Kevin Bronson on April 20th, 2023

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New songs (and album info) from Valley Queen, SWIMM and Militarie Gun in today’s singles roundup …

VALLEY QUEEN, “Nobody Ever”

“Nobody Ever” is the final single from Valley Queen’s sophomore full-length, “Chord of Sympathy,” which comes out Friday. It’s an album that makes you believe in a lot of things — compassion, the supernatural, connectivity, reincarnation, true freedom and, importantly, the power of an unexpurgated human voice (here, Natalie Carol’s). Carol and bandmates Mike Deluccia and Neil Wogensen ran up to the album’s release with singles such as “Cassavetes,” “Pavement” and “Falling” (not to mention the stellar title track), and “Nobody Ever” sprang from an interesting place in Carol’s imagination.

“I personally think ‘Nobody Ever’ was written by Paul McCartney to Linda McCartney, or vice versa,” Carol says. “I was working on this song when I moved into my first solo place in 2020 in Los Angeles and was spending a lot of time alone. I would have dreams where I would hang out with Paul and he would noodle melodies and fragments on the piano and I would lay around and listen. All I remember ever saying to him was: ‘I love Linda.’ He said ‘I love her, too.’ Maybe ‘Nobody Ever’ doesn’t sound like ‘Wings’ to anybody else, but I know it’s the closest I’ll ever come to writing in their style, even if it was by accident. I think of Paul and Linda every time I hear the track and how sound might travel between the land of the living and the land of the dying.” See Valley Queen on April 28 at Pappy & Harriet’s or May 4 at Gold-Diggers.

SWIMM, “No Ties”

Pop chameleons SWIMM will release their third album, “Best Comedown Ever,” on Aug. 10, and the second single, “No Ties” (the follow-up to last month’s “Talk to Me”), plays as kind of a hymn to the commitment-averse. “I noticed that I was starting to subscribe to this design of…’if I never create a true tie, I’ll never have to suffer a real goodbye.’ It’s even become this OCD thing where I won’t say bye at the end of a conversation. Didn’t realize I’d be shedding such a blinding light on my neurosis, but ‘No Ties’ is basically my reverse engineering the end of a relationship while also grasping to preserve its magic — ‘flash of gold as it dies.’

“Despite its ‘tell me you’re single in your 30s without telling me you’re single in your 30s themes,’ this song brings me a lot of joy because it represents our band being a wonderful sum of its parts. I had already ingested a THC Jolly Rancher when Marton sent me a recording of the main guitar riff over some synth pads. I remember lying on the carpet and listening over and over again. When we all came together and finished the song, I felt in awe of the touches Hany, Adam and everyone brought to the music. For so long, SWIMM was Adam and me and a revolving door, but this song feels like a celebration of being a band.” SWIMM plays May 5 on Day 1 of the three-day Magic Mind Music Festival near Santa Clarita.

MILITARIE GUN, “Very High”

Punk quintet Militarie Gun flexed their ’90s-influenced muscle on last fall’s “All Roads Lead to the Gun,” a compilation of the two EPs they released in 2021. Now the band — Ian Shelton, Nick Cogan, William Acuña, Vince Nguyen and Max Epstein — have announced the June 23 arrival of their debut album, “Life Under the Gun.” They do hard-but-catchy well, and their new single, “Very High,” the follow-up to February’s “Do It Faster,” is exemplary. “‘Very High’ centers around the desire to escape the embarrassment of day-to-day life as much as possible,” Shelton says. “From the lyrics, to the video to the cover art of the album, it’s about struggling with something no one else sees, ‘I’ve been feeling very down, so I get very high.’” Militarie Gun plays May 6 at the Sardine in San Pedro before embarking on a U.K. tour.