On Jaguar II, even the uptempo jams have a languid, swooning quality to them, so the ballads basically plunge you into a dream state. In the week since the album’s release, “How Does It Make You Feel” has emerged as a fan favorite for that reason. Throughout the song, Monét and producer D’Mile create a plush environment for her silky vocals, an orchestral adult contemporary R&B wonderland that hits like a quiet storm. She sounds spectacular in this context, fully in command even as she sings with the soft touch the arrangement demands. “How does it make you feel to be loved for real?” Monét asks, sounding so smooth that a sighing, contended reply is all but assumed. —Chris

You know a City Girls song is good if you don’t even feel comfortable quoting any of the lyrics. The Miami duo has a sound and a formula. They rap hard and display a whole lot of attitude over funky, minimal beats, and they talk about sex from the most mercenary standpoint imaginable. They’ve been doing it for years now, and it still just sounds good. JT has always been the more effortless of the two, and her presence here has an easy bounce that effortlessly eases into Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” flow. Yung Miami’s cadences are simpler, but her lines stick with you because she just says the nastiest shit. A song like this might not change your life, but if it’s a sunny weekend and you’ve got your windows down, it can make you feel invincible. —Tom

If you lived in New York in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it seemed like hardly a month went by without hearing Marnie Stern’s name. At a Marnie Stern show, the finger-tapping guitarist would melt faces and shred frets with her unique strain of fiery indie rock. The knife-sharp “Plain Speak” is Stern’s first single in a decade, and it sounds like no time at all has elapsed. Atop raucous percussion and airtight licks, Stern’s shrill vocal hovers, quakes, and rings out as if to proclaim her comeback. The next generation of showgoers have no idea what they’re in for. —Rachel

Let Daniel Lopatin show you down this barely lit path. The lead single (and closing track) from Oneohtrix Point Never’s new album Again is a marvel, Lopatin’s standard sense of digital decay giving way to sweeping strings and plodding synths and a heavenly chorus that sounds like it could be in conversation with Max Richter’s score for The Leftovers, melodramatically ominous and classically warped. Lopatin keeps adding on details and textures until the whole track is pounding, transcendent — an overwhelming sensation that inevitably cuts back to the track’s scratchy, barely-there beginnings. A full circle odyssey orchestrated by one of our compositional masters. —James

Marisa Dabice is spitting straight fire on “I Got Heaven”: “I went and walked myself/ Like a dog without a leash/ Now I’m growling at a stranger/ I am biting at their knees.” Sick! “And what if we stopped spinning? And what if we’re just flat? And what if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?” Hell yeah! Mannequin Pussy are firing on all cylinders here; the swirl of abrasive sweetness that has characterized this band from the start has rarely sounded better. Dabice presents herself as an angel on “I Got Heaven,” sent here to keep us company and seek vengeance. She sounds ecstatic in the religious sense, impassioned and fearsome and wholly in control. —James