LITM Pop Picks Weekend Tunes to set your mood featuring Ricky Earlywine, Sonny Southon and Amara Fe

LITM Pop Picks Tunes brought to you by Ricky Earlywine, Sonny Southon and Amara Fe

1. Ricky Earlywine—"Move "Like This"

   There are comebacks, and then there are reckonings. Ricky Earlywine's "Move Like This" is firmly the latter. Debuting in January 2026, the single arrives fresh off a deeply personal chapter of healing—and you can hear every bit of it. Channeling the vocal authority of Tori Kelly, Kehlani, and Rihanna, Earlywine layers a hypnotic cadence over slick, intimate production that manages to feel both epic and close to the chest. Recorded and mixed entirely in his home studio in Lacey, the track is a full declaration of creative independence, each harmony, each vocal breath, placed with the precision of someone who nearly lost it all and refuses to waste a single note. This is what survival sounds like when it's been set to music.

2. Sonny Southon – "I'm In Love"

Some artists spend their whole careers building toward the kind of quiet authority that Sonny Southon was simply born with. Samoan and Scottish, raised in New Zealand, she left home at seventeen with nothing but a passion for music and went on to perform at Wembley Arena, Glastonbury, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Montreux Jazz Festival, working alongside legends like Duran Duran, Bryan Ferry, and Bob Geldof. Now, in 2025, she's finally turning those decades of lived experience into her own sonic musings, and "I'm In Love" is exactly the kind of song that only someone with that depth of history could write. It doesn't perform joy. It simply is joy.

3. Amara Fe – "Forever Last"

The best opening tracks don't ease you in. They grab you by the collar. "Forever Last," the album opener from Amara Fe's Echoes, sets the tone immediately: danceable R&B, a sharp, punchy beat, and vocal lines so elegant they almost feel effortless - luminous, flexible, and nearly weightless. A Mission, Texas-based singer and songwriter, Amara Fe blends alternative pop, R&B, and neo-soul into lush melodic soundscapes, with vocal performances that carry a quietly soul-stirring presence. She chose her stage name to represent something pure and everlasting, and "Forever Last" lives up to exactly that promise. It's the kind of song that lodges itself in your chest and simply refuses to leave.

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LITM Pop sets the mood for the week featuring Joshua Pearlstein, Spectra, DJ Momotaro and more!

LITM Pop brings tunes featuring Joshua Pearlstein, Spectra, Neon Heat, Amara Fe and Jared Hallock.

1. Joshua Pearlstein – Just The Feeling

Joshua Pearlstein's "Just The Feeling" is not just a song; it's a 2 AM fever dream dipped in glitter, grime, and temptation. Imagining yourself walking into a neon bar at 2 AM, pulse racing, with the knowledge that this night can kill you or make you live, and that this song is the soundtrack, is to know why it succeeds. Joshua blends Y2K nostalgia with sleek modern production, creating a hypnotic rhythm that makes your pulse sync to the beat. His sensual falsetto isn’t just singing; it’s teasing, whispering secrets in your ear while the bass shakes the floor beneath you. The lyrics? Addictive, and they cut deep into the psyche of toxic love and emotional dependency. And then there are these vocal textures, breathy humming, raw shrieking, and alive-sounding harmonies, as if the song itself is breathing lust. This song isn't background music, it commands the room. Pearlstein bottled up chaos, hunger, and midnight desire into a three-minute masterpiece.

2. Spectra – Calling You

Spectra's "Calling You" is like a ghostly diary entry wrapped in vintage velvet and cinematic ambience. From the first notes, you’re transported to an old-world ballroom where chandeliers sway to the sound of blurred piano lines and orchestral strings, while a crackling rotary phone echoes like a ghost from the past. There’s an intimacy here that feels almost intrusive, as though you’ve stumbled upon someone’s heartbreak preserved in amber. Documented as a tribute to teenage regret and unearthed years later, the lyrics bite with the accuracy of hindsight but are infused with a soft fragility. Where "Calling You" is unique is that it is double, gothic in setting but very human in spirit. Spectra doesn't simply offer up a tune; she recreates an entire atmosphere, casting heartbreak into shades of gold and burgundy. It's the kind of record that lingers in the air well after it ends, settling you into serene contemplation in the faded light of your own memories.

3. DJ Momotaro – Neon Heat (Radio Edit)

And with "Neon Heat," DJ Momotaro proves that nostalgia and futurism can double each other on the same scorching, strobe-lit dance floor. This is a retro-futuristic paradise, a flourish of synths, pulsing rhythms, and searing lyrics that are Miami Vice and cyberpunk romance in equal measures. This isn't a song, it's an affair conducted under strobing neon signs and the hum of late-night highways. Vessa's voice is smooth as silk over the throbbing beat that surges with raw 80s energy, but the music is new, crisp, and cinema-like. Every note is drenched in that stinging nostalgia for something that you never had but want you did. It's aggressive, it's sensual, and a bit risky, the kind of song that makes you want to buy a leather jacket, speed down an neon city street, and recast your love story in the light of the neon streets.

4. Amara Fe – Trust Me Again

Amara Fe's "Trust Me Again" is satin-wrapped heartache, a track that nearly whispers sorry and pleads for forgiveness, not out of desperation, but with soul-shattering vulnerability. You can feel the weight of regret from the very first note, every silence packed with unspoken words. Production is minimalist and lean, leaving Amara's bell-like voice space to breathe and shatter in just the right moments. There's heritage at work here, a nod to her grandmother's legacy with Minnie Riperton, but don't be deceived: Amara's voice is her own. She wedges that old-school soul sensibility with something extremely modern, creating a song that feels both timeless and now. The chorus doesn't just ask for forgiveness, it aches for it, pulling you into the uncertain hope of making up. If you've ever replayed an offence in your mind a hundred times, wondering if love can withstand the storm, this song will hit like a gentle fist to the chest.

5. Jared Hallock – My Destiny

Jared Hallock's "My Destiny" is not your typical EDM track; it's a hallucination of fevered dream with rhythm, a whispered voice wrapped in silk, and exactly the right degree of craziness. Forget the obligatory drops and such hackneyed hooks; Hallock sweeps you away into a sonic funhouse where basslines writhe and twist, whistles reverberate off walls, and hushed vocals whisper like a covert lover. There's something wickedly happy about its restraint, how it teases with chaos but delivers seduction instead. Taken from The Ying Yang Twins and Snoop Dogg but dressed in cinematic garnish, the track is ASMR for ravers, a sinister whisper of temptation. Hallock's experimental nature gets to have its way, creating something that's both sensual and ridiculous, a Dadaist take on the dancefloor. It's not a song; it's an experience, a swirling vortex that leaves you wondering if you just listened to music or stumbled into someone's late-night delirium. One thing is certain: fate has never sounded so brazen.

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