Now Hear This: New music from Rosalia, KO!KO!KO, Skepta, Headie One, and spotlight artist Lupa J

In her weekly column, music correspondent Roisin O'Connor goes through the best (and worst) new releases

(Jac Meddings)

The Independent’s culture team is just about recovered from Glastonbury Festival, although I have an eye-twitch that won’t go away and a lingering sense of FOMO. But at least it means we can crack on with the rest of summer, enjoy Craig David on Love Island, and forget about Glastonbury Alex. PS I put "Thiago Silva" on the playlist to boost those streams for Dave and AJ Tracey.

Boosting my mood this weekend are KO!KO!KO! with their debut album Fongola. It is one of the most spirited, vibrant and joyous releases of the year; the collective, who hail from the Kinshasa capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, have poured all their energy into this record. To this week’s playlist I’ve added the funk-driven “Zala Mayele” and the more urgent “Kitoko”.

After her sizzling set at Glastonbury, Spanish singer Rosalia has released two new tracks, “Millionaria” and “Dio$ No$ Libre Del Dinero”, which both feature in her music video “F***ing Money Man”. “Milionària” is an upbeat, Latin-influenced pop track, while “Libre Del Dinero” has a hip-hop vibe that suits her trilling, husky vocals.

It’s taken me a while to warm to Mahalia but I love “Simmer”, her collaboration with Burna Boy, where she lays out the kind of love she wants over a dark bass hook that seems interpolated from Krept & Konan’s “Freak of the Week”. Sam Fender’s new single “Will We Talk” takes a break from the politics and instead focuses on the moments of uncertainty before two people’s lives become entangled.

There are two clubs I want to be in right now: Press Club, who emulate the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on their new track “Thinking About You”, and “Fang Club” who are definitely going for a Queens of the Stone Age buzz on “Vulture Culture” (potentially even a nod to Josh Homme’s supergroup Them Crooked Vultures?). Anyway, the track has a great stomp – if my ankle wasn’t still healing I’d stomp along with it.

I’m trying very hard not to think too much about Chris Stapleton’s collaboration with Ed Sheeran, but it’s very difficult. Stapleton is one of my favourite artists, but even he can’t save this weird, bloated attempt at a rock song featuring Bruno Mars. “Pull my trigger, let me blow your mind.” Eesh. Since “Galway Girl” Sheeran seems to have got it into his head that he can dip his toes into any genre if he enlists someone of weight from that scene.

North London rapper Headie One matches Skepta for bars on “Back to Basics”, which is accompanied by a video (directed by Hugo Jenkins) showing the duo doing a tour of their Tottenham territory. There’s another superb (very different) video for “Money”, one of my favourite releases from last week by Michael Kiwanuka and Tom Misch, which intersperses shots of Kiwanuka working in a supermarket with him and Misch enjoying a couple of convertibles and lots of cash. I’m not too sure about Misch’s gold teeth, though.

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London-based R&B singer has a gorgeous acoustic release of her track “Stranger Things” if you’re looking for something to unwind to after a long week. Ditto Talulah Ruby with her haunting new single “I Don’t Feel Like Me”, which the east London singer says comes from “an introverted, personal place” in contrast to her first single, “Hot Water”. “I wrote both songs in the same set up and with the same person, but in completely different head spaces,” she explains. “’Hot Water’ is assertive and almost demanding, but ultimately inclusive, whereas ‘I Don’t Feel Like Me’ has an honest, post-defeat feel about it.”

My spotlight artist this week has featured previously in the Now Hear This Column with her single “The Crash” – Australian goth-pop artist Lupa J. She just released her debut album Swallow Me Whole, which is excellent and themed around self-discovery, sexuality and desire. I caught up with her to speak about making the record and what else she has lined up for this year. You can also check out the premiere of her brilliant video for "Woman", below:

Hey Lupa J, how's your 2019 going so far?

It's been pretty insane!!! The album was all written last year but this year has just been a non-stop rollercoaster of making videos, finalising vocal recordings & mixes, doing photoshoots and album art ALL at the very last minute as I try to balance my music career with demanding hospitality day jobs! It's been mental but it's definitely paid off - I've never released music to so much success before.

Tell me a bit about the process of making your debut album – when did you start writing it and did you have a clear idea of the themes you wanted to address/the sound you wanted?

I decided at the end of 2017 after releasing my last EP that I wanted to make my first full length album. I was at a point where there were a lot of problematic aspects in the way I was living that I hadn't properly addressed; a lot of emotions and desires I hadn't allowed myself to fully feel – and I knew that I had to face it by writing about it. So naturally, the album is very much focused around a set of consistent themes - it was pretty soon into the writing process that I knew what the story was that I was trying to tell.

I think I'd started writing it in December 2017, and by March 2018 I had most of the album written. It was when I wrote 'The Crash' in January 2018 that I had my 'aha' moment; realising that that song in particular really hit the nail on the head of the state of mind I was trying to write about.

Several of the tracks seem to tackle the sexual awakenings we experience as young adults – is that something you feel you've recently started exploring more in your music?

Yes, absolutely – in fact this album is the first time I've ever really tried to tackle writing about sexuality, and was very much the focus of the album. I wrote the bulk of the album while I was still in my longest relationship to date, a straight relationship - realising more and more every day that I had a lot of previously unexplored queer desire, and that it made more sense to me than anything had in the past. I found a sense of joy and relief in the fantasy of intimacy with someone who may experience life with a body / sense of gender like my own, and it became this intense escapist fantasy from the reality of my life in a straight relationship that I didn't yet know how to leave.

Much of the album is about this reckless, escapist state of mind I was in that came before I figured out how to take steps towards healing and actual happiness – wanting to throw myself into new and risky situations, to feel completely consumed by something: a person, emotion, desire, intoxication… anything that wasn't my reality.

What are your plans for the rest of the year?

In August I'll be playing two album launch shows in Sydney and Melbourne, and hopefully I'll be doing a whole lot more shows after. I'm actually just keen as heck to get back into writing again, now that this record is finally out! It's been ages since I've really sat down and focused on writing a bunch of songs at once. There are a lot of new things I wanna try out!