Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt released their last album as Everything But the Girl in 1999. They announce a new one with “Nothing Left to Lose,” a song that shows its danceable desolation from its initial bass note and twitchy, echoey drumbeat, even before Thorn arrives to sing, “I need a thicker skin/This pain keeps getting in.” The production opens up a hollow void between throbbing bass tones and just enough single notes to sketch the rhythm and harmony; Thorn’s voice fills it with melancholy longing. JON PARELES
Skrillex, Fred again.. and Flowdan, ‘Rumble’
Skrillex, PinkPantheress and Trippie Redd, ‘Way Back’
On his first singles as a lead artist since 2021, Skrillex explores two different sides of the jungle family tree. On “Way Back,” he takes a pop approach, partnering with the dreamlike vocalist PinkPantheress on a bubbly, quick-stepping flirtation anchored by some anguished pleas from Trippie Redd. On “Rumble,” though, he leans in to a harsher sound more in keeping with the thundering dubstep he first made his name with, but refracted though a jagged lens, with Fred again.. manipulating samples and the grime veteran Flowdan declaiming with cool detachment. JON CARAMANICA
Bizarrap and Shakira, ‘Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53’
Shakira’s revenge on her ex-boyfriend of 11 years, the soccer player Gerard Piqué, is as much a canny social media beef as a song. “I was out of your league,” she sings, going on to rap, “So much time at the gym/But maybe work out your brain a bit too.” Dozens of rappers and singers have collaborated with the Argentine producer Bizarrap, but unlike most of his sessions, “Vol. 53” isn’t a beat and a rap; it’s a fully produced electro-pop song with multitracked vocals and a contemptuous, self-branded hook: “A she-wolf like me isn’t for guys like you.” PARELES
Miley Cyrus, ‘Flowers’
Miley Cyrus exudes a cool confidence on “Flowers,” the breezy leadoff single from “Endless Summer Vacation,” due March 10. At first, the song seems like a brooding breakup post-mortem, but that turns out to be a ruse: “Started to cry, but then remembered I can buy myself flowers,” Cyrus sings, and the mood suddenly lifts. The relatively subdued chorus melody may not demand much of Cyrus, but her vocals are imbued with a laid-back maturity and convincing self-assurance. “I can take myself dancing, and I can hold my own hand,” she sings with her signature huskiness. “Yeah, I can love me better than you can.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Paramore, ‘C’est Comme Ça’
Latching on to the deadpan, spoken-word sarcasm of post-punk groups like Dry Cleaning, in “C’est Comme Ça” Hayley Williams takes on the isolation and enforced introspection of the pandemic era. “Sit still long enough to listen to yourself/Or maybe just long enough for you to atrophy to hell,” she deadpans over a disco thump with scrubbing guitars. The nonsense-syllable chorus — “Na na na na!” — is where Paramore’s pop-punk reflexes kick in. PARELES
Vagabon, ‘Carpenter’
On her buoyant new single “Carpenter,” Laetitia Tamko, who records as Vagabon, opts for a sound that’s sleeker, lighter and more playful than her previous material. Rostam Batmanglij’s coproduction provides a reset, but the sweet melancholy of Tamko’s vocals gives the song an added emotional weight. “I wasn’t ready for what you were saying,” she sings on this tale of gradual maturity. “But I’m more ready now.” ZOLADZ
Gracie Abrams, ‘Where Do We Go Now?’
Here is pop’s verbal compression at its most distilled, to single syllables: “When I kissed you back I lied/you don’t know how long I tried.” Gracie Abrams, the definitive online sad girl, breathily sings, continuing a question — “Where do we go now?” — that has an open-ended answer. PARELES
Yo La Tengo, ‘Aselestine’
The word “Aselestine” sounds like a cross between a crystal and an over-the-counter medication, but in Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo’s mouth, it becomes a conduit for mellifluous, vowel-y beauty. “Aselestine, where are you?” she sings with numb serenity. “The drugs don’t do what you said they do.” Like “Fallout,” the previous single from the indie legends’ 16th album “This Stupid World,” “Aselestine” is vintage Yo La Tengo, a timeless, quietly poignant distillation of the band’s singular essence. ZOLADZ
Yahritza y Su Esencia, ‘Cambiaste’
The teenage singer Yahritza Martinez of the family band Yahritza y Su Esencia is powerful and peculiar. She sings with preternatural theatricality and emotional heft, yet somehow maintains a youthful casualness. On “Cambiaste,” she yearns in stops and starts, lamenting someone who’s cast her aside. The song moves slowly, almost erratically, as if she’s staggering through sludge in search of refuge. It’s the latest in a slew of Yahritza songs that might be heard as unerringly odd if they weren’t so instinctually pop. CARAMANICA
Moneybagg Yo featuring GloRilla, ‘On Wat U On’
A tug of war of toxicity between two of Memphis’s finest rappers, “On Wat U On” is unsentimental and testy. Moneybagg Yo is the cad, rapping about needing freedom (“Tryna see me every weekend, damn/I need space to miss you”). And GloRilla is aggrieved, constitutionally fed up — she’s had enough: “I be busting out the windows/got him switching up his cars.” After two minutes of back and forth, there is, notably, no resolution — just recrimination and resentment. CARAMANICA
Iggy Pop, ‘New Atlantis’
Most of Iggy Pop’s new album, “Every Loser,” circles back to the bone-crushing riffs and surly bluntness of his glory days in the Stooges — sometimes pointedly (in “Frenzy” and “Neo Punk”), and sometimes approaching self-parody. But there are glimmers of Iggy’s other eras in songs like “New Atlantis,” a cowbell-thumping, mock-admiring tribute to his current home, Miami. Being Iggy, he appreciates the city for its seaminess and its vulnerability to climate change: “New Atlantis, lying low/New Atlantis, sinking slow,” he sings. PARELES
Lonnie Holley featuring Michael Stipe, ‘Oh Me, Oh My’
The songwriter and outsider visual artist Lonnie Holley previews a new album, “Oh Me, Oh My,” with its elegiac title track: two slowly alternating piano chords underpinned by a bass fiddle and surrounded by echoes and, later, electric guitars and more mysterious sounds. Holley merges preaching and singing, as he declaims “I believe that the deeper we go, the more chances there are for us to understand.” He invokes family and faith, joined by Michael Stipe from R.E.M. intoning, “Oh me, oh my”; it’s thick with atmosphere and memory, offering no conclusions. PARELES
Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz
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