Hear tracks by Ava Max, Tricky, Bill Callahan and others.
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. 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. Though SZA is one of those artists who works at her own pace, plenty of fans have been clamoring over the past few years for a follow-up to her beloved 2017 debut, “Ctrl.” “Hit Different,” her new song with Ty Dolla Sign, suggests that she’s been cooking something up in secret. The Neptunes-produced “Hit Different” is certainly a promising return: Ty anchors the song with a catchy, rhythmic hook, freeing SZA up to unfurl mixed emotions and signature cool throughout the rest of the track: “All that I know is mirrors inside me/They recognize you, please don’t deny me” she croons. The stylish, SZA-directed video, too, is striking: Prepare to never look at a pommel horse the same way again. LINDSAY ZOLADZ Under the name Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner makes hazy, densely atmospheric dream pop. Bumper, her collaboration with Ryan Galloway of the Brooklyn band Crying, is a bit more straightforward and unabashedly poppy: Imagine the D. I. Y. reveries of early Grimes with the adventurous spirit of Cibo Mato. The highlight of their newly released four-song EP is “Black Light,” a slinky ode to late-night yearning: “I saw you,” Zauner sings from afar, “in the black light.” ZOLADZ The disco revival — Doja Cat, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga — continues with Ava Max’s “OMG What’s Happening,” which shrewdly segues the guitar syncopations of Dominican bachata into disco hi-hats, synthesizers and scrubbing rhythm guitar, along with echoes of the descending chord progression of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” But Gaynor’s message of independence is flipped; in this song, Ava Max is smitten. JON PARELES Tricky shaped Bristol trip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s, and “I’m in the Doorway,” from his new album, “Fall to Pieces,” remains true in some ways to his bleakly austere aesthetic.
