Atwood Magazine is excited to share our Editor’s Picks column, written and curated by Editor-in-Chief Mitch Mosk. Every week, Mitch will share a collection of songs, albums, and artists who have caught his ears, eyes, and heart. There is so much incredible music out there just waiting to be heard, and all it takes from us is an open mind and a willingness to listen. Through our Editor’s Picks, we hope to shine a light on our own music discoveries and showcase a diverse array of new and recent releases.

This week’s Editor’s Picks features Goldie Boutilier, Mothé, The Aces, Jack Garratt, G Flip, & Of Monsters and Men!

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Goldie Boutilier shimmers like starlight in “Goldie Montana,” the dazzling, golden-hued title track to her forthcoming debut album. It’s a dreamy, seductive, sweltering reverie – cinematic in scope, sultry in delivery – that reintroduces the world to an artist who has worn many names, but has never shone so brightly as she does now. The guitars drip in reverb, her voice is crisp, charming, and emotionally charged, glowing with grit, glitter, and stardust. In a single breath she’s a femme fatale, a starlet, and a survivor, casting her own mythos in radiant, golden hues.

I’m wearing a white dress
I couldn’t look more innocent
I look like a virgin
And you wouldn’t know the difference

No one sees the grifter
She’s cutting a figure so elegant
Not even a whisper
And that’s how I win your confidence

“This album is my manifesto,” Boutilier declares. “Goldie Montana is a concept I created about the alter ego I had to become in order to survive my past, and then, in fact, now thrive in this chapter of my life. A gangster in a gown, Goldie Montana is that outlaw version of yourself, the person you become to feel your inner strength and empowerment and that is what I hope people will take away from my music – that feeling that you are in charge of your destiny.” That duality – grit wrapped in glamour, survival steeped in allure – pulses at the very heart of this song.

The lyrics read like a screenplay dripping in scandal and allure. “I’m wearing a white dress, I couldn’t look more innocent / I look like a virgin, and you wouldn’t know the difference,” she sings, her words laced with danger and desire. Elsewhere, she toasts champagne laced with MDMA, winks at fathers behind lovers’ backs, and descends in glass elevators like a goddess-turned-grifter. Every line blurs fantasy and reality, painting Goldie Montana as both a character and a confession – an alter ego born of necessity, but also a mirror of Boutilier’s own reinvention.

I look pretty inside a photograph
Don’t you agree, as I wink at your dad
Ya, he’s winking back
Mdma inside my champagne glass
You know that all the best girls are fast
Uh huh it’s like that

“It’s my origin story and my heist movie rolled into one,” she candidly tells Atwood Magazine. “Goldie Montana is a character I built out of my own scars – part Scarface, part Goldie: Someone who could walk into any room and never flinch. Each song is a scene in my transformation: from underdog, to survival, to chaos, many bad decisions, bad people and danger. The moments I wish you could take back but wouldn’t, because they made you indestructible.” It’s the sound of a woman refusing to be defined by her past – instead, wielding it like a weapon.

A glass elevator
Your eyes on me as I descend.
My sins are forgiven
Before I have even committed them
You’ll get the estate
My period’s later than it’s ever been
Now everybody is getting what they wanted
Aren’t they?

As Goldie herself puts it, her music is “a love letter to bad decisions, survival, and the women who don’t wait to be saved.” “Goldie Montana” is all of that and more: A shimmering, intoxicating anthem of self-creation and self-possession. Both dreamy and dangerous, glittering and grounded, it heralds the arrival of an artist fully in command of her destiny – a gangster in a gown, a star forged from her own fire.

I look pretty inside a photograph
Don’t you agree, as I wink at your dad
Ya, behind your back
Mdma inside my champagne glass
You know that all the best girls are fast
Uh huh it’s like that

Here she comes
believe the propaganda
Look out fellas
Watch out world
it’s Goldie Montana

“I’m not a rockstar, baby I’m a pop star,” Mothé boldly declares with conviction in their voice and a strut in their step. The title track off their sophomore album Total Popstar is big, brash, and unapologetic – a magnetic, intoxicating song that seduces the ears and stuns the heart, instantly winning us over and luring us deep into Mothé’s visionary world. Equal parts satire and celebration, “Total Popstar” is a glittery, electrified anthem of self-mythologizing – the sound of an artist demanding the spotlight on their own terms. “Stop calling me a rock star / That’s the old me, I’m a real total pop star,” Spencer Fort sneers, blurring the line between parody and proclamation.

I’m not a rockstar, baby I’m a pop star
You could sell my spit in a tiny little bottle
Used to be an empath, now I’m just an asshole
Used to date a nice girl, now I’m with a model

And I only see my friends when we’re all f*ed up
And it’s 1pm and I can’t wake up
When has one more drink ever been enough?
When I’m back in town I’m never back enough

Born in the punk scene and sharpened in the club, Mothé’s music thrives on contradiction – bizarre synths layered against pop accessibility, intimacy colliding with hedonism. “I think that the ethos of the project is always just sort of doing whatever I wanted,” they recently shared with Atwood Magazine. “I want people to expect genre changes because I just get so bored.” Where their 2022 debut I Don’t Want You to Worry Anymore leaned into guitars and a lush indie pop sound, Total Popstar embraces the chaos of the dancefloor, drenched in sticky synths and late-night abandon. The result is a record designed like a DJ set – relentless, restless, and impossible to step away from.

I’m a pop star
T-O-T-A-L-L-I-E pop star
Totally a pop star, that’s why I’m so awful
What’s your name again?
Stop calling me a rock star
That’s the old me, I’m a real total pop star

That sense of freedom bleeds into the lyrics themselves – messy, incriminating, and reveling in excess. “It started as a joke,” Mothé says of the title track, co-written with Anna Shoemaker. “That’s why we misspelled ‘popstar’ and did all this stuff. It was really just Anna and me having a lot of fun, kind of embracing a new friendship in music. And then when I was looking back at it, I was like, oh my God, that shit actually happened!” From stalkers and sports cars to hangovers and hookups, “Total Popstar” is as autobiographical as it is exaggerated. “We were kind of expressing our grievances with… ‘stand around with your arms crossed’ music,” they add with a smirk. “Somebody’s got to inject some life into this shit.”

The whole album carries that same pulse of reckless honesty. Written and recorded on a breakneck timeline, many of its vocal takes are salvaged post-club freestyle sessions: Unfiltered, unpolished, and alive. “I put myself on this really intense schedule so that I would not be able to edit myself,” Mothé explains. “It basically became unfiltered at a certain point… I ended up with an album with the most incriminating lyrics I’ve ever had. But I also figured… if it gives the audience an extra amount of permission that they didn’t previously have in their life to go out and be messy and feel the joy in the world, then that’s worth it.”

Had to change my number ‘cause I got a stalker
Broke into my house, he’s a freaky little fucker
I just got a new car, I can take the top off
Actually take your top off
We could get down in the back of the restaurant
Baby, don’t you wanna?

That’s the ethos of Total Popstar: To revel in the mess, to glorify the chaos, and to remind us that being human isn’t about looking polished – it’s about showing up, turning the lights up, and sweating it out together. “The age of the ‘put-together’ pop artist, it’s just so f*ing done,” Mothé asserts. “It’s boring as hell… So let’s create an album where I’m the one that’s doing things wrong, that’s messing up. Check it out. I’m proud of it.” Loud, incriminating, and unapologetic, Total Popstar is a manifesto of radical honesty – and a record that makes you want to get up, get out, and live a little louder.

I’m a pop star
T-O-T-A-L-L-I-E pop star
Totally a pop star, that’s why I’m so awful
What’s your name again?
Stop calling me a rock star
That’s the old me, I’m a real total pop star

Pop star
T-O-T-A-L-L-I-E pop star
Totally a pop star, that’s why I’m so awful
What’s your name again?
Stop calling me a rock star
That’s the old me, I’m a real total pop star

The Aces’ “Gold Star Baby” is a strutting, shimmering, disco-drenched triumph – a song bathed in mirrorball light, dripping with sweat, and pulsing with euphoric abandon. The title track to their fourth studio album captures everything this new season of the beloved indie pop band stands for: joy, confidence, celebration, and unapologetic queer ecstasy. It’s dreamy, it’s seductive, and it’s impossible not to move to – a glitter-glossed invitation to step inside the world they’ve built, where love and liberation take center stage.

I know where to go, follow the rainbow
Every flavor you can come and taste
When you come with me, I think you’ll agree
That you’ll never wanna go back, baby

Don’t know what to do, don’t stress, I got you
I’m an expert in the field I’m majoring
Say you’ve never tried, I said I don’t mind
And you can thank me later

“This album is all about joy, confidence, even cockiness, and sex appeal,” the band share. “We feel now that we’re grown women, we can explore those things in a way that feels authentic and exciting. This album is for anyone that’s looking for an escape in the more than challenging world we live in. This album is a celebration. Welcome to ‘Gold Star Baby.’” That spirit radiates through every verse and beat, wrapping you in glitter and letting you lose yourself on the dance floor.

Do you like shiny things?
Think you know what I mean
Yeah, I’m a gold star baby,
oh, I’m so unique
You wanna learn some things?
I do it differently
You get a gold star, baby,
when you’re good for me
(good for me, yeah)

Sonically, the track is pure disco-pop bliss: Sparkling synths and funk-kissed guitars swirl around an infectious four-on-the-floor groove, while Cristal Ramirez’s vocals glide with equal parts sweetness and heat. The lyrics are playful and full of charm – “Do you like shiny things? Think you know what I mean / Yeah, I’m a gold star baby, oh, I’m so unique” – embodying the album’s balance of lighthearted confidence and sultry allure. It’s a soundtrack for the kind of night where magic feels tangible, and where anything is possible.

“This album really embodies the sound of what I think a resident disco band would play at the clubs in these films, so I thought it would be cool to create our own club through both the album and video,” drummer Alisa Ramirez explains. “As far as the song goes, to me it feels like the epitome of a queer awakening; exciting, sexy, intense (sometimes even disorienting) and mostly, magical. I wanted to embody that feeling visually through a vibrant, colorful night out that starts off just like any other Saturday night and transforms into a psychedelic queer disco fantasy at Gold Star Baby. It’s told through the lens of a young woman who’s come to the club with her friend, but upon entering is transported to another world where her desires become her reality.”

That’s exactly what The Aces achieve here: They’ve created not just a song, but a universe – a metaphorical club that exists everywhere and anywhere, waiting for us to step inside. Or, as the band put it themselves, “It became this beacon of light for everybody.” With “Gold Star Baby,” The Aces don’t just deliver a single; they deliver an anthem, a celebration, and a promise of freedom on the dance floor.

Jack Garratt has always known how to balance spectacle with sincerity, but Pillars feels like something different altogether – something bigger, bolder, and more unfiltered. His third studio album is a massive, multifaceted manifesto of where he is now: Catchy and cathartic, experimental and colorful, vulnerable and candid, free-spirited in spaces and unapologetic in others. It’s the most intimate and unguarded Jack Garratt has ever been in his art, and it’s beautiful for all those reasons and more.

“This is the most authentic sounding record I’ve made yet, because I am the most authentic version of myself that I’ve ever been,” Garratt says. “And to get there, I had to go through years and years of confusion and strangeness. And not knowing. And feeling like I’m being pigeonholed or cornered. But then at the same time not telling people who I am! Whereas now I have a much better understanding and idea of that.”

“I wanted to make something that felt honest, but also fun again,” he adds. “For a long time I thought I had to prove myself with every lyric, every sound. This time I let go of that – I let myself play, and that’s why this record sounds the way it does.” That authenticity pulses through every note of Pillars, which he frames as “an album about love (of self; of friends; of romance and, yes, sex). About community. About connection. About celebration. I really want this album to be an invitation… I want listeners to feel cared for and looked after and loved and brought in. I also really want this album to reach more people. I want it to reach others.”

The record is as kaleidoscopic sonically as it is emotionally. Lead single “Catherine Wheel” bursts like fireworks – hit my head, scratch my back, leave me on read, get me on track – while tracks like “Shaftesbury Avenue” simmer in longing, and “Ready! Steady! Go!” struts with buoyant, funky abandon. Garratt has always been a wizard of production, but here the magic feels less polished veneer than raw translation – capturing his full emotional range in technicolor sound. “I wanted the songs to run away with themselves,” he explained. “Even when I tried to keep them neat, they would spill out. That’s what life feels like, so why fight it?”

“Two Left Feet” is an instant standout, a dreamy, sweet, intoxicatingly dancey number that embodies the album’s balance of fun and fragility. It’s playful and radiant on the surface – come on baby, come gimme a chance, coz I got two left feet and I wanna dance – yet it cuts to the core with brutal honesty: “Broken people need loving too, broken people like me and you, let me show you my arms are here to hold you, so give me your hands.” “That’s one of the songs that I feel opens the door to new listeners,” Garratt says. “It’s got all my bells and whistles in it, the melody is fun, the beats are cool and the chords are luscious.”

 “I love that it’s exuberant, but it’s also me admitting my flaws,” he adds. “I wanted it to feel like a hug, like I’m saying: You don’t need to be fixed to be loved.”

On the other end of the spectrum, “Love Myself Again” aches inside and out – “darling you make me wanna love myself again,” he sings – a powerful confessional of self-loathing transformed into a plea for healing and a testament to love’s redemptive power. With its aching chorus and heavy lyricism, it’s the kind of song that leaves a lasting mark on both ears and heart, lingering long after the last note fades. “I didn’t think I’d ever let a lyric like that leave my mouth, let alone release it,” he shares. “But it’s the truth, and saying it out loud makes it real. It’s terrifying, but also freeing. That song is me at my most vulnerable.”

It all comes together in Pillars, an album of resilience, reckoning, and renewal. Garratt has described it as a kind of open invitation: “I want people to know that there’s a party going on. You can just come in. There’s no guest list. You don’t have to worry. The water’s fine, come on in.”

“I spent years feeling like I had to earn my place in music,” he reflects, “but this record is me saying: I’m here, and you’re welcome here too. Let’s celebrate together.” That spirit of welcome defines Pillars: A record that meets you where you are, holds nothing back, and reminds us that we’re never too broken to dance, to heal, or to begin again.

G Flip’s “Disco Cowgirl” is a dazzling fever dream of a song – dynamic, hard-hitting, and absolutely dripping with cinematic seduction. The lead single off their fast-approaching third album Dream Ride (out September 5 via AWAL) pulses with life and love, fueled by G’s explosive drumming and undeniable songwriting force. It’s dazzling, it’s radiant, and it cements their place as one of pop’s boldest, most exciting voices.

You were a wild card
I knew you were trouble babe
Oh oh

Oh no you never stay long
Star studded, a runaway
Oh oh

“‘Disco Cowgirl’ is the first taste of a new era, and I can’t wait to share it with the world,” G Flip declares. That boldness is everywhere in this track, which fuses slick 1980s-inspired production with modern pop edge: reverb-drenched drums, shimmering synths, and a chorus that soars with anthemic urgency. For one night I’ll rock your world / but don’t go fallin’ for a country girl, they croon, painting a cinematic portrait of love-at-first-sight that burns bright and fades fast.

I took an arrow straight to the heart
Hot shot
As she whispered to me in the dark
“For one night I’ll rock your world
But don’t go fallin for a country girl”

The lyrics themselves feel ripped from a neon-streaked movie screen: I can still see your face / watching you dancing on the table / saying oh baby I never felt this way. It’s euphoric and aching all at once, equal parts disco fantasy and heartbreak confessional. And like much of G Flip’s work, it’s anchored by rhythm: their drumming drives the track forward with a heartbeat-like urgency, making it impossible to stand still.

In a candid interview with ABC’s Drive, G shared some of the inspirations behind the track: “Queer line-dancing nights is hot and so much fun… definitely some inspo.” They also teased the moodboard for this new era: “Let’s go denim, muscle cars, a lot of 80s textures… Tape cassettes, maybe some saxophone, drum solos, synths, high energy, lots of colour… but still some dark-coloured themes, some neon lights and moody night time vibes.” That vision shines brilliantly through “Disco Cowgirl,” which feels both nostalgic and brand new, playful and charged with longing.

With Dream Ride on the horizon, “Disco Cowgirl” is the perfect launch point: a sparkling, swaggering anthem that feels tailor-made for the club, the highway, and everywhere in between. Dazzling, intoxicating, and brimming with life, it’s G Flip at their most magnetic – and the start of a thrilling new chapter.

There’s a dreamy, dramatic intimacy to Of Monsters and Men’s “Ordinary Creature” that hits like a homecoming. It’s achingly warm and lived-in, breathtaking in its quiet intensity – expressive in a way that feels so definitively them: Soul-stirring indie folk that is both wondrous and confessional, cozy and cathartic all at once. Their latest single off the upcoming All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade (out October 17) is poetic and powerfully human – a light in the dark, reminding us of the beauty in simply being alive.

I was on a train
Heading through the veins of your heart
You were lookin’ in
But the passenger window was dark

Slow swim in sloe-gin,
getting lost in the labyrinth
I’ve been grinnin’ through Easter
like an ordinary creature
Farewell, my dreaded fear
Thank you, but I’m out of here now

“‘Ordinary Creature’ captures the moment where your mind is opening up to the world and you’re realising that you’re starting to feel better after a long period of the opposite. Kind of a journey from sorrow to joy. From winter to summer,” the band tell Atwood Magazine.

“The original idea of the song was very minimalist, building on a slow, steady beat and staccato strings. We later turned it totally on its head. We were playing around in the studio and something just clicked. It’s always exciting when something so joyful and natural comes so effortlessly. ‘I wish I could run to your house when it gets dark out’ has a sort of a quiet hunger to it. Thoughts of an awakening mind. To us, it’s nostalgic. It reminds us of a long summer night in Iceland when the sun never sets. It’s a peculiar energy, both romantic and relentless.”

I wish I could run to your house
when it gets dark out
I wish I could run to your house
when it gets dark out

That duality is at the song’s core. The lyrics ache with longing and shimmer with hope: “Farewell, my dreaded fear / thank you, but I’m out of here now… I wish I could run to your house when it gets dark out.” Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson’s voices intertwine like two halves of the same story, carrying sorrow and solace in equal measure. Their harmonies feel timeless, grounding the track in a sense of lived-in wisdom even as it glows with renewal.

About the song, the band add: “’Ordinary Creature’ is about the feeling of yearning for that someone that brings you comfort. It’s about when you start feeling better after a period of not feeling so great. That moment when you start coming back to yourself again and remembering what it’s like to be an ordinary creature.” That gentle return to self radiates through every verse, carried on dreamy strings and the band’s signature blend of intimacy and grandeur.

“Ordinary Creature” follows “Television Love” – another song rooted in dialogue, memory, and connection – and together, these singles set the stage for what promises to be Of Monsters and Men’s most poignant album yet. Written and recorded in Iceland, shaped by playfulness and renewal, All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade explores the paradox at the heart of human experience – the inseparable dance of joy and sorrow. If this single is any indication, the return of Of Monsters and Men isn’t just long-awaited; it’s soul-stirring, spectacular, and utterly worth the wait.

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Editor’s Picks

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