This is a song called Maria También, by a band named Khruangbin, from Houston. I heard about them a couple of years ago and use them for background grooves when I’m working on projects; I heard this tune in Austin while waiting for coffee and it’s stuck in my head ever since. This is just a monster jam.

This week’s Earworm is a track by Sleigh Bells called SWEET75. The album track is good but this live version is about ten times better:

It’s an interesting song. The drum breaks are odd in their placement and construction, but the hook is solid and they work it hard. I dove into their back catalog and can’t say I enjoyed most of it—there’s a lot of noise rock and overprocessed elements I can’t get into, but a track from their previous album also caught my ear:

This is an even stranger construction; the chorus has nothing to do with the verse other than the key it’s in, but they hang it together really well. And damn, that woman can sing.

I’ve had this tune stuck in my head since I heard it last week:

I really dig the distance between the verse melody and the chorus melody; it’s a beautiful, unusual song. Soccer Mommy is one of a group of women artists I seem to be diving into further these days.

This week’s earworm: New York, by Richard Ashcroft.

This song came out on his first solo album back in 2001 and it has a great dirty groove through the verse section—it’s this part that’s stuck in my head. I was never much of a Verve fan back in the day but I really liked this album and the vibe of this tune.

Driving Finn back from karate on Monday, I was flipping through the radio stations and the distinctive guitar opening for Lit’s My Own Worst Enemy came on. Typically I change the station as soon as I hear these notes, as I could not stand this song in 1999 when it was released, and I dislike it even more now. One of the many “I’m a drunk manbaby and I can’t remember what I did last night” songs that headlined that era, it played constantly for years and never seems to go away. Now it’s stuck in my head.

I don’t have much more to say about it (and I’m not linking to the video here) because I want it out of my head as quickly as possible.

This week I’ve had Lies by Chvrches running through my head, mainly the chorus. The song starts out strong, and has a killer hook, but when that chorus kicks in, it’s like the band magnifies itself by a factor of ten. Chvrches was at the forefront of an electropop revival at the beginning of the last decade, all heavy synths and processed beats, but they did it better than any of their peers, and they’re still around and kicking today.

It’s hard to believe this song is almost ten years old at this point; this was one of my favorite albums of 2013 and is still on repeat in my favorites list.

As someone diagnosed with ADHD, there are multiple symptoms that come along for the ride. One of the things I’ve dealt with my entire life are songs that get stuck in my head for days on end, until they burn out and I need to lock them away for months or years until I can hear them again. There is no logic behind why a song will stick; I can’t control it nor can I shut it off. Imagine being stuck in an elevator for hours with a song on repeat—or, in many cases, a particular section of song repeating. They are the soundtrack of my life.

This week’s earworm is one of the lesser tracks on Steely Dan’s Gaucho, called Glamour Profession. A song about a coke dealer in L.A. in the late 70’s, it’s anchored by an uncharacteristically weak rhythm section, a beat programmed into every cheap keyboard punctuated with even cheaper keyboard tones. It’s almost saved by the supporting elements of the band’s signature sound: careful horn arrangement, world-class backup vocals, and an excellent bridge leading to an abrupt chorus.

There are far better songs on this album: Babylon Sisters and Time Out of Mind are some of their best. Gaucho was was a troubled production, at the very end of the band’s first run. Drug use, perfectionism (perhaps influenced by drug use) and interpersonal problems split the band up at perhaps the best time to preserve their legacy—AOR sounds were shifting and yacht rock-adjacent music was dying out. I get the sense this was as close to filler as the band was willing to release. Either way, it’s stuck in my head until something else comes along.