Ugly (UK) “In Samphedoo”

Ugly (UK) are very polished, precise, and mannered in ways that don’t often overlap, which means they often sound sorta like modern musical theater crafted by people obsessed with American Football and Radiohead’s In Rainbows. The results are intriguing – moments that feel achingly sincere coming in songs that also seem prickly and evasive, lyrics that resist narrative yet hit the ear like a sung-through show. They’re at their best when the contradiction is essential to the emotional impact, like how “In Samphedoo” moves between sections that feel like someone actively avoiding eye contact and parts where it’s as though someone is looking too deeply into your eyes for comfort.

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Angèle featuring Caroline Polachek & SebastiAn “Love Triangle”

The phrase “love triangle” typically implies infidelity and fraught drama, with at least two corners of the triangle at odds with one with another. But this is really more of a ménage à trois song from the perspective of a unicorn brought into a couple’s dynamic. Angèle is the ingenue here, overwhelmed by lust but convinced that “somebody’s heart is gonna break.” Caroline Polachek plays the role of the blithe seductress, alternating between singing in English and a bit of flirty French as though she’s trying to impress her Belgian duet partner. SebastiAn puts it over the top by contributing keyboard parts that can only be adequately describe in horny language: throbbing, thrusting, grinding, undulating.

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Kate Bollinger “Dreams Don’t Come True”

“Dreams Don’t Come True” starts off with a strong late period Beatles vibe with that particular loose-yet-refined feel, but once her vocals kick in the music gets faster and more manic, as though someone accidentally pushed it from 33 1/3 to 45 on the turntable. The double time verses express a lot of desire and anxiety – Bollinger wants affection, but is overwhelmed by ordinary anxieties and prosaic obstacles. When the song snaps back into a more mellow vibe, her worries completely evaporate. “Dreams don’t come true like you think that they do,” she sings, “but when they do….oh, they do.” I love the emotional whiplash here, from daydreaming romantic to pragmatic pessimist to someone grounded in actual happiness.

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Yukimi featuring Dina Ögon “Vann du livet?”

Even with a Swedish title, the lyrics of “Vann du livet?” completely bypassed me at first; I was so locked into the vocal melody, guitar groove, and the aesthetics of the production that I just assumed it was heavily slurred, “cursive” English. I’m intrigued by what’s being said in Swedish, though – the title roughly translates to “do you win at life?,” which is a provocative question. I think if it was just “you win at life,” it’d be straightforward, but as a question being asked, it forces you into a philosophical corner. What would it mean to win at life? How do you make all of life a binary zero sum game? And even if you could look at it that way, wouldn’t life be more like a series of games with various outcomes? And what would it say about you if you said you won? And what would it say about you if you think you lost? Anyway, in a rather low-key way, I think this song actually feels a lot like pondering this question.

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Spike Fuck “Getting Sober”

“Getting Sober” is a type of boogie rock song that was old fashioned back when Marc Bolan and David Bowie made it the basis of glam over 50 years ago. It’s foundational rock music – groovy and flamboyant, sexy but silly, tapped into cultural roots but unapologetically artificial. There’s a lot of glam pastiche, but I think what Spike Fuck is doing here is a lot more sincere and heartfelt than straightforward genre emulation. They’re tapping into a tradition in the hope of finding something distinct about themselves within it. To unlock something, to see themselves from another angle. And while the song is explicitly about getting clean, the emotional center is about learning to see themselves a new way. Listen to how much feeling goes into how they sing the chorus “every time I look in the mirror I see…” The phrasing changes a little, like they’re trying it on, getting used to it before really owning it: “I see what is, and what could have been.”

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Cute Door “Flash Bucket”

The way Cute Door manipulates volume on this track is very clever: whispered verses rich with assonance to maximize ASMR ear tickle, a vocal delivery that ducks behind the beat like she’s hiding from something, that sudden jolt of redlined bass that threatens to blow her cover. As with previous Cute Door songs, she’s blending horror and rap tropes from the perspective of the young ingenue, though it’s always unclear whether she’s the prey or the predator. And of course it’s very horny, but I get the sense that’s mostly in reaction to the tension and terror.

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LEENALCHI “Bird”

I was considering showing up to Geese’s show at Forest Hills Stadium closer to their set time, but I’m so glad I ended up getting there on time to see LEENALCHI’s set, which sorta blew my mind. I didn’t know anything about them going in, and I think even if I did, I wouldn’t have been ready to see a band merging traditional theatrical Korean music with groovy new wave rock. Basically they sound like a kooky Korean version of The B-52’s. All the songs are immediately catchy and fun, but the pansori factor warps the most familiar aspects of the music into something eccentric and unexpected. I don’t understand Korean so the storytelling aspect of the music is lost on me, but on a pure musical level I’m fascinated and hooked.

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Jam City featuring Aidan & Hannah Yadi “Hung Up”

If there could be a Millennial version of Valhalla—one where all joy and glory is soundtracked by a specifically early 2010s wave of optimistic and emotive internet indie pop—it would sound just like Jam City’s new record My World. “Hung Up” in particular feels bittersweet, like it’s yearning for the innocence of what I’ve called “Millennial brightness,” but also asserting that we can still have the paradise offered by the likes of M83’s “Midnight City” or Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead” if we really want it. We don’t need to die to get to Millennial Valhalla.

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Quava featuring Pharrell Williams, Tyler the Creator, and A$AP Rocky “Baby Breath”

“Baby Breath” starts with Pharrell and Quavo making a lot of ultra-clever references to luxury goods over a big banger beat. This is fun in and of itself, but it’s even better as a setup for Tyler the Creator’s punchline: showing up and going caveman dumb on it, chanting “BLING BLING BLING” through two entire bars, gleefully rolling beyond the point where you expect him to stop on a rhythmic level. Why not dumb it down in a vaguely spiteful way? Why not fuck with the listener? Why not pivot to threatening to a competitor’s songwriting published and make him so poor he can’t feed his children? This is Tyler tapping into his diabolical inner troll, and it’s a delight. A$AP Rocky wraps it up nicely by bringing it back on theme, but every time I hear that verse I’m still thinking about how funny it is when Tyler just chants the song title for a little too long.

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Miley Cyrus featuring Model/Actriz “Different Religion”

Miley Cyrus isn’t consistent, and that her charm. She’s willing to try a lot of things and doesn’t seem too anxious losing about her position as a pop star. She can shrug off releasing a lot of duds because there’s seemingly always another mega-hit for her around the bend. And that gives her the capital to make wild creative decisions now and then, like collaborating with an abrasive art rock crew like Model/Actriz.

It’s not surprising to me that Cyrus would click with Model/Actriz’s “Korn, but make it super queer” vibe, or recognize Cole Haden’s star power. It is vaguely surprising to me that her collaboration with them would sound more like she’s the guest on a Model/Actriz song than vice versa. But if you’re trying to get in on their specific sweaty, furtive, and psychosexually twisted music, you can’t really go halfway on it.

“Different Religion” is all lust and gleeful sacrilege, with Cyrus and Haden literally worshipping a sexy guy as a deity. “I’ve got my own god,” Cyrus sings. “My god’s a hot boy.” That’s a funny line, but Haden isn’t laughing. He one-ups her: “My faith is his hard body, cracked leather.” They’re on the same page, but while Cyrus exalts the dude, Haden leans into the more debasing side of worship.

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No.006 “u1ch.ing2m.ao4y.en4ch.ao3z”

The only thing I know about No.006 is that it’s apparently a Chinese woman named Huang Hanqiu, but I’m not even certain about that. Weird electronic producers will lie about anything – or conceal anything – to seem interesting. But that sort of effort wouldn’t be necessary for a glitch track like this, which is somehow both totally incoherent and one of the year’s best earworm-y pop songs. Imagine Charli XCX at maximum Brat hookiness, but scrambled and warped like early PC Music tracks. Now keep scrambling. Keep warping. Make it bouncy, like Yelle in 2007. Warp it one more time. It’s kinda like that.

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Dance Arts Center “Everyone Was Talking About You Last Night (CFCF Remix)”

Dance Arts Center’s debut from last year is intended to be like a Broadway cast recording of a dance pop musical, which is a brilliant conceit that only occasionally comes across on the record. For the most part it just sounds like a solid electronic pop album with no obvious lyrical or thematic thread, which is fine as a listening experience but disappointing given the state premise. The major exception is “Everyone Was Talking About You Last Night,” which establishes a conflict, sets up a fuckboy antagonist with a lot of funny details, and sketches out some fun side characters. Gossip is the frame of the song, but actual subject is how easy it is to see through other people, and realizing with some degree of horror that your flaws and foibles are obvious to everyone and someone is almost certainly saying bitchy little things about you. You don’t really need any other context for this song to click. The newly released CFCF mix doesn’t mess with the song’s very strong bones – if anything, they just pour a little musical hot sauce on it.

Buy the original on Bandcamp.

FKJ featuring Eryn Allen Kane “I Want U”

Years ago my friend Sean T. Collins wrote a daily blog about the movie Road House because he realized he could find something interesting to say about Road House every day. (He did, and it’s now it’s a terrific book.) I feel like “I Want U” is so full of wonderful little details that I could potentially do the same for at least a month. Like, I’m not going to! But that’s mostly because I don’t have the music theory and production background to get it right. Most of what I love about the song comes down to appreciating all the interesting musical choices FKJ and Eryn Allen Kane make throughout the track, and the way everything in the composition and production is shamelessly focused on pleasing the ear. And I suppose that’s the other reason I wouldn’t want to catalog every little thing I love about it: Why risk reducing the pleasures of this music by overthinking it? I’m pretty sure a lot of why this works is just a lot of very good raw instincts.

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Jhené Aiko featuring Larry June “Neighbors”

In a contemporary pop world clogged with ambivalent songs about situationships, hopeless heteropessimism, and bitter songs about breakups, it’s refreshing to hear a song as wholesome and hopeful as this. Jhené Aiko sings from the perspective of a woman who has recently moved into a new building and gets a crush on the guy across the hall, and Larry June plays that guy, and he’s into her too. It’s just that simple! Like, he’s not even a creep or a weirdo, she makes a point of noting “I can tell your mama raised you right.” June and Aiko play it sweet and down-to-earth but keep the vibe cool rather than veer into corniness. The keyboard parts by Julian-Quan Viet Le are what really make this work – elegant and lightly jazzy, but filtered and mixed to give it a hazy daydream quality. The production dodges formality without losing the romantic sparkle on the piano flourishes.

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daisy* “Sunbleach”

The glitchy hook of “Sunbleach” is so melodic and mesmerizing that it took me several listens to notice that the lyrics are just the artist introducing herself and telling you how to spell her name, including the * after the y. It’s cute, but as it turns out, it’s somewhat necessary as she recently had to change her name from BABii. The rest of the song is vaguely unsettling – she’s hiding from the sun like a vampire, living in fear of someone, and mostly feeling dazed and vacant. The melody is sweet and girlish, but the stuttering and clipped arrangement keeps the song feeling agitated and unstable. It feels a bit like when you’ve got insomnia and feel exhausted, but also wired from drinking too much coffee to get through the day.

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True Blue “Proof She’s Picked Her Poison”

“Proof She’s Picked Her Poison” is technically a remix of a True Blue song called “Fountain” that came out last year, but it’s so fundamentally different from the source material that it became a separate song. As far as I can tell the only thing the two songs have in common are lyrics, but even those are presented in a different order. The original is mostly acoustic and borderline ambient, and I’ll be real with you – I’m not fond of it. “Proof,” on the other hand is basically pandering to my late 90s sophisticate sensibilities – very trip-hop, a little bit dub, a sort of posh goth vibe. I hope this is the direction for True Blue going forward.

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Erykah Badu & The Alchemist “Love Me Not”

“Love Me Not” is a song that is in large part about waxing your bush and ends with a skit in which Erykah Badu endures a particularly painful waxing appointment, but there’s a lot more going on in the song besides that. It’s mostly about Badu confronting what she’s willing to put up with for love. The bush-waxing is one thing, but what about when he doesn’t give you real affection? What about when it’s clear that you’re making all the compromises and he always gets what he wants? It’s not an angry song, though. She’s mostly shrugging and laughing and wondering why she allows this to happen. But you can hear the ache in her voice, especially when she sings the counterpoint to the “love me, love me not” hook: “That’s when I really fell in love.”

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Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats “UPS”

Denzel Curry makes a sly reference to MF Doom in the chorus of “UPS,” but that’s about as much as this song is lyrically about him. Musically, that’s another matter entirely. Kenny Beats and Curry do their best to channel Doom’s style as both a producer and rapper on the track, and the late MC’s work seems to be so deeply embedded in their psyches that it feels natural rather than tacky or affected. In their case, imitation is indeed sincere flattery, and Doom’s eccentric aesthetic is a formal challenge rather than a style to bite.

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Chinese American Bear “Dance Dance Dance (跳舞跳舞跳舞)”

This song could have stayed in ESG/Liquid Liquid post-punk funk minimalism mode and I would’ve been happy. I’m a total mark for that sound and always will be easily won over by most attempts at it. But the switchover in this track to orchestrated disco is magical; like the song suddenly shifts from grainy black and white to full garish color. This cut is a stand alone single pulled from the sessions for Chinese American Bear’s Dim Sum & Then Some record that was released earlier this summer. There’s some terrific songs on that album – I came close to writing up both “Turn Up the Radio” and “No No Yeah Yeah” – but “Dance Dance Dance” is a revelation. It’s not a departure from the playful energy of that record, but it’s a little less overtly twee and stands up to more repeat plays.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Romare “Take Us”

There’s a similar sort of fake-out here: Romare opens the track with a chopped vocal sample that feels like it’s about to segue into a Madlib/Alchemist sort of down-tempo rap instrumental, but instead you get a left turn into a bouncey cartoonish groove that’s closer to Damon Albarn in Gorillaz mode. “Take Us” is as elegantly crafted as those comparisons would suggest, with some subtly shifting layers of samples and textures under that big beat. This could easily slip into goofy territory, but Romare allows for a lot of grace in the composition.

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After Louise “Crybaby”

I don’t love directly comparing new artists to artists who’ve been around a while. It always feels a bit lazy or unfair, but bear with me: You know how Molly Rankin sings on Alvvays’ 2022 masterpiece Blue Rev? (I hope you do because I’m not kidding, it’s a masterpiece.) That sensitive but sorta defensive tone, attached to melodies that seem wispy at first but reveal themselves to be omega class earworms? “Crybaby” sounds so much like it could fit in on Blue Rev that I had to check to make sure After Louise wasn’t a Molly Rankin side project I had not heard about.

Here’s the twist: Whereas Alvvays songs mostly fall somewhere between early R.E.M./Smiths jangle and My Bloody Valentine/Slowdive shoegaze, “Crybaby” trades all that busy guitar noise for a tight pocket groove, a mildly funk bass, and some sparkling keyboard parts. It’s got some swing, it’s got some negative space, it’s got enough bittersweet romantic ambiance to sit comfortably next to a Beach House track or The Marias’ streaming mega-hit “No One Noticed” on a playlist.

So yes, I do feel bad that I’m framing After Louise’s music entirely in relationship to other music, but it’s all very good music. I’m sure they’ll reveal a little more distinct character as they go along, but this is a fabulous start.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard “Level 5”

I’ve noticed that when King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard make their most radical genre shifts, like their album-length forays into metal and electronic music, they stick closer to their recurring lyrical obsession with manmade disasters. This could just be a response to the extremity of the sound – it makes some sense to pair metal with lyrics about environmental catastrophe, and for that to extend that into techno-based meditations on extinction. In any case, this does some favors in providing a through line in their body of work. Even when they don’t obviously sound like themselves, they’re still very much being themselves.

Alien Metal is the band’s third electronic-oriented record, following excursions into analog synth psychedelia on Butterfly 3000 in 2021 and expanding into a more sinister techno palette on The Silver Cord in 2023. They’ve also performed live a lot in “everybody except the drummer plays synthesizers” mode over the past few years, which for me is their most exciting angle on this sort of music. When they bring out the synth table, they are basically playing electronic music with the mindset of a jam band. They have reworked several oldies in this format and let the songs sprawl out like they’re chasing tangents and exploring the possibilities of the music in real time. There’s some precedent for what they’re doing but not a lot. If this seems interesting to you, definitely jump at any opportunity to see them do a “rave” show.

This time around on Alien Metal, they have jumped wholeheartedly into early to mid 90s rave aesthetics. The sound is pure PLUR, even if the vibe is all tech dread. I think the songs work better when the bleak lyrical fixations overlap with a darker energy, like when they channel The Prodigy’s fire-starting breakbeats on “Level 5.” You can feel their glee in unleashing that big boom beat. It’s just as thrilling as whenever they lock into a motorik groove and Stuart Mackenzie shouts “wooooooooooo!”

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Jungle “Where Are You Now“

Jungle default to making music that sounds like paradise. The grooves are relaxed, the sound is sleek, the arrangements are so harmonically satisfying that they almost feel too good. As they’ve refined their sound they’ve gradually dialed back musical tensions, so at this point a song like “Where Are You Now?” is the musical equivalent of perfectly comfortable weather. There’s a melancholy current to the song, a genuine bit of sadness in the midst of all this beauty, but it registers as more nostalgic than negative. I can understand being suspicious of music this warm and ingratiating, but I think the guiding creative impulse here is a celebration of sensual pleasure and a desire to give listeners some peace. It strikes me as an altruistic form of pop music.

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Carwyn Ellis & Rio 18 “Shades of Red”

Carwyn Ellis and Rio 18 also offer a relaxed groove with a gorgeous tonal palette on “Shades of Red,” but it doesn’t sound as much like paradise. Imagine a beautiful setting, but the air is muggy and the sky is overcast. Guest vocalist Nina Miranda brings a very late 60s sort of folky-witchy sensibility to the track, making the song sound a bit like Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention getting lost in a dense, funky jungle.

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Charli XCX “Camera”

The aesthetic premise of Music, Fashion, Film is basically “pop-punk, but aesthetically interesting.” Charli XCX has been toying with rock sounds through her entire career, so it’s not surprising she’d tip in this direction. If anything, she’s always been a punk making pop and dance music, and not the other way around.

The intriguing thing about this body of work is how she and collaborators AG Cook and Finn Keane reinterpret a very 00s version of rock music. They clearly have a lot of affection for the dynamics of pop-punk and “landfill indie” of their youth, but not so much the drab and limited palette of all that music. They splice up chords, aggressively transpose and mutilate timbre, and glitch it up to avoid plodding rhythms. It’s not unprecedented – for one thing, Madonna and Mirwais were on this at the turn of the 21st century – but it’s well-executed and highly effective in applying fresh style to an overly familiar form.

It is a little frustrating to me that this music is so poetic and evocative in its abstraction of guitar rock, but Charli’s lyrics are direct to the point of total artlessness. I suppose for a lot of people that’s the entire appeal – the sound is ultra stylized, but she’s telling you exactly how she feels. If you have a parasocial investment in her, it may seem unguarded and brutally honest. It might feel like she’s letting you in. But I don’t feel that way about Charli XCX, so the lyrics mostly sound like a flat statement of neuroses. Sometimes it just sounds like she’s singing a press release or publicist approved notes app message. I’m fine with the subject matter, I just wish it felt more of a piece with the music rather than a supposedly artful juxtaposition.

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Coupdekat “Mwah”

At my age, Goodbye 2012! is a hilarious title for a record. By that point in my life I had been writing Fluxblog for 10 years, had just finished my runs with Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, and was just starting a job as music editor for BuzzFeed. I suppose I have some nostalgia attached to my early days at BuzzFeed – it truly felt like joining a cult early on – but I don’t have a romantic feeling about this era. I was too adult, too jaded, too settled into my identity.

Not so for Coupdekat, who was a preteen in 2012, and made Goodbye 2012! as a way of exploring an innocent time in her life just prior to puberty. I love this idea, if just because I’m curious about what this period looked like to someone from a totally different perspective.

A lot of the record isn’t particularly retro – to my ears a majority of tracks are firmly rooted in contemporary post-hyperpop electronic indie production – but “mwah” is a very evocative throwback to the later phases of what’s now called indie sleaze. It feels more 00s to me, but that’s only because I spent a decade before 2012 collecting songs just like it.

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Sam and Louise Sullivan “Love & Devotion”

“Love and Devotion” is a lovely, laid back, and agreeable song about being in love, but it’s written from a somewhat contrarian point of view. Here’s what Sam Sullivan has to say about it:

“These days, it seems like people are always saying, ‘ooh, love is so hard; let’s work on our relationship; we need to find compromise.’ No. Wrong. Love is easy, actually. Love is quite fun. Don’t fall for this insidious, anti-love propaganda.”

If you’re in a happy relationship, it can feel like you’ve cracked a code for living and everyone who hasn’t figured out can look a bit foolish. It can make you quite smug! But Sullivan is right about this. Love may be difficult to find, but real deal true blue love is easy and fun.

Like most of Sam and Louise’s songs, “Love & Devotion” is so deeply rooted in folk-pop tradition that it could pass as something written 40-50 years ago. The duo’s fundamentals are strong, the substance is tried and true. But I don’t think it actually feels retro. The Sullivans have a peculiar arrangement and production style – they’re always pushing for a sound just beyond their grasp and landing on odd aesthetic balances and textural contrasts. R&B impulses get blurred by folk sensibilities, attempts at reggae grooves end up closer to Mac DeMarco vibes. No matter what they do, they can’t sound like anything but themselves.

Which is for the best, really. They may not be bone-deep eccentrics like fellow brother/sister duo The Fiery Furnaces, but they have a similar magnetic charm and also seem like they’re building a little world together.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Beabadoobee “Switchblade”

A lot of Gen Z approximations of Gen X rock sounds rather flat to my ears – all the expected signifiers of various alt sub-genres cut and pasted in, but not much depth or dynamics. Not so for “Switchblade.” Beabadoobee’s arrangement places its emphasis sharply contrasting textures, and there’s a sickly sort of swing to the bass groove. It’s a very vivid production that makes every moment of the song feel alive and somewhat surprising despite how closely the songwriting sticks to alt-rock conventions. And unlike a lot of contemporary indie, the vocal and lyrics seem like secondary concerns: The guitars are the most emphatic and emotionally articulate aspects of the music, and by contrast singing feels more ambivalent and mutable.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Osees “Hecate’s Reflection Is A Trick”

Osees are a classic “always different, always the same” band where the pleasure of following them in the long-term depends on noticing the way they incorporate new ideas into their immediately identifiable sound. In this case, I can feel them gesturing towards making their own Fela Kuti song, even if it ends up sounding much closer to Tago Mago-era Can. At any rate, the groove has a nice jolt to it, and there’s an alluring dark undertow to its insistent beat.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Kelela “Point Blank”

“Point Blank” is a breakup song in medias res, and listening to the lyrics can feel like overhearing an argument in passing and trying to sort out the details on the fly. Some of it is a little confusing – one can only hope that the guns and bullets mentioned are purely metaphorical – but mostly it comes down to a question Kelela sings in the first verse: “Why’s your love so bleak?” She sounds wounded and frustrated but not fully angry, which maybe has something to do with the admission in the bridge that the guy she’s singing to was pretty good in bed.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Allison Russell featuring Kara Jackson, Denitia & Explore! Pop Choir “Cold April”

Allison Russell’s music largely exists in realms between genres – mostly country and R&B, but you can hear some pop and indie in the stew – but the connecting thread is an earnest, wholesome public radio vibe that can tip over into being a little off-putting. “Cold April” avoids that, which is a little surprising given that it’s an extremely optimistic song that features a children’s choir. But the melody is strong, and ultimately that can make me forgive the more syrupy aspects of the music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

CFCF featuring Touching Ice & TECHG1RLS “Let’s Kill Ourselves”

Don’t let the title freak you out. This is a song about using “I’m gonna kill myself” in a hyperbolic or sarcastic way, and poking at that turn of phrase a bit. Is it funny, is it cute? Is it annoying, is it insensitive? Is it actually hyperbole at all, or is it just making light of actual dark urges? Will getting your blowout screwed up by a sudden rain storm really push you over the edge? It’s a fun song, so don’t expect it to do much more than gesture in these directions, but do prepare for a lot of exciting dynamic shifts.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

(un)familiar. & Devi McCallion “ohmyfuckinggod”

The synths and programming in “ohmyfuckinggod” feels loose, bright, and carefree, but the lyrics seem like they’re strung together from a tour diary documenting every moment Devi McCallion felt even a little bit anxious, nervous, or bored. The contrast dials down the lyrical angst considerably, placing it all in a proper perspective. It’s as if to say, “hey, touring can suck and mess with my head, but the music part is always fun and it beats working a normal job.” In a battle between lyrics and music, the music wins.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Ratboys “Light Night Mountains All That”

There’s no proper chorus in “Light Night Mountains All That,” but there is a hooky refrain: “You didn’t care, you didn’t care, you didn’t care.” It’s sung with increasing frustration as Julie Steiner attempts to relate the details of some sort of wilderness vision quest, but the person she’s telling is visibly bored. And like, what’s the difference between this and someone describing a dream they had? Not a lot, besides the urgent momentum of the music giving you the sense that Steiner’s character may have actually experienced something quite profound and inexplicable out in the woods. And maybe it’s terrifying?

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Madonna “Danceteria”

Madonna has spent much of the past 20 years artistically lost at sea, attempting to navigate a unique set of circumstances – trying to stay vital and relevant in the pop market in her 50s and 60s, attempting to live up to her own past successes, and competing against artists whose careers wouldn’t exist in the same way without her laying the groundwork. There’s very little precedent for what Madonna has been doing, and virtually none within the lane of pop music she pioneered.

And so it comes as a huge relief that Madonna is back on track, and figuring out how to be an elder pop icon on her own terms. It took some trial and error, but with Confessions II she’s found a way to balance out doling out the wisdom of age, looking back on what she’s lived through without cheap nostalgia, and finding fresh ways to be outrageous. And while she spent a lot of time in the wilderness trying to figure out new people to be in rather “hello fellow kids” ways, the answer to the problem was always obvious: She just had to be herself.

After all, who else has ever lived a life like Madonna? And when Madonna sings about her early career, her nostalgia is our history. “Danceteria” is an ode to the Manhattan club where she made her name, with all the lyrical emphasis placed on name-checking her friends (Martin Burgoyne, Haoui Montaug, Debi Mazar) and the various luminaries (Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Byrne, The B-52’s) who frequented the space. It authentically situates her at the center of an exciting cultural moment, a convergence of some of the coolest and most creative people who’ve ever lived.

She’s giving us a little window into something very specific and exclusive and genuinely historically important. And from our perspective in the smart phone era, it’s something that feels exotic and alien. An organic community of artists and assorted stylish people living in the moment, feeling the music, only performing for one another? It’s an aspirational existence that doesn’t seem replicable today.

I think that last point is part of why she feels compelled to sing about it now. There are moments throughout Confessions II in which she’s subtly or overtly begging us all to get off our phones, go outside, to dance and be fully alive. She knows from experience how amazing it can be, and she’s not giving up hope on younger people who’ve never had a chance to experience it as she has. She’s trying to help us!

Buy it from Amazon.