“Did you know that I’m the face of youth today?” Kai Slater sings on Mod Mayday 23’s “Face of Youth Today,” exuding both the graceful charm and supreme confidence that swiftly made him the new crown prince of jangle pop. After achieving indie sainthood status with the 2025 double-whammy of Radio DDR and Balloon Balloon Balloon, the Chicago wunderkind (also of Lifeguard) cultivates his superhero origin story with a wide-release reissue of Mod Mayday 23, a grab bag of 2023-era Tascam recordings made when he was just 18 and initially released in an extremely limited cassette run of around 50 copies. Even in this primordial state, Slater’s songwriting gifts are in full bloom, as he leads out a hit parade of Rickenbacker’d delights like a one-man golden-oldies station. And rather than obscure the candy-coated appeal of songs like “It’s a Mod Mod World” and “Let Me Be the One,” the degraded recording quality faithfully conjures the experience of ’60s kids hearing the latest British Invasion hits blaring out of their battery-operated handheld AM radios. But Slater is no cosplaying retro purist; rather, he’s connecting the dots between Beatlemania and subsequent countercultural movements like punk (“Tonight’s the Night”), ’90s lo-fi (“Friday Night”), and underground psych/noise (“Live Without Her Love”) to carry rock ’n’ roll’s revolutionary spirit into the here and now. Our Favorite Track: “I’ve Got You on My Mind,” an adrenalized shot of joyous jangle that doubles as both a paean to a crush and a theme-song advertisement for Sharp Pins’ earworm melodies.