Sabrina Carpenter Slices Up Her Sunny Image, and 7 More New Songs

Sabrina Carpenter’s winning streak of singles continues on “Taste,” the lilting, deceptively chirpy opening track from her hook-filled new album, “Short ’n’ Sweet.” A bright, buoyantly delivered blend of ’80s pop gloss and ’90s country sass, Carpenter lets a paramour’s on-again-off-again ex know exactly whose bed his boots have been under lately: “I heard you’re back together, and if that’s true,” Carpenter taunts, “you’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissing you.” The music video, which stars the “Wednesday” actress Jenna Ortega, makes the lyrics’ queer subtext clear as day, while also indulging in some surprisingly gory Tarantino-esque violence that subverts Carpenter’s sunshiny image. Not that she’s taking any of it too seriously. “Singin’ ’bout it don’t mean I care,” she coos on the bridge, issuing another giggling wink at that image: “Yeah, I know I’ve been known to share.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ

“I’m the only one to ease my soul/I’m the only one that’s in control,” Amythyst Kiah vows in “I Will Not Go Down.” It’s a fierce, foot-stomping song laced with backup vocals and bluegrass virtuosity — on multiple instruments — from Billy Strings. The song’s stark declarations arrive fully armored in musicianship. JON PARELES

Geordie Greep, ‘Holy, Holy’

As the guitarist and singer in Black Midi, Geordie Greep helped concoct songs with elaborately ugly narratives and genre-twisting musical gamesmanship. He announces his coming solo album with “Holy, Holy,” a speedy, episodic disco-Latin-funk excursion through sleazy paid sexual encounters (“I want you to dress like a sophisticated tart with too much makeup on”), fantasies of fame and desirability, geographical name-dropping and elaborate chord changes — clever and creepy at the same time. PARELES

Yaeji, ‘Booboo’

The Brooklyn-based D.J. and producer Yaeji pays visceral homage to dance floor euphoria on her latest single, a playful but slyly vulnerable club banger that she debuted during a recent Boiler Room set. At one point in the pulsating “Booboo,” Yaeji samples her own 2017 breakout tune “Raingurl” before admitting that she “wasn’t really ready at the time” for all the attention it garnered. But the passing years, it seems, has allowed her to grow into her own sound with confidence: “You know what,” she reflects toward the end of the song, “I think I really know the joys of life.” ZOLADZ

There’s a troubled undercurrent even in upbeat tunes from the Nigerian songwriter Omah Lay. “Moving” — a preview of his second album, “Clarity of Mind” — enfolds a brisk Afrobeats rhythm in minor chords, tolling synthesizers and echoey guitars. When he sings “I’ve been moving,” he’s proud but also driven, compulsively in motion. The video shows a different movement: refugees trying to cross a desert. PARELES

Duendita, ‘Born With Power’

Fragility meets pugnacity in “Born With Power” from the Queens-based songwriter, singer and producer Duendita. Layered vocals — from a gutsy contralto to a pitch-shifted soprano chorale — ride a jazzy, Latin-tinged bass riff and light-fingered piano counterpoint with a statement of determination: “You were born with power/You don’t have to fight, you already got it.” PARELES

Olivia O., ‘One Hit Wonder’

Olivia Osby, who has been recording since her teens in the band Lowertown, leans into bleary self-insecurity in “One Hit Wonder” from a coming solo album she recorded largely on her own. “One Hit Wonder” piles on fuzzy, wavery, dissonant guitars as Osby sings about feeling pointless, stupid and numb in a scratchy deadpan, admitting the mental morass and shrugging it off at the same time. PARELES

Broadcast was a British band whose career ended with the death in 2011, at 42, of its frontwoman, Trish Keenan. Most of its songs had a motoric, electronic exterior. In September the band’s surviving members will release “Distant Call — Collected Demos 2000-2006,” with two songs that were never completed including the haunting “Come Back to Me.” Instead of the full band’s layered guitars, synthesizers and rhythm section, there’s just Keenan’s voice and a folky, minimalistic, modal guitar pattern behind Keenan’s plea for connection: “Come back to me to anchor me,” she sings. PARELES