Hey, you over there. Brazilian Money is back didn’t cha know? Led by bespectacled teen heartthrob Garrett Johnson and a new backing trio of friendly and familiar faces, these boys on the bus are back to what they do: making artfully warm and warbly pop wormholes. Their latest release Doug Nasty asks questions: “What do ya do when a guy comes and shits on your floor?” and ponders the simple things: “Nothing is free, some things are cheap.” Maybe it was the product of several late night acid parties; maybe it was just the people. Maybe it’s for the dance floor slackers, burned out, thinking about the incomprehensible. Either way, it’s fuuuuuuuuun! Glad to see Johnson still shuckin’ and jivin’ in yer minds, giving you reason to think.

Moments pass; Each Other persists. The Nova Scotian wunderkinds have traversed twisted trails to arrive at these amber-encased oscillations, cramming a Rundgren-esque treasure trove of hooks into two new insta-classics. Paradigmatic pop moves that transcend an already-flawless discography.

With insatiable pop addiction, Expwy forge wondrous anomalies between classic riffery and a future primitive brimming with mutant fuzz and choralic melancholy. Bag of Waters enslaves with every sonic ritual, finding wikked balance between jangled nuance and blasted harmonies; without warning, it’ll radiate cultic catchiness to every stalwart remover within the spectral radius of your dual blaster. Its ambitious existence remains a beacon to the brilliant creative energies exploding within our tundradic paradise. Totally and unabashedly awesome.

With just enough slacker isolation to eschew the waning spring, Beach Velvet’s warbled shimmer slips unseen into the eternal heat of summer noons. It’s an easy sound that hits all the right vibes and osmose into your mind to the rhythm of swirling jangle and warm riffs. Relish in the simplicity of tape jammers and log cabin chillin’, mentally free-basing off these tape waves.

Calgary’s Cable-knits play summery skate jams for when you got dumped by your brace-faced teenage girlfriend and just want to bust a boneless into the pool. Knotty threads of guitar drive the duo’s junk-fi pop into a swift set of sugar rush head-boppers. Turns out Stalwart Sons plus Hunter Gatherer equals hook city.

Silky sleaze and a sense of humour turn Mac DeMarco (FKA Makeout Videotape) from nu-blooz deity into a self-aware rhythmic slime-rocker. Woozy tremeloed guitars mix with padded percussion to give a warm, lush backing for Mac’s grumbled, sensitive, pitch-shifted nocturnal emissions, while warped radio spoofs and an obsession with blue jeans add to the strange new world that DeMarco creates throughout this mini-LP. It’s hard to separate DeMarco the man from DeMarco the artist, and there’s a certain charming disingenuousness to these songs (I don’t think that a fresh pack of ‘Roys is the only vice of this boy), but it somehow adds to the album’s layers: parsing genuine communication from made-up slang (which exists in levels that rival a Chandler novel), figuring out honest sentiments from in-jokes, discerning artistic creation from pure entertainment. It somehow all works together in a strange mix of talented song-writing and playing, humor, invented nostalgia and infectious everything. Grip before this grip is gone – DeMarco has been unleashed onto the world and these releases will disappear fast.

Huge late-pass on this monster groove. Between the subtle hushes of “cocaine love” and damaged guitar slank of “Larmes de crocodile” resides the sequenced genius of Jef Barbara. The subtle streams of pop consciousness run rampant in Barbara’s work; somehow existing in a nether-genre equally perplexing as inastiable. Contamination‘s surreal jaunt through NRG minimalism will wreck the havoc of permanence as you clamour for softer heights amongst Montreal’s erotic synth explosion (complete with cameos from Femminielli and JLK).

This one’s a total “no duh.” The latest subsidiary of the Long, Long, Long hit factory sheds a few layers of skronk while firing jangular hooks down the assembly line. Space echoes shimmer in an ocean of detached emotion while the tag-team harmonies sound positively fab. Drifting from the Maritimes to Montreal, our heroes have picked up a ringer to man the traps and cast this brilliant kahuna into the wild. A+++.

Specters of surf-beat and apparitions of the brothers Reid linger between supercharged shards of feedback from this brazen Toronto trio. Hollandaze channels decade-faded six-string anthemia smoke-ringed into the present like a resinous blast of chromium dioxide. The holy triumvirate of Buzz, Daps and Pleasence group grope the O boys to present this late ’11 stunner in all three formats a gripper could desire. Our only question: who’s dropping this shit on eight-track?

Revelling in the unabashed pleasures of record collection rock, alt-weekly barnstormer and vinyl slinging stalwart Devin Friesen has hit a stride with his effects-laden solo flight. Looper Pedal Blues is one of two new cassettes from Friesen’s own Gerogerigegege-inspired imprint, pairing epic instrumental fuzz-outs and guitar-damaged confessionals abuzz with post-SY hookery. We love the jams and the jams run free.