TELECOMS (Sean McVerry), courtesy.

This week we bring you folk-pop from Tom Speight, Brit-pop-inspired rock from Telecoms, blues rock from Alexander Wren, an R&B and art-pop hybrid by Raia Was, folk rock from David Garza, alt-rock from Sir Chloe and bedroom pop by grentperez.

grentperez, “Us Without Me” – Grant Perez is only 21, but this Australian has been taking the world by storm with his covers and original music on YouTube under the name grentperez since he was 12. “Us Without Me” is a reflective post-breakup tune. “I keep my space but I’m still bound/ To the spell that we both cast but sometimes magic doesn’t last/ For me it did, for me it did,” Perez sings sadly over gentle guitar strums. After a brief headlining tour, he’ll join Cavetown, mxmtoon and Ricky Montgomery this summer.

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Telecoms, “Ramon” – Just try to get this catchy piano-driven number out of your head. Sean McVerry wrote “Ramon” on a piano he got for free through Craigslist while isolating during the pandemic. “Ramon” has a jaunty Britpop feel with a rock sensibility. He sings about the feeling of being trapped with his neighbors in their apartment building. A multi-instrumentalist, Sean McVerry has made his own albums and has played with Danger Mouse, Karen O and Aurora, but he put Telecoms together because he wanted to “put a pause on the solo grind and start something new with my pals.” You might have seen him on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” recently, where he and won an “Instant Songwriter” segment.

Raia Was, “What It Feels Like” – Everyone who jumped on the Kate Bush bandwagon after “Stranger Things” should get on board the Raia Was bus. Her voice has the melodic grandeur of Bush over a haunting R&B beat. Was broke out after her song “You Are” was featured in season two of HBO’s “Euphoria,” but she’s been a mainstay of the New York indie scene since she was a teen playing weekly at a piano bar on Avenue B. The video for “What It Feels Like” features an all-female lineup of collaborators (mix/master, producer, editor and director) and conjures the feeling of a party having ended.

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Alexander Wren, “Full Time Blues” – “I make the coffee/ I sweep the floors/ I wash the dishes/ I do the chores/ I count the cash/ I take the trash out too/ Ooh baby, I got the full time blues,” declares Alexander Wren, kicking off this song. Wren isn’t inhabiting a character for this song; he really did work a series of menial dead-end jobs, including cleaning toilets and scraping dead rats off the streets of New York, just to make enough to finance LP To Whom It May Concern. Wren cites ’90s artists like Bonnie Raitt and “MTV-Unplugged”-era Eric Clapton as influences on this track, but he has a soulful funk that reaches back to the ’70s with its realness. Turn it on and cheer yourself up while you’re working for the man.

Sir Chloe, “Salivate” – Sir Chloe started out as a school project; Dana Foote put a band together in college to perform a concert as her senior thesis. Their 2020 EP, Party Favors, was recorded in a warehouse for $100. When a song, “Michelle,” went viral on TikTok, Foote found themselves playing arenas, opening for Alt-J and Portugal. the Man. Dark rocker “Salivate” is off forthcoming album I Am the Dog, set to be released on May 19. Foote has cited St. Vincent and Cage the Elephant as influences. You can catch Sir Chloe this summer opening for Phoenix and Beck.

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David Garza, “Rock & Roll Heart” – Garza, who coproduced Fiona Apple’s 2020 masterpiece Fetch the Bolt Cutters, has recorded a new EP, 3Sirens Sessions, at the 3Sirens studio in Nashville. Among these three acoustic songs is “Rock & Roll Heart,” in which Garza accompanies himself on guitar and sings about sowing “songs like Jonny Appleseed” while shouting out Los Lobos and Yo-Yo Ma. “I got a four-track mind/ So brother, let that tape roll/ I got a rock and roll heart /And a symphony soul,” he sings. Garza is a legend in his native Texas, but somehow he’s still a well-kept secret elsewhere. If you like Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens or José González, definitely check out Garza’s new EP.

Tom Speight, “Let Go” – This one’s about the angst and heartbreak of getting over someone, but the mood is lightened considerably by the accompanying video, where fans from around the world participated in lip-synching the lyrics. “Tell me, do you love me?/ Don’t go/ You treat me like a stranger, you know/ Sometimes I get so lonely, it hurts,” fans from Cardiff to Melbourne to Sao Paulo mime to Speight’s voice. The singer-songwriter has collaborated with Turin Brakes and opened for James Bay, Stereophonics and Maisie Peters. Even Paul McCartney is a fan! Speight’s music hits that folky sweet spot for fans of artists like Damian Rice and David Gray. His third album, Love and Light, is out Aug. 11.

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Rachel’s pick: Of all the songs I listened to this week, “Ramon” by Sean McVerry, as Telecoms, was the stickiest. He says more music from Telecoms is on the way soon. Hopefully he means a full album, because if there’s more where this came from, I definitely want to hear it!

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.