Last year, Boston’s Horse Jumper Of Love perfected their strain of cozy, emotive shoegaze on their mini-album Heartbreak Rules. “Gates Of Heaven” does the same, drifting with a sense of poignancy as Dimitri Giannopoulos sings with resignation: “I am late to work again/ I’m always missing something when/ I walk out the door.” Distorted, pensive guitars add weight to his confession, especially when later on he admits: “The gates of heaven/ are always closing up on me,” delivered with the same detached, tired voice, which makes it all the more devastating. —Danielle

History is doomed to repeat itself. Vampire Weekend’s songs have always had a cynical streak to them, a bafflement at how we as humans can be so vicious to each other without a second thought. It’s a cycle we cannot escape, no matter how hard we try. “Classical” frames that struggle in one of Ezra Koenig’s best choruses — “Untrue, unkind, and unnatural/ How the cruel with time/ Becomes classical” — and one of his best bridges, one that makes it sound like even though the apocalypse is coming it won’t change humanity’s innate selfishness. The band does this while occupying a comfortingly familiar soundscape, a similar trick they pulled with the first two singles fromOnly God Was Above Us. But as with those songs, they manage to push themselves in new directions — the whizzing intro, the horn-piano freakout in that breakdown. So maybe we can change our ways, break out of prescribed patterns. But to what end? Well, that’s a bleak sunrise. —James

“It is about being stuck in a flow that’s unhealthy,” Joe Vann says of From Indian Lakes’ tremendous comeback single, “one you need the help of your loved ones to pull you out of.” Getting caught up in destructive patterns is a relatable experience, and Vann’s descriptions of that experience are vivid. But “The Flow” stands out most for the way it demonstrates a much more appealing kind of momentum: that of a song that barrels forward with contagious, exhilarating force. Under a haze of production that makes the song feel like some brittle neon relic, the music surges ahead, pulling you into its undertow. It works wonders as a thematic parallel, but even if Vann was singing nonsense, this is music that could sweep you away. —Chris

Maxo Kream lost his father last month. Emekwanem Ogugua Blosah Sr. was a big part of Maxo’s life; that’s him on the cover of Maxo’s Brandon Banks album. “No Then You A Hoe” is not a warm, sentimental goodbye. Instead, it’s the kind of thing that you write when you’re freaking out, trying to make sense of new life circumstances. Over an itchy and minimal beat, Maxo spends most of the track upset at the people in his life, rapping with bleak mastery about how everyone wants his money. The pain comes out in sidelong ways: “Heart attack, a couple strokes, blood pressure, dementia/ Looked at me the other day, said he might die before December.” And then: “Papa Maxo was a soldier and through me forever livin’.” Maxo Kream has never done anything to sanitize his music, and “No Then You A Hoe” is what it sounds like when you’re going through it and still making art. —Tom

It can be weird to write a song, especially when you get in your own head about exactly what it is you’re doing. There’s a specific mood or feeling that you want to convey — how do you get there? You look to the greats, you look inward, you try to come up with something that feels honest. The Montréal musician Myriam Gendron did all that for “Long Way Home,” the sighing, lovely first single from her new album Mayday. “I’ll write a sad, a very sad song/ I’ll write it neat, it won’t be long,” she sings on it. “And I will try to make it true/ As I have been to you.” She pulled its central refrain, “mother make my bed,” from traditional folk, and she makes it ring just as weary and true as it ever has, the eternal desire of wanting to be cared for and comforted, in some place familiar. —James