Song Recommendations: 4/27/26

"Hooked," Josephine Network
There's a fun '70s glam rock vibe to this track, albeit one that's a little overstated by the rather cheesy video, and also a little undermined by the band's somewhat polite approach to grooves that could have been a little louder and a lot greasier. Still, even if "Hooked" never quite gets where it sounds like it wants to go, it's still fun, (ahem) hooky, and overall appealing.

"Index of Memories," BASIC
I don't know if I'd call myself much of a post-rock fan, but I do have a major weakness for sprawling instrumental tracks that convey wide vistas of emotion — which is another way of saying that on the genre spectrum, I'm the type of listener who's highly susceptible to 85 percent of the Explosions in the Sky catalog while remaining largely agnostic toward a lot of other artists. The members of BASIC may or may not wish to be compared to Explosions in the Sky; for the purposes of this track, however, I think those comparisons are wholly justified.

"Ache," Not for Radio
Listening to "Ache" makes me feel like we might be standing on the verge of a renaissance for Mazzy Star-inspired bands, and even though Mazzy Star isn't a band I've ever listened to or thought about much, this is not an unappealing feeling.

"Rest of My," Owen Riegling
You can't really write about this flavor of modern country without at least acknowledging the ongoing debate over whether it's "real" country and/or whether it's actively doing harm to the genre. Having thus acknowledged said debate, I will proceed to give "Rest of My" a friendly nod while waving it through here. Over and beyond everything else, a well-written song is a well-written song, and even if it does have its roots in Rascal Flatts-style Nashville pop rock, this one will sound great blasting out of car speakers throughout the summer.

"Go," Wafia
I don't think I'm familiar with Wafia's earlier work, but "Go" apparently represents something of a gear shift away from pensive confessional pop toward something a little more uptempo. The change suits her — while this is the type of thing that can tend toward sameness if it's repeated over the course of an album, it can also be awfully addictive in three-minute bursts, and that's the case here. The main attraction, appropriately, is Wafia's voice, which floats over waves of synths, juuuust far back enough in the mix to make you want to lean in. And listen again.

"TV," Olga Myko
On the surface, Olga Myko's "TV" is a fairly standard — albeit nicely catchy and extremely easy to enjoy — pop track. Listen a little more closely, though, and you'll realize it's also kind of clever in the way it uses its laid back, loping arrangement to offset the main character's frenzied inner dialogue as she tries to unpack where she and the object of her affection stand (and also tries to stop trying to unpack it). We've all been here, just not as tunefully as this.

"Room to Breathe," Gary Klebe
Diehard power pop fans will immediately recognize Gary Klebe as the longtime lead singer and guitarist for Shoes, the genre mainstays who've been releasing classic records — largely on their own — since 1974. It can be hard to get a group together as you get older, which is how Klebe ended up releasing his first solo album, Out Loud; eventually, he realized he had a stack of songs and no immediate outlet for them, so he took a deep breath and faced his fear of stepping out as a solo artist. The good news is that this doesn't mean the end of Shoes; the even better news is that Out Loud will be deeply satisfying for fans who've been patiently waiting for new material since 2012's Ignition.

"Waiting," Beth Orton
Beth Orton is on the list of artists you're supposed to love if you write about music, but for whatever reason, I've never truly cottoned to her stuff. Perhaps "Waiting" marks the spot where that starts to change, because I'm all in on the way her tremulous vocals flutter uncertainly yet gracefully above this song's downright gorgeous arrangement. The overall effect feels like listening to late '60s/early '70s adult contemporary with some of the varnish rubbed off. Marvelous.

"Good Friend," Gia Margaret
Part of getting older, I think, means becoming emotionally expansive enough to appreciate things you might have rejected out of hand when you were younger and life seemed infinite enough to accommodate thoughtless snap judgments. It also means learning the value of forgiving old grudges — specifically, the way they unburden us from emotional weight while absolving others of their sins. What I'm trying to say here is that when I listened to Gia Margaret's "Good Friend" and smiled at the part where the Gregorian chanting came in, I realized I was finally ready to stop hating Enigma. Time really does heal all wounds.

"You Say I Love You," Quiet Light
More than one thing can be true, or so the saying goes, and more than one thing is true here: On one hand, "You Say I Love You" is built from parts that have become so common that they're downright tiresome, and if you're listening from a certain direction and in a certain mood, it'll probably hit you like a third-generation Xerox of the stuff Imogen Heap was doing years ago. On the other hand, there's still something kind of moving about the song's musical dynamic; for me, sitting through all that overly familiar Bath & Bodyworks trip-hop pop is worth it to get to the song's closing moments, when the electronic gewgaws drop out, the strings come sawing in, and you hear "When you wanna go, I'll go / When you wanna swim, I'll swim / When you wanna dive, I'll dive / When you wanna give, I'll give."

"Bitches," Kassi Ashton
This is one of those tracks that can fairly be accused of pandering to its audience, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in this case, I'm tickled enough to give it a cheerful pass. Sometimes all you need is a proud drawl, a handful of cowboy chords, and lines like "I come from a long line of bitches / Thick-skinned, tough as nails misses / So don't act surprised when I speak my mind / I come from a long line of bitches."