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Dora Jar, 'Bumblebee'

Don't expect a Dora Jar love song to sound like anything less than a riddle of Carrollian proportions. The 24-year-old artist – who has only a couple of EPs to her name but also a spot on Billie Eilish's tour – possesses a fun, surrealist streak for describing her somewhat pained affections: "My heart is a crustacean, could you come and crack it open?" she cooed in her song "Lagoon" from earlier this year. Her maximalist pop songs swoon with theatrical whimsy, their gushing, hyperactive choruses laced with bits of nursery rhyme and rapped nonsense.

Her latest, the bright "Bumblebee," joins her canon of romantic absurdity. "Obviously, you're already over me," she begins over sunny, samba-evoking guitar and percussion. "So I'll become a bumblebee." It's the sort of song, with its twee, "Ring Around the Rosie"-quoting chorus, that might not work if it weren't for Jar selling her larger-than-life, psychedelic pop vision with such undeniable magnetism. "I'm in love with everyone," she confesses. For most, that'd be a curse. For Dora Jar, it's her superpower.

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Hazel Cills is an editor at NPR Music, where she edits breaking music news, reviews, essays and interviews. Before coming to NPR in 2021, Hazel was a culture reporter at Jezebel, where she wrote about music and popular culture. She was also a writer for MTV News and a founding staff writer for the teen publication Rookie magazine.