Camila Cabello gets in her head and 16 more new songs

Alienation gets an electronic touch in ‘Psychofreak’ from Camila Cabello’s ‘Familia’, which is actually full of songs about jealousy. In “Psychofreak” she sings about feeling dissociated, insecure and suspicious: “Tryin’ to get connected, no Wi-Fi/ tell me that you love me, are you lie?” Against brittle percussion and impassive chords on the off-beats, Cabello sounds relatively imperturbable, despite what the lyrics say, but Willow (Smith) concentrates and accelerates the fear. JON PARELES

Miranda Lambert’s “Actin’ Up” could have just been another punchy, bluesy country rock song. “I want a sunset ride, a velvet rodeo/A Colorado high, a California glow,” she explains. The richness is in the arrangement: the stereo, the reverberating guitar playing, the syncopated drumming, the echoes and pauses placed behind her boasting. PARELES

Kelsea Ballerini, ‘Heart First’

On her 2020 album “Kelsea,” Kelsea Ballerini honed her keen ability to emphasize the kind of self-doubt and self-doubt that many other country singers easily take out of the frame. However, the single “Heartfirst” is all about pushing those impediments aside and jumping headlong into new romance: “That voice in my head tells me to slow down, but it can’t feel your hands on my hips now,” she sings. Recommended to anyone who rewatched Taylor Swift’s version of “Red” last year and wished someone would still be making shiny, heartfelt pop-country songs in the present tense. LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Banks, ‘Meteorite’

Banks’ songs bring a deep caution to her relationships. “We’re already in bed, you might as well lie,” she sings as “Meteorite” begins. But in this song, syncopation fights pessimism. Hand claps, stop-and-start drums and backing vocals that hint at Balkan and African call-and-response insist this dubious romance can still go on. PARELES

Pieri, ‘Vente Pa Aca’

It was only a matter of time before the textures of hyperpop collided with reggaeton. Consider Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based recording artist Daniela Pieri his champion: her new single “Vente Pa Aca” mixes a muted dembow riddim, jagged synths and meshy speaker feedback straight from a PC music compilation. In an auto-tuned shrill, one that has just enough of a punk edge, she says: “No te quiero perder/tú y yo hasta el amanecer” (“I don’t want to loose you/Me and you till dawn” ) . ISABELIA HERERA

Syd, ‘Fast car’

“Broken Hearts Club,” the first album in five years from Syd — a member of the R&B collective Internet and one-time Odd Future perfumer — is mostly an intimate chronicle of a relationship’s demise, but the sultry “Fast Car” yells a moment before it turned sour. A driving, 4-4 beat and a gleaming ’80s shine set a backdrop for Syd’s faint vocals (“Nobody can see in,” she laments, “do with me whatever you will”) before a glorious, Prince-esque guitar solo breaks the whole song opens like a cracked sunroof. ZOLADZ

Oliver Sim, ‘Fruit’

Oliver Sim’s “Fruit” is the kind of queer anthem only he could create, using the high drama of a power ballad, but with all the lightness of the xx’s gauzy R&B. Produced by his bandmate Jamie xx, “Fruit” is a love letter to a younger self coming to terms with the queer identity. “You can dress it up, talk it out / Put out the flame / But it’s all pretend,” Sim whispers, dripping melancholy. He may have been the last member of the xx to go solo, but it was well worth the wait. HERRERA

This is a tearjerker. Emily Sprague — sometimes a solo artist, sometimes the leader of the Brooklyn indie folk group Florist — chronicles her late mother’s life and her own early childhood in a series of vivid, lucid snapshots (“I’ve seen photos of the living room, we had not much”), sung atop a soft, fingerpicked chord progression. Synthesizer mustaches mingle with birdsong in the song’s breezy atmosphere; Sprague and the band even recorded it on a porch. That sonic embrace of the natural world becomes even more poignant towards the end of the song, which will appear on an upcoming self-titled album Florist, when Sprague sings in a peaceful murmur, “She’s in the bird song, she won’t be gone.” ZOLADZ

Daniel Rossen, ‘Unpopulated Space’

‘Unpeopled Space’, a dazzling culmination of former Grizzly Bear guitar virtuoso Daniel Rossen’s first full-length solo album ‘You Belong Here’, is a searching meditation on leaving the city for the country, as Rossen himself did ten years ago. But his arrangement is so full of compositional surprises and instrumental chatter—shape-shifting acoustic guitar riffs, croaking strings, and dynamic percussion from his former bandmate Christopher Bear—that he makes the natural world sound as vibrant as a teeming metropolis. “Whatever was, whatever will happen,” he sings to the vast green space around him, “we belong here now.” ZOLADZ

Pink Floyd with Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox, ‘Hey, Hey Rise Up’

Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band Boombox returned to his homeland to fight the Russian invasion. From Kiev, he made an Instagram post of his defiant, heartfelt rendition of a resistance song, “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” singing with a rifle slammed across his chest. It prompted Nick Mason and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd to build an entire track around it – their first new Pink Floyd song since 1994, which will bring relief to Ukrainians. Pink Floyd accompanies Khlyvnyuk with somber gravity, sustaining him with organ chords and choral harmonies; a wailing, clawing guitar solo from Gilmour supports the air of grim determination. PARELES

Emo bands are often verbose, but Joyce Manor of Torrance, California is extremely efficient – as if Taking Back Sunday had attended Guided by Voices school of songwriting. “Gotta Let It Go,” a two-minute ripper from the forthcoming album “40 oz. to Fresno” (out June 10 and named after an auto-corrected lyrics about Sublime) showcases the rabid yet melodic screams of vocalist and guitarist Barry Johnson, next to the kind of crushing waves of distorted guitar that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on late-90s Alt rock radio. “You say it’s cute, but you think it’s ugly,” Johnson yells on the pounding bridge – yes, a bridge in a two minute song! I told you these guys are efficient. ZOLADZ

El Alfa, Braulio Fogón, French Montana and Kaly Ocho, ‘Máquina de Dinero’

El Alfa’s ascent as the king of the Dominican dembow has been accompanied by its fair share of missteps: watered-down EDM bangers or pop-dembow tracks with a little too much shine. So “Máquina de Dinero”, from his fourth studio album, “Sabiduría”, is an unexpected bomb. El Alfa uses his ambiguities and witty rapping over a gritty, shrapnel-like beat from his go-to producer Chael Produciendo, whose deliciously raw, unfinished texture more closely matches the coarseness of his own early hits. His guests are also surprising – Braulio Fogón and Kaly Ocho, titans of el bajo mundo (the underground dembow scene), along with French Montana. Just try not to laugh out loud when Montana says, “‘Rican or Dominican, she’s bursting at the seams,'” mimicking the addictive hook of El Alfa’s summer warmer ‘La Mamá de la Mamá’. HERRERA

Alicia Keys, ‘City of the Gods (Part II)’

Alicia Keys was treated like a simple hook singer alongside Fivio Foreign and Kanye West on “City of Gods,” cast aside as they praised their careers. But with “City of Gods (Part II)” she regains the song as the plea of ​​a rejected lover, pleading “Don’t leave me, go easy”, amid towering piano chords and cavernous bass, a voice trying to find their way through the cityscape. PARELES

Sun’s Signature is the partnership of Elisabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins and Damon Reece of Massive Attack. In the 1990s, both groups conjured up all-encompassing atmospheres, but in different registers. Cocteau Twins were misty ethereal; Massive Attack was bassy and seismic. “Golden Air”, the first track of an EP due out in June, is more proteic. It works through multiple transformations – tinkling baroque pop, minimalist a cappella vocal layers, shimmering psychedelic march – as Fraser sings cosmic musings: “My heart will say to me/Do with me something.” PARELES

S. Carey, ‘Sunshower’

S. Carey, a longtime associate of Bon Iver, goes for undulating bliss in ‘Sunshower’. His multi-track falsetto harmonizes with cascading guitars and saxophones while indulging in the inexplicable beauty of deep connection: “I didn’t know myself until I knew you,” he realizes. PARELES

Sam Gendel and Antonia Cytrynowicz, ‘Something Real’

One afternoon in Los Angeles, saxophonist, keyboardist and composer Sam Gendel improvised some songs with Antonia Cytrynowicz, the younger sister of his partner, filmmaker Marcella Cytrynowicz; Antonia was 11 years old at the time. They haven’t played them before or since. Luckily they recorded them and realized they were good enough to release as an album; “Live a Little” comes out on May 13. In “Something Real,” Gendel circled an undulating, slightly somber four-chord keyboard pattern as Antonia mused on what she heard: “Never know, never feel/like a sound, that’s fun,” she sang. “You’re kind and gentle.” But at the end, dissonant feedback bubbles up, suggesting that security is vulnerable

Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, ‘For the Love of Fire and Water: II.’

On “For the Love of Fire and Water,” esteemed pianist and bandleader Myra Melford leads a new band featuring some of the most distinctive players in improvised music today: Ingrid Laubrock on saxophone, Tomeka Reid on cello, Mary Halvorson on guitar and Susie Ibarra on drums. On Track 2 of the 10-piece suite, the quintet pulls itself forward with a mix of lethargy and restlessness, Halvorson and Laubrock – longtime musical intimates – carry the nervous melody across Melford’s static left-hand pattern, then improvise together in dyspeptic outbursts. The tune itself is hard to keep up with, and the meter hard to count, but the stubbornness of the pulse and the resonance of the harmony can linger in your ear long after the song dies away. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO