The 5 Best Songs Of The Week

Once upon a time, Denzel Curry was an insurgent teenager, a part of SpaceGhostPurrp's Raider Klan crew. Now, he's an established festival presence, and he's pulling together a new crew to recapture some of that feeling. The scattered churn of "Lit Effect," not to mention the use of the word "lit," feels like it just beamed in from the last decade. Curry still has fire and purpose in his hyper-technical adrenaline-rush multiple-flow attack, and his guests are down for the party. Is there such a thing as "old-school SoundCloud rap"? Because this is that. —Tom

Sorry to go Addison Rae on y'all, but each new release from the Los Thuthanaka camp gets me all starry-eyed about the power of music. Two sibling sonic adventurers with roots in the US and Bolivia keep sending the traditional sounds of their Aymara heritage on a collision course with the ultra-pop and the avant-garde, refracting a lifetime of experiences through their inimitable point of view — and it comes out sounding like this. Songs like the charred, clattering guitar experiment "Ch'uwanchaña ~El Golpe Final~" are beamed into the universe, online yet off the grid in a sense. Through a convergence of factors, they find their way to a white dad in Ohio raised on Radiohead and Pavement, forever rewiring the way I process recorded sound. It's amazing. It's beautiful. —Chris

Sometimes the fuzziness of a song makes its bleakness feel warm and compelling — a daunting inevitable feels welcome. The lo-fi approach to Winston Hightower's "Lay Low," one that recalls Daniel Johnston or Moldy Peaches, proves that all you need is a noodling melody and some potent lyrics to make a song feel like it has tattooed itself inside your bones. Hightower's words point to absence or loss — "When it goes you’ll know cause we won’t be here anymore." But a chugging guitar lost in the background carries him forward. There’s no specifics or certainties to Hightower's premonition, but an aching feeling that we can adapt to our circumstances, maybe even prepare. Its catchy murkiness is addictive and mesmerizing, like Highwater is offering some sort of prophecy. —Margaret

Healing from a proper breakup can be tough, but it's also hard grieving the potential of a relationship that never fully came to fruition. I think of those situations when I listen to "Jupiter And Mars," the latest song from DJ Avalon Emerson's recently revived indie pop project the Charm. Co-written and co-produced with Rostam Batmanglij, the instrumental is equal parts jangly and dance-floor ready, and Emerson's airy vocals bids farewell to the one that got away — that is, assuming, the person in question was ever really there at all. "I reckon it was written in the stars/ So you can take it up with Jupiter and Mars," she sings. "Baby, nothing gained is nothing lost." As Emerson tells it, it's best to let those "what if" moments turn to dust. —Abby

"But don't change your hair for me/ Not if you care for me." Chet Baker sang this line in his 1954 rendition of the jazz standard "My Funny Valentine," and his intimate, smooth delivery is hard to forget. This served as a source of inspiration for Irish indie rock band Cardinals' new song, endearingly called "I Like You." It's a sprawling folk-rock serenade that evokes Bright Eyes, the accordion specifically calling to mind Fevers And Mirrors. The crescendo is staggering, and frontman Euan Manning's vocals never cease to communicate sincerity, even desperation. The three-word title operates as the hook, and it's impressive that a band this new already knows that sometimes simplicity is what hits the hardest. The song is big, uncomplicated, and beautiful. —Danielle