Ten tracks that push boundaries, uncork emotions and can get the block party started.
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs. After six months of listening, here’s what they have on repeat. (Note: It’s not a ranking, it’s a playlist.) Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.
Bad Bunny, ‘Baile Inolvidable’
Heartache and heritage mingle in “Baile Inolvidable” (“Unforgettable Dance”) from Bad Bunny’s album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”). The song bridges current and vintage sounds, underscoring the multigenerational continuity of Puerto Rican music. It begins as a blurred dirge of synthesizer lines and Bad Bunny’s vocals, mourning a lost romance; “I thought we’d grow old together,” he sings in Spanish, then admits, “It’s my fault.” But the track switches to an old-school salsa jam, with organic percussion, horns and a jazzy piano. The lessons of the girlfriend who taught him “how to love” and “how to dance” have stayed with him. — Jon Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Drake, ‘Nokia’
After the conclusion (?) of his war of words with Kendrick Lamar, Drake briefly hibernated, then re-emerged with one of his loosest projects, “Some Sexy Songs 4 U,” with longtime collaborator PartyNextDoor. Its charming center is “Nokia,” a saucy and cheeky electro-rap track that calls back to the sweet woe-is-me plaint of “Hotline Bling,” perhaps the peak of universal-approval-era Drake. — Jon Caramanica
B Jacks featuring Zeddy Will, ‘Get Jiggy’
A post-drill hip-house throwback that restores lightness to contemporary rap. These two young rappers — B Jacks from New Jersey, Zeddy Will from Queens — find a middle ground between the dance floor and the comedic internet, making a song that works as a party anthem, a meme soundtrack or a savvy entry in the long lineage of club-focused hip-hop. It’s summer block party manna. — Caramanica
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Obongjayar, ‘Not in Surrender’
The Nigeria-born, England-based songwriter Steven Umoh, a.k.a. Obongjayar, throws his hands in the air to celebrate a deep connection in “Not in Surrender.” He exults, “I only want this, this hallelujah / For the rest of my life.” He starts out singing over just a brisk bass riff and snappy drums. Then Karma Kid’s production keeps adding layers of percussion and guitars, stoking pure euphoria. — Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Sleep Token, ‘Caramel’
“Caramel” zigs, then zags, then erupts. It’s a theatrically intense multigenre suite that combines progressive metal, hip-hop, quasi-reggaeton, soul and plenty more into a rumbling anthem that’s astonishing and bizarre in equal measure. The band performs anonymously, and the song is about attempting to hold firm under the pressures of fame while holding on to some small sliver of your old self. — Caramanica
Stereolab, ‘Melodie Is a Wound’
Stereolab’s first studio album in 15 years, “Instant Holograms on Metal Film,” reinvigorates the group’s best ideas from the 1990s: perky minimalist cycles, odd meters, amiable pop melodies, wavery analog synthesizer tones and calm denunciations of oppressive power structures. In “Melodie Is a Wound,” Laetitia Sadier warns about, among other things, disinformation that’s meant to “Snuff out the very idea of clarity.” The seven-minute track detours into an instrumental coda that dissolves into noise, reassembles itself and then proceeds to climb through changes of key and texture that barely contain a rising anxiety. — Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Alison Krauss and Union Station, ‘One Ray of Shine’
Home holds no comforts in the pristinely melancholy “One Ray of Shine.” Backed by her longtime string band, Union Station, on their first album together since 2011, Alison Krauss sings about silence and gray skies. Union Station accompanies her with taut restraint and answers her plaintive voice with keening, sympathetic solos from slide guitar and mandolin. — Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Lana Del Rey, ‘Bluebird’
“Bluebird” has a homey, retro sound: a relaxed waltz tempo, acoustic guitar picking, dulcet strings and an antique warble in Lana Del Rey’s voice. Behind it is fear. She’s warning someone — a child? a friend? — to escape while they can, while she stays behind to shield them from abuse: “We both shouldn’t be dealing with him,” she sings. It’s an alarm that’s delivered as a lullaby: “Find a way to fly,” she urges, oh so sweetly. “Just shoot for the sun, ’til I can finally run.” — Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Oklou, ‘Family and Friends’
Oklou — the French songwriter and producer Marylou Mayniel — ponders generational connections, the meaning of life and the role of music in the delicate, cryptic “Family and Friends.” She sings, “I’ll be singing pleasure and pain / Try everything I can,” amid sparse, plinking electronics; she sounds utterly isolated, yet quietly determined. — Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Maruja, ‘Look Down at Us’
Over the course of this 10-minute song, the English band Maruja is by turns post-punk, industrial, orchestral, pastoral, pummeling, squalling and droning. One thing it’s not is complacent. Harry Wilkinson, its guitarist and lead vocalist, shouts and occasionally screams his rhymes about rapacious elites. “Corporations profit hard then cackle like some vultures,” he barks. Later, he calls for reconciliation, advising, “Turn pain to power, put faith in love.” Alongside him, Joe Carroll’s saxophone blares at first, then stakes out defiant melodies. It’s a bruising, cathartic track. — Pareles
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
