Karl Kuehn directly addresses the “straight crush from hell” narrative of the last Museum Mouth album, Alex I Am Nothing, on “Riff From My Head,” the second single off the North Carolina band’s upcoming fourth album Popcorn Fish Guinea Pig following last week’s “Incubus Tattoo.” The title of the track of course refers to the killer riff that takes off after the chorus, but it also alludes to the way a crush can become stuck in your head much like a hook, catchy and instantly appealing but annoying and repetitive over time. Diminishing returns and all that. Kuehn focused on music to center himself and help him get past the infatuation, and “Riff From My Head” charts his progress: “Now all the breakup songs on scratched CDs I bought magically play/ And I can go 24-hours-plus without picturing your face,” he boasts in the chorus. “I used to want to ride my bike off a cliff, death was imminent/ Now I just want to smash some shit, a vast improvement.”

“I spent all of 2013 trying to make a straight man love me, wrote an album about it (Alex I Am Nothing), and then got over it LOL!!! As cheesy as this sounds, just writing those songs helped me get through it, and “Riff” is an attempt to acknowledge that fact,” Kuehn said in a statement. “And when you have a super scratched up copy of Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette in your car that skips on every track except “You Oughta Know” – I think that’s the universe talking or something idk.”

Listen via BrooklynVegan below.

Popcorn Fish Guinea Pig is out 4/29 via Rory Records. You can pre-order it here.