There’s a lot of stuff out there. A lot of killer stuff. But how about falling in love with five more artists?

I know, I know, you still haven’t listened to those Lana Del Rey and Jon Batiste albums everybody is buzzing about (me neither). Skip ’em and start small. Here are five perfect songs, some might say 2023’s very best songs, from five artists on the verge of being the next big thing.

Rock is immortal! “Nothing Matters” sounds like the ’80s and early 2000s and today. It has this broad, grand, poppy vocal hook and this ugly, angular electric guitar. It’s punk rock prog or arty baroque pop or some weird, wonderful genre yet to be nailed down. And it’s also rock ‘n’ roll. And, and, and… it’s the first — the very first! — single by this British band. The debut album, “Prelude To Ecstasy,” is due in February. I fully expect it to be one of the best LPs of 2024.

So country can still be honest, confessional, ugly, and bracing. This is wonderful news. On “Chosen to Deserve,” Wednesday frontwoman lays it all out. All of it. She sings, “I’m in the back of an SUV/Doin’ it in some cul-de-sac/Underneath a dogwood tree/I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserve.” Tales of sex, drugs, and adolescent messes sit atop twang, feedback, melody and a groove halfway between Drive-By Truckers’ “Sinkhole” and Waxahatchee’s “Never Been Wrong.”

Blaze’s “Broken Rainbows” is a hip hop opera, a rap telenovela, a landmark that is a Top 10 album of the year. And yet, there are tracks so bright (and so dark) they outshine (or crush) others. The Boston MC stepped back from music for half a year before crashing back with “7 Months.” In under two minutes, Blaze burns through trauma with glorious defiance that has her booming: “They think that I’m a lamb/(expletive) I’m King Kong.” It’s the best track on her best album. Or it would be if the album wasn’t a collection of best-upon-best tracks (see: “The Things that You Say” and “So Free” and…).

You must change your life! David Wax heard a voice whispering this command to him during a summer trip to Mexico in 2001. Finally, he’s put the command to melody. Much has been made of Wax’s knack for overlapping Mexican and Appalachian folk, roots music and forward-looking indie rock. But when it comes down to it, he’s just staggeringly good at writing pop songs. Without a single change this could be a Beatles, Fleetwood Mac or Lake Street Dive song.

The sound of the apocalypse can be both jarring and beautiful when scored by Divine Sweater. The Boston band’s track “Two Steps Forward” floats through a dream-pop jam into a kind of feverish saxophone and keyboard breakdown before the instruments fade away. After two seconds of silence, a keyboard riff picks up and Meghan Kelleher sings, “Felt the ground fall through on Commonwealth Avenue/Brighton broke in two down Commonwealth Avenue.” It’s meant to be the moment when people realize that the world is ending and the track sits at the center of Divine Sweater’s concept album “Down Deep (A Nautical Apocalypse).” Oblivion never sounded better.