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.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

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.

Buy it from Amazon.

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.”

Buy it from Amazon.

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.

Buy it from Amazon.

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.”

Buy it from Bandcamp.

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.

Buy it from Amazon.

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.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Lou Hayter “Wish You Were Mine”

I think a lot of the time the music tells a lyricist what the words should be, in the sense that it’s like putting subtitles on the abstract content of the chords and melodies. “Wish You Were Mine” is a good example in that you’d have to be very contrary to make this something other than a crush song. Everything about the composition and arrangement is powerful current pulling towards that conclusion; you’d need a lot of strength to push against it. You could end up with something interesting that way, sure, but in giving in to that feeling – in pushing everything about the song towards this emotional extreme – Lou Hayter has created something incredibly satisfying and effective. It’s a song with a flawless internal logic, in which everything always adds up to this attraction, and the tinge of sadness in the track comes from being worried that this logic isn’t mutually agreed upon.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Dijon “Another Baby!”

“Another Baby” is clearly referencing some mid-to-late 80s pop in its structure and production touches – I’m mainly picking up Prince, Jam & Lewis, and Scritti Politti – but the actual sound of the track is a bit warped and inside-out, making it feel more like it’s a dispatch from the future than a retro pastiche. Dijon’s lyrical subject essentially paraphrases the words of one of his obvious touchstones – “if love is good let’s get 2 rammin’” – but with an emphasis on procreation. This only becomes apparent as the song moves along, and the focus shifts from “come on, let’s have sex” to him hard-selling the notion of expanding the family. Maybe I’ve just been listening to the wrong things my whole life but the lyrical conceit here strikes me as somewhat novel, and the execution is just the right balance of sexy and funny. (About 70/30, let’s say.)

Buy it from Amazon.

Kaytranada featuring TLC “Do It! (Again!)”

It probably isn’t hard to flip a sample from anything on TLC’s Crazysexcool and end up with a cool song – the source material is top shelf, and just hearing a little snippet of T-Boz’s distinctively smoky voice can carry the vibe of a whole song. But Kaytranada goes far beyond that, reworking some elements from the bridge of “Let’s Do It Again” into an entirely different musical phrase. It makes me very curious what the starting point for chopping this up was. Has he heard this specific potential in the song for 31 years? Was this how he heard it in a dream or something? Was he just screwing around and landed on something sublime? If you know, don’t tell me. It’s more fun for these things to be a little mysterious.

Buy it from Amazon.

Q Tha Hero “Hero 4 Hire!”

I’ve listened to a lot of Q Tha Hero recently, and I love everything he’s released so far but struggle to find an angle on his work as a writer. Like, he’s a very good rapper with strong lyrics and excellent taste in production? This is high but totally non-specific praise, and in aesthetic terms, he’s a type of rapper that could exist comfortably anywhere between 1992 and the present. He’s an underground rap traditionalist but not quite retro, though I’d place him much closer to Earl Sweatshirt or Curren$y than, say, J. Cole. He’s the kind of rapper who’d thrive on an Alchemist or Madlib beat, but I’d be more excited for him to land on a more ambitious Tyler the Creator or Kaytranada track. I imagine great things for this guy, but he’s great enough right now as it is, monologuing about trudging through bad vibes but mostly sounding like he’s having a good time.

Buy it from Amazon.

Little Simz “Free”

A lot of the Little Simz songs I’ve gravitated to in the past were aggressive and showy; music made by someone eager to show and prove. “Free” is far more relaxed but just as assured. It’s not a love song, but it’s a song about love. There’s an old Wilco song where Jeff Tweedy sings about “making love understandable,” and that’s kinda what Simz is trying to do in the first verse. She presents her philosophy of love, which is largely rooted in humility, kindness, empathy, and patience. In the second half she examines fear, which is presented as the dark opposite of love: “Fear works best when love isn’t close.” Fear closes doors, love brings freedom, and freedom yields creation. She makes an airtight argument, but keeps it chill.

Buy it from Amazon.

Girl Group “Shut Your Mouth (Sometimes)”

“Shut Your Mouth (Sometimes)” gets a lot done in under three minutes: Pithy verses describing annoying experiences with obnoxious men sung by four members of the band over a bouncy yet vaguely sinister groove that sounds like a lost Le Tigre banger; a chorus hook that manages to sound biting, funny, and extremely sad all at once; a thumping electro bop outro. Everything about the song is dialed in just right – fun enough to play at a party or get people going at a show, but dark enough to convey the justified paranoia that any of these slights against them could be prelude to much worse indignities and violence.

Buy it from Amazon.

Osees “Sneaker”

The “Sneaker” in this song isn’t a running shoe, it’s a demonic trickster figure who distracts you, warps your sense of reality, and makes you lose hope and the will to live. So, an algorithmic feed, right? The song swings between two of the Osees’ core competencies – a polyrhythmic groove with a bobbing bass line that sounds like they’re trying to induce seasickness, and a barking hardcore punk section that’s more like whiplash. When they play this live, the pit will get extra wild.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Madison McFerrin “Run It Back”

The bones of “Run It Back” are strong enough that I think you could go a lot of ways with the arrangement and end up with something good, but I’m glad Madison McFerrin opted for minimalism. Aside from a bit of well-placed percussion and harmony vocals, it’s pretty much just her voice and a bit of piano. Her voice is strong and forceful, but I think if she was competing with more elements in the mix, it would tip over to a sort of belting/honking that wouldn’t suit the low-key vibe of the lyrics. The way it is here, you get just the right balance of flirtatiousness and decorum. It’s like she’s trying to keep something quiet out of caution, but can’t help raising her voice when she’s overcome by the feeling.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

LSDXOXO featuring Boys Noize and VTSS “Red”

Prince is an extremely influential artist so you can hear traces of him in all sorts of music, but sometimes you hear something like “Red” and it’s really more about emulation than generalized inspiration. The drum machine sound, the synth tones? Unmistakably Prince. The vocal cadence, the lyrical approach? Prince 2 the max. LSDXOXO and crew are clearly tapping into a very purple funk here, and that includes nailing the casual catchiness and lascivious atmosphere of peak-era Prince. But it’s not all retro, or all Prince worship – there’s a modern gloss on the production, a more relaxed vocal tone, and the lyrics are very, very gay.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Sex Week “Lone Wolf”

“Lone Wolf” is in no way a “retro” thing, but it does bring me back to the refined and romantic atmosphere of a lot of indie music circa 2008-2010, which I documented in this playlist from a few years back. Think of Grizzly Bear, Bat for Lashes, the xx, Wild Beasts, Owen Pallett – artists that were accessible but unapologetically arty and uncompromisingly adult in their emotional tone. Sex Week started off as more of a shoegaze band but have evolved into a more distinctive form – fuzzy and hazy textures traded for a sound that evokes the feeling of cold marble sculpture, vocals far more confident and overtly sensual. The lyrics are more interesting too, exploring the eroticism of predator/prey imagery without spelling out exactly what’s going on or how you should feel about it.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Confidence Man featuring Jade “Gossip”

“Gossip” is funky and frisky and forceful, and almost certainly directly inspired by Basement Jaxx in their early 2000s pop peak. Confidence Man approximates a similar paradoxical mix of sophistication and blunt rhythmic force, but with more emphasis on a fluid, groovy bass line. Confidence Man vocalist and Janet Planet and guest vocalist Jade, formerly of Little Mix, bring a coy and bratty attitude to the track. The premise is basically “gleefully gossiping on the phone,” and while it feels relevant to culture right now, there’s some turns of phrase that are noticeably retro – “phone ringing off the hook,” for example. It’s interesting how so many 20th century idioms about phones stick around in pop music long after they have much to do with how anyone today uses a phone.

Buy it from iTunes.

Sturdyyoungin, Ohthatsmizz, and Zeddy Will “Trippin”

Maybe you can help me figure out something that’s been baffling me for days?

“Trippin'” is very straightforward, a bubblegum rap song in which three charming young guys flirt with the same pretty girl. It’s as wholesome as a song could possibly be while including the line “I’ma knock the coochie out.” Great chopped up Fergie sample, strong performances by a trio of young rappers, fun energy. It’s super easy to love this song.

That’s the context, here’s my question.

Midway through the song, Zeddy Will drops this verse:

If you tryna stay the weekend, let me know, girl it’s alright
Pretty in the face so you definitely my type
And for that, I’ll book your flight
So where you tryna go?
She said, “Let’s go to Turkey”, say no more, case closed

Turkey? Of all the two syllable destinations on planet earth, why Turkey? Is this totally random, or is there some Gen-Z cultural significance to Turkey beyond it being where guys go to get hair transplants? Why not, say, Toyko or Bali or Paris or Dubai or London or Fiji or Rio?

Is there some kind of Turkish tourism campaign aimed at girls under 20 on TikTok that I’ve never heard about? Is the girl in this song just a big fan of Erdoğan’s far right wing government? Are they big Eric Adams supporters?

It’s such a bizarre choice of destination in 2025, but it is funny to imagine this young dude booking the trip and arriving there with her and just being like….????

Buy it from Amazon.

Zeddy Will “Yup and I Do”

And here’s another one from Zeddy Will, all by himself. And once again, it’s an ultra horny song that somehow seems wholesome if just because it’s not misogynistic. There’s nothing profound going on here, it’s just a song about being excited about giving and receiving head. But here’s a positive energy and cool attitude in this music, and it’s not calling attention to being a Very Good Boy relative to anyone else, or it’s not dorky. It’s just flirty, fun, and overflowing with lust.

Buy it from Amazon.

Tyler, the Creator “Sugar On My Tongue”

It’s funny how the common use of the word “creator” has shifted so much in the past decade that the name Tyler, The Creator has gone from sounding incredibly pompous to sorta humble. But while he’s definitely matured and mellowed with age, I don’t think he’s even close to humble. This is a guy who takes the notion of being a CREATOR very seriously – he consistently chases big ideas, has an extremely refined palette and aesthetic, and approaches every aspect of everything he does with a meticulous perfectionism.

There’s always a thrill in hearing Tyler play to his core strengths as a rapper with a distinctive rich growly voice, as on “Sticky” from last year,” but he’s often impressive when he steers out of his lane into various strains of R&B, quasi-industrial music, or in the case of “Sugar On My Tongue,” extra-horny 80s electro pop. As always, he fully commits to the bit – the lascivious synths would make Prince proud, the sweaty atmosphere would get a thumbs up from Uncle Luke, and the lewd thrusting beat would come in second place after Salt-N-Pepa in a hot party show.

Buy it from Golfwang.

Clipse “The Birds Don’t Sing”

Pusha T and Malice have been so relentlessly focused on rapping about selling cocaine and presenting themselves as brilliant supervillains through their careers that opening their first album together as Clipse in 16 years with something as vulnerable and true as “The Birds Don’t Sing” is genuinely startling. It’s a song about the brothers losing their father, and under relatively mundane circumstances: They’re middle aged men, their dad gets sick, and he’s suddenly gone. They feel regret about where they left off with him, they reflect on their good fortune of having a good, supportive father. The typical Clipse kayfabe is dropped entirely – don’t worry, they get right back to it as the record goes along – but for this song, all their considerable skill as rappers and lyricists is redirected towards fully being themselves and letting the listener in. I think their dad would be very proud. But of course, he already was. As Malice reveals at the end of his verse, “I love my two sons” was the code to his phone.

Buy it from Amazon.

Nine Inch Nails “As Alive As You Need Me to Be”

I’ve never seen either of the Tron movies and it’s unlikely that I’ll watch the forthcoming movie featuring Jared Leto, but I appreciate that Disney is cementing “get an auteur electronic act to do the entire soundtrack” as a defining feature of the franchise – first Wendy Carlos, then Daft Punk, and now Nine Inch Nails. And no, not another “Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross” score – the two of them as full-on, real deal Nine Inch Nails.

The most immediately striking aspect of “As Alive As You Need Me to Be” is how very Nine Inch Nails it sounds. Specifically it’s NIN in Pretty Hate Machine/Year Zero synth-heavy industrial mode, which is something Reznor and Ross haven’t done much over the past 12 years or so. But it doesn’t feel self-conscious or contrived – it’s more like gravitating to core competencies and responding to the demands of that primary synth part on the verses, the part that somehow sounds blood red and incandescent. It wants to be a banger, it wants to be huge and dramatic. Bow down before the riff you serve, you know?

Buy it from Amazon.

Fcukers “Play Me”

I highly doubt Fcukers know who I am and there’s zero chance they’re specifically trying to please me with their music, but sometimes it feels like that’s actually what they’re trying to do. “Play Me” is a more dubstep-y iteration of their indie dance aesthetic, which mostly comes down to the funny contrast of Shannon Wise’s shy cool girl shtick and Jackson Walker Lewis’ extremely extroverted production style. I love how the music sounds so ruthless in its efforts to get you to dance, but also so cold and aloof. Instead of canceling out, it ends up sounding playful and flirty.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Geese “Taxes”

Cameron Winter’s voice can get a bit ugly and awkward and honking, but he sings with so much raw soul and earnest feeling that it becomes beautiful and sometimes totally heartbreaking. There’s no shame in how he performs, only total commitment, so even when he’s expressing totally pathetic feelings he sounds like a man with great dignity. That’s certainly the case in “Taxes,” a song with lyrics so grandiose in its self-pity that at one point he demands to be crucified. The lyrics work because Winter has found the ideal balance of cartoonishness and earnestness, so both the humor and the pathos land just right. And the arrangement does the same thing – meloddramatic, but also bright and crisp and light.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Dawuna “Love Jaunt”

I don’t know much about Dawuna or how this track was made, but it makes me think of the term “demoitis” – the thing where an artist’s demo is so good that every attempt to fully flesh it out in the studio feels wrong because it’s not capturing what’s already been put down on tape. “Love Jaunt” feels like a home demo in the best sense – low-key, understated, a set of feelings and musical ideas laid down without any fuss. Could this be better as a slicker production? Sure, this has the bones of an excellent R&B song for any era. But I’m not convinced you could improve on what Dawuna conjures here, unless you wanted to drop the “low-key” aspect entirely and then you just have a very different song. I like that the music doesn’t feel uptight, but also that she’s singing quietly enough to make it seem like she’s choosing her words very carefully.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Fine “I Could”

The component sounds in “I Could” are very familiar after decades of alternative rock – a bass line halfway between Peter Hook and Kim Deal, a high breathy female vocal, miscellaneous layers of off-kilter and/or abrasive guitar – but the feel is kinda strange. This could easily be a lot more plodding and flat, but there’s some swing to it, and some touches of delicacy and sophistication cast in stark relief with elements that are entry-level simplistic. It’s a song that’s somehow both thudding and sensuous.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Maren Morris “People Still Show Up”

A lot of people think they have a handle on Jack Antonoff’s sound, but for the most part, they’re really just thinking of what he does with Taylor Swift, or clients who likely show up saying “hey, can you give me The Taylor Swift?” Dig a little deeper, and he’s a very odd and versatile artist. He’s a guy who composed Lana Del Rey’s masterpiece “A&W,” figured out how to merge ABBA and Dolly Parton on Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please,” and has transitioned into a strong hip-hop producer on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX. At this point I wouldn’t rule out anything for the guy, particularly as he’s chasing vibes more than following mainstream pop templates.

“People Still Show Up,” one of a handful of tracks he produced for Maren Morris’ first post-country record, has a peculiar feel to it. It’s aiming for a loose, bluesy energy, but in an intentionally odd and inorganic way. You get it right away – a stiff drum machine, keyboard tones bending wildly, sounding like neon blobs smearing across the stereo image. It’s a really cool sound, and going in this direction with the song is so much more interesting than playing this song very straight with an expected traditional arrangement. It makes sense in the context of Morris’ lyrical POV too, as it’s very much about her getting nudged out of the country space and taking stock of where she’s at. And here she is, in some odd simulacrum of an “authentic” sound, and while she sounds a little befuddled and bemused, she sounds very much at home.

Buy it from Amazon.