The ever-surprising bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding persuaded the magical and ingeniously tuneful Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, 81, to collaborate on a full album that was recorded in 2023 and is due in August. Its preview single is “Outubro” (“October”), a tune that Nascimento initially wrote and recorded within the Nineteen Sixties. Its asymmetrical melody carries lyrics that replicate on solitude, mortality and the potential of pleasure. Nascimento now not has the pure, otherworldly vocal tone of his youth, however Spalding bolsters him, singing in Portuguese alongside him and probing the harmonies with springy bass strains. Close to the tip, she comes up with a leaping, scat-singing line that he finally joins, nonetheless having fun with what his composition can encourage. JON PARELES
The Brooklyn singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins delivers “Delphinium Blue,” the second single from her upcoming third album, “My Mild, My Destroyer,” with a sluggish, cleareyed poise. Amongst glacially paced synthesizers and delicate percussion, she describes the sensory overload of working in a flower store, and daydreaming about somebody particular when enterprise is gentle. “I see your eyes within the delphinium, too,” she sings, as magnificence blooms throughout her. “I’ve turn into a servant to their blue.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Omar Apollo, ‘Get rid of Me’
“We acquired an excessive amount of historical past, so don’t simply get rid of me,” Omar Apollo — the bilingual, Indiana-born pop songwriter — begs, in English, within the slow-building however more and more convincing “Get rid of Me.” At first the tune appears to be only a lazy two-chord vamp, however Apollo pleads his case with rising desperation as devices subtly chime in. “My physique simply received’t neglect,” he moans, happening to insist, “It was actual love.” His ex-partner might need a unique opinion, however not on this tune. PARELES
Luna Li, ‘Confusion Track’
The Korean-Canadian songwriter Luna Li — Hannah Bussiere Kim — ponders separation and reconciliation in “Confusion Track,” which faces a strained relationship with unanswered questions and ambiguous beats. “I believed we have been taking house,” she sings over a drumbeat that may be parsed as a waltz or a march. The uncertainty is constructed into the construction of the music, whilst she asks, “How do you see it?” PARELES
Polyamory will get difficult on this craving reggae duet. “Don’t be too fast to evaluate,” the Jamaican singer Lila Iké urges; H.E.R. counters, “You simply preserve mendacity to your self.” Neither of them wished to “lose a great factor simply because,” however that’s all they agree on. The person in query by no means states his case. PARELES
Rapsody that includes Erykah Badu,: ‘3:AM’
Rapsody basks in longtime love and potential motherhood in “3:AM,” framed as a late-night cellphone name; it’s on her new album, “Please Don’t Cry.” Backed by soft electric-piano chords and a comfy saxophone riff, Rapsody raps, “It’s completely different while you lovers and also you greatest associates/I really feel protected with you,” whereas within the choruses a kittenish Erykah Badu coos, “Child you are able to do it, discover me.” However within the final verse, it seems that she’s solely reliving reminiscences. “We grew with one another until we grew aside,” she reveals. PARELES
Saweetie, ‘Nani’
Saweetie’s newest single “Nani” is a blast of sing-songy, candy-coated pop that sounds tailor made for summer time. “Two exhibits, one night time, what’s that? 100-plus,” she boasts on the verse, however in any other case it’s a observe extra about leisurely strutting one’s stuff than hustling. “I’m bougie, moody, tanning in my Louis,” she raps. “It’s a privilege simply to say you knew me.” ZOLADZ
“I nonetheless don’t know the place I’m going/However I’ve pleasure in my coronary heart,” the Colombian-Canadian songwriter Lido Pimienta sings in “He Venido al Mar” (“I Have Come to the Sea”), from the soundtrack to “Calladita,” a movie by Miguel Faus. She’s making a journey towards renewal, together with her guileless soprano crusing above a observe that begins with sparse digital chords and gathers layers of percussion and voices, assembling a cumbia and a group out of skinny air. PARELES
SML, ‘Trade’
SML, a Los Angeles quintet that laces jazz with electronics, bears down on a mechanized one-chord groove in “Trade” from its coming album, “Small Medium Giant.” The observe surrounds a blipping beat with fertile, relentless improvisation: synthesizer swoops, bass jabs, blotches of noisy guitar, fragments of saxophone melody, drum equipment cross-rhythms. On the finish, it ratchets down as if a change was flipped. PARELES
Little Feat, ‘Why Folks Like That’
Little Feat, the Los Angeles band whose blues-rock-country-funk hybrid was Americana lengthy earlier than the class was named, takes a break from songwriting on its new album, “Sam’s Place.” It’s a group of blues covers sung by its percussionist, Sam Clayton. The band dug out deep cuts like “Why Are Folks Like That” by the Louisiana swamp-rock songwriter Bobby Charles. The band lightens up Charles’s model, switching it from minor to main and summoning a New Orleans strut, underpinned by Invoice Payne’s two-fisted piano. However Charles’s bitter criticism about greed continues to be all too related: “They take your home and your property/They take the flesh out of your bones,” Clayton growls. “Why folks like that?” PARELES
The largehearted Welch rockers Los Campesinos! will launch their first album in seven years, “All Hell,” on July 19. The lead single “Feast of Tongues” steadily builds in depth, stacking intelligent, wordy lyrics that reference a dizzying hodgepodge of contemporary cultural touchstones (Bessel van der Kolk and David Berman). “I need the belief of each animal,” the frontman Gareth Paisey sings on the refrain, earlier than promising with nervy defiance, “We’ll feast on the tongues of the final bootlickers.” ZOLADZ
