Save Me

Lorely Rodriguez (aka Empress Of) told Apple Music that 2020’s *I’m Your Empress Of* album was “painful and vulnerable and urgent.” While the five-song *Save Me*—her first collection of music since then—has moments of melancholy (“I want to be somewhere familiar/My mind is in handcuffs,” she sings on “Cry for Help”), it’s hard to feel anything other than joy while listening to it. And that’s if you can keep still long enough to process what Rodriguez is singing. *Save Me* is highly danceable in the way of recent collaborations with MNDR (“Love in Reverse”) and Jim-E Stack (“Note to Self”), the latter of whom pops up here for the women’s empowerment anthem “Turn the Table.” Two other tracks within the painfully short set, “Save Me” and “Dance for You,” are cut from a mold of dance pop at its truest, built from heartache, yet steeped in hope.

Lorely Rodriguez returns with a short collection of disco- and house-inflected pop songs about tormented emotions and burning desire.