It’s time for Your First Listen, where we show you songs you need to discover this week!

This Indie88 feature is presented with Bay Bloor Radio.

Each week we feature five remarkable songs that you need to hear on Your First Listen on air. In case you miss them on air, you can catch up on the weekly tracks right here. Your First Listen airs every day in Indie88 beginning at 10 a.m.

Online, we expand the list with a couple more tunes. This week, we’re featuring new songs from Beck, Bartees Strange, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Murray Lightburn, and more.

Check out nine songs you need to discover this week below.

Beck – “Thinking About You”

Beck’s new standalone single “Thinking About You” dropped on the eve of the singer-songwriter’s extensive 2023 tour, which begins in Australia and includes a Toronto date at Budweiser Stage on September 3 with with Phoenix, Weyes Blood and Sir Chloe.

Bartees Strange – “Tisched Off” and “Keekee’in”

Bartees Strange has kept busy to begin 2023 after being tabbed to curate Sled Island Festival and announced a tour with boygenius. The singer-songwriter shared two new songs this week with “Tisched Off” and “Keekee’in (feat. Daniel Kleederman)”.

The tracks arrive via Sub Pop’s singles series.

Murray Lightburn – “Dumpster Gold”

Murray Lightburn (The Dears) recently shared a new single, “Dumpster Gold,” from his upcoming album Once Upon A Time In Montreal.

Lightburn on “Dumpster Gold,” via release: “About a year or so after my old man passed, my mom called and said, ‘Murray, I’ve made a big decision: I’m selling the house’’ She’d been there for 50 years. We were the only family that ever lived in it, one of many identical houses in a section of Brossard, Quebec. On our way out, we sifted through everything; most of it was going to the dump. There were many worthless treasures that were meaningful only to us. A couple of things now sit around my house. My father wasn’t an expressive man to me. I am left with these fragments to piece together a connection to him.”

The record arrives March 31st via Dangerbird Records.

Paramore – This Is Why

Cheating? Maybe a little… Paramore’s highly-anticipated new record This Is Why arrived today and we couldn’t pick just one. So enjoy the full record.

St. Paul & The Broken Bones – “Sea Star”

The new album from St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Angels in Science Fiction, is set for release April 21 via ATO Records. This week, the Alabama-based band shared the record’s first single, “Sea Star,” and accompanying Gus Black-directed video.

Hayden – “Miss Fort Erie”

Canadian indie-folk singer-songwriter Hayden has returned with a new single, “Miss Fort Erie” via Arts & Crafts, marking his second new piece of music since his 2015 album Hey Love. Hayden previously shared the single “East Coast.”

“‘Miss Fort Erie’ has been in my back pocket for a while now. It  was written and recorded pretty quickly up in my attic in the summer of 2016,” Hayden said of the track in a release.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – “Plague Dogs”

The Rural Alberta Advantage have shared a new single “Plague Dogs,” which draws some inspiration from the Richards Adams novel of the same name.

“Having read ‘Watership Down’ and ‘Shardick’ when I first moved to Toronto, I found myself drawn to Plague Dogs, and found the title creeping into a song we were playing around with in early 2020.” RAA vocalist and guitarist Nils Edenloff said in a release.

“The song doesn’t end up following the events of the novel in any way, but it underscores the specific time frame that we started to work on this song. The feelings of dread, uncertainty and isolation that I felt while reading the novel, along with the eerily similar feelings around early on in the pandemic are so tightly coupled with this song that it all feels like one for me.”

Fast Romantics – “Outta Love”

Toronto-based indie rock outfit Fast Romantics recently returned with their first new music in three years with the single “Outta Love.”