Girls, “Heartbreaker.” Nervous, buoyant strumming begins “Heartbreaker,” echoing last year’s “Lust for Life,” but the first single from Girls’s upcoming EP Broken Dreams Club doesn’t have any of that song’s drug-kid sneer. Instead, “Heartbreaker” drifts along, finding comfort in the little things (“I still got a lock of your hair”) and being weirdly okay with everything inevitably screwing up: “When I said that I loved you honey, I knew that you would break my heart.” The song’s strange form of solace is best communicated through that simple guitar solo near the two-and-a-half-minute mark. Not a damaged wail and not a burst of joy either. It’s the wizened sound of acceptance. Brandon Soderberg
The Good Natured, “Be My Animal.” In what must surely be the most visceral and unhinged come-and-get-me plea of recent times, Sarah McIntosh asks—or, rather, demands—you to be her animal and hunt her down. This sprightly electro-pop number stands out for its pert innuendos and prickly lyrics, offering a more stout angle on feminism than we’ve seen from the likes of Lily Allen or Kate Nash (who, up until now, were the female of the species’s most matter-of-fact voices.) McIntosh’s “I want some more/Give me some more/What are we made for?” is just the tip of the iceberg here, summing up the sex-obsessed teen culture and turning the tables on the patriarchal views of sexual gender roles. Not bad for three-and-a-half minutes. Huw Jones
Buddy Guy featuring B.B. King, “Stay Around a Little Longer” As far as blues collaborations go, Buddy Guy and B.B. King’s “Stay Around a Little Longer,” from the former’s new album, Living Proof, is the equivalent of Jay-Z and Kanye trading verses. In five minutes, the slow, laidback song, which is built around a perky church organ, gives us soulful voices appreciating lives well-lived, intertwining guitar solos, and a spoken-word outro in which the two legends give each other props for making it this far. It doesn’t haven’t the typical blues lament or much of Guy’s piercing guitar, but these two guys have earned a chance to lean back and relax, and “Stay Around a Little Longer” is like a satisfying stretch set to 12-bar blues. Michael Kilpatrick
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