The music of Toronto quartet PONY has always teetered between the plug ’n’ play spirit of ’90s grunge and the beat-driven intricacies of 2020s bedroom pop. But their third album presents us with their most fully realized fusion of these oppositional aesthetics. Clearly Cursed is a nonstop charm offensive that feels scientifically engineered to elicit maximum joy at your next indie-rock pool party, whether it’s recasting the sun-soaked sing-alongs of Sheryl Crow in a dream-pop shimmer (“Superglue”), channeling the ecstatic New Wave energy of a Go-Go’s classic (“Middle of Summer”), or processing vintage ’60s girl-group sounds into a fuzzy alt-rock anthem (“Swallowing Stars”). And with irrepressible vocalist Sam Bielanski at the helm, even the most vulnerable expressions of post-breakup melancholy are filtered into joyfully jangly juggernauts like “Hot and Mean.”