With the Lorde-curated The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 movie soundtrack, it's easy to say that its hype has outdone what music accompanies it, because aside from a Lorde's own "Yellow Flicker Beat" effort, the soundtrack has been pretty disjointed and disappointing as a result (we've heard the rest of it, and we standby that statement). To be fair, most artists never want to share their best material and release it out of an album-release cycle, but with Swedish up-and-comer, XOV, we have our exception, because his contribution to the soundtrack, "Animal", is not only a great opportunity for him to get his work out and into the public eye, but a great-sounding work overall—perhaps his best to date. XOV's been around for a little while now (we covered him a year ago with "Ku Klux Klan" [no, he's not promoting them]), and though the track was removed from SoundCloud, he went on to give us more material in the form of his official debut single, "Boys Don't Cry". However, with "Animal" we think XOV is at his very best, and we think after listening to it that you'll agree immediately with us. If you wish to purchase The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 soundtrack, you can pre-order it on iTunes now. It will be out next Monday (November 17th).
XOV