“Undergrowth” is up there with the best in Squid’s (admittedly small) discography. Over seven minutes, the UK rock band extends into territory both insistently sputtering and windingly ominous, all tentacled off the track’s groovy beginning. As with everything they’ve released, it’s dense and technically accomplished and surprising, and a song as beguiling as this deserves a commensurate backstory. And it’s got one. Per Ollie Judge’s description, he’s reincarnated as an inanimate object, condemned to spend the rest of his days as something people barely notice is there. “Ergonomic for the rest of my days, I’d rather melt melt melt melt melt melt away,” he concludes in its skronking hook. A fate worse than death. —James

The mixing on this song is weird. The vocal performances are weird. The video is weird. Weird in a good way! Weird as in I keep coming back to it, rolling it across my brain from one ear to the other, wondering how a song can be so catchy while barely sounding like pop. The anxious energy, the tinny guitar sound, the resoundingly twee guy-girl vocal performance — it’s like the xx got really into the Swell Maps, locked into a relentless groove, and made something mesmerizing. It makes me want to pull up a seat at bar italia and hang around for a while. —Chris

Christine And The Queens has been graduating into their stadium era for what feels like years. In the run-up to forthcoming album PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE., it finally seems like Chris is on the precipice of achieving that moment. On their slow-burning “True Love,” which creeps over Mike Dean’s staticky, heart-monitor beat, Chris transmits an icy fear around being truly vulnerable with someone. “I can’t believe you saw me crying,” they admit in one minute, only to turn around and confess: “When I dance, baby, I dance for you.” It might seem counterintuitive that such a warm sentiment would be at the center of what is a pretty chilly track, but getting that emotionally naked is bound to cause goosebumps, IMO. —Rachel

MUNA spent years mastering effervescent synths-meet-guitars late-20th-century nostalgia bombs. At this point, on the heels of last year’s exceptional indie-pivot-as-mainstream-breakthrough LP for Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label, it feels like jams of this caliber just fall out of them. But songs as meticulously assembled as “One That Got Away” don’t happen without a lot of hard work. Every detail on this one matters, from the glittering, jittering sonic components to the carefully sculpted vocal melody to the lyrics as vivid-yet-universal as “Now I’m the one that got away/ The kiss you never tasted/ Tell me that you hate it.” All I can tell you, MUNA, is that I love it. —Chris

The very good “Very High” video expertly mimics the aesthetics of the opening credits from a Y2K-era prime-time teen drama, a Dawson’s Creek or a One Tree Hill. Instead of Paula Cole, though, we get Ian Shelton growling that he’s been feeling pretty down and getting very high. In the clip, Shelton elbows his way through the mob of photogenic kids grinning at the golden-hour light, brow-furrowed and out of place. It’s a fitting visual representation for the feeling captured on the song — that thing where you feel like you’re existing at a remove from the rest of the world and where you remove yourself further in an effort to feel a little more numb. The song itself, with its spikily fuzzed-up power-pop riffage and its perfectly-timed echo-soaked gorilla-grunt, sounds both down and high, but it never gets numb. Instead, Miltarie Gun have once again brought something as bracing as it is catchy. I’d watch this show. —Tom