The Leaning Towers - "Rich Enough to Ignore It". In music, in art, the why-didn't-wes are rarely meted out like this. Usually it's dragging feet, dusty drums, a weary man hounded by flashbacks. Here: tambourine, tuba, synths, fanfare, and of course that golden guitar-line. The guitar never leaves the moment of open possibility; it curls back over and over it, like a life can always be remade. The song seems... happy. Resigned to its regrets, comfortable in its shoes. Nostalgic in a pool of warm tender sun. "Probably should be singing redemption songs / instead of filling out exemption forms."

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Miranda Lambert - "Desperation". This song's beautiful and low-key, and it's about stuff that pop-songs usually keep secret. Truths rarely sung: that persistence is dangerous, that sometimes the only reason we hope is so we can forget, that often we love half-heartedly. Over drum-thump and guitar-glitter a country-pop princess explains this, subtle truths in simple words, and at the end of every chorus her advice falters - at the end of every chorus she can sing just one thing, that she's still "desperate for you". And I don't know, it's beautiful and sad & in its way wise, but I wonder if perhaps the greatest kindness "Desperation" offers is just in its use of "you". A song for the lonely, and its narrator longing for "you".

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The remarkable artwork of Betsy Walton is currently in exhibition at the Compound Gallery in Portland. You're looking at some of it above.