Diving into the Jackhammer Sound and Dancefloor Alt-Rock of Ashnymph and the Week's Best New Tracks

Based in London and Brighton
If you enjoy Underworld, MGMT, Animal Collective
Coming soon An as-yet-untitled EP, to be released in 2026

The two singles put out up to now by Ashnymph defy easy classification: the band's own tag of their music as “subconscioussion” provides few hints. The first single Saltspreader blended a pounding industrial rhythm – member Will Wiffen has at times appeared on stage wearing a T-shirt that displays the emblem of the trailblazing band Godflesh – with vintage-sounding synthesisers and a guitar line that partly brings to mind the Stooges’ garage rock perennial I Wanna Be Your Dog, before melting into a barrier of unsettling sound. The planned result, the band has indicated, was to evoke motorway travel, “the grinding circulation of vehicles around the clock over vast spans … orange lights at night”.

Its follow-up, Mr Invisible, occupies a space between club music and left-field alt-rock. For one thing, the cut's tempo, multiple entrancing electronic parts, and lyrics that appear either psychedelically smeared or spellbindingly cyclical in a way that evokes Dubnobasswithmyheadman-era Underworld all suggest the dancefloor. On the other, its powerful concert-like energy, edge-of-chaos quality and fuzz – “making everything sound crunchy is a lifelong ambition,” Wiffen noted – set it apart as undeniably a band creation rather than a solitary home producer. They've gigged around the self-made music community of south London for under a year, “any venue that cranks the volume”.

But both are exciting and different enough – mutually and contemporary releases – to spark curiosity about the band's future direction. Whatever it is, on the basis of these two singles, it’s probably not dull.

Top New Music This Week

Dry Cleaning's Hit My Head All Day
“I really require adventures”​, singer Florence Shaw declares on her band’s beguiling return, but across six minutes – with breath sounds keeping rhythm – you perceive that she can’t work out why.

Danny L Harle's Azimuth featuring Caroline Polachek
Merging gothic intensity to classic 90s trance – including the line “and I ask the rain” – the track implies dusting off your best Cyberdog wear and dancing the night away, right away.

Robyn – Acne Studios mix
Robyn's composition for the Acne Studios' spring/summer 2026 presentation teases her upcoming ninth album, including Soulwax-worthy grinding guitar, Benny Benassi-style thrust and the verse “my body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive”.

Jordana – Like That
We loved her album Lively Premonition last year and the US singer-songwriter keeps displaying her stunning facility for chorus writing as she laments her latest hopeless infatuation.

Molly Nilsson – Get a Life
The one-woman Swedish pop operation dropped the record Amateur this week, and this cut is remarkable: a synthetic guitar line jerks forward at hardcore punk pace as Nilsson insists we take control of life.

Superstar by Artemas
After documenting jaded love and sex on his hit single I Like the Way You Kiss Me and its underrated parent mixtape Yustyna, the UK-Cypriot artist is hopelessly devoted to his new flame amid driving coldwave beats.

Miss America by Jennifer Walton
From one of the year’s standout debuts, a delicate electronic ballad about the artist hearing of her father's passing in an airport hotel, describing her eerie environment in gentle refrains: “Retail area, shady transaction, nervous fits.”

Lynn Alvarez
Lynn Alvarez

A tech enthusiast and digital strategist with over a decade of experience in helping businesses adapt to the digital age.