Kevin Bronson on May 6th, 2022

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From the wide, wild world of our inbox, today’s singles roundup is a handful, featuring new songs from More*, Ashe, Wallice, LEAN and the Small Calamities.

MORE*, “Woman on the Move”

Like their asterisk suggests, there’s more than meets the ear with More*, the duo of Malcolm McRae and Kane Ritchotte. Ahead of their 13-date tour supporting Haim (for whom Ritchotte is now playing drums), More* has released the bad-news bop “Woman on the Move,” the follow-up to “Really Want to See You Again” and “Whose Side You’re On.” It’s not to be taken too literally. “The events written into this song are all exaggerated truths,” McRae says. ” I did, in fact, crash my car (with lapsed insurance) on Franklin Avenue in L.A. The debt collectors were after me for almost two years. I also did, in fact, work at a law firm located on the seventh floor of a Pasadena office building, where I accidentally drank a drug-laced smoothie for breakfast before heading to work. … It was a genuine accident and a pretty overwhelming day. However, the sardonic quality tied to the line ‘looking back, it doesn’t seem so bad’ is untrue. Looking back, none of it really doesn’t seem so bad.” Beyond the new single and tour, Ritchotte and McRae have roles in the upcoming Jeff Buckley biopic “Everybody Here Wants You.”

ASHE, “Hope You’re Not Happy”

Ashe — aka Ashlyn Rae Willson — has released the string-drenched kissoff tune, “Hope You’re Not Happy.” Following “Another Man’s Jeans,” it’s the singer-songwriter’s second single since last year’s breakout album “Ashlyn.” Meanwhile … bitter much? “Some songs are about acceptance and moving on, wishing someone the best even though you’re not together anymore,” Ashe says. “This is not that song. ‘Hope You’re Not Happy’ is about the harsh truth that us all at some point hope the person we’re no longer with is miserable without us.” Her fans knew the song before it was even released, as Muriel Margaret’s video indicates.

WALLICE, “Funeral”

Highlighted by the singles “Little League” and “90s American Superstar,” Wallice’s sophomore EP dropped today. (Stream the five-song release here.) On the closing track, “Funeral,” songwriter Wallice Watanabe contemplates her own mortality, in a light way. “I’ve been thinking about death / How I want my friends to dress / Think I want an open bar / Casket in a muscle car,” she sings, and by the time the song rocks out, and just before the nifty guitar solo, she imagines “dancing at my funeral.”

LEAN, “Alive on the Outside”

“Alive on the Outside” is the first new single from L.A. duo LEAN — Stephen Johnson and Kyle McCammon — since their 2020 EP, “Contrast,” which featured “Head in the Clouds” and “Killing the Sound.” “Alive” is mellow, and then it’s not, and if this is what a bout of insomnia at 2 a.m. sounds like, we’re happy being wide awake.

THE SMALL CALAMITIES, “Hey Cat”

Punk, folk, emo, pop, that-band-who-reminds-you-of-the-Weakerthans … It’s calamitous how many things the Small Calamities can be. Witness their 2021 album “Moments of Impact” and stuff like “Violin Concerto in the Key of Crippling Regret,” and buckle up for what’s next from Charlie Wolf, Christian Kalafut and Crystal Dunning. In today’s case, it’s motormouth-y chamber-pop in the way of the single “Hey Cat,” the first single from a forthcoming EP, “Stupid Love Songs.” Says Wolf: “During the pandemic, I had a lot of friends reconnect with their ‘one that got away’ and sometimes that worked out but more often than not it kind of blew up in peoples’ faces. I tried to capture a lot of those experiences I’ve witnessed over the past two years in the lyrics of this song. We arranged all the strings and horns ourselves and had an orchestra in Europe [dba the Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra] record it live, which was both surreal and terrifying!” See the Small Calamities on May 17 at the Silverlake Lounge.