Hear tracks by Ethel Cain, PinkPantheress, 100 gecs and others.
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.
Coi Leray, ‘Players’
It takes a certain audacity to sample Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” but, as the 25-year-old rapper Coi Leray puts it on her punchy new single “Players,” “when you a boss you could do what you want.” The track has a playful swagger, and a relatively straightforward, if potent, message: “Girls is players, too.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
PinkPantheress, ‘Boy’s a Liar’
Insecurities and fragmented bits of heartbreak ping across the weightless atmosphere of “Boy’s a Liar,” the latest two-minute missive from the TikTok phenomenon PinkPantheress. “Every time I pull my hair, well, it’s only out of fear/That you’ll find me ugly and one day you’ll disappear,” the 21-year-old British musician confesses, melancholically, to an unappreciative guy. The producer Mura Masa, though, turns out to be an attentive accomplice: His kinetic, carbonated beat bolsters the energy of PinkPantheress’s vocal and makes her sound like the heroine of her very own video game. ZOLADZ
100 gecs, ‘Hey Big Man’
Ahead of their much-anticipated second album “10,000 Gecs” — which finally has a release date of March 17 — the beloved hyperpop enfants terribles 100 gecs have released a surprise three-song EP, “Snake Eyes.” The whole thing is very much worth your time (and it’s only six minutes long): “Torture Me” features Skrillex and effectively compresses his glossy production style into the gecs’ lo-fi universe; “Runaway” is Dylan Brady and Laura Les’s warped version of a piano ballad, all AutoTuned operatics and melodramatic sonic explosions. The opener “Hey Big Man” is the EP’s most potent adrenaline shot, a scream-along live staple that updates the sound of “Treats”-era Sleigh Bells and piles on absurdist quotables. They’ve rarely been more audacious, or funnier: “I smoked two bricks, now I can’t pronounce ‘anemone.’” ZOLADZ
Ethel Cain, ‘Famous Last Words (An Ode to Eaters)’
Ethel Cain — the darkly gothic yet high-gloss songwriter Hayden Silas Anhedonia — quietly released to SoundCloud this prettily morbid waltz inspired by “Bones and All,” the Luca Guadagnino film about a romance between cannibals. “Eat of me, baby, skin to the bone/Body on body until I’m all gone,” she sings, over strummed, echoey guitar chords and a wavery keyboard, serenely offering to sacrifice herself for love. JON PARELES
serpentwithfeet, ‘The Hands’
“Look at the hands that fed me today/Bless the hands that wiped the tears from my face,” serpentwithfeet (Josiah Wise) sings in “The Hands.” It’s a hymn of gratitude that arrives with sonic undercurrents of dread. As serpentwithfeet harmonizes with himself, joined by a choir, piano chords give way to inhuman electronic tones and drumbeats rumble like distant thunder. He sings about finding a refuge, but the production makes clear that he’s still very much at risk. PARELES
Kali Horse, ‘In the Water’
Kali Horse, formerly Kaleidoscope Horse, is the style-hopping Canadian duo of Sam Maloney and Desiree Das Gupta with assorted backup musicians. “In the Water” works up to beat-driven psychedelia: motoric like Krautrock, using the sound of dripping water as percussion, flecked with violin and harp sounds, cheerfully offering advice — “Don’t ask for much/Don’t ask if you will ever change” — and kicking up a ruckus before dissolving into a welter of vocal overdubs and a cryptic postscript: “Guilt takes many forms,” they sing. PARELES
Anna B Savage, ‘In|Flux’
The English songwriter Anna B Savage sings about one more tense, failing relationship in “In|Flux,” the title track from an album due in February. The song is a contrasty two-parter. Sustained woodwinds breathe a chord behind her at the beginning as she sings, between fraught pauses, about an angry, unsatisfying lover. But then a beat arrives, and it turns out that separation is liberation. Her low, troubled voice starts to leap upward as she exults, “I want to be alone/I’m happy on my own.” PARELES
Jelly Roll, ‘She’
Jelly Roll — the stage name of Jason DeFord — has a Southern-rock yowl to rival Chris Stapleton or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant; he can also rap. In “She,” he just sings. It’s a song about an addict — as strings and horns join him, all he can do is warn, “She’s afraid of coming down.” PARELES
Fievel Is Glauque, ‘Save the Phenomenon’
Fievel Is Glauque — the duo of the singer Ma Clemént and the instrumentalist Zach Phillips — glides easily through the musical and verbal acrobatics it packs into “Save the Phenomenon.” It’s from their new album, “Flaming Swords,” a set of 18 jazzy, hyperactive miniatures, all but one lasting less than three minutes; “Save the Phenomenon” runs 1:46. Over knotty chords and brisk meter shifts, Clement tosses off head-scratchers like “By parting the leaves you meet the sublime/and there a fake you find,” all with an utterly charming nonchalance. PARELES
Source: Music - nytimes.com
