Florence and the Machine “Witch Dance”

“Witch Dance” was written about Florence Welch’s experience of nearly dying as a result of an ectopic pregnancy. “The closest I came to death was trying to make life, and you don’t get that without desire,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music. The song tangles sex and death into knots, starting with an opening scene in which she’s fucking the personification of death, whose “blackberry mouth” tastes like life. Welch has been exploring themes of desire, faith, and nature through her entire career but she’s rarely been so lascivious and primal. The lyrics play out like a dark fairytale, but she keeps the song grounded in equal measures of lust and loss, buzzing with a profound connection to the cycle of life.

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Water From Your Eyes “Life Signs”

There’s a touch of Fugazi in the opening bit of “Life Signs,” which is mostly notable to me in how rarely I hear any band approach a Fugazi-type groove. The song shifts gears pretty quickly and keeps moving from there, creating a restless and gnarly backdrop for Rachel Brown’s monotone monologue. It’s the perfect sound for itchy lyrics about feeling uncomfortable and out of place in nearly any setting – “I’m unfulfilled, I’m in a beautiful place, yeah, it’s so sad in this beautiful place.” Brown reaches for sung higher notes on the chorus hook, but only gets so high, as though they hit a ceiling for their feeling a bit too soon.

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Model/Actriz “Diva”

The first time I saw Model/Actriz live I was surprised to learn that a lot of the sounds I assumed were coming from “electronic” instruments were in fact being played on guitar by Jack Wetmore. Of course, this is a guitar running through various pedals and devices, so it’s effectively a more traditional conduit for “electronic music,” but the physicality does change the feel significantly. There’s an immediacy and implied violence in how Wetmore plays guitar, and it adds to the malevolent atmosphere of a track like “Diva.” Cole Haden’s vocal relies on this tension in the spoken verses; the most mundane details of his European travelogue imbued with a sense that something could go terribly wrong at any moment. But the feeling is more about (homo)eroticism than terror, and the sung chorus flips a very Korn-ish melody and vocal affect into a specifically masculine expression of sexual vulnerability.

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Brad Stank “Chenchi”

Brad Stank owes a lot of his aesthetics to King Krule and Mac DeMarco, but even compared to the stoned, drowsy vibe of those guys, Stank’s music feels like the result of gobbling Benadryl and high potency weed gummies like a bag of Skittles. “Chenci” is a slo-mo ballad with the frequencies pushed to extremes – womb-like bass, guitar treble rendered like squiggles of neon light. I’m particularly fond of the way he doubles his low-register lead vocals with a sensual high harmony on the “I’ll change, I’ll change” chorus. It’s relatively subtle in the mix, but the contrast opens up the heart of the song.

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Wolf Alice “White Horses”

Unlike most Wolf Alice tracks, Ellie Rowsell doesn’t take the lead on “White Horses,” yet the song still showcases one of her most inspired vocal performances. The primary vocal is handled by drummer Joel Amey, who sings introspective lyrics about not knowing a chunk of his family lineage due to his mother being adopted. His vocal is cool and rhythmic, locked in with his driving beat and the brightly ringing guitar chords. Rowsell goes for contrast, belting out the emotional core of the song – “know who I am, that’s important to me” – in a distinctly B-52’s-esque harmony, right on down to her pinched timbre sounding just like Cindy Wilson. It’s a bold choice that seemingly comes out of nowhere, though it’s not exactly unprecedented – the rolling rhythm and circular acoustic riff isn’t far off from R.E.M.’s “Me In Honey,” which featured Kate Pierson wailing in a similar way on the chorus.

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Olivia Dean “Let Alone the One You Love”

Olivia Dean sold out four nights at Madison Square Garden this week, an extremely impressive feat for a singer who just recently played four shows there as the opening act for Sabrina Carpenter. It’s a real perspective-shifter – Dean is substantially more popular than she seemed, and the market for lovelorn classic-style R&B is clearly stronger than ever. (Also take note of Giveon’s show at MSG, and Cleo Sol selling out three nights at Radio City Music Hall.)

Dean has a lot of very good songs, but I figure a lot of her success comes down to how easily and effortlessly she fills a void in the pop landscape where Adele and Amy Winehouse used to be. Her music isn’t nearly as sexy, but I think she’s also tapping into some of Sade’s appeal as well. But it’s that distinctly British form of R&B classicism – elegant and immaculate, a little bit prim and mannered. If you nail this aesthetic in the right cultural moment, the sky’s the limit.

“Let Alone the One You Love” sounds like musical signifiers from many eras of R&B blurring together into something uncannily familiar and vaguely modern. It’s a ballad about romantic disappointment, of trying to come to terms with realizing the person you thought was “The One” was not who you made them out to be. It’s written like a negotiation with that person, who is simultaneously checked out but holding on. I like that twist on the narrative, and the way Dean has to navigate through such delicate emotions.

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Chinese American Bear “Magic Number (魔法数字)”

“Magic Number” has the vibe of an artsy-cute late 00s/early 10s indie song that got licensed to death, and you will know exactly what I mean by this as soon as you put this on. It sounds so much like it’s already been popular that I get a powerful deja vu sensation every time I hear it, like my brain is trying to Mandela Effect it into an iPod ad in 2008. I feel like maybe I’m being too glib and selling this band short, but this is what my brain is screaming every time I play this song, and I’m pretty sure in a more earnest sense this means Chinese American Bear hit their target in making it.

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Packaging “Water’s Edge”

Grizzly Bear recently played a run of shows in New York City, their first gigs in a long time. I didn’t attend, but their reemergence prompted me to listen to their albums Veckatimest and Shields for the first time in ages. My major takeaway was that Grizzly Bear is much more my sort of thing now than when those records first came out in 2009 and 2012. Those albums have subtle charms – the melodies are lovely but understated, the vocals are light on character but very strong with harmony and nuanced phrasing, and the most striking aspect of the music is consistently how beautifully and organically the sounds are captured and mixed. I would’ve identified these strengths in my late 20s, but I wouldn’t have valued them quite so highly. I wanted oomph and big personalities then, in part because that’s just a lot easier to write about.

I say this because Packaging, a duo of musicians from Seattle and Denver, share a lot of positive qualities with Grizzly Bear. And this being the case, they’re also not easy to write about! Their debut pulls together a lot of tasteful influences and shows off a lot of well-articulated musical ideas, but there’s not a lot of personality in the vocals. This isn’t a bad thing – the vocals sound nice, they suit the songs, a bigger singer would likely disrupt the careful balance of the production. And it’s clear to me that the sound is the point of this music. Sure, there’s lyrics and recurring themes, but I seems clear to me that when these guys were working on “Water’s Edge,” they spent a lot more time thinking about the particular tone of the central keyboard and the exact brightness of the arpeggiated acoustic guitar part. These are certainly the elements that suck me in and linger in my mind, and even when it comes to the vocals, I’m thinking about the contrast between the dry takes on the verses and the touch of reverb on the bridge.

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Sorry “Candle”

“Candle” is sung from the POV of an actual candle, which leads to some good extended metaphors about dripping wax and time to burn. But the interesting thing to me is how Asha Lorenz anthropomorphizes this inanimate object but retains its total indifference. She filters that into her vocal performance, singing the jaunty melody with a bit of haughty attitude, and clearly having some fun spitting out the “I’m a cunt, I’ll be a cunt again” refrain.

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Daphni featuring Caribou “Waiting So Long”

Dan Snaith started releasing dance music as Daphni to differentiate it from his psychedelic indie project Caribou. This is not uncommon in electronic music, and of course, it’s very common for authors to have pen names for different genres in publishing. But as Caribou has evolved to sound more like Daphni, it was probably inevitable that Daphni would end up sounding more like Caribou. And so here we are…Daphni featuring Caribou, the Snaith singularity.

So what is this great synthesis of Snaith and Snaith? Basically, it just means that he sings on this song, and he hasn’t sung on other Daphni tracks. Otherwise he’s off in the deep end of French filter house in the vein of Daft Punk and Alan Braxe, very far from established Caribou territory. “Waiting So Long” is a particularly great track in this genre, with a relaxed groove and airy Snaith vocal breezing over a drum track that gently swings from ultra chill to mega hype.

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Robyn “Dopamine”

Robyn’s first solo single in ages is asking a philosophical question: If we know that an ecstatic feeling is – on a biological level – just a shift in brain chemistry, is that chemical reaction all it is? Or is the stimulation – attraction, lust, love, excitement – the real force, and the dopamine is just responding and doing its job? This is a Robyn song, so you know where she stands. She’s about the drama, the humanity, the total surrender to love even if it’s humiliating. She’s about the magic of attraction and a sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, right?

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Shudder to Think “Thirst Walk”

This is Shudder to Think’s first single since 1998. Aside from a few brief reunion shows, they’ve been broken up longer than Sabrina Carpenter or anyone in Geese has been alive.

I imagine it can be tricky to come up with new material after that much time apart. How could you not be self-conscious about it? How do you sound like Shudder to Think again, and what does that mean to you now?

And which version of Shudder to Think should you sound like? The proto-emo Dischord Records version, the twitchy quasi-prog Pony Express Record version, the smoothed out neo-glam 50,000 BC version? Do you risk putting off old heads–likely the only people paying attention–and do something radically different?

And can you still do it? Craig Wedren and Nathan Larson have been making music for film and television for decades now, and have become stylistic chameleons. Maybe they’ve grown too accustomed to creative independence to write together again?

It could be any of these neurotic brainworms, or maybe it’s just like riding a bike. Shudder to Think could have had these anxieties, but “Thirst Walk” sounds like they’re riding the bike.

“Thirst Walk” sounds exactly like Shudder to Think, as though there could be no other outcome of Wedren and Larson and drummer Adam Wade making music together. They answer the question of which version of the band to be by being all three at once. Wedren’s voice soars, swoons, swirls, and somehow winks. The rhythm is as jagged and spiky as a song can get while retaining a suave glammy strut. And there’s a few new moves in the mix – a cheeky little solo towards the end that’s as flirty as Wedren’s singing, and bit of vocoder that seems tossed in for the element of surprise.

So really, it’s more than “like riding a bike again.” It’s like they got back on it and immediately starting doing flamboyant BMX tricks.

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Melody’s Echo Chamber “Eyes Closed”

Many years ago a musician pointed out to me that a lot of 90s indie and alt music is built on a crude and funk-less variation of a funk breakbeat, and it comes up in a lot of bands you wouldn’t immediately think of, like Pavement. But the more obvious variation on this sound – which in many cases was derived from samples or drum machines – was all over the late 90s, and has come back in a big way over the past couple years.

“Eyes Closed” is a great example of this aesthetic, to the point that it very plausibly sounds like it could have dropped around 1999 or 2000. In this sense it’s a chronal head-spinner – the 2020s version of the late 90s version of mid 60s psychedelic rock. But this is how musical tradition works, right? You cycle through iterations through generations, collecting signifiers along the way, and eventually you end up with a weird combination that feels perfect. Like, this basically sounds like if Broadcast has made their own “Tomorrow Never Knows” but with a more aggressively funky bass player. What’s not to love?

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St. Panther “The Deal”

“The Deal” was surely written and recorded well before D’Angelo passed away, but it’s hard to listen to it without sensing his ghost lurking in the ample negative space on this track. It’s hard to imagine he’s not a direct reference point for this particular song – there’s an obvious melodic and rhythmic debt to “Untitled,” but it’s also just that general loose feel and overwhelming sensuality. St Panther get some of that D’Angelo feel but they’re playing in a tighter pocket. I think that’s mainly because the sentiment of this song needs a tiny bit of nervous energy. As the title suggests, there’s a negotiation going on here, and the emotional stakes are very, very high.

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Night Tapes “Babygirl (Like NO1 Else)”

This song is basically Night Tapes offering us another ride on the “6 Underground,” and how could I possibly decline? Many have tried to emulate this mid-90s neon-lit trip-hop vibe but they get it just right, and I like the way the lyrics Iris Vesek sings come off as shallow until you listen a bit closer and notice the way she’s poking holes in the affectations she’s evoking. She’s trying to take a symbol, embody it, and then change what the symbol means.

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Hether “Fake It With You”

Hether are iterating on musical ideas laid out over a decade ago by artists like Tame Impala, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and Mac DeMarco. While those acts have since moved on to different sounds, Hether continue to delve deeper into a distinctly 2010s style of stoner funk, but with a bit more warmth, sensuality, and light jazziness to set them apart. There’s also a touch of androgyny in their vocals, which emphasizes the sensitivity and delicate romantic spirit at the core of a song like “Fake It with You.”

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Tame Impala “Afterthought”

I think Tame Impala’s Deadbeat is fine. Is that because I have lower expectations for Tame Impala than some people do? Have I encountered so many records over the years that barely have one good song on them that an album with at least five registers as a win for me? Am I just generally forgiving of great artists in mid-career ruts? Is it that I’m just not weirdly condescending towards Kevin Parker?

As far as I’m concerned the obvious issue with Deadbeat, and really a lot of Kevin Parker’s output, is that he pretty obviously needs to open himself up to true collaboration. This is a guy who admits to spending ages working on any given song, and is doing so entirely on his own. Like any one man band, he’s the simultaneously the best and worst member of it, but doesn’t have multiple perspectives on any creative decision.

Parker needs someone on his level – a producer, a bandmate, session players, whatever – who can shake things up. He needs someone who can bring in musical ideas he can respond to, or someone who can take his own ideas to another level. He’s very good and sometimes extraordinary when left to his own devices, but even his best stuff has this vague stale bubblegum feel to it from being a little overworked. This guy needs a Brian Eno!

I think that the vibes around Deadbeat would’ve been a little better if they had the sense to lead promo with “Afterthought.” It’s a very easy song to like, particularly if you’re already on board for Tame Impala. It’s not far off from “Is It True” off The Slow Rush, but also could’ve fit in on Currents. It supports the message that this is a more dance-oriented Tame record, but in a way that’s more familiar than “End of Summer,” the more stark techno number that led the campaign.

“Afterthought” is also lyrically not far off from Parker’s most famous song, “The Less I Know the Better.” It’s a song about being confused and jealous and resentful of being strung around by a woman for whom you’re – at best! – third place on their “roster.” It’s a song a lot of young guys can relate to, but also a peculiar lyrical angle for a songwriter who has been married for years. (No need to speculate, but hmmmm!) As with “Less I Know,” Parker’s tone in singing from this POV is refreshingly in that it’s low on bitterness and anger, but high in self-loathing. He spends the whole chorus trying to make a bargain with her, seemingly oblivious that his willingness to live entirely on her terms is what got him in this position.

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Casey Dienel “People Can Change”

If I told you that at the climax of this song Casey Dienel sings the phrase “I believe people can change,” I wouldn’t blame you if you immediately assumed it’d sound like a passionate and cathartic declaration. Dienel’s phrasing is actually a lot more low key and nuanced, hitting more like a humble statement uttered with about 90% certainty. The accompaniment is where the drama is – it’s a casual crescendo, a swell of horns and harmony signaling gentleness, warmth, and gratitude.

It’s a very compelling moment in a lovely little song, and it’s all the more powerful if you’re aware of how much the aesthetics of Dienel’s music have changed through their career. Zooming out on Dienel’s body of work is a great example of how listening to a person’s music over time can be rewarding on a parasocial level, every so often getting a glimpse of how much a person’s taste and presentation can shift while their essence is always distinct and immediately recognizable. Twee piano pop? Sophisticated singer-songwriter? Vibey electronic artist? Avant garde powerhouse diva? Relaxed, confident non-binary adult? Dienel contains multitudes, but don’t we all?

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Camille Schmidt “Heaven”

Camille Schmidt’s lyrics are vivid with diaristic detail, to the point that listening to her songs can feel a little invasive. Her language is plain and her storytelling is unfussy, but her sentiment is precise and specific. “Heaven” is essentially three separate vignettes tied together by a chorus, each a little more personal than the last. The verses seemed disconnected to me at first, but then the internal logic became clear and the song became even more moving. Each line of the chorus correlates to a verse – “heaven is a place that you can’t see” is her mother’s faith in miraculous intervention, “heaven is a place on earth to me” is her ex-boyfriend’s cherished memory of a moment she doesn’t recall so fondly, and “heaven’s always realer than you think” is her fear of dying in the hospital from an ectopic pregnancy.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Geese “Trinidad”

The most striking and love-it-or-hate-it aspect of Geese’s third album Getting Killed is the way singer Cameron Winter and drummer Max Bassin both move between extremes of looseness and tightness, but not always in tandem.

Winter was already a fairly eccentric and emotive singer, but now he’s gone full bozo mode, leaning into his excesses with no trace of fear or shame. Bassin’s drumming is similarly flamboyant – sometimes he’s adding interesting detail to grooves that could be played a little more plainly and sound just fine, other times he’s frazzled and cacophonous, and mostly he’s so loose in his pocket that songs feel incredibly casual and impromptu. The rest of the band sorta swings between them, holding down their parts with unlikely grace while stuck between these guys who are like wild weather systems.

I’m pretty sure the looseness is a key reason Geese have broken through with this album, at least with critics and the cooler end of the indie rock audience. It makes them sound present and unpredictable, as if these often brilliant hooks are spontaneously occurring, and Winter’s clever lyrics are just sort of miraculously spilling out of him. This quality is the main thing they have in common with Pavement, but they don’t otherwise sound much like Pavement.

But they definitely have more in common with Pavement than most any notable band I can think of from the past two decades. This raw, organic feel – this sense that songs could collapse at any moment – is a million miles away from the often rigid and tight sounds of anything you’d call indie since the late 2000s. A lot of this is because so many artists were chasing more electronic or dialed-in aesthetics, but it’s mostly because almost everyone has been using some form of quantization in the studio. Everything has been made on grids.

Ezra Koenig was talking about this when he was promoting the most recent Vampire Weekend album Only God Was Above Us last year. I can’t recall where – it was most likely in an episode of his internet radio show Time Crisis. But he was saying that a lot of that record was produced with some desire to push against “the grid” – i.e., the way music appears in the interface of ProTools and other recording programs – and allow more unexpected and “wrong” sounds to break the symmetry. Vampire Weekend has always recorded to the grid, and it accounts for the tidiness of the sound, like the musical equivalent of Wes Anderson framing. You still get that on Only God Was Above Us, but that context and expectation only made the more abrasive elements on the record more striking. It was a good call, but it’s still a far cry from what Geese are up to on Getting Killed.

Getting Killed stands out in 2025 because it’s such a flagrant and brutal rejection of the grid and quantization. I’m sure it was also recorded on a grid because virtually everything is, and maybe there is some quantization going on in some spots. I haven’t seen the files! But however they got there, they sure sound like a real band playing in real time and plausibly like they’re all making it up on the spot. And they really throw the listener in the deep end right away by opening with “Trinidad,” a song that emphasizes their dynamic extremes. Relaxed, crazed, calm, panic. Winter screaming “THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR” like there’s actually a bomb in his car, Bassin bashing his kit like he’s trying to embody the explosion. It’s surreal, it’s scary, it’s a classic rock and roll thrill.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Neko Case “Destination”

I’ve been listening to Neko Case’s voice for a very long time now, and though her singing is very familiar and comforting, I feel like there’s something about her I never fully understand. This quality makes her more compelling, like she’s always several steps ahead of you and giving you cryptic clues you’ve got to figure out if you’re ever going to catch up with her. But the root of it is the implication that she knows things, that her perceptions go far beyond what most of us see, hear, or feel. This suits the songs she sings that are written by Carl Newman, whose words often approach complicated feelings from odd angles and with opaque language, and it’s even better for the lyrics she writes herself, which overflow descriptive details and nuanced observations.

“Destination” sounds to me like the culmination of years of Case’s music – a character study so vivid that the lyrics are like a photorealistic illustration rendered in dense crosshatching; a melody that undersells its melancholy so the sadness in the song creeps up on you; an arrangement that approaches the grandeur of some of the music she’s made with The New Pornographers but in a far more relaxed and resigned way. It’s stunning and ambitious work from a veteran artist, but also remarkably casual in its feel.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Sloan “Congratulations”

A little over 30 years ago Jay Ferguson wrote “I Hate My Generation,” a song about feeling awkward about where he landed in history as a Gen Xer and questioning how much he had in common with the rest of his cohort. The title sounds harsh, but his words were totally ambivalent. Flash forward to “Congratulations,” one of his songs from Sloan’s 14th album Based on the Best Seller, and he sounds like he’s become more comfortable with the notion of generations, or at least very sympathetic to the people coming up now:

“Congratulations are in order for someone who can draw a line to the generation waiting at the door impatiently for some to pass through.”

That line may look like a mouthful, but Ferguson’s melody is characteristically elegant and easygoing. From there, Ferguson ponders how successive generations of artists end up competing for anyone’s attention. There’s no real answer to the question, and no side taken. I just get the sense that he’s tickled by the conundrum, and hoping everyone gets some moments to shine.

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Garbage “Chinese Fire Horse”

Shirley Manson seethes with righteous indignation through “Chinese Fire Horse,” absolutely galled by the notion that her time is over, that’s she too old, and should retire. As well she should be! It’s cool to hear someone, especially a woman, push back this hard on ageism in music culture. Sure, maybe you reach a point where people start treating you like a living legend, and I’m sure that’s nice. But Manson isn’t looking for that kind of satisfaction – she’s still here, she’s still writing, she’s still as vicious and intense and charismatic as she’s ever been. And it’s not enough that she’s saying something interesting and true – this song is a bop, and it’s on par with Garbage’s best material. There’s no delusion here, she’s still got it.

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Selve “Strange Romance”

The lead singer of the Australian band Selve calls himself Loki Liddle, which immediately signals that 1) this is not a low-key sort of band (sorry!) and 2) their obvious ambition is spiked with a wry playfulness. I hear traces of a lot of different sleek and successful rock acts in their sound – Duran Duran, Franz Ferdinand, The 1975, Tame Impala, Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, The Darkness, Spacehog, even a bit of King Gizzard in “woooooo!” mode on a couple songs – but there’s also a distinct character to what they’re doing, particularly in the way Liddle inhabits his louche and flirty persona. There’s a big implied wink in the way he sings his lyrics, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s signifying “I know I’m not quite the character I’m presenting, but it’s fun” or “I’m totally getting away with becoming this guy and it rocks.”

“Strange Romance” is the band’s slinkiest, funkiest song, and it’s a duet with bandmate Creation Saffigna (these names!!!). The lyrics find Liddle waking up in various glamorous European cities, but leaving a bit of ambiguity about how he turned up there – is he passing out on a tour bus, or just visiting in vivid dreams? As the song moves along, it’s much more the latter, particularly when he and Saffigna show up in heaven to smoke cigarettes and share an “apocalyptic kiss.”

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Halloween “Crown”

Halloween making a point of explaining on Bandcamp that Shadow House is a “conceptual record about the compartmentalization of the sub-conscience.” This is helpful context, but I think it’s something you can easily intuit by the sound of it, and the lyrics that rise to the surface of the mix. “Crown” draws on a lineage of indie/art rock that’s meant to evoke the dream state, and its lyrics operate on dream logic, pulling together images from childhood and fantasy in a way that vaguely insinuates linear connections. As much as this song expects you to feel your way through it, the refrain that cuts through the mix gets to the point: “Everyone’s afraid of something.”

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Snuggle “Marigold”

“Marigold” keeps zigging when you expect it to zag. Once you think it’s going to be a drowsy faux lo-fi bedroom indie thing, the strings kick in, and then it pivots again to more of a Massive Attack feel. The lyrics sketch out a sexy scene with vivid language, then moves towards cliche, and then doubles back to critique that turn: “I’ve heard it all before, baby, it’s a nuisance / the poems, the fake romance.” It’s basically a song about getting turned on then getting the “ick,” and the entire arrangement seems to exist somewhere in that continuum between arousal and irritation. Listen to that main guitar part – it could easily be played in a softer, more sensual way, but there’s something prickly and agitated about the particular tone.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Winter “Existentialism”

“Existentialism” is a warm bath of familiar sounds for long-term indie rock listeners – you’ve heard that vaguely funky beat, you know this sort of dreamy rhythm guitar pattern, the vocal melody will spark some deja vu. The element that really lifts this up is the particular tone of the extremely simple lead guitar part, and how it’s mixed so it sounds like it’s a little outside the boundaries of the song. I like the subtle shift in perspective and the way it seems to dramatize the earlier lyric “only gonna send you out of your head.”

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Chloe Moriondo “Girls with Gills”

“Girls With Gills” is a quick, fast club banger that is literally about girls…with gills. Chloe Moriondo’s lyrics are absurd and whimsical, but delivered in a deadpan tone that borders on playing it straight without a wink. I’d be a mark for a song like this regardless of what the lyrics are, but I love hearing something so silly instead of the standard sex/love/neuroses boilerplate. Like, why not do a satire of club culture in which everyone happens to be amphibious?

Buy it from Amazon.

Adéla “SexOnTheBeat”

“SexOnTheBeat” presents as a dance pop song with generic sexy lyrics, but pay a little more attention and it’s more of an ironic critique of pop industry conventions. Adéla participated in Dream Academy, the music competition show that assembled the popular girl group Katseye, but she didn’t make the cut. This song is pretty straightforwardly about the pressures of existing in a context like that, and the dynamics of objectifying yourself and making your sexuality a commodity. It’s not exactly negative about it – if anything, she’s made herself more sexualized than she’d be if she was in Katseye – but there’s a lot of ambivalence and mild bitterness in how she sings “serve it on a silver platter, baby,” “make you think the choice is mine”, and “begging you to fetishize” in the chorus.

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Kerala Dust “The Orb, TX”

“The Orb, TX” is a rather mysterious and opaque title, but it makes sense if you think of it as a list of ingredients. The song is half techno bop, half ominous cowboy music. It’s a Western, but instead of a saloon, there’s a rave. The lyrics are basically the interior monologue of an outlaw trying to outrun a life of violence, to get out of town, to change their name and change their ways, and give themselves over to something bigger than themselves. The tone is rather bleak, but that little spark of hope keeps it from feeling oppressive or empty.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Just Mustard “We Were Just Here”

“We Were Just Here” is basically a serene banger – a heavy distorted synth line paired with a high, airy vocal and drums that keep a gentle pace while seeming the tick tick tick of time bomb paired with that rumbling bass. The song takes its time to fully explode but it’s a fantastic catharsis, particularly in the context of lyrics that sound like the singer’s trying to talk someone – or herself? – out of an anxiety spiral while losing their patience.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Ami Taf Ra featuring Kamasi Washington “How I Became A Madman”

Ami Tan Ra may be singing about how she became a madman but in the context of this song’s arrangement, she sounds exceptionally grounded and calm in the midst of chaos. The music is groovy but the drumming is busy and fidgety, amping up the frantic energy and emotive extremes of every other sound in the mix besides her voice. She sounds so centered and certain that her lyrics come across as wisdom from beyond time, which I suppose can seem like a sort of madness. Or maybe “madness” in this song is just about trying to obscure something important within you from others. The most resonant moment of the song for me is when she sings this: “I found the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood / for those who understand us enslave something in us.”

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Ghostface Killah featuring Raekwon, GZA, Method Man, Reek Da Villain, and Pillz “The Trial”

They still got it. “The Trial” is a sketch in song form, with Ghostface and Raekwon as defendants standing before judge Method Man, with lesser-known rappers Reek Da Villain and Pillz as lawyers. The premise is fun, but the song mostly works because the rappers sound great bouncing lines off each other, the drama is well paced, and the lyrical detail is as vivid as you’d expect from any of these Wu guys in their prime. I particularly like how Method Man and GZA are deployed here – Meth’s extra-weathered voice sounding gruff and authoritative as the judge, and the wise, grounded quality of GZA’s voice well-suited to delivering cold truth as the court stenographer.

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Big Thief “Incomprehensible”

Big Thief dropped their bass player in the time since their last album, which has resulted in the remaining trio taking the opportunity to shift and expand their sound. Their new record Double Infinity adds a new rhythm section with multiple percussionists, a crew of background singers, an additional guitarist, and other musicians playing zither, keyboards, and live tape loops. While previous Big Thief records could often feel rather stark and bare bones, the new songs are busy and dense, while retaining some of the spontaneous feel of the older recordings. A lot of the record, particularly the opening track “Incomprehensible,” reminds me a lot of late 90s/early 00s music that aimed for a folk rock + electronica aesthetic, but the minimal overdubs, live-to-tape strategy keeps it from having the “dead” in-the-box sound that can make that stuff feel dated in a bad way.

“Incomprehensible” starts as a travelogue but turns into more of a monologue as Adrianne Lenker shifts from singing about a landscape to ruminating on getting older. She seems OK with it, despite feeling pressured by culture to feel bad about it. As the song moves along, she resolves to embrace natural aging, to “let gravity be my sculptor, let the wind do my hair.” This is where the first and second halves of the lyrics align – to allow herself to be shaped by natural forces, to let herself be as wild and open as the open Canadian landscape.

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