What To Listen To This Week: June 18
Five NC-based tracks worth fitting into your busy schedule.
Caleb Pressley and I are hardly the same person (hanging out at the Thrill City shop aside), but if there's one thing neither of us can resist, it's rolling out a new feature for the audience. Every few weeks, I find myself doing the Super Empty equivalent of, "Do you mind if we do a new segment presented by Mamitas?" — except our new segments are usually articles about NC hip-hop rather than funny questions for celebrities, and we're not sponsored by Mamitas (but open to it).
Today, the new and quite likely short-lived segment in question is What To Listen To This Week, in which a select handful of North Carolina songs (or videos) are plucked off the internet sludge pile and delicately inserted into your consciousness, free of charge or even a thank you. So without further ado, let's get to it — the first (and maybe final?) edition of What To Listen To This Week.
“Keep My Name Out Your Mouth (Demo)” - chlothegod
Released: June 13, 2025 | Listen on Spotify or Apple
Maybe it's just me, but there's something uncannily (and satisfyingly) Brih-ish about Fayetteville native chlothegod lately, from her recent feature on Aminé's 13 Months of Sunshine to this loosie dropped late last week. How can someone listen to this and not hear any number of seductively simple, similarly stripped-down past moments from the likes of Jorja Smith, Amy Winehouse, Adele, or even Alex Turner? For an artist who came up on R&B/hip-hop beats and now traffics in high-energy alt-rock as much as anything, it's a reminder that she's just as well off with only an electric guitar and her voice. Maybe UK music has less to do with an accent than a state of mind — or maybe I'm just being daft.
“Godspeed” - Mavis Staples (prod. Brad Cook)
Released: June 10, 2025 | Listen on Spotify or Apple
Like many others who were in their teens or 20s at the time of its 2016 arrival, I consider Frank Ocean's Blonde one of the most important and indelible albums of my life — in nearly every memory of that summer (probably to a faulty degree, at this point) its sounds are never far away. Among the best of those has to be the kaleidoscopic, transfixing and stubbornly hopeful penultimate track, "Godspeed," which had some new life breathed into it last week in the capable and caring hands of Durhamites Brad and Phil Cook. The brothers, known primarily for their work in the band Megafaun, play the roles of producer and pianist, respectively, on a cover of the song by the gospel/R&B icon Mavis Staples — a rare and refreshing flip on the usual convention of young artists covering the work of their predecessors, rather than the other way around.