Hear tracks by Dua Lipa, Water From Your Eyes, Ichiko Aoba and others.
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Taylor Swift featuring Ice Spice, ‘Karma’
Mutual appreciation or celebrity damage control? Taylor Swift’s apparent new boyfriend — Matty Healy, from the 1975 — mocked the Bronx rapper Ice Spice and made other offensive comments on a since-deleted podcast that may (or may not) have been ironic comedy; social media flared. Now, proclaiming admiration and good feelings all around, Ice Spice gets her moment on a remixed Swift track that predicts karmic revenge on all the singer’s antagonists and obstacles. Ice Spice seizes the opportunity in her verse, warning, “Karma never gets lazy.” JON PARELES
Beyoncé featuring Kendrick Lamar, ‘America Has a Problem’
Beyoncé has now handed over the opening minute of her song “America Has a Problem” to Kendrick Lamar — the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper who has previously collaborated with her. His verses use multiple voices and registers to pick fights with corporations (Universal) and technology (artificial intelligence) while acknowledging hip-hop history by praising Jay-Z. It’s a commercial nudge to the “Renaissance” album that also deepens its sense of layered traditions and lore. Somehow the new track’s timing adds up to 4:20. PARELES
Dua Lipa, ‘Dance the Night’
“I don’t play it safe,” Dua Lipa insists on her gleaming, disco-kissed “Dance the Night,” the first single from the soundtrack to the upcoming “Barbie” movie. But the song itself — a rehash of the trusty “Future Nostalgia” formula with a little “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” thrown in — makes the opposing argument. Though disappointingly self-serious and light on “Barbie Girl” camp, “Dance the Night” is a blandly fun summer jam that shows off Lipa’s easy confidence: “Ooh my outfit’s so tight,” she sings, “you can see my heartbeat tonight.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Water From Your Eyes, ‘Everyone’s Crushed’
The title track from the Brooklyn art-rock duo Water From Your Eyes’ excellent new album “Everyone’s Crushed” is a kind of lyrical Rubik’s Cube, finding Rachel Brown twisting and rearranging a few deadpan phrases until they click into new meanings. “I’m with everyone I love, and everything hurts,” Brown declares, prompting Nate Amos to blurt out a caustic, angular guitar riff. The song makes space for both a collective feeling of generalized malaise and also the relief of sharing it with others: “I’m with everyone I hurt,” Brown concludes, “and everything’s love.” ZOLADZ
Squid, ‘The Blades’
Squid is one of the British bands that’s reconfiguring prog-rock in the wake of post-punk, mingling musicianly technique and caustic attitude. In “The Blades,” Squid sets up a tense 7/4 beat and a gnarled counterpoint of guitars, drums and horns, as Ollie Judge sings, insinuating and eventually yelping, about surveillance and callousness. The song peaks with a dire vision of crowds that look like blades of grass, “begging to be trimmed,” then tapers down to a quietly alienated coda. PARELES
Jeff Rosenstock, ‘Liked U Better’
The Long Island punk lifer Jeff Rosenstock’s knack for writing shout-along choruses is on full display in “Liked U Better,” a one-off single that’s as blistering as it is catchy. Racing thoughts and a palpitating heartbeat set the song’s antic tempo, before he shrugs them all off in a cathartic refrain: “I liked you better when you weren’t on my mind.” ZOLADZ
Jess Williamson, ‘Time Ain’t Accidental’
A dinky drum-machine beat from a cellphone app ticks behind “Time Ain’t Accidental,” a song about a brand-new romance with a longtime friend from a rarely visited town. Jess Williamson, born in Texas but well-traveled, has lately collaborated with Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) as the countryish indie-rock band Plains; this will be the title song of her next solo album. “I have a life somewhere real far away,” she sings, and later, with guitar and banjo joining her, “Look me in the eyes, I know it’s experimental.” But the song revels in staying smitten. PARELES
Blk Odyssy featuring Kirby, ‘You Gotta Man’
The situation is clear — “You gotta man, I gotta girlfriend” — but the music is blurry and dazed, as the R&B songwriters Blk Odyssy, from Austin, and Kirby, from Memphis, trade impressions and rationalizations about an infidelity that was fueled by “dopamine and Hennessy.” Above a slow, woozy beat, amid a welter of echoey voices and electric sitar, Blk Odyssy’s delivery is disbelieving and hesitant, answered by Kirby’s high whisper, both of them uncertain and then amorous; “See you next lifetime,” they vow before parting. PARELES
Ichiko Aoba, ‘Space Orphans’
“Space Orphans” joins Ichiko Aoba’s extensive catalog of quiet, skeletal, soothing songs, often accompanied only by her acoustic guitar; they are akin to bossa novas, American folk-pop and Japanese koto melodies. A string arrangement — warmly sustained and sometimes harmonically ambiguous — opens up the track as her Japanese lyrics speak of an otherworldly romance, where “We go to sleep each night/In some quiet place, that’s neither land nor sea.” In an initiative led by Brian Eno called EarthPercent, the Earth is credited as a co-writer and gets royalties for environmental programs. PARELES
Anjimile, ‘The King’
There are clear echoes of the minimalism of Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Steve Reich in “The King.” The track progresses from a complex, wordless chorale into a keyboard-arpeggio whirlwind as Anjimile sings biblical allusions and sensible advice: “What don’t kill you almost killed you,” he observes. PARELES
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