“Coast,” a delightfully woozy solo single from the eternally cool Breeders frontwoman Kim Deal, begins with a kind of self-deprecating punchline: “I’ve had a hard, hard landing/I really should duck and roll out,” she sings in her inimitable voice, pausing to add with great comic timing, “Out of my life.” Deal has said that the song was inspired by a wedding band she saw cover “Margaritaville,” but part of the track’s charm is that despite its surf-rock lilt and buoyant horn section, she is never quite able to tap into those blissful vacation vibes. Instead, it is a song about shrugging and carrying on in spite of what bums you out; the fact that it was produced by Steve Albini, who died in May, adds an extra note of elegiac bittersweetness. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
What seems like an idle complaint — “The drugs don’t work/Oh I can’t get high”— expands into a cry from the heart, as Joy Oladokun sings about no longer being able to numb herself from rage, loneliness and “running on empty and calling it strength.” Luckily, she has a bluesy backbeat and gospel-choir harmonies to lift her spirits. JON PARELES
Childish Gambino featuring Jorja Smith and Amaarae, ‘In the Night’
Childish Gambino — Donald Glover — is a crooner, not a rapper, in this song about overlapping betrayals from what’s billed as his final Childish Gambino album, “Bando Stone & the New World.” The singer is fixated on a woman who’s with another man who adores her, suggesting, “Just ’cause you’re sweet don’t make you loyal.” The English R&B songwriter Jorja Smith confesses, “Last night I said it was his baby” and warns, “I have to sneak around ’cause he could never know.” Then the helium-voiced Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae catches him kissing other women. The whole tangle is revealed amid a furtive, muffled beat and wisps of vocal harmony, as if it can’t be concealed any longer. PARELES
Ivan Cornejo, a 20-year-old Mexican American songwriter from California, obsesses over lost love throughout his new album, “Mirada” (“Gaze”). His music touches on Mexican styles but strips away the usual bounce and bravado; instead, he leans toward the lonely introversion of bedroom indie-pop. In the album’s title song, he realizes his lover is turning away from him, and he moves through disappointment to jealousy to self-reproach to bitterness: “One day you’ll taste this pain as I do,” he vows. It’s a subdued bolero, mostly just strummed guitars, the better to expose his heartbroken voice. PARELES
Alan Sparhawk, ‘Can U Hear’
In September, Alan Sparhawk of the long-running, boundary-pushing art-rock group Low will release his debut solo album, “White Roses, My God,” his first release since his bandmate and wife Mimi Parker died in 2022. “Can U Hear,” the album’s first single, is certainly an unconventional expression of grief, with its droning electronics, sputtering beat and eerie Auto-Tuned vocals. But that digitized wail is unmistakably mournful, and there is something admirably bold in the way Sparhawk, as ever, rejects the expected. ZOLADZ
Vale and Yendry, ‘Escándalo’
Vale — the twin sisters Valeria and Valentina Perez, from Colombia — and the Dominican-Italian singer and rapper Yendry tease, “Let the scandal break out” in “Escándalo.” It’s a rhythm-centered declaration of physical desire, escalating from handclaps to brittle electronica before dissolving, at the end, into children sharing a playground chant. PARELES
Drug Church, ‘Demolition Man’
“Picture being built for one thing, and when that thing is done you feel free,” Patrick Kindlon hollers on this ferocious number from the Albany rockers Drug Church, whose upcoming album, “Prude,” will be released in October. Corrosive guitars and pummeling percussion accompany his words but never drown him out, making his musings about animal instincts and the comparative confusion of the human mind come through loud and clear. It’s perhaps the hardest-rocking song I’ve ever heard about the very relatable notion of being jealous of a dog’s brain. ZOLADZ
Wendy Eisenberg, ‘Lasik’
“If this wasn’t true it would be the most heavy-handed metaphor,” Wendy Eisenberg sings. “But yes, I changed my eyesight. And yes, my eyes are blurry.” The track is minimalistic, math-rock infused, diaristic and open-ended; long stretches are paced by one repeated guitar note, while other sections move over jazzy, odd-meter vamps. The lesson Eisenberg comes to understand is that “changing isn’t healing.” PARELES
Read More: Kim Deal Goes Solo, and 7 More New Songs
