Through four albums, Thao Nguyen has sung about life’s stickier situations with emotional frankness that translated as pure likeability. But on A Man Alive, Thao lets her friend Merrill Garbus—of kinetic weirdos tUnE-yArDs—handle the production. The result takes Thao’s familiarly warm songs and stretches them over knotty, beat-heavy guitar workouts. The album is wonderfully odd and playful, catchy yet complex, and very much alive. Whereas on “Meticulous Bird,” her band The Get Down Stay Down would’ve once served up terse drumming and guitar, A Man Alive delivers snarling funk with a whole mélange of percussion and bass leading the way. “I got my baby to bed—oh, child, broke her to pieces instead,” Thao crows with newfound swagger. Even amid the clatter, though, she never loses her ability to crush you. “Oh, Daddy, I broke in a million pieces, that makes you a millionaire,” she coos on the hushed “Millionaire.” The results are, indeed, rich.