Ahead of their highly anticipated album, New Me, Same Us, Little Dragon’s latest single, "Are You Feeling Sad?" gives a fresh, upbeat tempo in the same distinctive vein of other defining songs such as "Lover Chanting" and "Ritual Union." With a command of rhythm like no other, Little Dragon kicks the groves into high gear on this song. Bolstered further by the vocal stylings of Kali Uchis, this track's lyrics are just as optimistic as the instrumentation. Introspective lines like, "I'm happy for the sun and air / When it rains I love the smell / Happy for the love we shared / Yeah, nothing could ever compare," urge you to look on the bright side in the face of difficult situations and even loss. On collaborating with Kali, the band said they were so thrilled to work with her, remarking that, “She put her twist on it and gave the track an amazing energy. Did we mention we also love her?!” It's not hard to be optimistic with such a power team on such a creative track, one that surely builds anticipation for their upcoming album.

Chastity Belt’s newest single “Elena” is a tribute to the enigmatic Italian novelist Elena Ferrante. It is slow and droning with Lydia Lund and Julia Shapiro layering vocals over fuzzy guitar, gentle basslines, and the soft crash of cymbals before gaining momentum in the second half. The track is an intricate web of sounds yet somehow it avoids feeling too engineered. They explore the feeling you have when your friend falls for someone who doesn’t deserve their attention, “his only intrigue was the lack of him / fill in the blanks with what you see fit.” It’s painful, infuriating, and somehow always makes you feel like a teenager. “Elena” is the newest single from Chastity Belt’s upcoming self-titled album due out September 20.

In advance of their upcoming album, The Cormorant I, the first album in a two-part project following two characters from birth to death after a visit from an ominous bird, Brooklyn chamber-pop group San Fermin has released the second single, “The Living.” The scale of the ambition of their projects is almost comical until you hear how beautifully it’s matched by the ambition of their music. Ellis Ludwig-Leone is a master of orchestration, constructing avant-garde indie rock songs with pop hooks and classical arrangements. After recording three albums with largely the same group of musicians—a group that started out as a piecemeal orchestra gathered specifically to record the self-titled debut and whittled down to a leaner band— what is most impressive is the way Ludwig-Leone employs each member's talents in the larger scope of the song. When Allen Tate, in his bone-rattling baritone, sings the song's memorable tongue-in-cheek lyrical wink—“It’s for the living / We don’t have to try / ‘Cause aren’t we alive?”—the wink in the lyrics is matched by an unexpected chord change, a smirk as the first hint of San Fermin’s more artful composition shines through. “The Living” is the album’s penultimate track, moments away from the inevitable fulfillment of the circle of life, and the band proceeds to its most bombastic as the characters spiral towards their inevitable conclusion.

Angel Olsen: a true, witchy beauty with a musicality like Sharon Van Etten and Fiona Apple (and the wardrobe of a goth Jenny Lewis) is blessing us with a new record on October 4, titled All Mirrors. She dropped the title track on July 30. Tonally intact but musically different, "All Mirrors" is all synth-punk and dreamy. Angel's vocals are as crass, girly and undeniably authoritative as ever, but this song falls more accurately into an 80s pop strain than an alt-rock one. That being said, it's still Angel. "All Mirrors" is still fraught with emotionalism and that rich, velvety darkness that we find in most of her music. The music video features Angel sitting atop a rotating platform in a white gown, singing to the camera in a black-and-white frame. Perhaps the rotation is an echo of the monotony and ache of time as she sings, "Standing, facin', all mirrors are erasin' / Losin' beauty, at least at times it knew me." She's kicking off her North American tour this fall—check out the dates here.

From Bon Iver's newest LP i,i comes "Naeem," a track likely named after Justin Vernon's collaborator and co-writer Naeem Hanks. More rhythmic and brimming with vocal warmth than some of the other tracks on this album, "Naeem" feels emotional and omnipresent: a cinematic departure from Vernon's otherwise loftier songwriting. This is not to say that this song is shallow in any sense. On the contrary, it feels more authoritative and defining. During an interview with BBC Radio 1, Vernon describes this particular track as signifying a crucial turn in the album: "I think it’s like the end of the first act. It ends the first side […] It was kind of too rambunctious, too energetic, or too Les Mis to end the record. It’s the end of the first act, the end of the first breadth of songs. It kind of gives you a chance to start over again on the second side." Bon Iver released i,i on August 9, 2019.