Stream: Singles from Butch Bastard, Frankie Rose and Runnner

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Butch Bastard (Photo by Kyle Johnson)

For your careful consideration: New singles from forthcoming albums by Butch Bastard, Frankie Rose and Runnner …

BUTCH BASTARD, “Little Black Shoes”

Songwriter Ian Murray, aka Butch Bastard, returns with the second single from his forthcoming album, “Elegy for the Baby Boomer,” coming out later this year. He introduced the album in early January with the song, “I Think It’s Gonna Rain,” and that turned out to be prescient, so maybe you’ll find some truth in “Little Black Shoes,” which is more than a song about footwear. We can’t quite decide whether you should stream the song first and then read Bastard’s essay damning Kirkland Signature tube socks, or vice versa. But do both.

FRANKIE ROSE, “Sixteen Ways”

The follow-up to “Anything,” the hazy “Sixteen Ways” is the second single from (and the lead track on) Frankie Rose’s first album in almost six years, “Love As Projection” (out March 10 via Slumberland). A quartet of dancers play the song out visually in the video directed by Scott Kiernan and choreographed by Neil Shwartz. “The result,” says Rose, “is a video that feels like a fever dream in the Black Lodge complete with my very own machine elves.”

RUNNNER, “Runnning in Place at the Edge of the Map”

Here is your periodic reminder that you should not, under any circumstances, sleep on the new Runnner album, “Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out.” It’s out Feb. 17 via Run for Cover Records, and songwriter Noah Weinman has crafted one of those albums that will have you smiling through tears or sobbing through laughter, or both. It has so many beautiful harmonies (and banjo) you’ll forgive the annoying extra “n,” and autocorrect. Speaking of, “Runnning in Place at the Edge of the Map” is the final single from the album, featuring harmonies from Helen Ballentine (Skullcrusher), A.O. Gerber and Evan Rasch and some self-flagellation about succumbing to certain states of stasis. “I wrote this song about feeling frustrated in my communication and video games,” Weinman says. “I’d work myself into a kind of mute, catatonic state and the more I tried to think through it the more stuck I felt. The only way I could picture it was like when your character in some open world game is just running into that invisible wall over and over again.” See also “I Only Sing About Food” and make a date to catch Runnner headlining the Echo on April 7.