Even in its early weeks, 2026 is revving up fast. The Swedish dance-floor auteur Robyn announced her first album since 2018, due March 27, with two new songs: “Talk to Me” and the title track, “Sexistential.” The somberly speculative Peter Gabriel, the North Carolina rapper DaBaby and the English rocker Morrissey also released early entries in the year’s musical free-for-all. Here’s what we’ve been listening to:
What’s New
Bruno Mars, ‘I Just Might’
The pop-R&B chameleon Bruno Mars has held his place on the charts with ever-savvy collaborations, sharing songs with Lady Gaga, Rosé, Anderson .Paak and more. On Feb. 27, he’ll release his first solo album since 2016’s “24K Magic,” titled “The Romantic”; a stadium tour starts in April. Its first single, “I Just Might,” harks back to a 1960s Motown groove as it sets out a nonnegotiable condition: “It would break my heart if I find out you can’t move,” he tells a prospective partner. “What good is beauty if your booty can’t find a beat?” Is judging dance moves romantic?
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Zach Bryan, ‘Say Why’
The scratchy-voiced songwriter Zach Bryan is as prolific as he is morose. His new album, “With Heaven on Top,” arrived on Friday and stretches to 25 tracks that brood about troubled romance, a vanished Oklahoma childhood, the rigors of the road, struggles for sobriety and living up to his faith. Those themes converge in “Say Why,” which starts out with folky minor-key picking and gathers a beat, horns and backup voices. He opens a 40-ounce drink from “some truck stop in Ohio” to face hearing “40 reasons for goodbye.”
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Doechii featuring SZA, ‘Girl, Get Up.’
”Y’all can’t fathom that I work this hard,” Doechii flatly states on her latest meta-career bulletin, “Girl, Get Up.,” set to a quietly clicking, minor-key loop. Later, angrier, she raps, “I did eight years of failin’, plus a lot of cold winters / Used to be a starvin’ artist, now I want the whole dinner.” Her frequent collaborator SZA sings a chorus that’s defensive but ultimately undaunted, predicting, “Someday, I’ll have everything.” Maybe Doechii will; after her showstopping performance on last year’s Grammys, her song “Anxiety” has Grammy nominations for record of the year and song of the year next month.
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Jill Scott, ‘Beautiful People’
After a long detour into acting, the singer, songwriter and poet Jill Scott will release her first studio album since 2015, “To Whom This May Concern,” on Feb. 13. Its first single, “Beautiful People,” reaffirms her benevolent spirit and neo-soul warmth, with gently scrubbing guitar and a sisterly choir joining her. But she’s up-to-date; now, when she sings about real love, it’s strong enough to be “conquering all algorithms.”
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Mandy, Indiana, ‘Cursive’
The geographically skewed band Mandy, Indiana is based in both Berlin and Manchester, England, while its lyricist, Valentine Caulfield, writes and sings in French. “Cursive” previews the band’s second album, “Urgh,” due Feb. 6. “I dance while waiting for the world to disappear / and my dreams refuse to be kept on a leash,” Caulfield vows, chanting in French over a brisk four-on-the floor beat and gleefully relentless percussion and electronics.
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What’s New in Instrumental Music
Aukai, ‘Yobue’
“Yobue” is a pensive, delicately enveloping piece by the German composer Markus Sieber, who records as Aukai. It’s from “Chambers,” an album due March 3 on which Sieber played all the instruments himself. Perpetual-motion acoustic guitar picking underlies a melody plucked on the charango, an Andean stringed instrument; other sounds and reverberations waft in without breaking the spell.
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What’s Big on the Hot 100
Raye, ‘Where Is My Husband!’
The English songwriter Raye neatly meshed two girl-group archetypes — the Supremes from the 1960s and Destiny’s Child from the 1990s — with “Where Is My Husband,” which leaped from No. 56 to No. 13 this week. Thunderous drums, bold horns and a close-harmony chorus hark back to the Holland-Dozier-Holland songs and productions from Motown’s heyday, while Raye’s rapid-fire verses — “I’m doing lonely acrobatics unzipping my dress at 2 a.m.” — pick up the hip-hop-like flow of 1990s girl groups. And the combination of suspicion, anger, worry and yearning stays immediate.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
What’s Big in … Japan
Kenshi Yonezu, ‘Iris Out’
Billboard’s No. 1 song in Japan this week is “Iris Out” — a frantic tune about obsessive love that’s on the soundtrack of a hit anime feature, “Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc.” It’s a manic electronic track that splits the difference between hyperpop and the Charleston, buzzing and swinging. Kenshi Yonezu growls and raps about titanic feelings, with key changes ratcheting upward and a virtuosic piano obbligato that darts all around him.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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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