Stream: New singles from Jesse Jo Stark, Hunx & His Punx and Fatal Jamz

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Jesse Jo Stark (Photo by Laurie Lynn Stark)

Rounding up three new singles that move our dial: Hear the latest from Jesse Jo Stark, Hunx & His Punx and Fatal Jamz


JESSE JO STARK, “Tornado”

“Doomed,” the debut album from femme fatale Jesse Jo Stark, is out Sept. 21. There was revenge in the first single, “So Bad,” sugary causticity in the ’90s-leaning rocker “Modern Love,” and now some good ol’ country & western-tinged heartache on the new single, “Tornado.” “Elvis, me and you / tied the knot / felt like a noose,” she sings, sounding as if something happened in Vegas. Stark says of the song: “It’s a story of letting a feeling take you to heaven then bury you six feet in the ground … somewhere in the desert.” Stark headlines the Echo on Oct. 15.


HUNX & HIS PUNKS, “White Lipstick”

Oh, Hunx. Oh, Punx. How we have missed you. “White Lipstick” and its flipside, “Lose My Mind” (stream that here), are the first new songs from Hunx & His Punx since 2013. They arrive via the Sub Pop Singles Club (tips cap). Their campy bubblegum punk is the work of multimedia star Seth Bogart, Shannon Shaw (Shannon & the Clams) and Erin Emslie (Secret Stare), and they background the new songs this way: “‘White Lipstick,’ named after an as-yet-unmade John Waters movie, is about being a queer teenager seeing women perform in bands and wanting to be just like them. ‘Lose My Mind’ is a reflection on how terrible the world is, America’s abundance of guns and wanting to give up and die, but deciding instead to keep fighting. It’s about thinking, ‘Fuck, what should all the women and queers and weirdos that don’t like guns do? Do we need them to protect ourselves?’ It’s about hating guns.” After reuniting for an L.A. show in June, the band has scheduled shows in New York, Portland and Austin. Consult your local listings.


FATAL JAMZ, “Eternity”

As we’ve said time and again, there are few singers we’d rather hear transmit peak agony and ecstasy than Marion Belle. Back at work with his collaborator Nicholas Allen Johns, Belle is plotting the release of the sophomore Fatal Jamz album (and first since 2016). In all its soaring beauty, “Eternity” is the second single, a song written in the months after Belle’s friend and musical collaborator Sam Mehran (Test Icicles) died. “This song, and the whole album really, came to me from another place, truly like a gift from the gods to help me make something beautiful out of all that and heal, move forward positively,” Belle says. “Moments of ecstasy are always present, like doors for us to open anytime we choose. When I sing ‘Eternity’ and enter the music, I open that eternal doorway and ascend.” See Fatal Jamz open for Tchotchke tonight at the Echo or Thursday at the Constellation Room.