Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Justin Bieber, ‘Daisies’
Justin Bieber has surprise-released a 21-song album, “Swag,” full of lo-fi experiments and unexpected collaborators. The singer has always been a savvy talent scout, and he concocted “Daisies” with the quick-fingered guitarist Mk.gee and the producer Dijon. “Daisies” is a bare-bones track: a lone electric guitar, drums and Bieber’s vocals, mostly using a vintage doo-wop chord progression (I-VI-IV-V) and juxtaposing vulnerability and strength. Bieber sounds needy but sure of his legitimacy: “Whatever it is,” he sings, “You know I can take it.”
Syd, ‘Die for This’
Syd (formerly Syd tha Kid from the band the Internet) ardently embraces the pleasures of the moment in “Die for This.” A drum machine and plush vocal harmonies buoy her through sentiments like “We can have forever tonight” and “It feels like heaven with you tonight.” She’s absolutely all in; has she convinced her partner?
Tyla, ‘Is It’
“Am I coming on a little strong?” Tyla teases in “Is It,” a dance-floor flirtation that’s both a come-on and an assertion of power. “Is it the idea that I like, or do I really wanna make you mine?” Tyla asks herself, then advances further. The beat is spartan — often just percussion and a few distorted bass notes — but a chorus of male voices joins her as she takes charge.
Flo and Kaytranada, ‘The Mood’
The British R&B trio Flo juggles a tricky situation in “The Mood”: saying no for one night, promising future sensual kicks and soothing a partner’s perhaps fragile ego. With a purring bass line and a subdued four-on-the-floor beat provided by Kaytranada’s production, they apologize, “It’s just that I ain’t in the mood tonight.” But they hasten to add, “I swear you’re the only one who does it right.” They also slyly pay homage to their R&B role models by slipping some old song titles into the lyrics.
Danny L Harle featuring PinkPantheress, ‘Starlight’
The hyperpop producer Danny L Harle has kept busy as a collaborator, but “Starlight” is his first song since 2021 to claim top billing, and it’s just swarming with ideas. With her piping voice run through all sorts of gizmos, PinkPantheress sings about misplaced longings: “I’ve met someone like you / They don’t love me back.” Around her, Harle’s production accelerates from wistful electronic lament to manic, pounding electro-pop, strewing countermelodies all over the place.
Indigo de Souza, ‘Be Like the Water’
“You can leave if you want to, and you don’t have to say why,” Indigo de Souza counsels in “Be Like the Water,” from “Precipice,” an album due later this month. The song is an emergency message — possibly a lifeline — to someone in a troubled relationship, and it’s simultaneously brittle and encouraging. The track uses desiccated electronics alongside warm, hand-played instruments, while de Souza’s proudly imprecise voice offers any listener a way out of a bad choice that doesn’t have to continue. “I can make it up as I go,” she decides.
Jay Som featuring Jim Adkins, ‘Float’
Alienation rarely sounds perkier than it does in “Float,” a preview of Jay Som’s first full album as a bandleader since 2019. (In the meantime she’s been collaborating: recording an album as half of the band Bachelor, playing bass on tour with boygenius, sharing a duet with Troye Sivan.) “Float” is an upbeat new wave rocker, with Police-like staccato guitar picking and wordless oohs. But even as drums and guitars come charging in, Som sings about separation and growing estrangement: “Is this the way it’s supposed to be? / Measuring your misery?” The exuberant music has to battle her doubts.
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, ‘Taka’
Two nimble, unpredictable studio adepts — the bass player Pino Palladino (D’Angelo, Nine Inch Nails, Adele) and the songwriter, guitarist and producer Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes, Perfume Genius, Lucy Dacus) — introduce their second collaborative album, “That Wasn’t a Dream,” with “Taka.” It’s a global-funk instrumental that seems to take shape on the spot like a Weather Report composition. Its modal, six-beat bass riffs hint at Moroccan gnawa music; flutelike melodies, which may be Mills using a guitar synthesizer, come and go. Soon the harmonic foundation starts to shift, climbing and climbing; everyone keeps up.
Kassa Overall, ‘Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)’
The 1990s hip-hop group Digable Planets often used jazz vamps to carry their rhymes — hardly the only rappers to do so. Now the drummer and producer Kassa Overall has reclaimed the group’s “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” for his jazz group, from a coming album of his instrumental versions of hip-hop favorites. He revs up the tempo and adds a tricky skipped beat as he reconnects the song to 1960s modal jazz, with cascading piano chords and roiling saxophones. There’s just enough of the Digable Planets hook to, perhaps, draw some new jazz listeners.
Noah Cyrus, ‘Long Ride Home’
Noah Cyrus’s second album, “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me,” is steeped in vintage Laurel Canyon folk-pop, with acoustic instruments at the core of intricate studio illusions. In the spooky “Long Ride Home,” she sings about the utter desolation that follows a bitter, possibly murderous quarrel: “I hope this is the bottom but I fear / That there’s nothing to push off from way down here.” Quiet verses erupt into orchestral interludes. Yet the singer ends up sounding even more alone.
Sir Richard Bishop, ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’
Quick, hard strumming and a pervasive drone define “They Shall Take Up Serpents” from “Hillbilly Ragas,” a solo-guitar album due in September. Like Sandy Bull and Robbie Basho in the 1960s and 1970s, Sir Richard Bishop draws on folk, jazz and Indian music while he savors the resonance and propulsion of fast hands on steel strings. “They Shall Take Up Serpents” lays out a series of little modal motifs, one after another, in frenetic tremolo single notes and six-string chords, constantly changing the texture but never breaking the momentum.
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
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