Welcome to our weekly roundup of the SPIN staff’s favorite new songs. Below, sample the best from helium-sucking pop satirists, post-punk disciples, and more.
A.G. Cook, “Superstar” (PC Music)
In these real-time times, PC Music has evolved fast enough that A.G. Cook has already reached his ’80s Elton stage: palpable corn fencing uncomfortably with club chintz. While Cook’s collective is more interested in preserving their pop cache than twisting the internet around their Animatronic fingers these days, he still makes plenty fun of it, tweaking his highest notes to sound like a pubescent, cracking droid. Get Chris Martin on the remix, preferably chipmunked beyond all recognition. — DAN WEISS
Black Marble, “Iron Lung” (Ghostly International)
The soothing bass, twinkling synths, and melancholy vocals are great and all, fuzzy and sentimental and ensconced in womb-like compression. But it’s that echoing drum cascade, which the song runs over once a measure like a repeating bump in the road, that sets “Iron Lung” apart from your garden-variety New Order throwback — giving the song an irresistible undertow, and, appropriate to its title, a breathe-in, breathe-out sense of pulsing life. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Daniel Woolhouse, “Map of the Moon” (37 Adventures)
The artist formerly known as Deptford Goth voluntarily withdrew from touring after releasing 2014’s Songs, but this week he reemerged under his given name, Daniel Woolhouse. If he’s worried that fans might lose track of him, he doesn’t show it. Crested with horns and better rooted in the R&B sound that Goth tunes usually glanced off of, “Map of the Moon” has a more robust presence than Woolhouse’s older work. Its choruses build as steadily as a tap being opened, but it’s the pockets of languid meandering that make it unabashedly pretty. — ANNA GACA
Hiss Golden Messenger, “Biloxi” (Merge)
Can you be a present family man and an on-the-road musician all at once? M.C. Taylor considers how we compartmentalize ourselves on Hiss Golden Messenger’s forthcoming record, Heart Like a Levee (he described feeing “wrenched apart by my responsibilities to my family and to my music,” while writing the record). Album opener “Biloxi,” presumably written while passing through the titular Mississippi town, captures Taylor’s sweet ennui with restless mid-tempo strums, topped by the singer’s rootsy twang. It stands to reason: He can wait to be on the road again. — RACHEL BRODSKY
John Lock feat. JVZEL, “Imagine” (Locked in Music)
Too few noticed John Lock wailing on the drums in the Glee Band, but they should have — he manned the kit all six seasons, after all. Now that the show’s reached its end, though, the musician, DJ, and actor puts on his producer hat for a new track: “Imagine,” an energetic electro-dance banger that sounds tailor-made for the nearest pool party and features Cali singer-songwriter JVZEL singing, “Could you imagine? / You give what I need.” The feeling is mutual. — MAYA LEWIS
Katie Dey, “Only to Trip and Fall Down Again” (Joy Void Recordings)
The paralyzing sadness of “Only to Trip and Fall Down Again” comes from neither the lyrics (they’re barely decipherable) nor the melody (there really isn’t a coherent one): Katie Dey’s palpable frustration wallows in the eerie noises of her own vast soundscape. The Melbourne-based artist’s pricks and glitches pop off in some echo chamber as she croons over a Sisyphean failure to stay upright, her voice tense and weary as a taut rubber band. — MATTHEW MALONE
Migos feat. Gucci Mane, “Now” (Quality Control)
Every night, there’s a millennial who lays prostrated in his bedroom, eyes glassy. “Why?” he asks. “Why does Sonny Digital go so hard?” These are lesser men. The bloodshot fury of Sonny Digital’s bass doesn’t break fellow Atlantians Gucci Mane and Migos — it sharpens them. Gucci glides over the beat (he delivers a fiercer performance on “Multi Millionaire LaFlare,” released this past Tuesday), but Migos are out here rapping like they’ve still got something to prove. Life itself isn’t as hard as Takeoff’s verse. — BRIAN JOSEPHS
