Song Recommendation: “Golden Lion” by Yin Yin (2026)
Dutch psychedelic groovesters Yiin Yin are back at it again with a new set of unbelievably earwormy jams. I really loved their 2024 Mount Matsu with its spaghetti western/kurasawa vibes and fantastic sense of pace. This year’s Yatta is a bit less cohesive than its predecessor but the band aren’t resting on their laurels, instead they give themselves more freedom to incorporate disparate sources into their pool of sounds, leading to some of their most experimental and rewarding work yet. They can’t, however, resist starting the record with an extended quote from Alan Watts, and so it’s not like there isn’t some explicit themes going on here, specifically with that whole “inside/outside” thing where it seems like each track here has a kind of inverse somewhere else. But it’s not a puzzlebox, so maybe just dive in with the extremely danceable “Golden Lion” which kind of picks up where Mount Matsu left off and then dials it up even more, adding glam and heaps of twinkling haze. But I’d be remiss if I also didn’t plug “Slow Burner” which, at the halfway point, could have legit come right off a TOBACCO project.