She’s So Lovely and I Know It

Scouting for Girls are the kind of band that shouldn’t work as well as they do. Three guys, guitar-pop that’s almost embarrassingly eager to please, love songs with hooks so obvious they feel like something you already knew. And yet "She’s So Lovely" has been stuck in my head on and off since 2007, resurfacing every few months uninvited and impossible to resent.

"Heartbeat" follows the same formula—bright, propulsive, built for exactly two situations: a sunny afternoon when nothing is wrong, or the blurry aftermath of a night out where the floor is still moving slightly under your feet. It doesn’t reach for anything complicated. It just does its one thing very cleanly, and that’s harder than it sounds.

I’ve tried to be cooler about pop music than this and mostly failed. There’s a particular pleasure in a song that just wants you to feel good and knows how to get there. Scouting for Girls are experts at it. I don’t listen to them when I’m trying to think, but I’ve never once turned them off.