There’s a moment in the third movement of def.sound’s latest potent-meets-ponderous funk jazz sojourn where the wit and tongue-in-cheek lyrics of the first two-thirds of the song give way to naked reflection, the song’s BPM crashing to earth as a quieter reality sets in: "Maybe for a moment, massage away the trauma. Maybe ..." def posits, a suggestion aimed at both the listener and himself. It’s tough to take this advice, right? Especially with our health in a vise, our heads in a shroud and our heartbeats double-timed.  ►

If Gemma Castro's new song "Free" had a video, it'd be a fragment from an oversaturated Kenneth Anger clip that catches fire in the middle—the kind of thing where image turns into light and then smoke. (See here for vivid demonstration of an arguably Anger-ian aesthetic.) But as a song, that smoke and light is all still there, along with that Cat Power / Mazzy Star / Sibylle Baier sense of isolation and desperation that pulls you closer even as it sounds like it's coming from farther and farther away. ►

Los Robles is named for the Pasadena intersection where Moniquea grew up, and this seamlessly supersonic mix she's made for us is its own journey from back then to right now. It's all vinyl, of course, and including plenty of her contemporaries across the robust and vital modern funk scene—producers and vocalists both, from labels like Bastard Jazz and Star Creature. ►

It's not exactly the title you'd want for a song coming out right now, but L.A.'s Good Talk made this "Fever" well before the romance in that metaphor was shredded by reality, and even in quarantine times they're still going to put it out. ("I swear we wrote it many months ago," says synth player Ryan Koch. "Weird timing.") ►

It’s tempting to call Davia Spain enigmatic—to call her lush, rhapsodic space-opera ‘otherworldly’—but that’s flat wrong. These songs are more visceral and human than any, plaintive lyrics and lovely rubato melodies laid over music that sounds like the Earth itself.  ►