Filled with stories, history, myth, trade, and conflict, these potent stretches of water sometimes connect two seas or basins, continents, cultures and east and west, and are filled with danger. So how does song capture these many passages, channels and sounds?

Famous classical composers to a certain theoretic physicist, as well as a wealth of unusual skilled people, this week guest Loud Atlas takes a sparklingly talented turn picking playlists from from the latest topic and song nominations

It’s unlucky for some, but for some, it’s the opposite. And fortunately it also inspired a wealth of song ideas and context in last week’s topic, boiling down to truly different and entertaining playlists picked by guest tincanman

Cultural counting as a figure of superstition and bad luck, it can also have other associations, but whether number, name, place, amount, date, age or more, this week it’s time find your significant thirteens in song as we head through a new Friday 13th

New album: A gorgeous, delicate debut folk LP by the Dublin-based singer-songwriter from County Meath with an exquisite voice, not unlike that of Joni Mitchell, that hovers and rises with expressive control, with themes of memory, grief, desire, and self-reckoning

New album: Following 2023’s Time’s Arrow, the Liverpool synth-pop band fronted by Helen Marnie, now a trio, return with substantial 16-track eighth LP that combines simplicity of chord progressions with rich textures, styles retro and futuristic with classic, catchy pop melodies

New album: Best known as a bedroom pop artist on her DIY produced first two LPs, the New Yorker returns with an expanded sound of eclectic, striking synth-pop, fuelled by a sense of personal and musical rebirth, inspired by some Californian sunshine where she recorded, and referencing an escape from addictions

New album: After 2023’s Amatssou, the collective of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara region of southern Algeria and of northern Mali return with a 10th LP iteration of their signature desert blues style sung in Tamasheq, and joined this time by younger younger musicians from the bands Imarhan and Terakaft, as well as guests José González and Sulafa Elyas

New album: A fabulous, bright, catchy and expanded, more live sound by the innovative New York multi-instrumentalist of experimental indie and synth-pop, moving on from the more bedroom feel of her first self-titled & The Charm LP, and here with lyrical themes of personal and relationship evolution

Song of the Day: Bright, uplifting, singalong, big sound pop in this welcome return from the enigmatic Swedish singer-songwriter and model, heralding her upcoming new album The Afterparty, out on 8 May via Futures Music Group

Song of the Day: Violently sensual, truly alternative and viscerally arresting experimental noise/ industrial rock with guitar sounds unlike any other band, all conjured up by the Brooklyn quartet from their new EP Swan Songs out on Dirty Hit Records

Song of the Day: With a gradual, powerfully growing intensity, this new indie-rock single about personal and universal challenges by the Washington band fronted by Ben Gibbard, heralds the upcoming 11th album, I Built a Tower, produced by John Congleton, and out on 5 June via ANTI- Records

Song of the Day: An orchestral, atmospheric, textured, gently serene new number with background birdsong by the Radiohead co-founder and guitarist with the title track heralding his second solo album, out on 22 May via Transgressive

Song of the Day: Fabulous, uplifting, classic soul by the British duo of producer Barney Lister and vocalist Kojo Degraft-Johnson, joined by the soaring voice of the London singer, out now on Dead Oceans