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    Rina Sawayama Flips Damnation Into a Dance Party, and 15 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Burna Boy, Metric, Sudan Archives 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.Rina Sawayama, ‘This Hell’Ever the pop maximalist, Rina Sawayama’s first single from her upcoming album, “Hold the Girl,” has it all: a fiery chorus, cheeky humor, devil puns for days and even a gloriously cheesy hair-metal guitar solo. “This hell is better with you, we’re burning up together/Baby that makes two,” she sings on the towering hook, making eternal damnation sound like an exclusive VIP party. Both the glammy intensity and be-yourself messaging feel like a throwback to “Born This Way”-era Lady Gaga, but it’s all remixed through Rina’s signature, neo-Y2K-pop sensibility. LINDSAY ZOLADZmxmtoon, ‘Frown’If the California singer-songwriter mxmtoon has a mission statement, it’s something like catchy, smiley self-help. “Frown” is from her new album, “Rising,” and it presents itself as an antidote to being “stuck in a loop overthinking all our pain.” She musters four-chord pop optimism, multitracked vocals and a pop-reggae backbeat to insist, “It’s OK to frown/smile upside-down.” JON PARELESDiana Ross and Tame Impala, ‘Turn Up the Sunshine’Nothing screams “Minions” like a collaboration between … Tame Impala and Diana Ross? Yet their styles blend surprisingly well on “Turn Up the Sunshine,” the first single from the Jack Antonoff-produced soundtrack for the animated summer movie “Minions: The Rise of Gru.” (Yes, the man is so ubiquitous, he’s even producing for the Minions now.) A sleek, seamless and lovingly conjured disco throwback, “Turn Up the Sunshine” allows Kevin Parker an opportunity to go fully retro in his arrangement and saves Ross ample space for ecstatic vocals and some groovy spoken-word vamping. ZOLADZCarrie Underwood, ‘She Don’t Know’Infidelity gets a fierce retaliation in “She Don’t Know,” a canny country revenge song from Carrie Underwood and her collaborators, David Garcia and Hillary Lindsay. A foot-tapping beat and country instruments like mandolin and fiddle back her as she sings, with the vindictive glee of someone escaping a very bad situation, “What she don’t know is she can have him.” PARELESKatzù Oso, ‘Conchitas’A good dream-pop song sparkles, like sunlight refracting through water. On the lustrous “Conchitas,” from Katzù Oso’s debut album, “Tmí,” the Los Angeles-based artist Paul Hernandez bathes in ’90s nostalgia, soaking in shimmering synths, buzzing guitar riffs and a breathy falsetto. The result harnesses Cocteau Twins’ most tender, romantic qualities, but Hernandez glazes the track in his own special gloss, too: Much of “Tmí” was written in Boyle Heights, and as sweet as the pan dulce treats of its namesake, “Conchitas” embraces the spirit of that neighborhood, casting it into the soundtrack for a saccharine, lovesick daydream. ISABELIA HERRERASudan Archives, ‘Selfish Soul’It might not seem like the impish charm of a playground rhyme and a jagged violin hook would seamlessly coalesce, but Sudan Archives has always taken risks. On her new single “Selfish Soul,” the artist born Brittney Parks reprises her irreverent boho whimsy, crashing together reverbed vocals, a rapped verse and wild visuals with a razor-sharp message: a promise to love and embrace every kind of Black hair texture. “If I wear it straight will they like me more?/Like those girls on front covers,” Parks sings. The video oozes euphoria, too; Parks climbs a chrome stripper pole, plays the violin upside down and twerks in a mud pit with her girlfriends. What did you ever do? HERRERAMetric, ‘Doomscroller’Over 10 minutes long, Metric’s “Doomscroller” is a minisuite that proceeds from electronic dystopia to a plea for empathy to an offer of reassurance that’s cradled by physical instruments. The dystopia is convincing: a tireless mechanical thump and throbbing, blipping tones — racing like a gathering troll mob — behind Emily Haines’s calmly caustic observations about internet rabbit holes and entrenched inequality. “Salt of the earth underpaid to serve you,” she notes, and, “Scum of the earth overpaid to rob you.” The reassurance, though it builds up to a full-bodied rock-band march, is shakier; as the song ends, electronic blips reappear. PARELESSylvan Esso, ‘Sunburn’Sylvan Esso celebrates self-indulgence and rues its aftermath in “Sunburn”: “Sunburn blistering, the heat under your skin,” Amelia Meath sings. “Oh, but it felt so good.” The electronic backup is bouncy and pointillistic — nearly all staccato single notes, rarely a chord — and punctuated with the cheeriest of samples: a bicycle bell. PARELESBurna Boy, ‘Last Last’Burna Boy juggles heartache, accusations, self-medication and reminders of his success in “Last Last,” a post-breakup song about a roller coaster of feelings: “I put my life into my job and I know I’m in trouble/She manipulate my love,” he sulks. “Why you say I did nothing for you/When I for do anything you want me to do.” The video shows him surrounded by friends, possessions and awards, smoking and drinking. The title of the sample that provides the track’s nervous strummed rhythm and vocal hook suggests a very different scenario: It’s from Toni Braxton’s 2009 single “He Wasn’t Man Enough.” PARELESMeridian Brothers & El Grupo Renacimiento, ‘Metamorfosis’Meridian Brothers, a high-concept Colombian band formed in 1998 by Eblis Álvarez, delights in twisting and time-warping the roots of salsa and other Latin American styles. “Metamorfosis” — from an album due Aug. 5 — borrows Kafka’s title for a song about a man waking up transformed into a robot, facing a futuristic world of drones and screens; he summons Yoruba deities to battle transhumanism. Blending brisk guaracha and montuno rhythms with eruptions of psychedelic reverb and jazzy piano, it’s a percussive romp. PARELESCalypso Rose featuring Carlos Santana and the Garifuna Collective, ‘Watina’The Garifuna people, an Afro-Caribbean culture that has maintained its own language and traditions primarily in Belize and Honduras, are descendants of Indigenous Arawaks and of West Africans who survived a 17th-century shipwreck to escape slavery. The Garifuna Collective, founded by Andy Palacio, revived and updated old Garifuna songs and “Watina” (“I Called Out”) was the title song of its 2007 album. This remake adds a horn section — pushing the arrangement a bit closer to ska — and has lead vocals from the Trinidadian icon Calypso Rose, 82, who has been an honorary citizen of Belize since 1982, along with stinging guitar from Carlos Santana and some lyrics translated into English: “Lord please help me, even if I’m alone.” PARELESOneida, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand’The long-running Brooklyn band Oneida loves repetition, layering and noise, and its catalog includes plenty of arty, elaborate structures. But “I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand,” previewing an album due in August, recalls foundational punk-rock songs like “Roadrunner” by the Modern Lovers. It uses just two chords nearly all the way through (with one more for a bridge), a hurtling beat and terse lyrics: “So sure of ourselves/Who needs a plan?” But those two chords support a welter of guitar parts and drum salvos that just keeps getting more euphoric. PARELESFKJ featuring Toro y Moi, ‘A Moment of Mystery’Vincent Fenton, the French producer who bills himself as FKJ (for French Kiwi Juice), collaborated with Chaz Bundick, who records as Toro y Moi, and Toro’s keyboardist, Anthony Ferraro, on a track from FKJ’s album due in June, “Vincent.” It’s three minutes of lush, wistful uncertainty: serenely blurred vocals, hovering keyboard tones, ambiguous chords that stay unresolved. “I love the drama because I never know what the ending’s like,” Bundick sings, matching the music. PARELESEsperanza Spalding, ‘Formwela 12’“Our bodies are Music/You cannot play/Music/Without the body/Dancing.” The 91-year-old dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, a former Alvin Ailey star, opens Esperanza Spalding’s latest with those lines of poetry; in the ensuing 13 minutes, she brings them to life. She glides and tilts across the floor of an open studio, surrounded by four dancers and four musicians — including Spalding, who uses her upright bass and a quiet, cooing voice to coax and support de Lavallade. Early in the performance, de Lavallade sits down beside her, laying an ear and a hand on the bass while Spalding plays. As the piece carries on, the band’s lush flourishes and pointillism are clearly coming in response to the dancers, as much as their steps are responding to the music. Mostly, everyone is focused on the guidance and the unhurried elegance of de Lavallade. The audio of this piece is a bonus track on the newly released vinyl version of Spalding’s “Songwrights Apothecary Lab.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOShabaka, ‘Explore Inner Space’Shabaka Hutchings begins this track improvising on a lone wood flute, against a backdrop of silence. Soon analog synthesizers and loops are pooling around him, and an electric guitar adds dewy, flickering plucks. The music never fully crescendos, but its mysterious serenity might invite to take up the charge of the track’s title. The tune comes from “Afrikan Culture,” the first solo EP released by this famed U.K.-based saxophonist, who has begun performing simply under the name Shabaka. RUSSONELLOMary Lattimore and Paul Sukeena, ‘Hundred Dollar Hoagie’The harpist Mary Lattimore and the guitarist Paul Sukeena, two experimental musicians and Philly-area expats who occasionally collaborate, have teamed up to release the stirring ambient album “West Kensington,” out Friday on the indie label Three Lobed recordings. The opener “Hundred Dollar Hoagie” announces itself humbly, with its playful title nodding to the all-time greatest regional slang word for a submarine sandwich, which does not quite prepare you for the seven-and-a-half minutes of otherworldly sublimity that it contains. Lattimore’s synthesizer chords and Sukeena’s warping, weeping guitar lines layer to create an almost lunar soundscape, pleasantly reminiscent of Brian Eno’s awe-struck 1983 masterwork “Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks.” ZOLADZ More

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      Romeo Santos’s Melodramatic Return, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jack Harlow, Flock of Dimes, Tame Impala 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, ‘Sus Huellas’“Sus Huellas,” the first single from Romeo Santos’s forthcoming fifth solo album, “Formula, Vol. 3,” finds him reprising the bleeding-heart theatrics he’s known for, recalling the kind of cortavenas (roughly, “wrist cutting”) torment of bachata classics. This time, the genre’s white-pants-wearing, antics-obsessed lover boy is trying to recover from the despair of a lost love, and the melodrama is in overdrive: “Come, pull out my veins/Because the plasma inside of me has the poison of her love,” he sings. “And take this lighter, I want you to burn my lips/Eliminate the taste of her tongue, which did me harm.” It’s not all tradition though; Santos drops in an EDM interlude that will have uptown clubs losing it. ISABELIA HERRERAJack Harlow, ‘Nail Tech’Last year Jack Harlow went to No. 1 as the guest on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby,” and he’s learned something from that experience. “Nail Tech” has echoes of that song’s horns, and Harlow approaches the beat similarly, with imagistic rapping — “You ain’t one of my dogs, why do you hound us?” — and a confidence that makes this song sound like a victory lap. JON CARAMANICAC. Tangana, Omar Montes, Daviles de Novelda and Canelita, ‘La Culpa’The Spanish singer-rapper C. Tangana gets top billing on “La Culpa” (“The Blame”), a song added to the deluxe version of his 2021 Latin Grammy-winning album “El Madrileño.” But except for a brief, vulnerable bridge, he spends most of the song merged in harmony with three other singers who are more robust and closer to flamenco — Omar Montes, Daviles de Novelda and the especially gutsy Canelita — while rock drums and electric guitars join flamenco handclaps to pace the song. While the lyrics profess guilt and regret, they’re delivered with jolly camaraderie, suggesting that male bonding can easily overcome pangs of conscience. JON PARELESTame Impala, ‘The Boat I Row’Kevin Parker, a.k.a. the one-man studio band Tame Impala, took so long to release his 2020 album, “The Slow Rush,” that of course he had outtakes. “The Boat I Row” is from his collection “The Slow Rush B-Sides and Remixes.” It shares the album’s stately, logy, time-warped sound — psychedelically phased drums playing a hip-hop beat, multitracked vocal harmonies suggesting both the Beatles and ELO — and its thoughts about dogged persistence. “Even if it takes a hundred thousand goes/The way’s in front of me ’cause that’s the one I chose,” Parker sings, at once diffident and determined. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Pure Love’Jenn Wasner, who records as Flock of Dimes, ponders unsatisfied desire — material and emotional — in “Pure Love,” recorded with the producer Nick Sanborn from Sylvan Esso: “I keep dreaming of a better moment,” she sings. She’s surrounded by looped voices and instruments, with ricocheting programmed beats that hit like 1980s drums; she sounds like she’ll persist. PARELESAsa, ‘Ocean’The songwriter Asa has forged a long career in Nigeria, singing about adversity and conflict as well as romance. But “Ocean” is pure affection. Asa is about to release her fifth studio album, “V,” and “Ocean” distills the ways Nigerian Afrobeats exalts Minimalism. The percussion is just a few syncopated taps, the bass lines are only two or three notes and Asa’s breathy voice floats with professions of pure devotion: “Boy, you are the ocean,” she coos, and everything about the song promises bliss. PARELESYeat featuring Young Thug, ‘Outsidë’Two generations of surrealists in one liquid pool of syllables. Yeat is still swooning over abstraction, and Young Thug, several years older, has learned how to form word-like shapes while still seeming to melt in real time. CARAMANICASigurd Hole, ‘The Presentation Dance’Like so many, the Norwegian bassist Sigurd Hole — a nimble-fingered player and a composer of sonically expansive, thoughtfully paced music — has been overcome with dismay at the fast-worsening climate crisis. Like too few, in the face of it he’s sought out wisdom and theory from non-industrialized societies. “The Presentation Dance” comes from his newest album, “Roraima,” which he made after reading “The Falling Sky,” a book by the Yanomami shaman and mouthpiece Davi Kopenawa. The rain-like pitter-patter of a marimba interacts with a small corps of strings, playing fluid and intertwined melodies that sometimes fall into a pizzicato repartee with the marimba’s mallets. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOEd Sheeran featuring Bring Me the Horizon, ‘Bad Habits’Last week Ed Sheeran released a new version of his song “The Joker and the Queen,” accompanied by Taylor Swift. Pfft. Predictably pretty. Plain. This is more like it. “Bad Habits” is maybe Sheeran’s most anodyne pop hit, and this version, which is theatrically stomped all over by the British metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon, rescues it, recalling the essential and overlooked “Punk Goes Pop” compilation series. CARAMANICAFrontperson, ‘Parade’Frontperson is the indie-rock duo of Kathryn Calder, from the New Pornographers, and Mark Hamilton, from Woodpigeon. Blooping, calliope-like keyboard arpeggios and layers of nonsense-syllable vocals give “Parade” a blithe, circusy tone as Calder and Hamilton sing about anticipation, connection and disconnection, accepting it all: “Sometimes you’re left/Sometimes you leave.” PARELESAmbar Lucid, ‘Dead Leaves’Ambar Lucid’s music bottles youthful longing. The 21-year-old, whose debut album, “Garden of Lucid,” collected stories about escape and radical self-acceptance, seems to know exactly how to stir the soul. “Should I even bother letting anybody know how I feel?” she wonders on “Dead Leaves.” It’s soft winter balladry that contains all the pain and promise of the change of seasons. HERRERAHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Jupiter’s Dance’“Jupiter’s Dance” is from the newly released “Life on Earth,” the seventh album Alynda Segarra has made as Hurray for the Riff Raff. The new songs contemplate the natural world and humanity’s toll on it. “Jupiter’s Dance” is a quasi-mystical reassurance — “Celestial children coming through/You never know who you’ll become” — with a glimmering bell tones and an undercurrent of Puerto Rican bomba, a brief benediction. PARELESJavon Jackson featuring Nikki Giovanni, ‘Night Song’The poet Nikki Giovanni selected the repertoire for “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni,” a new album by the strapping tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson that explores the lineage of Black American spirituals and hymns. But her voice appears on only one track, and it’s the one that’s not a church melody: “Night Song.” Rather that recite her own poetry, Giovanni sings this ode to unbelonging — a favorite of her old friend Nina Simone — with wistful conviction, picking up where Jackson’s gentle treatment of the melody leaves off. Her voice crinkles up on the high notes but loses none of its gravitas or tenderness as she sings: “Music, by the lonely sung/When you can’t help wondering:/Where do I belong?” RUSSONELLOChris Dingman, ‘Silently Beneath the Waves’For the vibraphonist Chris Dingman, solo playing was becoming central to his practice even before the pandemic hit. Since then, it’s been his primary mode, and he’s increasingly sought to use the big, chiming instrument as a vehicle for transcendence. That pursuit has guided him into a close study of a far tinier instrument: the mbira, a thumb piano with spiritual applications across southern Africa. On “Silently Beneath the Waves” — the opener to a new album of solo performances, “Journeys Vol. 1” — you can hear evidence of that research, as he repeats fetching, hypnotizing patterns that pull you into their force field before gradually giving way to a different shape. RUSSONELLO More

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      Tame Impala’s Disco-Prog Shrug, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Alice Glass, Jean Dawson and Mac DeMarco, Girlpool 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.Tame Impala, ‘No Choice’“No Choice” sums up the stasis of the pandemic: limited mobility, boredom, yearning, questioning, resignation. To be released as part of the expanded version of Tame Impala’s 2020 album, “The Slow Rush,” it’s one of Kevin Parker’s era-straddling solo productions: disco drums and percussion, prog-rock phasing on his voice, a guitar solo that sounds like Ernie Isley in the 1970s and lyrics that wonder, “What are we living for?” JON PARELESAlice Glass, ‘Fair Game’A listener doesn’t have to be aware of Alice Glass’s own story to recognize the crescendo of psychological manipulation — humiliation disguised as sympathy — in “Fair Game.” “I’m just trying to help you,” Glass deadpans in a little-girl coo alongside assessments like “You screw up everything” and “I’m so embarrassed for us.” A deep industrial thump, Gothic choir harmonies and a screamed backup refrain — “Where would you be without me?” — make clear that it’s actually a hellscape. PARELESJean Dawson and Mac DeMarco, ‘Menthol’The pop-punk revival of 2021 is alive in the melodic, middle-finger yelps of Jean Dawson, the genre crusher behind “Menthol” who was raised on the border between the United States and Mexico. This is gritted-teeth pop-punk, music for cheap cigs and driving with too many friends in the car. There is angsty precocity here, sure, but signs of versatility, too: Halfway through the track, Dawson takes a pause from screaming into the mic and melds his voice into a lonely R&B melody. The sun-dappled guitar tones of Mac DeMarco arrive, curling out of the track’s heavier, chugging riffs. And before it’s over, the sagacious DeMarco drops off a fatherly piece of advice for his host: “You should take it easy on yourself. Enjoy what you’re doing. And if you stop enjoying it at some point, no problem. Don’t do it anymore.” ISABELIA HERRERARuel, ‘Growing Up Is _____’Understatement of the year: “Growing up is weird.” The Australian songwriter Ruel admits but doesn’t quite take blame for his relationship misdeeds in this song, thumping along as he hops between tenor and falsetto, trying to justify himself. Even though he knows he failed, he tries to assign himself, “No regrets, no mistakes.” PARELESMitski, ‘Heat Lightning’How much did U2 change the landscape of rock? Mitski’s “Heat Lightning” is the kind of echoey and allegorical march that U2 forged decades ago, underpinned by a Velvet Underground drone. As its guitars and strings swell, the song surges forward steadfastly: “I’ve held on to feel the storm approaching,” Mitski sings, and then, “I give it up to you — I surrender.” PARELESLittle Dragon, ‘Drifting Out’“Drifting Out” has Yuri Nagano singing about precisely that feeling — “Deep sleep, crashing waves, heavy tide/Mmm, ooh love carry me down” — on an EP with three versions of the song: one with piano, one with cellos, one mixing all the sources with electronics. The cello version is the keeper; brawny arpeggios and rhythmic chords delivered by a pair of cellists including none other than Yo-Yo Ma. PARELESFlores, ‘Fools Gold’Some relationship send-offs surrender to despair; others are tokens of personal fortitude, reminders that there will always be a way forward. Flores’s “Fools Gold” is about an estrangement from a partner, but the Texas singer-songwriter is the one who comes out sure of herself. With the smokiness of a ’90s R&B icon, she oozes coldhearted pity for her ex over a funky bass line and operatic strings. “I got all your things to the left of me/You won’t be the death of me,” she sings. “Let me get one good look at you/Ain’t that a shame.” Ouch. HERRERAGirlpool, ‘Faultline’A country guitar twang, Harmony Tividad’s breathy coos and a sense of impressionistic abandon conjure a cinematic intensity on “Faultline.” But Girlpool doesn’t stop there — instead, it returns with the same propensity for piercing, bleeding-heart lyricism that has defined its work since “Before the World Was Big” in 2015. When Tividad sings, “I loved you so traumatically that I/Can barely lift the world you left for me,” there is little left to do than pull the covers over your head, turn off your alarm and let yourself decay under the sheets. HERRERAJeff Parker, ‘Ugly Beauty’There’s an almost alluring feeling of remove, of darkened vision but not necessarily a darkened attitude, in the sound of Jeff Parker’s guitar playing. When he’s unaccompanied, that feeling doubles. A collaborator with Meshell Ndegeocello and Makaya McCraven, among plenty others, he’s an expert at shooting friction into the groove of a group, one jagged single-note line at a time. But in solo-guitar moments, there’s nothing to disrupt but himself. Parker gets halfway into covering Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty,” from his new solo-guitar LP “Forfolks,” before he starts toying around with a sustain effect, giving his rich chords an electrified, ghostly power. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCarmen Villain with Arve Henriksen, ‘Gestures’This meditative but constantly changing instrumental begins with the assembly of a steady-state percussion pattern on bells and hand drums. It’s joined by the trumpeter Arve Henriken, improvising a solo that’s backed by loops and washes of his harmonized, electronically warped trumpet. It’s a clear homage to the continuing influence of the trumpeter and “fourth world music” innovator Jon Hassell, who died in June. PARELES More