▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Big Black: “L Dopa”
Steve Albini’s punk-electronic band Big Black revved up a relentless drum machine behind ferociously noisy guitars — a favorite Sleigh Bells tactic. The narrator of “L Dopa” is a patient with sleeping sickness, unwillingly awakened by the drug L Dopa — and furious about it.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Sleigh Bells: “Locust Laced”
“I feel like dynamite / I feel like dying tonight,” Krauss sings over buoyant handclaps in “Locust Laced,” from the 2021 album “Texis.” The song bristles with dichotomies. Miller’s guitars are all speed and muscle, delivering machine-gun bursts of rhythm chords and zooming glissandos. But the verses include pleas like “Crush my fate I’m losing breath / Send me an angel of death.”
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7. Sleigh Bells: “Lightning Turns Sawdust Gold”
Electronics, not guitars, dominate this desperate love song from Sleigh Bells’ 2016 album, “Jessica Rabbit.” In a vast, heaving, synthetic soundscape, Krauss pushes her voice until it breaks, and she pleads, “Take a deep breath before you do something drastic.” At the beginning and near the end, there’s sobbing in the mix, abandoning any chipper facade.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Illuminati Hotties featuring Cavetown: “Didn’t”
Sarah Tudzin, the songwriter and producer behind Illuminati Hotties, revels (like Sleigh Bells) in quick-change dynamics: a quiet exposed sound followed by a full-spectrum attack, a diffident verse exploding into a big chorus. “Didn’t” — with a guest verse from Cavetown (Robin Daniel Skinner) — jumps between breathy insecurities and defiant, power-chorded renunciation: “What if I just didn’t do it?”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Beck: “Girl”
Beck has been knocking together genres since the 1990s. “Girl,” from his 2005 album “Guero,” opens with a sound Sleigh Bells have also featured: chiptunes, harking back to the low-resolution tunes played by the primitive circuits built into hand-held video games. With slide guitar adding a rustic touch, “Girl” turns into a bouncy folk-rock song that might sound downright affectionate — except that the narrator is planning the girl’s murder.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. 100 gecs: “Dumbest Girl Alive”
100 gecs — the duo of Dylan Brady and Laura Les — are deadpan hyperpop experts; they crash-test all sorts of sounds and top them with sardonic, absurd lyrics. “Dumbest Girl Alive” is full of fake-outs: a grandiose electronic intro punctured by gunshots, a distorted guitar riff that sometimes has a note replaced by chiptune blips. Then, over a ticking drum-machine beat and a blotchy electronic bass line, Les sings — computer-tweaked of course — about how “I always get it wrong.” For two minutes and six seconds, the slapstick timing is impeccable.
