Duran Duran once said it wanted to be the band that people were dancing to when the bomb dropped. Well, minus the Cold War reference, “Paper Gods,” which will be released Sept. 11 on Warner Bros.

Somewhere in the unwritten songbook of pop covers, there’s a clause that states you must turn every ‘80s-pop banger into the power ballad it was meant to be. Enter: future-pop wunderkind Shamir. To ...