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Forget heads, shoulders, knees and toes... it's all about arms, hands and fingers. 

Here are three songs newly added to the New Sounds Rotation that don't have a huge amount in common other than they will hug, poke, slap and prod you in the ears. In a good way. 

Echo Arms – Mr Twin Sister

Winter may be coming but we won’t stop playing summery bangerz.

Long Island-slash-Brooklyn band Mr Twin Sister are often described as “chameleonic” or “uncategorizable”. But the ever-reliable Wikipedia has given it a go and puts them under a number of cross-pollinated genres of pop: chill wave, indie pop, dream pop, dream disco, pop disco, cult pop disco and even pop indie wave disco*.

As a band, they’re incredibly aware of the structures and formulas that work best for them as a band. They started out very DIY, making music in an ex-boyfriend's basement, then signed to an indie label before returning to being self-released.

Echo Arms is a particularly groovy and glossy track. Andrea Estella’s subdued vocals aren't the kind you would normally hear paired with funky guitar, bass and beats, but it's refreshing and it works.

All that's left to do, as their instructions say, is “just add rosé”.

*Some of these genres may or may not have been made up.

Needle & Thread – The Hands Free

There have been a couple of other tracks from The Hands Free’s recent album on rotation, but I love how this track gives us a bit of a tour around the odd mix of instruments that make up this ensemble: banjo (James Moore), violin (Caroline Shaw), accordion (Nathan Koci) and double bass (Eleonore Oppenheim). 

This album is unique for so many reasons, the group draws on folk music, jazz, and contemporary classical music, as well as visual artists and writers to create their mostly improvised music. 

The artwork that inspired this particular track is a thread that outlines the silhouette of a woman on a horizon. It was performed in a converted church, unamplified, in the round, and was recorded onto analog tape. Due to the improvisatory nature of the music, what you’re hearing here is only one incarnation of what Needle & Thread can sound like.

Bleeding Finger Blues – Gwenifer Raymond

Banjo player Gwenifer Raymond went from consuming Nirvana cassette tapes as a child to playing the Delta blues, all from the greener pastures of Cardiff, Wales.

She has mastered the American primitive fingerstyle, a style of guitar or banjo playing popularized by John Fahey in the 1950's and '60s which utilizes the finger-picking style of country blues in an open tuning, but draws from the musical concepts and embellishments of music from around the world, like Indian ragas, Indonesian Gamelan, neo-classical, American Spirituals and musique concrète. The "primitive" part basically means self-taught.

Bleeding Finger Blues is only short, just under 2 minutes, but this finger workout packs a punch. And, if the title is anything to go by, is also potentially hazardous to said fingers.