One comes around every now and then: a slow jam so smooth, so purposeful, so oleaginous that it seems sure to increase the world’s population. Sometime next year, if the nation’s obstetricians suddenly find themselves busier than ever, they’ll know whom to blame: a rising R&B star named J. Holiday. “Bed” (Capitol), his breakthrough hit, begins with him moaning, “Girl, change into that Victoria’s Secret thing that I like.” There’s a mesmerizing rhythm from what sounds like a slow-motion talking drum, and soon J. Holiday is explaining himself: “I’m tryna put you to bed, bed, bed.” Many listeners will hear echoes of Rihanna’s “umbrella, ella, ella,” but what makes this song sublime is the way it refuses to sit still. Rhythms and synthesizers cut in and out, and J. Holiday keeps switching his style, from fast and tricky vocal lines to wordless pleas. Like many of the best slow jams, “Bed” simultaneously evokes jumpy impatience, languid bliss and sweaty single-mindedness. That’s the prologue, the epilogue and the thing itself, elegantly shoehorned into four minutes of bedroom soul music. Or, to use the expression of approval that is more or less reserved for songs like this one: wooo!

Mutya Buena

She’s a former member of Sugababes, a British pop group that American listeners have avidly ignored. And her new single, “Song 4 Mutya,” is a collaboration with Groove Armada, British dance-pop producers whom Americans have also ignored, though not quite so avidly. (Perhaps you remember their 1999 club hit, “I See You Baby”?) Anyway “Song 4 Mutya” is a glorious chronicle of romantic misery (she sees an old boyfriend with a new girlfriend) driven by a thwacking new-wave beat and some maniacally cheerful synthesizers. The video, available at mutyamusic.com, shows Ms. Buena at a summer dance party she can’t quite enjoy. And part of the fun of the song is the way she carves a small, sad hole in a big, exuberant track. “Don’t panic, panic, Mutya, just look ahead now,” she tells herself as the beat pounds all around her.

Soulja Boy

Part of the fun of the music industry (if it’s still fun) is watching grown-up executives scramble to monetize the passions of high-school students. For an example take Soulja Boy, a young Atlanta sensation. He has a hip-hop hit with “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” though the song itself is always being upstaged by a convoluted dance, which is amply chronicled on YouTube. He recently signed with Interscope, which is trying to solve an old puzzle that keeps getting more puzzling: How do you squeeze corporate profits from something as slippery as a dance craze? For now newcomers can track the Soulja Boy phenomenon online. Don’t miss an underground favorite that could (for the sake of radio stations and newspapers) be renamed “Yahhh Yahhh Yahhh”; it’s a crude but oddly joyful song that should be allowed a chance to sneak up the charts.

Jens Lekman

He’s back! Mr. Lekman, a droll Swedish indie-rocker, has a new album, “Night Falls Over Kortedala,” due this fall; he has released a stream of singles and EPs, but this will be only his second album. In the meantime there’s a new song, “Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo.” (It was released by the Swedish label Service and can be heard free at srvice.com.) Mr. Lekman evidently loves awkward moments, whether he’s describing them or creating them. And so this song, a silly but melancholy account of a city boy’s trip to a small town, eventually goes off the rails. Disappointed but intrigued by village life, he seems to be scrambling to fit in the words, especially when the music speeds up. When he pants, “We could fake our deaths to get insurance money/And take on hippie names, I’d be Snowfish, you’d be Sunny,” he seems painfully — and happily — aware of how ridiculous he sounds.

Cole Deggs & the Lonesome

O.K., so his name sounds like a particularly unappetizing breakfast. But Cole Deggs isn’t some novelty act: He’s a country singer whose songwriting credits include a Kenny Chesney hit, “Live Those Songs.” He also leads Cole Deggs & the Lonesome, a country band that leans toward heartland rock; among the members is Shade Deggs, his brother. (Admit it, you were hoping his brother’s name was Frye.) They scored a minor country hit with “I Got More,” a sturdy love song, in which Mr. Deggs tells some woman how happy he would make her. Fortunately, his version of bragging sounds an awful lot like pleading: “Whatever it is you think you’re lookin’ for/I got more.” It’s on the group’s debut album, “Cole Deggs & the Lonesome” (Sony BMG Nashville), which is stocked with earnest but easygoing love ballads. “I don’t mind waitin’ for a girl like you,” Mr. Deggs sings, and he doesn’t seem to be in any rush.