Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, who made one of my favorite albums of 2011, will be releasing a new album on May 14th as Dungeonesse. It’s separate from her work with Andy Stack (the other half of Wye Oak), part of a new project with Jon Ehrens.

The tracks released so far sound entirely different from anything Wye Oak has done. It’s straight dance pop. The first song exhibits some R&B vocal influences and the second reps that trademark dance pop gloss. What I’m saying is, it’s catchy. I’m interested to see where this project goes.

[youtube http://youtu.be/DyNDaW4qwQw]

[youtube http://youtu.be/9cnsPLDsU-E]

In a similar but grittier vein comes a new track called “Recover” from CHVRCHES, an electronic band from Scotland that recalls The Knife or Metric. (Fun fact from this BBC write-up: the Roman “v” was used in place of a “u” to avoid confusion with physical churches when people searched for the band online.) They have only a couple singles to their name despite forming back in 2011, but they’ll be releasing an EP later in March. This song is the title track:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/77997623″ width=”100%” height=”164″ iframe=”true” /]

An earlier single of theirs called “The Mother We Share” is also pretty awesome:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/60173536″ width=”100%” height=”164″ iframe=”true” /]

Lastly we have a new track from James Blake, the UK electronica producer and post-dubstep wunderkind. After 2011’s breakout self-titled album, Blake released the Enough Thunder EP (with the beautiful Joni Mitchell cover) and now follows it up with “Retrograde,” the first single from his forthcoming second LP, Overgrown. There are fewer syncopation-born jolts, leading to more focus on Blake’s vocals. I like this song a lot and hope that the rest of the album heads in a similar direction.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6p6PcFFUm5I]

Note: I wasn’t planning on doing anything Valentine’s Day-related today, but this morning Josh Ritter (one of my favorite singer/songwriters) released a video for the song “New Lover” from his forthcoming album The Beast In Its Tracks. Fair warning: it is certainly not for anyone who’s enjoying this most divisive of holidays.