Dixie Chicks’ Fiery Return, and 10 More New Songs

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.

Dixie Chicks, ‘Gaslighter’

The first new Dixie Chicks album since 2006 is coming out in May, and its namesake debut single answers the question “What would a Jack Antonoff/Dixie Chicks collaboration sound like” while very much not answering the question “What exactly did Natalie Maines’s ex do on her boat?” The song is a (seemingly autobiographical, very specific) road map to divorce, with choruses featuring the pristine three-part harmony the Chicks — Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer — have been known for since their breakout 1998 album, “Wide Open Spaces,” went 12 times platinum. There’s a lot of raw emotion packed into the three and a half minutes of “Gaslighter,” which can feel at times like it’s more about the message than the melody, but this high-octane, grittier update of the sound the Chicks last left us with on the 2006 LP “Taking the Long Way” is a tempting teaser of what’s yet to come. CARYN GANZ

Vietnam National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health with Khac Hung, Min and Erik, ‘Jealous Coronavirus/Washing Hand Song’

Public health gets perky in “Jealous Coronavirus,” a remake of a Vietnamese pop hit, “Ghen” (“Jealous”) by its original singers, Min and Erik, with new lyrics by Khac Hung that mix medical advice — hand washing, not touching your face, avoiding crowds — and national pride: “Vietnam dares to beat the pandemic!” Amid glimmering keyboards, Min and Erik sound just as earnest singing about hygiene as they did about romance. JON PARELES

Diet Cig, ‘Thriving’

The first line of “Thriving” is the title of Diet Cig’s coming album, “Do You Wonder About Me?,” due May 1. “I will never hate myself/The way you want me to,” Alex Luciano informs her absent ex, with the sweet clarity of her voice riding verses that seethe and rumble with a ferocity that harks back to the Who. She’s airily polite — “I’m thriving, thanks for asking” — but the music isn’t. PARELES

Jarv Is, ‘House Music All Night Long’

Is this the first song for self-quarantine? “House Music All Night Long” isn’t about an ecstatic night at a club. It’s about staying home, stuck in “a world of interiors,” waiting for someone through a day and night as the cabin fever grows. “Goddamn this claustrophobia/’cause I should be disrobing you,” Jarvis Cocker semi-rhymes. Instead of the Britpop of his long-running band Pulp, Cocker (now billing himself as Jarv Is) surrounds himself with hazy keyboards and blipping sequencers; a four-on-the-floor beat sometimes surfaces only to disappear under mournful chords. He can’t turn solitude into a party for very long. PARELES

Rina Sawayama, ‘XS’

When does the lampoon become the thing itself? Rina Sawayama, a Japanese-British pop singer and model, slams together genres while she sings about compulsive consumption in “XS,” which she has described as “a song that mocks capitalism in a sinking world.” The track is hurtling, high-impact pop — quick-strummed acoustic guitar, percussion, strings — with sudden blasts of hard-rock guitar and little trap-like hollows. Sawayama boasts, “I’ll take that one, that one, yeah that one too/Luxury and opulence,” then reels off designer brands and demands, “Give me just a little bit more.” (Her previous single was named “Comme des Garçons,” like the Japanese fashion label.) “Where did it go awry?” she briefly wonders in the bridge, but she’s not exactly flaunting any irony. PARELES

Blueface featuring NLE Choppa, ‘Holy Moly’

Last year, Blueface joined NLE Choppa on the remix of “Shotta Flow,” one of 2019’s most incendiary singles. “Holy Moly,” their new collaboration, is like a photonegative of that song — a mean stomp rather than a buoyant thump, surly lyrics delivered in surly fashion rather than surly lyrics delivered with wild glee. JON CARAMANICA

Brandy Clark, ‘Can We Be Strangers’

This song, from the new Brandy Clark album “Your Life Is a Record,” channels the slow saunter and tightly controlled mood of 1980s smooth-country for a carefully calibrated tune about a broken heart. “We struck out as lovers, we struck out as friends,” Clark declaims, dry as a desert. “Is it to much to ask/Can we be strangers?” CARAMANICA

Lauv featuring BTS, ‘Who’

A moody, impressive, smoldering duet between the tender-voiced Lauv and the vocal dynamos of BTS. Lauv sounds lonely and a little lost in his heartbreak, while BTS arrives with indignation and finesse. CARAMANICA

Kenny Barron and Dave Holland, ‘Pass It On’

Two septuagenarian jazz eminences, the pianist Kenny Barron and the bassist Dave Holland teamed up in 2014 on a winning album of plain-spoken duets, “The Art of Conversation.” Now they’re back with “Without Deception,” a new LP, and the conversation has expanded to include the younger Johnathan Blake on drums. On the lively Holland composition “Pass It On,” Blake kicks off with a cantering drum solo — his soft-pedaled, high-impact playing reminiscent of Barron’s own style — before he and Holland lock into a kick-stepping groove that’s loose but secure. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Chris Dingman, ‘Ali’

On each of his first two albums, the vibraphonist Chris Dingman made himself an element within his sextet’s prismatic splendor, full of interplay between spiky glistening surfaces — like an El Anatsui work rendered as music. On “Embrace,” his latest album, Dingman cuts the band’s membership in half, and the challenge of building a tapestry falls largely to him. Somehow he rises to it, laying chords atop arpeggios, running across the instrument’s range, all while focusing your ear on the big empty space in the trio’s sound. His study of Indian and West African classical musics has helped to furnish his toolbox, and on “Ali” he pays homage to an inspiration, the Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, though Dingman’s playing here is as influenced by the sound of the kora, a different West African stringed instrument, as by the guitar. RUSSONELLO

Vladislav Delay, ‘Rakka’

The pressure feels relentless, close to physical, in “Rakka,” the title track of the new album by Vladislav Delay, a.k.a. the Finnish electronic musician Sasu Ripatti. He spent time in remote locations above the Arctic Circle, and translated that desolation and danger into tracks that threaten to blanket the entire frequency spectrum: blizzards of formless noise, bursts of rapid-fire distorted beats, mountainous immovable sustained tones, crashes and blasts and phantom aircraft. There’s continual change, but no respite. PARELES