“Butterfly Prowler,” Clark

Over techno’s familiar jump-roping rhythm and train-tunnel whooshes, a tricky little note pattern flits with the jerky grace and menace implied by the title.

“Carin at the Liquor Store,” The National

No song about being such a sadsack that it destroys your marriage should sound this uplifting, or funny: “I was walking around like I was the one who found dead John Cheever.”

“Chanel,” Frank Ocean

In yet another super-smooth assault on convention, Ocean laces together brags about men and money while the underlying music acts as if he’s singing a lullaby.

“Change Yr Mind,” LCD Soundsystem

As the band makes like a grinding stone, revving up then sparking and spitting, James Murphy grants all burnouts—himself included—permission to take the second chance they covet.

“Expect the Bayonet,” Sheer Mag

Wistful-sounding and militant at once, these AM-rock revivalists threaten that voter suppression will be the cause that inflames the next generation of street-fighting men and women.

Freestyle, Black Thought on Hot 97

Whether you want to dissect it on graph paper or let it simply absorb through the ear, there’s not a boring measure in 10 minutes of The Roots’s rapper riffing like, as he puts it all too humbly, “pre-Kardashian Kanye.”

“Groupie Love,” Lana Del Rey ft. A$AP Rocky

Del Rey’s tale of bliss in romantic servitude takes recent production trends to a drowsy, dramatic extreme, and when the chorus hits it’s like being inverted in a gravity chair.

“Keep Your Name,” Dirty Projectors

Dave Longstreth renders a passive-aggressive breakup letter as a luminous three-act play, and the outrageous vocal effects and wonky rapping signal it’s perfectly fine to hate the protagonist.

“I’m So Groovy,” Future

Among a handful of 2017 Future cuts in which the delicate serenity of the music—here, featuring toybox chimes and a mantra-like flow—subverts and improves the callous lyrics.

“In Chains,” The War on Drugs

A piano part on loan from Enya meets an aerobic rock rhythm section and suddenly everyone has a tear in their eye and a bead of sweat on their foreheads.

“LMK,” Kelela

“It ain’t that deep, either way,” Kelela coos, but the churning bass and zipping machine sounds enveloping her suggest that the hookup she seeks will be plenty substantive.

“Long Lonely Road,” Valerie June

With all the effortless grace of a traditional folk refrain, June pays stark tribute to the effort that simply being alive requires.

“Motorcycle,” Colter Wall

A deceptively chipper country ramble in which Wall’s classic-yet-skewed baritone throws morbid irony onto the touchstones of motorcycles and hard drinking.

“Neighbors,” Grizzly Bear

A deeply sad, queasily beautiful prog-folk journey that charts the way intimacy can curdle into unfamiliarity.

“On Hold,” The XX

The great whispering-across-the-arena anthem that indie’s premiere pillow talkers have always threatened to make, in which heartbreak is absorbed by dance-floor ruckus.