Shygirl (1993- )

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    Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro’s Love Trilogy, and 8 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks from Meshell Ndegeocello, the Japanese House, Hannah Jadagu and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, ‘Beso’“Beso” (“Kiss”) quivers with fear of separation, as Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro tell each other that “Being away from you is hell.” The song is part of a three-track collaborative project called “RR” the couple released on Friday; the “Beso” video hints at an engagement. They keep their voices high, small and tremulous over a brusque beat topped with quasi-Baroque keyboards and strings, a genteel backdrop for deep neediness. PARELESMeshell Ndegeocello, ‘Virgo’“They’re calling me back to the stars,” Meshell Ndegeocello declares in “Virgo” from her coming album, “The Omnichord Real Book.” It’s a funky march that revels in cosmic imagery, cross-rhythms and multifarious vocals: singing, chanting, making percussive sounds, high harmonies, husky low confidences and an occasional “la-la.” Morphing through nearly nine minutes, the track struts on Ndegeocello’s synthesizer bass lines; twinkles and hovers with Brandee Younger’s harp; and sprints toward the end with double time drumming, headed somewhere new. PARELESMoor Mother featuring Kyle Kidd, Keir Neuringer and Aquiles Navarro, ‘We Got the Jazz’Moor Mother seethes about Black achievements met with disrespect in “We Got the Jazz”: “We ain’t ’bout to stand for no national anthem,” she declaims. “When we was swinging they couldn’t even stand in attention.” Her testy voice is surrounded in a rich, polytonal murk: multiple tracks of Aquiles Navarro’s trumpet, Keir Neuringer’s saxophone and Kyle Kidd’s vocals over a slowly heaving bass line, burdened but determined. PARELESThe Japanese House, ‘Boyhood’The British musician Amber Bain, who records as the Japanese House, reckons with her past and present on the flickering synth-pop track “Boyhood,” which pairs smooth sonic surfaces and effervescent electronic flourishes with her yearning, achingly human vocals. “For a moment there, I swear I saw me,” Bain sings, her 20-something growing pains palpable as she yearns — in vain — for a stable, unchanging sense of self. ZOLADZRina Sawayama, ‘Eye for an Eye’The British-Japanese pop musician Rina Sawayama makes her film debut on Friday in “John Wick: Chapter 4,” and has released a new song from the soundtrack, the slinky “Eye for an Eye.” The track splits the difference between Sawayama’s gloriously bombastic debut album, “Sawayama,” and the softer, more recent “Hold the Girl.” Propelled by a mid-tempo, industrial chug, Sawayama vamps with the confident menace of an action star. “A life for a life,” she sings. “I’ll see you in hell on the other side.” ZOLADZBully, ‘Days Move Slow’“Days Move Slow,” from Alicia Bognanno’s grungy indie-rock project Bully, is a song about being caught in the muck of grief — she wrote it after the death of her beloved dog, Mezzi — but it also has a propulsive, bouncy energy that promises eventual forward motion. “There’s flowers on your grave that grow,” Bognanno sings in her signature holler, battling her buzzing guitar. “Something’s gotta change, I know.” ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Woe (I See It From Your Side) (Björk Remix)’Björk’s remix of Shygirl’s “Woe” is equal parts endorsement and disruption. Shygirl, born Blaine Muise in England to parents from Zimbabwe, has worked with pop experimenters like Sophie, Arca, Tinashe and Sega Bodega, and she was a founder of the label Nuxxe. “Woe,” from her 2022 debut album, “Nymph,” was a smoldering counterattack to a toxic partner: “Smiling faces fade just to leave a shell,” she charged. Björk, playing fourth-dimensional chess, offers both sympathy — agreeing with Shygirl that “I see it from your side” — and outside perspective. The new track lurches from the dark groove of “Woe” to something else: Björk’s vocal harmonies, warped keyboard vamps and mystical life lessons. “Forever we shoot for the sublime,” she advises. PARELESHannah Jadagu, ‘Warning Sign’“Warning Sign” is a hushed, hazy song that maps interpersonal tensions onto musical contrasts: quiet and loud, sustained and rhythmic, dulcet and distorted. Jadagu is an N.Y.U. student who grew up in a Texas suburb and recorded her first EP, in 2021, entirely on an iPhone. She has more resources since signing to Sub Pop. “Warning Sign” could have been an easygoing R&B vamp, but Jadagu has other imperatives; the song coos with keyboard chords and airborne harmonies, then crashes or glitches. What she hears goes with what she feels: “I can’t stand to hear your voice when it’s oh so loud/Could you quiet down?” PARELESLucinda Chua featuring Yeule, ‘Something Other Than Years’The songs on “Yian” (Chinese for “sparrow”), the new album by the London-based songwriter Lucinda Chua, are meditations seeking serenity — often just two alternating chords, set out slowly on keyboard and sustained by orchestral strings. In “Something Other Than Years,” she sings, “When all I fear is all I know/Show me how to live this life,” and she’s answered by the higher voice of Yeule, who promises, “There’s more in this life/Angel being of light.” PARELES More

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      Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake’s Team-Up, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Shygirl, Ava Max, Horse Lords 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.Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake, ‘Sin Fin’Ever the canny collaborator, Justin Timberlake joins Romeo Santos — formerly of the Dominican-rooted boy band Aventura, now a stadium act on his own — to pump up a typically imploring bachata. Both of them are sleek high tenors who can always sound like they’re eager for romance; both also know what it’s like to sing answered by ecstatic screams. “Sin Fin” (“Endless”) is a bilingual pop promise with a stalking undercurrent. Timberlake sings, “Can’t escape my love ’cause it’s yours/Even if you walk out the door it’ll chase you down.” It opens with cathedral-choir harmonies, then buttresses the bongos and syncopated guitar of bachata with pop’s synthesizers and hip-hop’s hype-man cheers. Melding bachata and power ballad, it still begs for love with high drama. JON PARELESAva Max, ‘Million Dollar Baby’Ava Max is partying like it’s 2000 and 2004 on the thumping “Million Dollar Baby,” a sleek, calisthenic pop song that name-checks Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture winner and interpolates “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” LeAnn Rimes’ once-inescapable “Coyote Ugly” theme song. (Who said Y2K nostalgia was dead!) While Max still hasn’t quite carved out a distinct persona in the pop sphere, she’s proven herself to be a satisfying practitioner of aughts-pop pastiche — there’s even a stuttering echo of “Bad Romance” on the bridge. “She broke out of her chains,” Max sings of her titular, diamond-encrusted heroine, “Turned the fire into rain.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAlex Lahey, ‘Congratulations’On the booming power-pop track “Congratulations,” the Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lahey attempts to process the news that an ex is getting married: “Congratulations,” she sings, dripping with sarcasm, “so happy for your perfect life.” There’s pathos in her voice during the verses — “If I don’t care then why do I still think about you all the time?” — but the chorus is volcanic and cathartic, as Lahey’s colossal guitar tones swell like a sudden surge of inner strength. ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Nike’“Peri-peri, too hot to handle,” the London-based Shygirl boasts with cool confidence on “Nike,” the latest single from her forthcoming debut album, “Nymph.” While the previous songs she’s released from the record have been glitchy and ethereal — think hyperpop crossed with “Visions”-era Grimes — “Nike” is all woozy low-end and spotlit swagger. “He tell me, ‘Nike, just do it,” Shygirl intones on the track (which was produced by the British electronic artist Mura Masa), her delivery full of winking, sensual charisma. ZOLADZHorse Lords, ‘Mess Mend’The instrumental “Mess Mend,” by the Baltimore band Horse Lords, starts out skewed — with chords from a slightly detuned piano hitting unevenly on offbeats — and gets nuttier from there, with a tricky 7/4 meter, a guitar melody that suggests a non-Euclidean hoedown and a gradual devolution into a funky electronic drone, not to mention a final twist. It’s a brainy lark. PARELESVDA, ‘Môgô Kélé’VDA — short for Voix des Anges — is a vocal duo from Ivory Coast that has become a consistent hitmaker in the Ivorian pop style called zouglou, which floats suavely sustained vocals over brisk polyrhythms and glossy synthesizers: airborne tracks that often hold sociopolitical messages. Above the speedy six-beat rhythms of “Môgô Kélé” — a hyperactive mesh of drums, marimbas, flutes and call-and-response vocals — VOA sings about easing tensions that have risen lately between Mali and Ivory Coast, citing their longstanding historical ties. The video shows jailed soldiers; it also gives the VDA a backdrop of both countries’ flags and words like “la paix,” “fraternité” and “union,” while the music sparkles and bounds ahead. PARELESDanielle Ponder, ‘Only the Lonely’“Love is lost and I must walk away,” Danielle Ponder sings, with mournful resolution, in “Only the Lonely,” a ballad that fights back any regrets with the certainty that “You don’t love me, you just lonely.” As the track rises from hollow keyboard tones to grand orchestral melancholy, Ponder’s voice opens up to reveal its bluesy power, with ghosts of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. By the end she finds herself, once again, nearly alone. PARELESCarm featuring Edie Brickell, ‘More and More’CJ Camerieri, who records as Carm, plays brass instruments in yMusic, a contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded; he has also backed Bon Iver and Paul Simon. In his own music, he often multitracks his trumpet and French horn into a supportive brass choir, as he does in “More and More,” a collaboration with Edie Brickell as a topliner. She sings about love, almost diffidently, amid sustained swells of brasses and strings. an electronic drumbeat and some echoing trumpet calls raise tensions, only to dissolve them in the undulating warmth of Carm’s orchestrations. PARELESWild Pink featuring Julien Baker, ‘Hold My Hand’John Ross, who leads Wild Pink, went through extensive cancer treatment between the band’s 2021 debut album and its coming one, “ILYSM.” He has explained that “Hold My Hand” came from a moment of “lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under.” As he whisper-sings to ask, “Will you be there when I come around,” joined by Julien Baker sounding delicate and fond, the band rolls through four rising chords again and again, promising nothing but reassurance. PARELESDawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, ‘Vantablack’The ever-evolving, impossible-to-pigeonhole Dawn Richard once again introduces a new side of herself on the first movement of “Pigments,” an upcoming collaborative album she made with the experimentalist Spencer Zahn. Each track on the album is named for a specific hue: “Coral,” “Sandstone,” “Indigo,” and “Vantablack” make up “Movement 1,” which the pair released in full this week. The culmination “Vantablack” is a tranquil, abstract, and utterly gorgeous contemporary classical soundscape populated by lilting clarinet, Zahn’s airy bass playing, and above it all Richard’s fluttering vocals, which profess a deep and radical comfort in her own skin. ZOLADZSteve Lehman and Sélébéyone, ‘Poesie I’In the hip-hop-jazz-avant-electroacoustic group Sélébéyone — which means “intersection” in the West African language Wolof — the saxophonist, composer and producer Steve Lehman collaborates with rappers from New York City (HPrizm from the Antipop Consortium) and Dakar (Gaston Bandimic), a saxophonist from Paris (Maciek Lasserre) and a drummer based in Brooklyn (Damion Reid). The group’s second album, “Xaybu: the Unseen,” pushes its previous ambitions further. “Poesie I” knocks its rhythms around with piano clusters, drumming that keeps moving the downbeat, hopscotching saxophone lines and a rap from HPrizm that keeps switching up its flow: “These words don’t fit so I’m forcing ‘em in/smashing the edges,” he declares. PARELES More