Another installment of the internet’s least consistent music weekly.

1. “Fish Sticks” by mildred
   
   This song earns the lead-off spot by getting straight to the point: you will love this one in the first 10 seconds. There is something deeply nostalgic about the central guitar riff, and that nostalgia washes over you as the lyrics, title, and even vocal tones all deliver a not-unpleasant mid-’90s flashback.
   
   The track comes to us from Fenceline, the debut album for Oakland-based mildred (Oaklandheads stand and be recognized), so there is very little info about the band available online. Yet the influences here couldn’t be more clear, and they are rooted in the American South in a way that will surprise listeners who have not been paying attention to what’s going on in rock the past few years.
   
   Nobody’s named the genre emerging from groups like Wednesday/MJ Lenderman, Colin Miller, and even certain shades of Geese, where country instrumentation, grunge tones, and folk-inspired harmonies meet down-and-out lyrical themes. I am calling it the Asheville Sound, given both the direct influence the Asheville area has had on these artists (Wednesday and Lenderman hail from AVL) and the symbolic place Asheville has taken on as the cultural estuary where West Coast energy mixes freely with the gravity of Southern art.
   
   Consider mildred a case in point: an Oakland band with a sound that belongs in 1985 Athens, GA (the R.E.M. inheritance is audible throughout), singing lyrics suffused with a distinctly Southern ache.
   
   I also enjoyed “UPS Brown” and “Charlie” off this same album and will have my eye on mildred in the coming months. For those looking for a direct kin to “Fish Sticks,” check out “Strokes” by Ovlov.
   
   
   
   
2. “第五元素” by 超级市场
   
   What, you don’t read Chinese? Fine, it can be translated as “The Fifth Element” by Supermarket, a track off the Beijing-based band’s 1998 album The Look. Supermarket is widely considered the first electronic band in mainland China, a fact I came to know the same way I found the song–with the help of my friend Jake.
   
   Consider this the anti-“Fish Sticks.” It will not win you over in the first 10 seconds, and I cannot give you a clear accounting of its artistic heritage. That is precisely the magic of the song: it is both very good and very hard to describe in terms of anything else. There is something unmistakably Cure-like in the vocals and mood, but it would be a mistake to reduce Supermarket’s sound to “China does The Cure.”
   
   The vibe is mellow and contemplative, so roll the windows down or put on a freshly laundered shirt, and just enjoy this one.
   
   
   
   
3. “If Life Was Long” by Joe DeVito
   
   Rich, wistful, and unapologetically folky, this song earned my respect for taking on the genre the way Nabokov said Tolstoy took on the truth: “marching straight at it, head bent and fists clenched.”
   
   With simple, jaunty fingerpicked guitar as his only accompaniment, DeVito freely appropriates the themes and even the lyrics of old folk standards (the first line is “If I had wings like Noah’s dove…”) and dares us to deny his song a place among their hallowed ranks. I admire the chutzpah, but more impressive is that the song is undeniable.
   
   The rest of his discography is uneven, suggesting DeVito may not go on to be the next Bob Dylan, and I’m not sure he’s “reinventing folk” as so many other contemporary artists seem determined to do. But sometimes art is about mixing things up; other times, execution itself can be sublime, like a perfectly seared steak or a tight spiral on a touchdown pass.