and flair.

American Football – I’ve Been So Lost for So Long (Polyvinyl Records)

There is a new American Football album coming out soon.  Man, it felt good to type that sentence out.  This is fantastic news as fans of the band have grown great in number and only have one album and one ep from this truly awesome Emo band.  Sure, Mike Kinsella has been releasing solid albums under the name Owen, including one of the best albums of this year, but nothing has been quite as good as American Football’s self-titled opus.  Their new material could have ended up feeling forced (has anyone heard the new Jimmy Eat World song from this week?) but luckily the band seem like they’re picking up from where they left off.  This is just beautifully intricate music that embraces the label “emo” in both subtle and blatant ways.  Musically they have always put together truly fascinating arrangements that are in the same category as The National and do not necessarily scream emo.  Lyrically, however, Kinsella treats American Football like a vehicle for his diary entries with lines like “If you need me / don’t / you can’t trust a man who can’t find his way home” and “I feel so sick / Doctor it hurts when I exist.”  Yet, it all works wonderfully together and results in one of the best songs of the year.  American Football’s next self-titled album is out 10-21 on Polyvinyl Records.

Mannequin Pussy – Emotional High (Tiny Engines)

Philadelphia punk band Mannequin Pussy are back with a vengeance, releasing their sophomore album, Romantic, on 10-28 from Tiny Engines.  Emotional High is the first taste we are getting from the album and it is delicious.  It is a classic loud, crunchy punk song with a nice pop edge to it and is so short that you’ll just want to listen to it on repeat all day.  Most punk songs are not as lyrically warm and fuzzy as Emotional High, which really works for this track.  It’s all about that emotional high you feel when you get nostalgic about all the great people in your life who have sacrificed for your benefit.  Although the song is airy where lyrics are concerned, musically it is definitely heavy and in your face.  This is a pummeling song, forceful and assertive and definitely one to blast.  If the remainder of the album is anything like Emotional High, Romantic could end up being one of the most enjoyable albums of the year.

Kero Kero Bonito – Graduation (Double Denim Records)

Hit play and buckle up for Kero Kero Bonito’s Graduation, the awesome new single from their upcoming album, Bonito Generation, out 10-28 on Double Denim Records.  Kero Kero Bonito is a British band who are inspired by video games and J-Pop music, all of which definitely shines brightly through on Graduation.  The music has video game-esque sound effects of lasers over an almost trap like beat.  It’s an interesting combination that will have your head bobbing.  Super pop female vocals sing the chorus and eventually turn into awkward rapping in English and then Japanese; again, it’s a combination that strangely totally works.  Lyrically this song will be easy to identify with for anyone who spent years and years on education and graduated only to find they didn’t learn anything and have no job prospects, but luckily they “even got a hat that I can throw.”  It’s an absurdist and cartoonish song in the best way possible and should inspire anticipation for what is to come from Kero Kero Bonito.