Royal Baths
Faster, Harder (Kanine)
Oh, those sinful excursions and shared perversions! If you’re going to write a song about S&M, you might as well make it sound like something the denizens of the Factory might have wigged out to in 1966.

Gap Dream
Scary Dennis (Burger)
Don’t know who Dennis is or what’s so scary about him, but this tripping-balls track sounds like Spacemen 3 dropping acid with the Beach Boys, so we’re guessing his last name is Wilson.

Orbital featuring
Zola Jesus
New France
It’s been a zillion years (okay, maybe only about eight) since we last heard from Orbital, and this propulsive-yet-atmospheric electro track featuring vocals by Nika Roza Danilova is a welcome return.

A Place to Bury Strangers
So Far Away (Dead Oceans)
A Place to Bury Strangers never really changes its formula—white-squall noise guitars plus reverb-drenched vocals plus poppy hooks—but it does keep getting better and better at putting it into practice.

If These Trees Could Talk
Barren Lands of a Modern Dinosaur (Science of Silence)
You could slip this track onto an Explosions in the Sky or Red Sparowes album and no one would be any the wiser. Still, it’s an effective piece of instrumental postrock, all searing guitars and mounting melodrama.

Here We Go Magic
Make Up Your Mind (Secretly Canadian)
The herky-jerky guitars and steady-rolling beat make this dance-floor fodder for anyone who wishes they’d seen Talking Heads at CBGB, before both of those things ceased to exist.

Lotus Plaza
Come Back (Audraglint)
A side thingamajig from someone in Deerhunter not named Bradford Cox, Lotus Plaza makes the kind of effects-laden late-afternoon-dream pop beloved of people who don’t get out of the house much before midday.

The Shins
Simple Song (Aural Apothecary/Columbia)
If a cute girl hands you her headphones, saying, "You’ve got to hear this one song; it will change your life, I swear", throw them back and screech, "I know who the fucking Shins are, you twat!" Actually, don’t. That would be horrible.

Nick Waterhouse
Some Place (Innovative Leisure)
He belts it out like a soul shouter from 1962, so it’s a bit of a shock when you find out that 25-year-old Nick Waterhouse is a bespectacled white boy. Not an unpleasant shock, but still.

Fort Lean
Sunsick (Neon Gold)
You’ve got to love a band that knows why the sweet Baby Jesus made reverb and whammy bars, but the best part about "Sunsick" might be the unrelentingly propulsive beat. Our arms beg for mercy just listening to it.

Young Liars
Colours (Nettwerk)
Looking for some local content to put on that "indie pop you can dance to" playlist alongside of Montreal and Phoenix? Vancouver’s Young Liars have your fix, and that’s the truth.