Melissa Kacar

Hey Billie, you there? Happy Record Store Day! To celebrate one of the biggest events of the year for independent record stores, Charli xcx and Billie Eilish released a special 7" vinyl single for their iconic 2024 collaboration "Guess". It was one of my most anticipated releases for this year and I'm so happy to have it in my collection! There were only 10,000 copies of this vinyl pressed worldwide and sold exclusively at independent record stores in April 2025. It is a classic black pressing with the iconic shade of brat green as the center label. The disc itself is overall very minimalist, with no markings at all on either side of the center label. Like all of the vinyl from the BRAT era , there is a sticker closing the record that needs to be cut open very carefully. This is one of two special releases Charli released this year to celebrate independent record stores.  It is housed in a cardboard sleeve, which is so different than any other record sleeve I'...

"party 4 u" by Charli xcx is a euphoric anthem of unrequited love, a song full of glittering synths and raw emotion. She sings about throwing an entire party with the hopes that just the one person she wants to see the most will be there - a very Gatsby theme that she translated so well into this song. It is featured on her 2020 album how i'm feeling now , which was largely created in isolation and released in the thick of the pandemic in May of that year. She worked with her frequent collaborator, A.G. Cook , on this song and the rest of the album. By the time the pandemic started, they only had about half of the album finished, so they decided to go with a DIY approach while finishing the rest of how i'm feeling now .  "party 4 u" had a much longer history by that point though, as Charli said in an interview with Apple Music. "This is the oldest song on the album. For myself and A. G., this song has so much life and story," Charli said. "We...

Brat summer has just been the gift that has kept on giving! Shortly after Charli xcx 's iconic album BRAT   was released in June 2024, Charli put out the deluxe version titled brat and it's the same, but there's three more songs, so it's not - which is possibly one of the best album titles ever. She's nothing if not straightforward! Those three songs were really great additions to the album and I love that she released them so soon after the standard BRAT . For Urban Outfitters' annual Singles Day vinyl event every November, one of the limited edition releases was this special 7" single featuring two of the three bonus tracks on it - "Guess" and "Spring Breakers". I love having this vinyl in my collection to commemorate what a massive year BRAT had in 2024 , especially since it includes two of my favorite songs. It was limited to 5,000 copies and is a classic black pressing, sold exclusively at Urban Outfitters. This is one of many 7...

"DANCE..." is the breakthrough hit from Slayyyter , a pure nightlife dance anthem encapsulating all of the grit, glamour, and chaos of a night out. The song is built on an incredibly infectious beat, anchored by an indelible hook that feels seductive, synthy, and hypnotic all at once. In so many ways, it carries the energy of a future pop classic.  This serves as the opening track off of her 2026 album  WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA and was promoted as the album's fourth single alongside its official announcement. It introduces so many of the themes and overarching narrative threads that run through the rest of the album, acting almost like a mission statement for the world she's built around it. "I feel like everything sounds kind of different," she said in an interview with Switched on Pop. "But I was using that as a through line. I just loved it." It was produced and co-written alongside her frequent collaborators Valley Girl, the duo of Nate Campany ...

Despite being a divisive release by Charli xcx at the time, her 2016 EP,  Vroom Vroom, has gone on to become an experimental pop classic that is largely regarded as one of the defining releases to pioneer the hyperpop movement. Made largely in collaboration with producer SOPHIE in just three days, the EP captured two visionaries who were so far ahead of their time that the rest of pop music spent the next decade catching up. Its quick, four‑track runtime stands as a brief but incredibly impactful chapter in Charli's discography, planting the seeds for so much of the groundbreaking work she would go on to make. This stands as the only full‑length project she and SOPHIE ever officially released together, but it was an undoubtedly formative one as well. While Charli has undoubtedly garnered a significant amount of mainstream success in the decade following  Vroom Vroom 's release - especially in the past couple of years post‑ BRAT -  at this point in 2016 she was still larg...

"White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter" by Lana Del Rey Whoopsie daisy yoo-hoo! Lana Del Rey is back with a new single off her upcoming album Stove , and it already feels like an instant classic in her catalog. She embodies a sound and style that's unmistakably unique, blending an enchanting Southern‑Gothic, witchy‑princess vibe - a description that's incredibly specific, but really does captures the tone of the song so well. It feels unlike anything she, or anyone else, has ever made before, and it reflects the new stage of life that's inspiring this era of her work. There's a special charm running through the entire song, serving as the strongest reminder (if anyone needed one) of what an artistic force she is and always has been. Lana creates music that is so singular to her vision; no matter how abstract the idea might seem on paper, she pulls it off with an effortlessness that only she can capture. "Funny Mouth" by Charli xcx Charli xcx 's Wut...