Sorry have penned plenty of dissonant, weirdo hits. But that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to craft a good pop song. Their latest single “Echoes” is dizzyingly consuming, the way a crush or a lover might eat up all your brain space. Eerie whispers float through the background, a glinting electric guitar snakes in and out, and the drums are formidably front-and-center. The bass is persistent, almost playful —everything feels tightly wound and locked in.

It’s hypnotizing, like a phenakistoscope animating the fevered desire in Lorenz’ vocals. A flourish of strings adds a surprising layer of romanticism to it all. Lorenz’ fevered vocal delivery oscillates between soft, casual and anxious. She and her love can do anything, go anywhere; it doesn’t matter. “Echo, echo, echo, echo, I love you,” she breathily repeats on the chorus. Towards the song’s end, there’s an explosive guitar solo. Then, the vocals come back in and collapse on themselves. It’s captivating and disorienting — the way love often feels — like an echo that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once. —Margaret

The contrast is intoxicating. The synths on “We Were Just Here,” the title track from Just Mustard LP3, throb with glittering aggression. Eventually, ferocious guitars tear into those keyboard oscillations, electric instruments approximating the organic experience of two wild animals attempting to devour each other. Meanwhile Katie Ball’s vocal is serene to the point of hypnosis, gently and prettily relaying her search for peace of mind amidst the chaos: “Everything happens, all the time/ All around me now and/ I just wanna make it feel good.” For three minutes and 40 seconds, it does. —Chris

Deftones may be well past their peak, but their legacy strengthens every day. Bands will never stop ripping them off, and TikTok will never stop making their decades-old songs viral. It would be easy for the legendary band to let classic records like 1997’s Around The Fur and 2000’s White Pony define them forever, but these private music singles show they’re on a mission to prove their relevance. “milk of the madonna” has the dark magic that made “My Own Summer (Shove It)” a hit. Frenetic and breathless, it’s proof that after years of bands desperately trying to emulate their sound, no one does it better than they do. —Danielle

A lot has changed since Militarie Gun released their debut album, 2023’s Life Under The Gun. Amid all the positive critical reception and the constant touring, there was a lot to celebrate, and frontman Ian Shelton — who grew up around addicts and spent his whole adult life straight-edge as a result — started drinking. He was even smoking weed here and there. Shelton’s new tendencies might’ve seemed innocuous to a lot of people, but to him, “just a little something to take the edge off” was the beginning of a slippery slope that could’ve landed straight at rock bottom.

Luckily, before he fell too far, Shelton caught himself. On “B A D I D E A,” the shout-along lead single to Militarie Gun’s forthcoming album God Save The Gun, he argues that finding yourself in the pits of despair isn’t a prerequisite to wanting to improve your life and wellbeing. “Missed by a mile, could have sworn it was an inch,” Shelton shouts over a rowdy hardcore instrumental, the song’s cheerleader-chant chorus drilling the song’s title into your brain as a gentle reminder to check yourself. After all, when you miss a turn on the highway, you don’t just keep going until you end up somewhere you don’t want to be. Sometimes, it’s as simple as turning around. —Abby

Back in the day, DC noise-punk ensemble Black Eyes came off as a percussive whirlwind — two drummers, two bassists, one guy who screeched and thrashed at his guitar, occasional bursts of concussive free-jazz saxophone or stentorian synchronized-shout vocals from the wildly different duelling vocalists. They were a comet, a sight to behold, and they made exactly one album of this madness before everything changed. Black Eyes went into the dubby avant-garde zone on their second LP and then broke up. Now, with their first song in a couple of decades, they are right back to the thundering lunacy of their elusive peak. “Pestilence” roils and pounds and erupts and seethes. As the scrapes and blats and drum-rolls build and build, Daniel Martin-McCormick rabid-weasel quasi-raps about finding a cozy corner in your personal hell, and the weird thing is that he and his bandmates actually provide one. I haven’t been back to this cozy corner in a long, long time. It still feels like home. —Tom