Seattle trio Helms Alee doesn’t really do dead weight: bassist Dana James, guitarist Ben Verellen and drummer Hozoji Matheson-Margullis all split singing and songwriting duties, oftentimes in the course of a single tune. “Tumescence”—the first cut off of their forthcoming third LP of wonderfully sticky pop-metal, Sleepwalking Sailors—thrives on the tension created by pushing these parts into a tight, three-minute space.

The down-tempo opening is Melvins-level heavy, with serrated dude-yells roared over a thick, martial riff. But in the chorus, James steals the song from Verellen, her keening voice suggesting Kim Deal squaring up with fists. Verellen’s guitar rises to meet her, too, a piercing anti-riff tracing her voice upward through zigs and zags. The antiphonal seesaw two continues for the song’s length, leaving no room to take as much as a breath until the end, when the whole thing collapses beneath its own weight. Sleepwalking Sailors is out February 11 via Sargent House.

Helms Alee: "Tumescence" (via SoundCloud)

UK producer Shadow Child recently spun some pop-house gold with his Takura-featuring "Friday" (not a Rebecca Black cover), and now legendary garage producer MK has jumped into the fray with his own hopped-up eight-minute remix, which takes Takura's vocal line and breaks it up, refracting it through a thousand degrees of polyrhythmic heaven.

Shadow Child: "Friday" [ft. Takura] (via SoundCloud)

Shadow Child: "Friday (MK Medicine Dub)" [ft. Takura] (via SoundCloud)

Big Doint is a new-ish label originating from Adelaide, and spinning off from Untzz Twelve Inch; it's co-run by producers HVCK and Babicka (the latter of which translates to "Grandmother" in Czech—the more you know!), and they just put out a compilation EP yesterday, November 25. This hissing tune comes courtesy of Melbourne producer Griffin James, aka Francis Inferno Orchestra, who's turned out a dusty, thumping tune here with "Take No Time".

Francis Inferno Orchestra: "Take No Time" (via SoundCloud)

For a purveyor of increasingly industrial machine music, Untold stands out for his playfulness. His earliest tracks turned sub-bass tones into soft, stackable blocks. Last year's techno-oriented Change in a Dynamic Environment EP series applied industrial textures in only the shiftiest and most unbalanced ways.

"Sing a Love Song", the first single from Untold's upcoming 2014 debut LP, Black Light Spiral, offers an extreme, comical contrast. The track triggers and re-triggers a short, dubbed-out reggae sample and proceeds to brutalize it with a huge, fuzzy kick drum and pinging FX that dodge around the mix like ricocheted bullets. Touching both on his dubby past and steely present, "Sing a Love Song" continues his a fruitful practice of slew-footing convention.

Untold: 'Sing a Love Song" (via SoundCloud)

Norwegian producers have spent the last decade earning their country a reputation as a hotbed for bright, erudite electronic music. Rising star Andreas Kleven Rasmussen performs as Pandreas, and his work is steeped in the sound of predecessors like Lindstrøm and Todd Terje: sparkling synth lines, ecstatic samples, loosely Balearic melodies. “Rås,” his newest single, is a study in patience, restraint, and momentum: a simple beat slowly unfurls as Rasmussen teases out the song's underlying youthful sweetness, using vocal samples that take over three minutes to reach their ultimately joyful resolution.

Pandreas: "Rås" (via SoundCloud)

Friends singer Samantha Urbani is a conspicuous presence on Cupid Deluxe, Dev Hynes’ excellent second album as Blood Orange. She lends colour and heat to seven of the album’s eleven tracks, from funky kiss-off “You’re Not Good Enough” to the soft-lit, grand closer “Time Will Tell”, and her chemistry with Hynes anchors many of the album’s highlights; they share a lightness and deft touch that makes them good sparring partners, floating around each other and landing emotional blows.

Hynes’ new remix of Friends’ “The Way”, a track originally released back in July that bore his signature production, proves his chemistry with Urbani remains intact even with the lead and supporting roles flipped. Hynes preserves the Urbani vocal take and slashing Purple Rain riffs that originally formed the song’s core while adding harmonies with his own voice and ramping up the humidity. The result is a palpable raising of the stakes, and that heightened sense of drama elevates a nondescript stopgap single into a showstopper that merits consideration alongside the finest cuts from Cupid Deluxe.

Friends: "The Way" (Blood Orange remix) (via SoundCloud)

A minor-key guitar, tolling in dead space, opens "Blood Song" in almost comically ominous fashion—a bare stretch of desert highway, black van approaching in distance through heat shimmer. It's parched and immediately arresting, lightening gradually when Jess Williamson's voice, a dusky, halting alto, enters. "There's a veil between what you kind of see and what you kind of feel," she mutters, sullenly, a powerful line that keys into the mood of the song, which is fierce and hesitant at once, quiet but by no means soft.

The mix, mic'ed close and buzzing with room tone, puts us too close. There's the rasp of her guitar strings, the sound of her thumb pads working the bass strings, and her hood-eyed glare: "Somebody there takes your vitals conveniently while you're on the phone with me/Well that's what I call fucking timing." It's all too close, and it's transfixing.

Jess Williamson: "Blood Song" (via SoundCloud)