Our latest picks: Joy Ike, Vanishing Shores, Local Natives, The Strokes + introducing 26th Avenue

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Joy Ike: Wearing Love

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The Nigerian-American, Philadelphia-based artist says this song originated with thoughts about her personal life but evolved into "my response to 2020. In the blackhole of identity politics, social media wars, and our country's polarizing responses to racial injustice, this song is a response and a challenge to come up higher and do better - to wear love better than we wear our pride...or our political affiliations." 

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Vanishing Shores: Road Less Traveled

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This Cleveland-based indie group is about to release its Kickstarter-financed, pandemic-delayed album Maps. We previously featured the early single "Fix Me," and now we're picking up this guitar-driven ode to exploration (with Katie Egan again providing backing vocals). Key lyric: "I don’t care if we get lost / We can always find the stars / I believe in hope unseen / I believe it changes everything."

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Local Natives: Statues in the Garden (Arras)

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From the Los Angeles band's new EP Sour Lemon comes this sweet track that Rolling Stone calls "an eclectic showcase of the group’s varied talents, featuring shimmering guitars and dreamy melodies, with its swirling, intricate arrangement helping to frame the depiction of someone reconciling changes in themselves with a world that is also constantly changing." 

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The Strokes: The Adults Are Talking

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This is the opening track on The New Abnormal, which came out back in April, but it has just been spun out as a single, accompanied by an amusing video that has the band playing baseball against robots. Because why not? 

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26th Avenue: 2:06

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This is the debut single from the debut EP, Fuel the Fire, by a young band of indie-rockers from Sussex, UK. They began playing local gigs in 2018. From the press release: "The band weaves alternative sounds like Paramore’s alt-punk rock influence with the upbeat soft playfulness of Wolf Alice or Yonaka ... [featuring] electrifying high-energy guitar riffs" behind vocalist Demi.