Pond
Hand Mouth Dancer

Once more, we imagine how brilliant Tame Impala would be if Pond’s Nick Allbrook never left. This sort of quicksilver psych-disco incisiveness would enhance Kevin Parker’s dopey intergalactic soft rock no end; see how Allbrook casually sums up the refugee crisis and decades of feminist plight in one verse while barely taking his lips from the bong. Then stops to watch Springwatch on MDMA for a minute before trying to mate enthusiastically with the last Flaming Lips album. The music the 60s promised us.

Matt Maltese
Rom-Com Gone Wrong

More romcoms should go wrong. When Harry Maimed Sally. You’ve Got Crabs. “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking for help with her intestinal prolapse” etc. Matt Maltese’s comeback is more grosscom gone right, though; in the video, he has his first ever shave to discover that, bumfluff-free, he’s basically Jay from The Inbetweeners, but still manages to deliver his most lustrous and touching piece of heartbroken schmaltzcore yet. Beats Gove, Actually.

Katy Perry
Harleys in Hawaii

Harleys in Hawaii? Screeching up to a tiki bar in a lei bandanna, fuelling up on mai tai and burning off to jump an active volcano? Hell yeah. So why does this Charlie Puth co-write sound as if Perry is skateboarding slowly down Jennifer Lopez’s cobbled driveway? It’s inspired by a real-life ride with her fiance Orlando Bloom, for which he must have stayed well under the speed limit and firmly in the middle of the road.

Beabadoobee
I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus

Part Gen-Z bedroom indie rocker, part Frank Sinatra scat riff, Beabadoobee clearly digs Pavement like a drainage repair team on Adderall. This is adorable hazy/cranky grunge-pop upon which His Slackness would pour His wonky blessings.

Matt Berninger ft Phoebe Bridgers
Walking on a String

While Beck is busy going full Pharrell with his new material, it is reassuring that the National’s shiraz swigger extraordinaire is still waiting for us in a dusky midwest bar with a sozzled hard-luck mumble on his lips and a sky-scorching crescendo in his back pocket. Even when he’s writing a song for Between Two Ferns: The Movie. Here he’s recruited Bridgers for one of those May-to-September romances that have made Woody Allen films an awkward watch since 1993. Still majestic.