Sophia Kennedy is a Baltimore native who moved to Germany with her family as a kid. Her music combines a surprising assortment of retro and modern sounds, from Sinatra-style crooning to belted-out R&B to bright Brill Building pop to skewed hip-hop and electronic beats. There’s something late ’90s about the way she collages these styles together, yet her music never really comes across as old-fashioned. Monsters, her second album and first for City Slang, is dropping in May, and along with detailing it today, she’s sharing its second single.

Whereas last fall’s “Orange Tic Tac” played like menacing trip-hop spliced together with a wistful show tune, today’s “Cat On My Tongue” is brighter and more ecstatic. Its beat reminds me of songs like Washed Out’s “Feel It All Around” and Kanye West’s “We Major,” sweeping and grandiose yet grounded in grit. It’s topped off with a glamorous melody attached to lyrics about being so gobsmacked by another person’s presence that you can barely string a sentence together: “Every time oh when we meet/ Words have no order to me.”

Here’s more from Kennedy herself:

The song is a movie-like bold teenage rebel story – like the world of the Shangri-Las and Lovers-Rock combined with psychedelic Hip Hop – but to me, the real star of the song is the melody. It has this bright addictive Beam and it makes me feel good. It makes me feel so good, as if I’m sliding down the rainbow with no clothes on, while waving to tiny little angel babies.

Watch the “Cat On My Tongue” and “Orange Tic Tac” videos below, as well as a Monsters album trailer.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Animals Will Come”
02 “Orange Tic Tac”
03 “I Can See You”
04 “Francis”
05 “Seventeen”
06 “Loop”
07 “I’m Looking Up”
08 “Chestnut Avenue”
09 “Do They Know”
10 “Cat On My Tongue”
11 “Brunswick”
12 “Up”
13 “Dragged Myself Into The Sun”

Monsters is out 5/7 on City Slang.