MOLLY TUTTLE So Long Little Miss Sunshine (Nonesuch) — There’s no doubt that Molly Tuttle is bona fide in bluegrass circles. The prior two albums from the California-reared banjo picker swooped up Grammy Awards in the bluegrass category, and she’s earned plaudits from just about every musician who pines Appalachia. With her latest album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, Tuttle aims to build on that twangy cred while also dipping her pick into the poppier side of Nashville. The album is produced by Jay Joyce, the go-to studio sorcerer for Eric Church, Lainey Wilson, and a slew of other country kickers, and he definitely puts a sheen on the material. “The Highway Knows” is polished enough to spy a reflection in it. Purists might grouse, but the light commercial tint sits well on Tuttle’s slender shoulders. “Summer of Love” is a cheery ramble, despite a touch of melancholy to the lyrics (“We were singing ‘All You Need Is Love’/ Turns out it was never enough/ Take me back to the way it was/ I don’t wanna give up”), and “I Love It” is a charmingly stripped-down cover of the Icona Pop hit that helped introduce Charli XCX to the world. Tuttle doesn’t completely abandon her own ways; “Rosalee” isn’t that far from something that might have appeared on one of the preceding albums. She arguably does best when she finds a way to bring her different instincts together into one potent punch, as with the rockabilly-rough “Old Me (New Wig),” which memorably draws on her alopecia to playfully reimagine the classic kiss-off tune: “Got you off of my back, now I’m walking on air/ I got a new wig to get you out of my hair.” In addition to those already mentioned, give a hearty greetings to the following cuts: “Everything Burns,” “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark,” and “Story of My So-Called Life.”

SUPERCHUNK Songs in the Key of Yikes (Merge) — It ain’t broke. Superchunk is in their fourth decade of banging out bratty, witty rock songs, Mac McCaughan’s nasally insolence soundly established as the McSweeney’s reader’s answer to Gordan Gano’s perpetual-adolescence anxiety. After all these years, they can still deliver a real corker: the new album Songs in the Key of Yikes opens with “Is It Making You Feel Something,” which is catchy and brash (“You can turn the lights out/ And rethink every sound/ Coming out of your mouth”), immediately joining the pantheon of great Superchunk tunes. It’s emblematic of all that follows, which is solidly, unmistakably products of this beloved band. Sure, there’s the occasional deviation — “Cue” taming the usual headlong tempo or “Train on Fire” sounding like the Superchunk version of glam — but mostly Superchunk knocks the billiard balls smartly in the pocket. Even bringing in a fellow member of the Merge galaxy of stars, as they do with Rosali on the propulsive “Bruised Lung,” means inducting the guest into the established sound rather than twisting towards some transformative collaboration. It just makes sense. Don’t fix it. Tune into the these cuts: “No Hope,” “Climb the Walls,” “Everybody Dies,” and “Some Green.”

WOLF ALICE The Clearing (Columbia) — For their fourth album, The Clearing, Wolf Alice revels in a newly available pop expansiveness. The U.K. act has long tended towards sonic vastness, but their new corporate home of Columbia Records allows them to really level up. To help them out, they enlist producer Greg Kurstin, who’s got a couple of Adele blockbusters on his vita. Wolf Alice doesn’t follow him all the wall to adult-contemporary Valhalla, but there’s no mistaking the added care and precision to the songs here. The material calls back to the nineteen-seventies, the dawn of crystalline pop like this. There’s the soulful shimmy of “Bloom Baby Bloom,” the sunshine pop of “Bread Butter Tea Sugar,” and the airy folk rock of “Midnight Song.” It can seem like Wolf Alice is trying to will the musical communes of Laurel Canyon back into being, albeit with a distinct twenty-first century upgrade. In that vein, “Leaning Against the Wall,” which sounds like the earthier version of the Sundays that could very well have emerged had that band stuck it out, is a track that hits the sweetest of sweet spots. At this time and this place, Wolf Alice seems to argue, this is pop, or at least what pop could and should sound like. Open up to these tracks: “Thorns,” “Play It Out,” and “White Horses.”