Being “down bad,” as they say, has the potential to turn you into somebody you don’t quite recognize. That might be the issue at hand for Stay Inside vocalist Chris Johns on their new single “Super Sonic,” who explains that the track is “quite literally about me doing drugs on my sofa with someone in an attempt to manufacture some sort of emotional connection for myself.” The song flits between an upbeat emo-pop guitar jangle and wind-instrument interludes, as if to mirror the ups and downs of a solid high. Sometimes, it’s useful to remember that a crush often elicits a similar effect. —Abby

Ah yes, the age old question: “Can’t a girl have fun?” The Cyndi Lauper-inspired “Money Is Everything” refrain serves as a thesis statement for Addison, and the album offers the answer: Yes, a girl can have fun – in the form of chic shoes on the glamorous “High Fashion,” backseat sex on the sultry “Diet Pepsi,” and skinny dipping at the beach on the Lana Del Rey-indebted “Summer Forever.” The singer’s knack for pop star extravagance reaches its apotheosis on the coruscating “Money Is Everything,” whose “Pocket full of sunshine” hook nods to Natasha Bedingfield’s classic 2008 hit. Addison is packed with allusions to the greats who came before her, and it’s likely that pop stars in the future will be doing the same with her. —Danielle

First off: Great video. Amazing video. If the song was just an excuse to make the video, that would be good enough. It’s not that, of course, but it’s also not an immediate, incandescent banger on the level of “Espresso.” Instead, “Manchild” sits right in the “Please Please Please” zone, Like that song — another one that Sabrina Carpenter co-wrote with her buds Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff — “Manchild” has no genre. It’s country and disco and synthpop and adult contemporary all at once, and its bubbly, insistent hooks serve an elegantly worded set of withering put-downs: “Why so sexy if so dumb?/ And how survive the earth so long?” “If I’m not there, it won’t get done/ I choose to blame your mom.” This time around, she has fun tossing away that notion that her attraction to idiots could be her own fault. You could hear a few layers of psychology here, or you could just let it work as a series of sly hooks, or maybe it’s merely the thing playing in the background while she steals the adorable puppy from the guy with the machine gun. In all those scenarios, we’re still talking about pop music magic. —Tom

Every instrument gets to shine on “Crossing Fingers.” The Grohl-esque drums. The crashing power chords. The rumbling bass on the bridge. It’s the kind of ’90s pastiche that has been done so often that it needs to be perfect in order to hit hard. Rocket have quite a few songs that good in their arsenal, and this one joins the club, becoming the soundtrack for an engaging Alithea Tuttle performance about the fear of ruining a thriving romantic partnership. The better it gets, the more she worries they won’t be able to hold it together. Surely, as her band finds its groove, the sentiment mirrors her feelings about Rocket. —Chris

La Dispute hail from Grand Rapids, MI, a city with a history rooted in the furniture manufacturing business and the headquarters of the evangelical Christian Reformed Church. Those two facets of the city intersect on “Environmental Catastrophe Film,” the whopping nine-minute single from La Dispute’s upcoming album No One Was Driving The Car. The multi-movement post-hardcore odyssey opens on a boy sitting by the notoriously polluted Plaster Creek, pondering the irony of it all — how these rapids that allowed trees to sprawl and family heirlooms to be built were ruined by the very people who sang their praises. If that polluted river were to kill you, vocalist Jordan Dreyer ponders, does the inevitability of it all get you a free pass into heaven?

“Environmental Catastrophe Film” asks way more questions than it offers answers, debating the reciprocity between man and earth. Looming over it all, as its mathy drums and post-rock guitars crescendo, is Dreyer’s nagging awareness that everything is out of his control. But rivers only flow one direction: Forward. Maybe that’s a lesson we can learn from them. —Abby