These days are days in the sun for the spick-span semi-famous with AOL-parental-filter smiles and for PR speak that reassures us we’re better off connected even though the fact we can’t stand each other has never been clearer. That in mind, it’s heartening to know that there are moments when pop music still seems prepared to engage with the occult. I mean, this When Saints Go Machine remix of Planningtorock’s “Living It Out” is more ghostly than chart, but still: there are serious melodies here, even if they’re scrambled into spectral versions of themselves over a club beat that’s just a little too weird for the club. This truly magnificent remix is one of a number on Planningtorock’s new EP for DFA, which has the original version of “Living It Out” as its centerpiece. Get it now.

Bowling Green, KY band Sleeper Agent really has the pop-rock thing on lockdown. The group’s debut, Celabrasion, which came out earlier this year via Mom+Pop, is a happy-go-lucky collection of catchy alt-rock numbers that require repeat listens. It’s hard to pick a favorite track, but “Get Burned” has an infectiously bounding chorus and urgent stomp that propels the dueling vocals from singers Alex Kandel and Tony Smith. Really, that’s just a convoluted way of saying it’s fun.

The skewering of power-pop outfit Surfer Blood’s “Miranda” by School of Seven Bells is one of the lushest and sweetest whippings we’ve seen. Because the newly-infused mechanical clanks and demonic synths actually open a dimension in which the breathy, nostalgic rock vocals calling out for love lost are magnified until they become sublimely exalted. Dreamy, for sure, and rather unlike the original, which lives on Surfer Blood’s latest—the Tarot Classics EP on Kanine.