Do you like riffs? How about tones? Do you recognize that both the ’70s and the ’90s constitute classic rock? Have you ever conjured ragged glory while waitin’ on a Sunday afternoon, thinking about how it’s all downhill from here? Do you crave guitar rock that is poppy but not pop, complex but not fussy, dynamic yet super fucking smooth? Are you willing to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with the lead single from an album called Western Cum? Have you caught on yet that Cory Hanson makes magic, with or without Wand? —Chris

“If that was me then,” Caroline Rose murmurs, “then who am I now?” It is remarkable that an artist who first broke through making alt-country released this as an advance single from her new album. But like so much of Rose’s output over the course of her metamorphosis, “The Doldrums” holds up as an excellent piece of music even excerpted from the arc of her career. It’s a song about how identity changes can be a means of self-destruction: “My idea of rebirth and reformation at the time was killing off my old self and finding a new one, rather than simply being kind to myself,” she explained in a note accompanying the song. “Not because I didn’t want to be, but because I didn’t really know how.” But if reinvention can secretly be indicative of something broken inside, this dark, elegant, woozy, murky electro-organic swoon reminds us that it can be spectacular too. —Chris

One of last year’s dumbest, most annoying music-news stories was the existence of FN Meka, the fictional AI-generated mumble-rapper who was briefly signed to Capitol and who was memory-holed as soon as people recognized that the whole character was a ridiculous, cartoonish stereotype. “Florida Water” was the name of FN Meka’s big single, and it had Gunna on it. This “Florida Water” has nothing to do with that one, but the differences are instructive.

On the new “Florida Water” — the real “Florida Water” — we get Palm Beach’s DJ Scheme putting together an ominous piano-pounding beat and bringing in shit-talkers from around his state. There’s Orlando’s Danny Towers rapping in a weary, grizzled bark. He’s in Rancho Cucamonga, and he snuck in with that thumper. There’s Luh Tyler, the 16-year-old Tallahassee newcomer with the squeaky wheeze of a voice. He slaps her ass like he’s her damn dad. And then there’s the booming Fort Lauderdale eccentric Ski Mask The Slump God, having as much fun as ever. What’s up in his pocket? It’s a 30 like a Percocet. Who’s that in his blunt? Nevermind, he’ll reconsider it. The video establishes a sense of place: Dirtbikes, palm trees, convenience stores, overcast skies. An AI could never. —Tom

Nashville is the center of the country-music world, but it’s also the city that gave us Paramore and Be Your Own Pet and Diarrhea Planet and JEFF The Brotherhood. I’d like to think that you can hear some of that Nashville echoing all over “Lose You,” from Nashville natives Bully and Soccer Mommy. Bully’s Alicia Bognanno is one of our finest practitioners of ’90s-style fuzz-rock, while Sophie Allison’s deadpan indie continues to travel in different directions. On “Lose You,” those two voices come together to sing soaring harmonies over a drum-shuffle that manages to be hazy and thunderous at the same time, like a summer-afternoon sky just before the rain comes. The song is a catchily ragged rock-monster about time always slipping into the future, and the level of craft is just undeniable. Salute to the rockers of Nashville. You don’t get all the attention, but you know what you’re doing. —Tom

Lana’s got bars. I know this, but sometimes it takes a song that breaks out of her familiar molds to remind me. Or maybe it combines everything she’s ever done into something new. However you construct it, “A&W” is unorthodox LDR; her epics have sprawled like this before, particularly in her profusely worshipped Norman Fucking Rockwell! era, but going from piano balladry that edges up against Radiohead to digital minimalism that plays like a sequel to Lorde’s “Royals”? It feels audacious even within the Del Rey canon.

The title stands for “American Whore,” as expressed in the song’s central lyric. “It’s not about havin’ someone to love me anymore,” Del Rey sings, bleary and dispassionate. “No, this is the experience of bein’ an American whore.” As ever, it’s doomed all-American trash and glamour as a Rorschach blot, self-evidently iconic fare that doubles as an interpretive feast. In the beginning, she declares, “I haven’t done a cartwheel since I was nine/ I haven’t seen my mother in a long, long time.” By the end, the mood has lightened slightly, even if circumstances still seem grim: “Your mom called/ I told her that you’re fuckin’ up big time” Along the way there are detours through shadows, a schoolyard chant, and the realization that Lana and Jack are back in their stylish, apocalyptic bag. —Chris