Kevin Bronson on April 21st, 2022

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Plenty of compelling viewing in our latest video roundup: Check out new releases from Agender, Zola Jesus, Haunted Summer and Eyedress …

AGENDER, “Top Bottom Top”

Agender, the L.A. post-punk quartet of Romy Hoffman, Cristy Michel, Christy Greenwood and Sara Rivas, will release their new album, “No Nostalgia” (check out the title track) on May 27. They take it to the disco on the deliciously throbbing new single “Top Bottom Top.” It’s a “straight-up, no-frills jam,” Hoffman says. “It’s an homage to queer sexuality and power dynamics. Perhaps we’ve transcended this terminology, but it’s still important to celebrate these specific binaries. Words are indicative of the times, and the times are captured by a sound, and this song’s sound and sentiment evoke the post-punk/dance punk of the ’80s. A steady, repetitive vocal line and stomping bass propel the verse into a feel-good chorus that one might have heard in the Chicago House era.” Notably, the video by filmmaker and activist Graham Kolbeins depicts a wide array of people from across the queer spectrum — including 81-year-old Sheree Rose, a performance artist, documentarian and dominatrix known for both her collaboration with poet Bob Flanagan and for her documentation of queer and underground subcultures since the 1980s.

ZOLA JESUS, “Desire”

Zola Jesus’ sixth album (and first in five years), “Arkhon,” is out June 24*. Equally capable of causing goosebumps as the album’s first single, “Lost,” the new single “Desire” is a piano ballad that for the songwriter served as “an exorcism for my pain and lack of closure around heartbreak,” she says. She adds, “Sometimes songs are written simply for the cathartic effect of playing them. This is one of those songs.” The video is the work of director A. F. Cortés. “I’ve seen Zola Jesus perform live many times in the past,” he says. “Still, nothing prepared me to see the vulnerability of this piece unfolding as it was performed in front of my camera. It was visceral, personal and profoundly moving.”

* Updated May 5 with a new release date for the album.

HAUNTED SUMMER, “Camera”

Husband-and-wife dream-pop duo Bridgette Eliza Moody and John Seasons will release their third Haunted Summer album, “Whole,” on June 21. The follow-up to “The Tree” and the Daniel Johnston cover “You Put My Love Out the Door,” their languid new single, “Camera,” is a melancholy paean to how photographs immortalize a moment in time. The video, a live-action/stop-motion hybrid, is the work of directors Callie Bloem and Chris Ewing, who “took inspiration from the classic Xeroxed feel of punk gig posters and zines to create something that felt hand-made and D.I.Y.” That included hand-animating more than 2,500 frames, which took two months. See Haunted Summer, along with the Warlocks, on June 25 at the Lodge Room.

EYEDRESS, “Smoke & Mirrors”

And now for something completely different: Right before his Weekend 1 appearance at Coachella, singer-songwriter-producer Idris Vicuña dropped the new Eyedress track, “Smoke & Mirrors.” It’s really nothing like anything on his 2021 album “Mulholland Drive” — in fact, the track’s Soundcloud rap-inspired robotics and processed vocals will make traditionalists cringe. Whatever floats his boat, we guess. The animated video by Josh Parsons is trippy fun, though.