What’s New
Zach Bryan featuring Lana Del Rey, ‘Lies’
As Lana Del Rey has teased a country album, this duet reveals how her disconsolate ballads can intersect with the country mainstream. “Lies” brings Zach Bryan within Del Rey’s musical universe: hymn-like piano chords, string-ensemble backup and lyrics about obsession, temptation and intimate betrayal. “Truth means nothing when you look this way,” the two sing to each other.
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Olivia Rodrigo featuring Chappell Roan, ‘Expectations’
Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan have toured together and share a producer, Daniel Nigro. Roan’s first new music since 2025 is a guest verse for a remix of “Expectations,” Rodrigo’s perky synth-pop song about deadbeat dates. It adds a gay twist: Roan sings about getting ghosted by a girl and, near the end, ad-libs, “Not kissing no boy.” It’s giggly, pointed fun, topped off by a video featuring David Byrne as a game-show host.
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Fireboy DML, ‘One Man Regiment’
The Nigerian songwriter Fireboy DML has been making Afrobeats hits for less than a decade, but he acts like a long-hauler on his new album, “Zuko!” In “One Man Regiment,” he declares, “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” As he sings about his wealth, diligence and perseverance amid naysayers and parasites, voices assemble around him like defensive troops.
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Tiffany Day and glaive, ‘Meant to Be’
The hyperpop songwriters Tiffany Day and glaive deploy the blatant artifice and inhuman precision of digital production to confess very human doubts and fears. In “Meant to Be,” released as they begin a tour together, they share some tentative reassurance about trying to look ahead. Day tells herself, “There’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing right / And it’s OK if I don’t know,” and glaive acknowledges, “Sometimes it’s best to be alone.” Around them, synthesizers whiz, bass lines drop and tweaked vocals gibber in an electronic onrush — one that they control.
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Richard Thompson, ‘The Soul in Me’
Since the 1960s, Richard Thompson has been writing songs grounded in British ballad traditions, American blues and country and global modes, speaking about characters no one else notices. The narrator of “The Soul in Me,” from his new album, “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes,” is coping with a shattering breakup: “One day she plainly told me she found a better man than me.” The tune echoes Celtic roots; the arrangement is just picking and vocals. And the emotion is overwhelming.
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Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly, ‘X’
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, a singer who plays multiple instruments, and Frank Rosaly, a percussionist, are a duo based in Amsterdam. She was raised in Bolivia by a Bolivian and Brazilian family; he was born in Arizona with Puerto Rican parents. “X” — from their new album, “O” — is a kinetic world-music benediction. “Long live your curiosity / Long live your dignity,” Ferragutti sings over frenetic, multilayered Latin rhythms and airborne electronics, adding, “Long live what you fight for.”
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Marina Herlop, ‘Bliss’
Marina Herlop — the Catalan composer, pianist and singer Marina Hernández López — has a wildly recombinant new album, “Dja Dja.” In “Bliss,” she intercuts grandiose brass fanfares, sampled crowd chants, fluttery electronics, a beat that hints at carnival, effervescent nonsense-syllable counterpoint, grandiose organ chords and lyrics that invoke “angels that kill.” She adds, “Swear to me that they sing.”
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June McDoom, ‘Without You’
June McDoom’s otherworldly debut album, “Follow the Light,” draws together multiple strands and generations of hazy, echoey music: psychedelia, dub reggae, dream-pop. As she sings about loneliness and yearning in “Without You,” her breathy voice drifts through an atmospheric folk-Baroque counterpoint of guitars, keyboards, wordless voices and swooping harp, all hovering in midair.
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What’s on the Charts
Gener8ion & Yung Lean, ‘Storm II’
An arresting dance video with hundreds of millions of views — and its live re-creation at the MTV Video Music Awards — has given “Storm II,” released in April, a toehold on the Hot 100, at No. 93. Dozens of dancers, in schoolboy suits and ties, flank the Swedish rapper and singer Yung Lean, writhing and flailing in formations choreographed by Damien Jalet. But Yung Lean is jacketless, deadpan and louche, proclaiming both love and indifference in an anthem produced by Gener8ion. Can its shout-along momentum transfer to audio alone?
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What’s New in Instrumental Music
Gwenifer Raymond, ‘Bird Songs for Atomic Skies’
Gwenifer Raymond, a Welsh guitarist who’s extending the meditative heritage of John Fahey and Sandy Bull, flaunts misdirection in “Bird Songs for Atomic Skies.” Its first full minute sounds like a tentative, minor-key lament. But suddenly she accelerates like a locomotive hitting full steam, with a drummer thumping along. When she slows down in the finale, it’s for a brawny, bluesy half-time finish.
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The post Lana Del Rey’s Country Duet and 9 More Songs We’re Talking About appeared first on New York Times.
