Stream LE SSERAFIM’s HOT and more albums for New Music Friday

HOT, the newest EP by HYBE’s girl group LE SSERAFIM, is all about love, which isn’t that unique of a topic though it’s the production of the project that stands out. The group, whose name is an anagram of the phrase “I’m Fearless,” has stayed close to hard, high-octane beats, whether that be in rap or dance music, throughout their career of singing about needing no one and cherishing independence. Never have their songs sounded as soft and rounded as the glowy synths on “So Cynical (Badum)” or the shadowy expanse of “Ash,” a song about wanting to stop time to be with a lover a little bit longer. It’s nice to hear K-pop's fearless girls get a bit vulnerable over pretty pop beats. —Steffanee Wang

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

cootie catcher's winsome new project Shy At First represents a total reinvigoration of Canadian indie. The Toronto four-piece subverts the dominant mode of sleek and stadium-ready tracks by jerry-rigging pop to their own designs: call it "slackertronica," a mixture of K Records guitar washed in waves of erratic samples and glitches. Shy At First has some stand-out individual moments — the propulsive "Friend of a friend," and "Dumb lit," a cloudy grunge track — but it's best enjoyed as a whole for its pitch-perfect evocation of being in your twenties and starting to realize the kind of person you want to be. All told, it's as exhilarating as cold beer secretly sipped in the park on a summer day, with a fun-loving and endlessly passionate spontaneity coursing throughout each of the songs. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

There is something inherently comic about a project themed around varying temperatures on the thermometer when you live and work in a mild city like London. U.K. producer Loraine James gets the absurdity, opening her second album under the Whatever The Weather moniker with a shiver and a quick "it's chilly, innit?" That's not to say Whatever The Weather II is music to zip your jacket up to, though. Across 12 tracks, James ushers in a brighter atmosphere through a collage of introspective and ambient contemplations that unspool gently like a quiet day with no plans. Chintzy keys paint patterns on the melancholic "8°C," while the minimalism of "20°C", complete with samples of polite chattering and a phone buzzer, is striking in its simplicity. By the time album closer "12°C" arrives the pace has begun to pick up, with darkwave synths sending Whatever The Weather II down a grimy wormhole. Just one of many pleasing detours in an album to get buried in. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp