Here are my favorite tracks from June 2019, a time when I would usually chase those delicious clicks and list my Songs of the Summer. But nobody ever clicked. It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s fine! It’s fine. I don’t need you anyhow. JUST WATCH ME NOT CARE.

1. Prince – “Sex Shooter”

This never-before-heard demo of Purple Rain-era Prince, laying down a song he would give to Apollonia 6 to perform in his movie, is as excellent as you’d hope – a pop-funk workout so erotically charged, even the puns are sexy.

2. Sleater-Kinney – “Hurry On Home”

“Disconnect me from my bones,” pleads Carrie Brownstein on this lustful synth-rock scorcher, foregoing the “you up?” routine in favor of complete emotional transparency.

3. Goldlink (ft. Haile) – “Yard”

This chameleonic DC rapper made this list last month by applying his sinuous flow to an Afropop groove. Here, he does it with dancehall, eradicating bad vibes like a sonic exorcist.

4. Kim Petras – “Clarity”

Shimmering, flex-laden 2019 pop meets Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door.”

5. Nicki Minaj – “Megatron”

The legend returns with her best single in five years, an island-inflected banger that plays to all her strengths, leaving the scents of rum and Mercedes leather in the air.

6. Hatchie – “Her Own Heart”

An Alternative Nation dream-pop ballad that sounds like The Cranberries getting The Bends.

7. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib (feat. Anderson .Paak) – “Giannis” 

I’m still reeling from seeing Anderson .Paak perform back in May. And his gliding croon and formidable bars are perfectly suited to this twinkling groove from Madlib. But that doesn’t stop the Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs from outshining them both.

8. Lucy Dacus – “Forever Half Mast”

“Yes you’re evil but you’re not that bad,” goes the chorus to Lucy Dacus’s July 4th-inspired single. Over rich Americana strumming, Dacus nails the guilt of being from the richest, most damaging nation on earth, and loving it all the same.

9. Zara Larsson – “All the Time”

At first, Zara Larsson’s latest single feels like a swing at the Song of the Summer crown.  “Summertime and I’m caught in the feeling,” she sings over the roboticized, irresistible mantra, “From the breaking of the day to the middle of night.” But this isn’t about partying at all.

10. Bill Callahan – “What Comes After Certainty”

Magic is for rom-coms. The real shit, the chills-up-your-spine shit, is knowing, without a doubt, that you have found your person.