It’s loud and fast and angry: It’s straightedge hardcore! This music demands conviction, and Anklebiter play it with ferocious passion to immolate the targets of their ire on contact. After a chugging, pounding, feedback-blasted intro, “Paradise” blasts off at full speed ahead, then gets back into chunky power chord riffs that crush like anvils. “I’ve been cursed with the frailest bones under the fucking sun!” Rachael Braverman rages. “All it takes is one misstep, it all comes undone!” The song blazes past so quickly that you might miss what she’s getting worked up about if not for the lyrics sheet, but even a quick perusal is enough to reveal writing that dovetails powerfully with the band’s direct assault. “You promised to take me to paradise, now we spend forever in hell instead!” she yells near the end. Then things get really dark: “Your hands that restricted my breathing were far warmer than the rope I have now!” —Chris

“Can’t Be Still” is a fitting title for a new Illuminati Hotties track. Sarah Tudzin is always busy mixing and producing great records — most recently Cloud Nothings’ Final Summer and Guppy’s Something Is Happening… — but this restlessness serves her music well. She may triple-book her Saturdays, as she sings, but she puts just enough into this song, not overpacking but instead letting it snowball. The anticipation builds into a fuzzy guitar solo at the end that encapsulates the explosive feeling of being unable to let yourself take a break. Lucky for us, this probably means a new Illuminati Hotties album is on the way. —Danielle

Sprints’ Letter To Self is still one of the best albums of the year so far, and what a pleasant surprise that they still had enough left in the tank for something like “Drones.” It’s a song about how we’re all just going through the motions, dying and dancing and drinking while unable to escape a gnawing emptiness. It drives ahead on a sound that feels like being electrocuted, and it culminates in a bashed-out conclusion that Karla Chubb delivers with a fiery passion: “You’re getting better and I’m getting bitter/ Maybe I always wanted to be like you/ But maybe you always wanted to be like me.” —James

Challengers is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ most exciting score in years. (Even last year’s The Killer was a bit too by-the-numbers for them, bolstered more by great music supervision than anything they were doing as composers.) But Challengers, and more specifically the main theme that threads itself throughout the movie, is invigorating. It makes me want to take up a racket, or scream innuendos while barely being able to hear myself speak, or be the camera attached to a ball that’s being volleyed back and forth across the court by two hot little white boys.

I had some qualms with Challengers itself — weirdly paced, should not have been over two hours! — but whenever that score came on and drowned out everything else around it, I became completely immersed. What a genius choice by Luca Guadagnino and co., to let Reznor and Ross dominate so many scenes, so that the audience really has to lean in and pay attention to every word. It makes the film’s horniness feel much more dangerous and participatory. The “match point” version of the theme, which soundtracks the film’s final moments, pushes it past its breaking point. It’s sweaty and pulse-pounding, opulent in a coked-out way. Reznor and Ross have never made a score like this. —James

A few days later, the Kendrick/Drake story has already moved onto its next chapter. That’s a good thing. This kind of mega-profile rap feud builds on the excitement of the moment. It’s heavyweights trading blows while the whole world watches. The tracks might hold up years later, or they might not. In the moment, it doesn’t matter. In the moment, you’re supposed to ride the energy of the disrespect. But the sheer fuck-you joy of “Euphoria” still has plenty of gas left in its tank. Rap feuds work best when they lead to tracks like this, wild barrages so loaded with pent-up feeling that you can keep coming back again and again.

Every time I play “Euphoria,” and I play it a lot, I get stuck on some new detail. Right now, it’s the little grunt that Kendrick lets out when he says he’ll field-goal punt y’all. That’s the sound that you make when you’ve really gassed yourself up, when you know you’re playing on infinite-lives mode. “Euphoria” is smart and tactical and considered; there are hidden easter-egg layers to plenty of Kendrick’s lines. He brings out all his weird voices for this occasion. The track picks up steam as it rolls along, and by the time it’s over, when Kendrick switches out of his mock-Toronto accent, he’s just barking. Drake has done us all a tremendous favor by pushing Kendrick back into this zone, when he’s rapping so hard that it doesn’t feel fair to compare him to anyone else. When Kendrick is in that mode, memes aren’t going to cut it. Game on. —Tom