Just shooting early from the hip here, but these pages are finding that the pretty sad songs from Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album just haven’t managed to linger around as long as the sweetness of SOUR‘s hits or the get stuck in the GUTS either. It’s those sleep ballads which really do turn the rest of the listen upside down into a frown. But who knows? Maybe once green leaves turn to brown and then, eventually, nothing, the album as a whole will get the feels right.

That’s what makes Rodrigo’s new single “Serena Joy” stand out more so on its own. Released in celebration with this weekend’s Daisy Chain Fields festival, which she founded, the listen proves that lightning can at least strike more than once in the instance of her taking on neon gothic post-punk electricity coursing through the bigger heartbeats of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’s as if she invented alternative-pop all along, and then goes one step further in seeking inspo from The Handmaid’s Tale in standing up for something against today’s oppressors in power, which too many within the pop zeitgeist stand clear of altogether. “If they do it to them / They’ll do it to you,” she warns. Good on her for waking up the masses while making cool-as-hell pop music that punches back on top of it.

Olivia Rodrigo’s “serena joy” single is available now on Geffen Records.