The Merge debut single from Chicago’s Case Oats,“Seventeen” is a perfect “hello” from the band, brooding and playful and pitched to the left of their country-rock cradle, a poem expressed like a 1 a.m. torch song on a long-lost iPod that strikes a riveting balance between Iris DeMent and Kimya Dawson.

Case Oats leader Casey Gomez Walker on “Seventeen”:

When you’re seventeen years old, everything feels like the most important thing in the world, yourself included. And growing up in a small town [Eureka, Missouri], it’s even harder to see over the horizon. Every emotion feels big. This is a song about making it past that feeling.