The plunderphonic pioneers and English producer skillfully weaved together a beautifully upbeat song, alongside a satirical beverage ad video (produced by Jonathan Zawada).

If the single sounds familiar, that’s because it was originally was featured as an interlude on Jamie’s 2024 release, In Waves. They also collaborated on “All You Children” on the album.

“We’ve loved collaborating with Jamie xx over the years – his In Colour album reignited our passion for sampling, and this track is all about letting go, forgetting the 9-5 grind and enjoying every single weekend,” the group said in a press release.

The single came just two weeks after The Avalanches released “Together,” featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza, and Prentiss. No word yet on if a new album is in the works but are certainly hoping for one.

Listen to both new singles below.

True to the HighClouds spirit, we’ve once again tried to shine a light on overlooked releases and new or under-the-radar artists alongside some more familiar names. And yes… for the second year the same artist is topping our Best Songs list. At this point, it’s safe to say we’re obsessed. All of the tracks featured here (and many others) are also gathered in our Spotify playlist, that you can find below.

Thank you for reading, listening, and sharing music with us throughout 2025. We wish you a beautiful end of the year, and we’ll be back very soon in 2026 to share even more amazing music with you.

60 Avalon – Harder To Reach Than God
59 Farao – Waiting for You
58 Reggie Devoyage – Down Town
57 Nuovo Testamento – Picture Perfect
56 Yumi Zouma – Drag
55 Boyhood – A Grand Time
54 Danny L Harle; Caroline Polachek – Azimuth
53 Fernette – Lowlands
52 Jouska – Season of Dread
51 Charli xcx – Chains of Love

50 Pearly Drops – End Credits
49 Marina Zispin – Penthouse Samba
48 Boyish – Jumbos
47 Sword II – Sugarcane
46 TOPS – Chlorine
45 Robyn – Dopamine
44 The Deep – KPOP B!TCH
43 Juliana Madrid – Jamie
42 Men I Trust – Come Back Down
41 R. Missing – Telepolartears

40 Jenny Hval – The artist is absent – 89 seconds rewrite
39 Fontaines D.C. – Before You I Just Forget
38 hemlocke springs – the beginning of the end
37 Sea Lemon – Stay
36 Georgie & Joe – Pacemaker
35 Fine – I could
34 Jessy Lanza – Slapped By My Life
33 Arny Margret – Day Old Thoughts
32 Lipsticism – Erased
31 Clara Kimera; notinbed – angel candles

30 Neggy Gemmy – Mysterious Girl
29 Joanne Robertson; Oliver Coates – Always Were
28 Hannah Jadagu – My Love
27 HTRK – Swimming Pool
26 Night Tapes – television
25 Raisa K – Affectionately
24 helen island – hot zone, regular day
23 Dean Blunt; Elias Rønnenfelt – 1
22 Cole Pulice – After the Rain
21 crushed – starburn

20 AMORE – Delirio
19 Oneohtrix Point Never – Rodl Glide
18 Erika de Casier – Delusional
17 Judeline – chica de cristal
16 Dijon – Yamaha
15 Rochelle Jordan – Ladida
14 PinkPantheress – Illegal
13 Maria Somerville – Garden
12 Ethel Cain – Fuck Me Eyes
11 Sophia Stel – Everyone Falls Asleep In Their Own Time

10 Jim Legxacy – ’06 wayne rooney
9 Magdalena Bay – Human Happens
8 snuggle – Woman Lake
7 Addison Rae – Headphones On
6 After – 300 dreams
5 FKA twigs – Striptease
4 james K – Play
3 Nourished by Time – Max Potential
2 Smerz – You got time and I got money
1 Oklou – blade bird

A few months ago, Jessy Lanza released her breezy and personal album, Love Hallucination. Today, the Canadian songwriter, producer, and vocalist unveiled the visuals for “I Hate Myself,” a Balearic chill-out ballad in which she continuously repeats the phrase ‘”I Hate Myself”—a sort of reverse daily affirmation or mantra. Don’t get too hard on yourself Jessy, this song is just amazing. Jeu Lanza stated on her social media, “This one goes out to all the introverts and misanthropes.” Watch the video, courtesy of Infinite Vibes, below.

Prior to the release of her new record, Jessy Lanza just shared a new single and video, “Limbo”. Besides a slaying bass line and some funky hooks, the disco-ready single also comes with a very tongue-in-cheek video, directed by Winston Case, which features her web-cammer neighbour Conrad Stark dressed in a kinky rubber outfit.

“The video stars our neighbour Conrad who moonlights as a web-cammer for a living,” Lanza shared. “He revealed that he sometimes uses an inversion table in his webcam sessions and it seemed like the perfect visualization of the themes in the song.”

Catch Jessy Lanza during her North American Tour:

08/01 Hollywood, CA – Amoeba Records
08/10 Seattle, WA – KEXP Concerts at the Mural
08/11 Vancouver, BC – Fortune Sound Club
08/12 Portland, OR – Holocene
09/22 San Francisco, CA – Popscene @ Rickshaw Stop
09/23 Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
09/24 Tucson, AZ – 191 Toole
09/27 San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger
09/28 Houston, TX – Secret Group
09/29 Austin, TX – The Parish
09/30 Dallas, TX – Rubber Gloves
10/02 Atlanta, GA – Masquerade
10/03 Durham, NC – Motorco Music Hall
10/04 Washington, DC – Union Stage
10/05 New York, NY – Racket
10/07 Boston, MA – Deep Cuts
10/08 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
10/10 Montreal, QC – Theatre Fairmount
10/11 Toronto, ON – El Mocambo Upstairs
10/12 Chicago, IL – Sleeping Village

Hey! We made a mixtape with some of our favorite bops of 2023, and we also added a few all-time favorites. Expect some good pop, dance, indie, and more, by the likes of COBRAH, Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX, Automatic, Jessie Ware, Jessy Lanza, Romy, Blue Hawaii… It’s hot, sweaty, euphoric; everything you need to slay this Summer. Enjoy!

Mixed by yours truly.

Listen and check the full tracklist via Mixcloud.

One year after her album All The Time, Jessy Lanza will be the next curator of the iconic compilation DJ-Kicks. Coming with this announcement, the artist has unveiled the first single off of her mix, “Seven 55,” which features London’s producer Loraine James.

“I wrote ‘Seven 55’ about a close friend and his inability to commit,” Lanza stated. “I fantasized about the women caught in his web and wrote ‘Seven 55’ from their point of view. I think it’s important to face a nightmare head on so what better place than Las Vegas to shoot the video for a song about longing and denial. In the video, Winston captures people in liminal spaces in limbo between destinations during their weekend in Vegas.”

Watch the Winston H. Case-directed visuals, check the tracklist and pre-order via Bandcamp below.

01 Jessy Lanza: “Guess What”
02 Jessy Lanza: “Seven 55” [ft. Loraine James]
03 Jessy Lanza: “Wet x3” [ft. Taraval]
04 DJ Spookie: “Twilite”
05 Michael J. Blood: “Lip Biter”
06 Mr Ho + Mogwaa: “Bail-E”
07 Crystal: “Jungli​-​la (Joe Howe Club Mix)”
08 Masarima: “Freak Like U (Club Mix)”
09 Golden Donna: “Foaming”
10 Mafia Boyz: “Teaspoon La Qoh”
11 Markus Mann: “I’m Losing”
12 Jim C. Nedd: “Maleka”
13 Maarten Van Der Vleuten: “Nightshift”
14 Secret Werewolf: “Yage”
15 Grain: “Untitled B2”
16 Gant-Man: “Distorted Sensory [Loefah’s South Side Rmx]”
17 G3: “Drum 2 (Peanut)”
18 Lolina: “A Path of Weeds and Flowers”
19 DJ Nehpets: “Na Na Na”
20 Oyubi: “140yaku”
21 DJ Swisha: “If the Shoe Fits”
22 Jessy Lanza: “Heaving” (ft. Taraval)
23 Tah: “Beat It Up Like (These Drums)”
24 Kanyon: “IDFWS”
25 EOD: “Anubis”
26 The Raining Heart: “Raining Heart”

Since Oh No (2016), her fiercest statement, the last couple of years have unfolded strangely for Jessy Lanza. A move from her Canadian home of Hamilton to New York where, she was, as admitted candidly, “emotionally up and down and felt very isolated and disconnected from everything and everyone around me.” She prods on the album’s spacious opener: “Anyone around? Anyone…?”. Sparse, elegantly deconstructed rapid-fire beats and subterranean bass pumps slack, punctuated with curious synth strokes unrolling without an answer as futile question marks.

It wasn’t apparent another album with her creative partner in crime Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys would even happen, but as the triumphantly melancholic titular track “All The Time” effortlessly took shape to their satisfaction, the new album was soon in the making. It fast became a constructive anchor for Lanza. “I felt very depressed, so experimenting with my instruments and spending time in my studio and working on ‘All the Time’ was something positive to focus on.” The duo, working long-distance, perfecting ideas back and forth, gave the record a feeling of highly accomplished sonic craft and emotional finesse without feeling overworked. In an unstable world, Lanza found a safe space and comfort in the form of her transient habitat, her beloved van which is featured on the cover.

Jessy Lanza by Milos Jacimovic

Unfortunate circumstances continued, further spreading globally, with the pandemic dismantling her early European tour and forcing another move to San Francisco. New home base, shared with her videographer partner Winston Case and family, proved fertile ground. A poignant visual identity resulted, capturing the lockdown moment in a series of videos and home Dj sessions, exemplary of a new global DIY aesthetic, running everything through the everyday filter. “I think there has been a burst of creativity for us despite the limitations. Maybe even because of the limitations,” she affirms. “I’ve been working on remixes and lots of new material too since I’ve been at home so hopefully I can share something soon.”

Lanza’s scholarly ear is as ever hooked on immaculate pop melodies and finding that holy grail of the perfect R&B song. Her sonic principles still draw heavily from 90s sophisticated bangers: divine vocals and ungodly beats as immortalized in Aaliyah/Timbaland era. But lately, her inspiration seems to be moving back a decade and further, towards softer soulful hues and slow burners. New sound is influenced by her more often excursions into DJ territory, where mixing mindset altered the structure of the new tracks to appear more fluid and changeable.

Still, prominent Lanza signature, crisp tones, playfully luminescent Asian-tinged melodies betray longstanding influences like Haruomi Hosono, and some less obvious informing the record’s carefully crafted sonic aesthetics. Of contemporaries, she was drawing on producers like “Chasethemoney, Pi’erre Bourne, Kara-Lis Coverdale” and trying to figure out what they were doing to get the tones and sounds on their records. “I listened to Grafts by Kara-Lis all the time,” Jessy is revealing. “The way she uses samples and frequencies to compose was a huge inspiration for me on All the Time. In a similar way, I was obsessed with the Playboi Carti song ‘Lean 4 real’ (produced by Bourne).” Labelmates like Inga Copeland and Dean Blunt still share much with her sonic DNA. While subtly emulating the atmosphere and aesthetic principles, you’d never guess any direct links with said artists in Lanza‘s finely crafted unique pop jewels.

“I made myself quite vulnerable on this album – the liner notes include the lyrics which is something I never would have done on previous records,” Jessy shares. Her most sincere statement to date, “All the Time” is easy to connect to, feeling like a certain coming out as a human being, isolated and vulnerable, dropping the shame, making it feel liberating and gleefully normalized. She uncovers the secret behind the greater self-acceptance: “I started doing psychoanalysis which really helped me to identify the source of a lot of sadness and anger in my life. I felt like I got to know myself a lot better and it became easier to articulate what I felt in my writing whereas before trying to understand myself was like looking at a big abstract blob.” Bewildered, she sings: “And it’s hard to believe I don’t know myself”, her voice fading in higher registers on the bonafide banger of the album, “Over and Over“, most rightful sonic heir to “Oh No”. Evidently, we can take ourselves for granted, sometimes straying so far, when we finally meet ourselves inside, it feels like a strangely familiar alien encounter.

The atmosphere of alien intimacy haunts the record deeply, in eerily retro synth work and vocal effects, oftentimes playfully overpitched. Despite toned down footwork and signature beat sorcery, subtle experimentation emerges throughout, rewarding careful listening. Lanza uncovers a conscious effort to leave mistakes, “whether it was weird sounds in the drums or a vocal take that may not have been perfect in pitch but captured a unique quality that I wouldn’t be able to replicate.”

Realizing a certain kind of discordant feeling is necessary to set the creativity off but still a formally pure artist, Lanza does not let it spill over too much into the body of the song, except in decidedly overworked glitch thrill “Face“.

Jessy Lanza by Jenia Filatova

Angry at its core, but sublimated, deceptively saccharine fun-spinning “Lick in Heaven“, shows up as zoned out 4×4 pop euphoria. Accompanying video made by Case is set on a morning TW show, all fuchsia power suits and fake excess smiles, with Lanza at the decks, studio turning into Ellen-inspired dancing spinning frenzy. What makes Lanza “go spinning” in anger are often ways things are marketed to women, the media and those morning TV shows exemplary in selling the one-dimensional images. She explains the frustration: “It seems to be challenging for people to accept that someone can be many things at once. It’s possible to be soft and assertive or submissive and domineering at the same time. A big problem with representation for women is that it can be very one dimensional and very boring. This drives me a bit crazy but I think that’s why it’s fun for me to play around with the tropes in the music so that I can steer the narrative in my own direction.”

There is the wizard of Oz kind of vibe, where she subtly draws the curtain to let you peek in, revealing clichés of the dream selling pop industry, without disrupting the structure at the same time wholeheartedly adopting the same “naive” pop song tropes. In her musical language, pop tropes are a kind of “small talk”, deceptively easy-going ice breakers that make way for dealing with the inner complexities and the lows comfortably camouflaged. Despite much of the album’s themes charged with romantic and erotic revelations, directed at a significant other, oftentimes frustratingly, equally lovingly, all that subtly conflicted ideal vs real romantic material is adopted for wider subversive play. “I think I use ‘romance’ as a way to talk about my own longing to be understood,” she finally concludes. As much as the album is a reflection on relationships, it stands as a radical statement of self-intimacy, its maturity found in self-acceptance, flaws and all. Without being self-helpy, it’s a fine document of personal knowledge and growth.

Asked about the near future of romance, Lanza shrugs off the fears post-pandemic blues might alienate us all further. “It’s human nature to seek out connection (romantic or otherwise) and despite the need to be distant the desire to be close is so powerful.” This uncanny timely collection of purest pop songs for the distanced, yet reaching out in longing, stands as her strongest argument, to be played over and over to the banishment of isolation.

Text by Danijela Bočev

Yesterday was a busy day for Jessy Lanza. Besides releasing her third album All The Time (we will post something about the record in the coming days), the Hamilton-born, NYC-based producer and vocalist organised a virtual listening party from her van and shared a video for “Over and Over”. Directed by Winston H. Case, the visuals take place in a mall where Jessy uses an escalator over and over again. Also, do like Jessy: wear a mask! By the way, this is one of our favourite tracks of the album. Watch the visuals and get the album via Bandcamp below.