Stephen Thompson

Hook named herself after her own aptitude for writing catchy choruses, but her raps are bark and crackle so discordantly, you nod along so much as clench your teeth approvingly.

Heran Soun was deaf for much of his early childhood. His music bridges folk, rock, electronic and ambient music with the help of a soaring, deeply emotive voice.

Grrrl Gang's members embrace the jangly charms of Scottish indie-pop bands like The Pastels while adding their own spry, spiky twists.

Gold Cage's radiant slowcore epics may take their time, but they sure don't lack power.

A go-to percussionist who's become a staple of Puerto Rican music — he spent a decade playing with Calle 13 — Hector "Coco" Barez never seems to stop moving.

For Lightning Bug, singer-songwriter Audrey Kang lets her voice swirl into a larger enchanting whole — busy, noisy, shoegaze-y concoctions in which her lyrical intentions remain opaque.

Leslie Bear's sound is perfectly suited to ambivalent nostalgia. In "Sweetheart," she sets reflections on an old love against guitar lines that sound like the musical equivalent of faded postcards.

Making Movies features two sets of musical brothers with a passion for protest music and a high-profile collaborator in Panamanian superstar Rubén Blades.

The Parisian guitar-pop band Marble Arch wouldn't have felt out of place on a college-radio playlist 30 years ago. But it still feels modern, sweetly rendered and utterly, hookily approachable.

Marem Ladson obsessed over American pop and folk while growing up in Spain. She sings in English and Spanish, but her sumptuous hooks and sweetly lilting vocals form a language unto themselves.

When Nadia Reid moved from New Zealand to the U.S., she felt a deep sense of alienation and isolation — feelings that naturally bled into her beautifully, reverberantly melancholy music.

Elizabeth Moen wraps "Headgear" in an arrangement that sparkles agreeably, but Moen herself is the song's radiant star.

Hearkening back to the classic likes of Black Sabbath and Motörhead, the group pummels hypnotically, soars majestically and straight-up brings the damn thunder.

As Field Medic, Kevin Patrick Sullivan uses the sparest ingredients — an acoustic guitar, sparse drum-machine beats, an unadorned voice — to build lo-fi folk songs that crackle with vibrant intimacy.

On Black Aura My Sun, Deserta — the latest project of Saxon Shore guitarist Matthew Doty — uses whispery vocals as a garnish for a dish centered on guitars, guitars and more beautiful guitars.

Fran's Maria Jacobson knows her way around a curveball. Take "So Surreal," in which grungy guitars churn ominously before giving way to a jaunty, sprightly vocal by the song's 15-second mark

The artist known as fuvk is named for a typo and pronounced in a radio-unfriendly manner. Her song "Skipper" is an enchanting fragment of folk-pop breeziness.

Nobody's Girl takes three hardworking veteran Austin singer-songwriters and assembles them into a countrified folk-pop supergroup with a knack for choruses that soar.

The German electro-pop band Cosby spins out slithery hooks as efficiently as it confounds search engines.

Quinn Christopherson's songs sketch out raw, vivid character studies that reflect on his family, addiction and the dramatic shift in perspective that took place when he came out as a trans man.