The Week’s Songs That Landed: Hovvdy, Rostam, Proun, and Others

The week’s new music brought a cluster of tracks that hold up outside the algorithmic churn. Stereogum’s regular roundup pulled five into focus, each one rooted in a specific texture or feeling rather than a trending sound. Hovvdy’s “Try Try Try” works with the muffled crunch of a garage-rock band playing to themselves, a flute-like warble threading through a beat that thumps like a calm heartbeat. The song catches that odd, unanalyzed joy of grinning for no one in particular.

Rostam’s “Hardy” opens with a string arrangement that could slot into a 19th-century symphony before folding into his sleek pop sensibility. The track moves skyward until Clairo’s voice enters, not as a guest spotlight but as an arrival the song has been building toward.