Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" is the actual song of the summer, but Pink's just-released "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" is bound to be nipping at its heels on the Billboard Hot 100 in no time. What sounds like the product of tossing Modest Mouse's "Float On" in a blender with some stadium rock and a pinch of house, this is the most undeniable ear candy I've heard from Pink since her debut single, "There You Go" (back when she was R&B and of ambiguous ethnicity). The yelping she does at the end of the chorus ("I've had a shit day, you had a shit day, we've had a shit day") is the best, riskiest use of her pipes yet. Pink often irritates me for carrying herself like she's above her pop peers, but here she actually is, so hooray for her.

Between the steely beat, the timbre of her voice and her flow, Ms. Banks is serving "Is That Your Chick?"-era Missy Elliott on "Nathan," a song from her Fantasea mixtape, due out next week. It's just as well: if Missy's not going to release robotic, just-leftfield-enough hip-hop, I'm glad that someone's doing it. Aided by producers Drums of Death, Azealia continues to impress and Style P's verse is fantastic, too. Dig his Batman words.

Like the Kashif track I posted earlier this month, Krystol's "Nobody's Gonna Get This Loving But You" has been recently remastered (along with the rest of the Gettin' Ready album) by Funkytown Grooves. That label really knows how to please me with glistening electronic funk.

Daniel Tyler and Conrad McConnell, a.k.a. the Idjut Boys, are finally releasing an album. Not another mix or collection or collaboration: an "artist album" called Cellar Door, designed, McConnell says, for "hav[ing] a cup of coffee and read[ing] the paper." It still sounds like classic Idjuts, though — spacey and shaggy and drenched in echo and reverb — and it's only a matter of time before the whole thing is reworked for one of the pair's legendarily long sets. "Going Down," which we're premiering here, has apparently already been the recipient of a "drum and bassy dub" mix. Not that it needs it.

This week sees the release of the 11th R. Kelly album, Write Me Back. It's a follow-up of sorts to 2010's retro-tender Love Letter and just as wonderful of a spotlight for the best male voice in contemporary R&B, period. Like before, it's straightforward soul that's mopped of any potential pee jokes.

At last night's Melbourne stop on her Born This Way Ball tour, Lady Gaga debuted the song "Princess Die," and everything about it was ridiculous. "It's about some of the most deep and personal thoughts I've ever had and it's called ‘Princess Die. D-I-E. D…I…E," she announced, motioning to her Lisa Frank journal with a highway unicorn on its cover.

Out of all the things I love about this remix from Bulgarian producer KiNK - the hint of foreboding, the contrast between the Glass Candy-esque low-fi vocal and the crisp track, the throbbing - I love its space the most. It sounds like it's cycling through a small start up and shutdown on every quarter note.

Michael Jackson died three years ago today, so here's my favorite remix of my favorite of his songs, done in the mid-90's by none other than the godfather of house, Frankie Knuckles. I love how Frankie keeps all of the elements in that matter (the strings, the horns, the bubble-keyboards) and emphasizes some to make them matter more — I never realized how gorgeous this vocal performance was until I heard the stripped-down intro.

Happy Gay Pride again via this song by a noted homosexual and for homosexuals (and other non-homosexuals if they really want) to dance to.

It's been 10 years since Tweet's hit masturbation ode "Oops (Oh My)," with little chart activity in between ("Call Me" went Top 40, so she isn't technically a one-hit wonder, but still...). In another era, there would be no Tweet to speak of a decade later, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, she remains a presence who's taken to releasing a series of barely commercial R&B songs accompanied by the #TweetTuesdays hashtag. These kicked off with an impressively sung remake of Aretha Franklin's "Day Dreaming." The third in the series, "C 4eva," is below. Beatless but propelled by rhythmic cricket sounds, the song finds Tweet oozing delicately over an acoustic guitar. It's equal parts Deniece Williams and Aaliyah. It's so ethereal, it's practically ambient. It sounds like it blew right past the shackles of pop aspiration.

It seems like as good of a day as any to post Peggy Scott's 1997 downlow-discourse trailblazer "Bill," not only because we're in the midst of Gay Pride Month but also because, well, you know. "There are no words that can describe what I felt inside / When I found out the man I love loves another guy," sings Peggy before sharing that she was "ready" to find her husband in the arms of another woman, not another man. The reason remains between the lines, but it's not hard to discern that it's homophobia — the line about Bill, her husband's titular lover, wanting to be her kids' "stepmom" confirms it.

Reissue enthusiasts Funkytown Grooves just released a remastered/expanded version of Kashif's self-titled 1983 debut. It is a thing of warm, post-disco beauty. Jams for days. I can't get "Stone Love" out of my head, and I'm absolutely fine with that.

"Ruin" serves as a preview of the first Cat Power/Chan Marshall album in six years, Sun. If the cheery tone of "Ruin" is any indication of what's to come, Sun is an apt title. With its octave-jumping bass line and rushing percussion (that occasionally features a four-on-the-floor pulse) "Ruin" is the weird thing that happens when Cat Power goes disco (with the help of Cassius' Philippe Zdar, who mixed Sun). It's sleek, catchy as hell and Target-commercial ready. Could Sun be cleaned up enough to be Chan Marshall's Liz Phair? (That's if the critically acclaimed but relatively bland The Greatest doesn't deserve that title already.)

With the return of Dallas and tomorrow's release of Rock of Ages, it's a so-bad-it's-at-least-worth-enduring kinda week. So apropos only of that, here's a hilariously awful song from I-can't-believe-it-is-Fabio's 1993 album After Dark. Over an 808-based Skinemaximal sound that makes Paula Abdul's "Rush Rush" sound like real hood shit, Fabio mumbles, "It's strange how I feel! Everything seems so unreal." I empathize. The hook goes, "When somebody loves somebody desperately, everything comes out so natural." Affection: the greatest laxative of all.

This week, the debut album from Swedish weirdos (Sweirdos?) Niki & the Dove, Instinct, was released digitally in the United States. Swirling in influences that seem to range from the Knife to superstitions to a pile of twigs, Instinct is a creepy, pulsating electronic beast that manages ultimately to sound just left of standard pop. Confounding, fantastical lyrics abound, but my favorite moments come in the more straightforward offerings whose subtle weirdness manages to creep under skin with a stealth tenacity.

British dance (I'm sorry, I have to do it: Britlectro) band Hot Chip's fifth album In Our Heads is commercially available in the U.S. today and it's...OK? Kind of divisive? They definitely commit to making classic-inflected house without a trace of irony, but the dweebish voice of Alexis Taylor (the more active of the band's two singers) clashes in a way that keeps me from loving the band entirely. I much prefer the non-dance moments, such as the electronic ballad "Look at Where We Are," which sports an earnestness that seems not out of place at all. Dig that terrific pitch-bending around the 1:40 mark.

In "Hang Up the Phone," the new single from Lipa Schmeltzer, who has been called "the Jewish Elvis" according to Wikipedia, the Hasidic and robotic meet.

By and large, albums these days don't get bad reviews. If you look at the music section of crit aggregator Metacritic, you'll see a strip of green, signifying "generally favorable reviews" to "universal acclaim," per the site's metric. I don't know exactly why this is, but given my experience, I'd guess that there's still a lot of placating going on — sometimes publications fear giving negative reviews because it may impede future access. Music publicists can be pretty tenacious.

Swing beat realness.

One of my favorite things that Malcolm X ever did was admit that he was wrong. His hajj to Mecca expanded his worldview and in an epiphanic letter home, he advocated his new-found belief in racial unity, explaining, "on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions."