The jazzy, genre-jumbling francophone pop duo Fievel Is Glauque usually write by improvising in real time with Belgian Ma Clément on vocals and American Zach Phillips on piano, but they pieced this one together from parts of several sessions, only to discover they’d ended up with one of their most straightforward songs yet. That doesn’t mean “As Above So Below” is boring or predictable. The track matches its busily whirring rhythm section with fluttering melodies at just as hectic a pace, with Clément providing a sense of understated calm amidst the quaint, stylish storm. It’s titled for “the Emerald Tablet, a 9th century hermetic text foundational for alchemy and later occultist movements,” and around the time that overdriven guitar solo breaks out three quarters of the way through, “alchemy” is sounding about right. —Chris

A week before the release of Drug Church’s 2018 breakthrough album Cheer, I apparently tweeted, “drug church is gonna blow up.” The Albany post-hardcore crew has been unleashing invigorating anthems since 2011, and one of my favorites is 2015’s “But Does It Work?” The band references that track in their new single “Chow” as Patrick Kindlon intones, “Nothing ever works.” Not only does it serve as a nostalgic callback, but it shows how much they’ve improved since then; “Chow” and its predecessors “Demolition Man” and “Myopic” are Drug Church’s most infectious, electrifying material yet. Both Cheer and Hygiene cemented Drug Church in the scene, but Prude is going to bring them to the top. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: Drug Church is gonna blow up. —Danielle

You’d be hard-pressed to describe the sound of Midwife in words more fitting than “heaven metal,” a phrase the project’s own Madeleine Johnston coined herself. You won’t find scorched screaming or moshpit-inducing kickdrums in her catalog of hazy, gentle guitar music, but there’s an undeniable sense of darkness looming in all its celestial calm, making every emotion feel colossal. Take new single “Vanessa,” a haunting, Grouper-like dirge that could easily be misconstrued as a song about losing a person: “You don’t look at me the way that you used to/ You can’t look me in the eye/ Can you hold on just a little bit longer/ Before I lay you to rest in my mind?” It’s actually an ode to Johnston’s old minivan. Call it overly sentimental, but in Midwife’s world, each sentiment becomes beautifully all-consuming. —Abby

You don’t need to know anything about the Norwegian indie-pop band Onsloow. You don’t need to know what “Onsloow” means. (Google translate tells me that it’s Norwegian for “Onslow.” Great. Thanks.) You don’t need to know that the band’s upcoming second album is their first with new frontwoman Helene Brunæs. You don’t need a backstory on the song “Taxi.” You don’t have to play the subgenre game, or the influence game. You just need to allow yourself to get swept along by the craft of the thing — the meticulous guitar twinkles, the bittersweet melodies, the mathematically exact crunches and whooshes, the bridge and key change that hit some internal endorphin-flood button. Here at Stereogum, we like context. But sometimes, context won’t help you. Sometimes, you just need to hear a great song for what it is. —Tom

“No, not another love song/ Not one more song where I’m pretending/ Everything will be okay/ I died the day you left me/ I die again every day/ Go on go away get out of here/ Leave me alone, I’m dying/ Leave me alone, I’m dying/ Leave me alone, I’m dying here.” That might seem melodramatic, but with the first words on his first new album in years, former Girls frontman Christopher Owens is spitting straight autobiography. When you know the backstory about Owens ending up bedridden after suffering a horrendous motorcycle accident — then being left by his fiancée, then ending up without a home — those lyrics seem quite literal, and they take on a tremendous weight.

Yet even before I’d clocked what he was singing about, I was entranced by Owens’ return to the spotlight. He recently revealed that he and Chet “JR” White were beginning work on a new Girls album before White’s death in 2020, and “No Good” dials that band’s straightforward graceful glory all the way back up. “No Good” is a phenomenal guitar-pop song, tinged with reverb and melancholy but dynamic and wildly catchy too. That vocal hook! Those crashing distorted chords between verse! The ripping guitar solo! Every little touch is perfect, down to the way the tambourine peters out at the end of the song. We couldn’t have asked for a more powerful portal back into Owens’ world. —Chris