A lot has changed in the time since 2021, when Montreal musician Jonah Yano began working on the song that would become “Homerun 2021” with the producer and guitarist Mk.gee in LA. Yano released a pair of albums. Mk.gee experienced a glow-up through his work with Dijon, then watched his own star rise to SNL-level fame. More recently, Yano’s grandfather died while he was finishing up work on the track in Tokyo, inspiring Yano to film himself drinking a beer by the riverside in his grandpa’s honor. That context and those visuals adds a new dimension to Yano’s refrain “I’m running home,” but even without any information, the track remains a stellar convergence of Yano’s ghostly experimental pop and Mk.gee’s alternate-universe ’80s soft-rock guitar. —Chris

Like many of their fellow indie rock musicians, Bre Morrell and Shaun Durkan had performed in a few other projects before their current band crushed took off with their 2023 EP extra life. If I were crushed, I probably wouldn’t worry about having accomplished too little in my life, but those feelings of inadequacy certainly don’t discriminate. The duo searches for meaning and self-worth on “starburn,” the lead single to their upcoming debut album, which blends a moody slacker-rock groove with a peppy Britpop charm. “Does your star still burn on its own?” Morrell asks, leaving little room for doubt that crushed’s star will continue to burn for a long time. —Abby

“For as long as I’ve made music, fusion has been my strength,” Ghanaian-American alt-pop artist Amaarae says of “S.M.O.,” the ultra-catchy new single from her forthcoming album Black Star. The track — whose title stands for “slut me out” — pulls from a number of different genres, and might even introduce you to a few: Highlife, a Ghanaian dance-pop subgenre popular in the ’80s, and zouk, a movement of upbeat horn-heavy music pioneered in the French West Indies of the Caribbean. The pit-pattering disco beat calls to mind “I Feel Love,” while the come-hither demands to “show me how you like to love” feel indebted to Janet Jackson’s Control. When all of that fuses together, it becomes distinctly Amaarae. —Abby

In 2022, the Beths released Expert In A Dying Field, the perfect breakup album. The lyrics? Heart-wrenching. The guitars? Poignant and often painful. Elizabeth Stokes’ vocal delivery? Moving and convincing. There was a point where I couldn’t listen to “Your Side” without crying. It looks like the New Zealand indie rockers are leaning into sadness with the followup Straight Line Was A Lie, whose latest single is indulgently titled “No Joy.” It’s not a tear-jerker, but instead a snarky numbness anthem. “All my pleasures: guilty/ Clean slate looking filthy/ This year’s gonna kill me,” Stokes deadpans over playful post-punk guitars. SSRIs can take away emotions, sure, but it can’t take away bangers. —Danielle

When you’re a beloved collaborator who’s coming back with your first new single in a few years, it’s a good idea to turn that release into an event, and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes has absolutely done that here. “The Field” is a left-of-the-dial posse cut with a lineup of boldfaced names. Hynes has the respect and the pull to layer vocals from peripheral pop auteur Caroline Polachek and alt-R&B star Daniel Caesar over a lush, fluid guitar line from the 71-year-old Durutti Column legend Vini Reilly, so that’s exactly what he does. Baltimore singer Tariq Al-Sabir, who basically sings lead on “The Field,” isn’t as known as the other guests, but he did sing lead on the season-four theme song of The Wire, and that’s not nothing. It’s fun to watch a moment like this take shape — an adventurous musical mind collecting comrades, finding interesting voices and sounds to combine, and packaging it all with a gorgeously shot video where a bunch of friends throw a bonfire party.

But “The Field” is more than the sum of the names involved. It’s more than the combination of sounds, too — the fluttery guitars and the pillowy voices and the body-jacking dance beat. When the song is playing, it never feels like a stunt. Instead, these gorgeously lush sounds all interweave with one another like they’ve always been part of the same whole. When Dev Hynes joins them together, they cast a spell. “The Field” would be the contemplative, wonderstruck party song of the summer even if we didn’t know the names of anyone involved. —Tom