About their remarkable debut song, West Side Cowboy said, “Sometimes love is tender. Other times it just sounds like a snare drum.” The Manchester four-piece capture the explosive nature of romance on the evocative “I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You),” which overflows with charged guitars emanating subtle twang, made all the more powerful by harmonies between three members. It’s a riveting introduction to an exciting new band. —Danielle

“So I remember the kindness of strangers/ Back at the station, she gave me her inhaler.” So sings Lisa Walker on “Inhaler,” a song about celebrating “those small things that make one feel connected to the rest of the world.” Walker engages in this mindful practice in the context of a fuzzy, propulsive, six-minute indie rock song that will speak to you if you love artists like Yo La Tengo and Sharon Van Etten. It’s nice to be reminded about the good in the world, and “Inhaler” is definitely a part of it. —Chris

What’s better than RXK Nephew spouting dissociative brilliance over a dance beat? RXK Nephew and four of his most eccentric peers bringing their own flavors of unhinged inspiration on the same track. In RX Papi, Sada Baby, Tony Shhnow , and Quadie Diesel, the posse-cut remix of last year’s “Critical” adds four more voices to RX Brainstorm’s lush disco-house production, a tornado of talent that makes the song even more irresistible. All these emcees talking their off-kilter shit over such a club-ready beat feels like pockets of YouTube bending back toward the park jams at the genesis of hip-hop. —Chris

Ethel Cain wouldn’t exist without the church. Her debut album Preacher’s Daughter mulled on the hardships she faced growing up by the word of God while simultaneously embodying almost everything her fellow Southern Baptists seemed to oppose; its follow-up project Perverts already exudes a sense of ensuing anger. Lead single “Punish” takes its time luxuriating in pained self-reflection — for better or for worse — as Cain struggles to free herself from shame: “Whatever’s wrong with me/ I will take to bed/ I give in so easy/ Nature chews on me,” she sings over a cavernous piano instrumental. But by the end of its almost-seven-minute runtime, a wash of blown-out, droning guitars comes crashing in like a sunrise through stained glass windows: “The cautionary tale is the fool’s errand, and I am no fool,” Cain wrote in a statement along with the song’s release. Even when there are no neighbors around to love, “Punish” evokes the journey of finding godliness within yourself. —Abby

OK fine, we’re cheating. If there’s an existing studio-recorded version of “The Giver,” we haven’t heard it, and neither have you. The only version of “The Giver” that we’ve heard is the one that Chappell Roan sang on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live, her stage slathered in eye-bleeding levels of Country Bear Jamboree kitsch. Still, we know a beast of a song when we hear one.

On “The Giver,” pop’s most exciting newly minted star goes full ’90s country, using a familiar backdrop of boot-scootin’ power chords and headbangin’ fiddles to put the moves on some young lady. The lyrical economy is sharp and focused: “Ain’t got no antlers on the walls/ But I sure know mating calls/ From the stalls in the bars on a Friday night.” The riffs bring a crisp stadium-stomp. The big notes allow Chappell Roan to show that she can wail. The na-na-na singalong is glorious stupid fun. Also, that dance move that she hits after the chorus is just awesome.

When Orville Peck brought Shania Twain in to sing on one of his queer country songs, that was cool. On her own queer country song, Chappell Roan is her own Shania Twain. That’s even cooler. —Tom