[Warning: Contains spoilers.]

I have been on a serious Bates Motel kick. (For those of you who don’t know, Bates Motel is a new show on A&E, and a prequel to Hitchcock’s Psycho.) Thus far, ten episodes and one season in, we’ve seen quite a bit of both taxidermy (oh, right, Norman’s motel office in Psycho is filled with taxidermied birds and stuff) and mama issues running rampant, which I (who am a bit Psycho-obsessed) appreciate. I applaud the rarity and intensity of uncomfortably sexually charged moments between Norman and Norma, as well as the fact that taxidermy takes somewhat of a back seat (maybe not all the way in the back, just, you know, in the middle seats of a van or something) to the as-yet-unexplained, corrupt political atmosphere of White Pine Bay, Oregon. The show, set in present day, remains, politically and socially, situated outside of the current atmosphere, allowing sinister turns that a “realistic” setting would, I think, hinder. Of course, the season’s last episode—in which Norman kills his teacher, Miss Watson—sent me back on a Hitchcock spree; this summer I re-watched Psycho and Rear Window. I’ve also had “Que Sera, Sera” stuck in my head for what feels like years.

For five gloriously warm weeks, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, my hometown, crashing at friends’ places, drinking as much local beer as I could afford (I know how lame I sound), and getting entirely too tan for my own good. So when I haven’t been shamefully listening to bad pop because that’s just what driving to the beach calls for, I’ve been overdosing on Lorde’s “The Love Club,” which HuffPost has called “the perfect pop song.” I might modify that label to “the perfect indie pop song written by a sixteen year old musician from New Zealand and HOLD UP, she’s sixteen?!” “The Love Club” features simple yet affecting lyrics (“You’ll get punched for the love club” / “The other day I forgot my old address” / “The card games and ease with the bitter salt of blood”) that are delivered with an air of nostalgia, longing, and despair that I would not easily or readily attribute to so young a musician. These are lyrics and harmonies and gloriously melodic electronics that are not to be ignored. According to LastFM, her first shows in New Zealand sold out in 73 seconds. So you should probably listen to her.