Just a video this week.

“Stay With Me” – Hatchie. I still hate the move for new music to drop on Fridays instead of Tuesdays. It seems like I can never get through all the new albums I want to listen to on Friday, the weekend keeps me from spending much time with new albums, and then on Monday I’m trying to reset and catch up. On the weeks when there are multiple new albums I want to sample, it always seems like one slips through and I’m scrambling to review it the following week.

Such was the case this week, when Hatchie’s debut album Keepsake dropped. She was in the honorable mention section of my favorite songs of 2018 with “Sugar & Spice,” off her fine debut EP. But the early singles from her first full length didn’t hit me as hard. Over repeated listens I eventually enjoyed them, but it seemed like a step back from the songs on that EP. So I slid her album down in the list of importance last week, spending more time with the Prince Originals disk. In fact, I kind of forgot about Hatchie until I saw several Tweets and posts over the weekend about how great her album was.

So I gave it a listen Monday afternoon while doing some cleaning around the house and…HOLY SHIT! I know I’m still in that initial window where it is new and shiny, but if I had to pick an album of the year right now, Keepsake would be it. It is an utterly gorgeous, totally fantastic collection of music. Almost every song is really, really good, and a handful are flat out great. There are so many good songs, in fact, that it has been hard to isolate one as my favorite.

I share this one just because it is the one of those favorites with a video. You get most of the experience here: dance-influenced indie pop. This song lacks the sound of ‘90s bands like The Cocteau Twins and The Sundays that is prevalent on so many of the other tracks. But you do hear some of the Robyn-adjacent sound that Hatchie builds into most of her music. It is a shockingly mature collection from a woman who is just 26. Oh, and she’s Australian, so add her to the list of Aussie acts that I love these days. You could really tell me that I could listen to nothing but Australian artists and I would be perfectly content.