Kevin Bronson on August 26th, 2022

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Catching up with a bunch of releases from this past week: Here are new songs from Pioneer 11, Kit Major, Theo Kandel, Atta Boy and Wax Owls …

PIONEER 11, “Destiny”

Interstellar explorers Pioneer 11 — Bryan Gomez, Alex Hastings and recently added new member Joey Kehoe — this fall will release their new album, “Humanoid.” Their futuristic electro-psych takes cues from artists such as Caribou, Darkside and Four Tet — in short, they are the next-gen gentlemen who are floating in space. Or dancing, if you follow their new single, “Destiny,” whose lyrics are inspired by the ’90s anime “Sailor Moon” and whose wonky synths, vaporous vocal effects, twinkling guitars and insistent bass make for an otherworldly combo. For those who can’t afford their own spaceships. See also: “Brain Dead.”

KIT MAJOR, “Rot Ur Mind”

Kit Major steers her caffeinated, grungey pop-punk toward the technological abyss on her new single, “Rot Ur Mind.” The song, from her debut EP, “Vampire Saturday” (out in November), is “a protest song about the tyranny of technology,” she says. “It’s about being sick of living in a world where you are deluged with information and constantly perceived and judged by others. It’s exhausting. We don’t need to know what everyone else is thinking and doing, so this song is about finding sanctuary by escaping to a place where you have control. For me that’s the car radio. I always take over the AUX cord to play the songs I want to hear. And it’s also my nights watching TV. I control the remote and I get to decide the worlds I’m going to enter.” See also: “I’m Bitter!”

THEO KANDEL, “Moving Slowly”

The follow-up to singles such as “Elegy” and “Me & All My All Friends Have Got the Blues,” “Moving Slowly” is songwriter Theo Kandel’s “drive down the PCH with the windows down, put on while at a chill party” entry to his forthcoming EP, “What If It All Works Out in the End?” (out Sept. 22). No speed limits were broken in the making of this one.

ATTA BOY, “Spring Seventeen”

The follow-up to “Boys,” “Spring Seventeen” finds resurgent L.A. quartet Atta Boy waxing nostalgic in an Aimee Mann kinda way on their new single “Spring Seventeen.” Singer Eden Brolin says that after hearing the skeleton of the song by guitarist Freddy Reish a few years ago, she wrote the lyrics in a laundromat. “There’s a really specific memory from high school that just worms its way into my head every once in a while, and I guess started to think about how those images and understanding of events start to shift,” she says. “It doesn’t feel so long ago but the substance of the memory has been sifted like 800 times, so it inevitably feels like a game of telephone that just keeps coming back around to you.”

WAX OWLS, “Lie for Me”

After releasing a half-dozen singles in 2021 (including “Idle Affair” and “Sacrifice”), Gerry Hirschfield-led folk ensemble Wax Owls return with their first single of 2022. “‘Lie for Me’ is about those unique friendships/relationships that are totally insulated from the rest of the world,” Hirschfeld says. “The kind that are totally separate from our normal social group and exist only privately. For me, this isolation creates a strange juxtaposition where I can be totally honest and open with the other person because it is hidden from the rest of the world. In some situations, hiding actually makes it easier to not hide. Everything confided stays there; safe … the Vegas of friendships.” For fans of Lumineers, Of Monsters & Men, Local Natives … and valid anywhere gang choruses are sold.