Lucy Dacus, ‘Best Guess’
Lucy Dacus recognizes that love can be precarious in “Best Guess.” She sings, “I love your body, I love your mind/They will change, so will mine.” The tempo is measured and the band supplies a subdued folk-rock march as Dacus overcomes self-conscious skepticism to commit: “You may not be an angel, but you are my girl,” she decides. PARELES
Yukimi featuring Lianne La Havas, ‘Stream of Consciousness’
“Stream of Consciousness” will be on the debut solo album by Yukimi Nagano, the singer in the Swedish group Little Dragon. Over a backdrop of gently strummed electric guitars and plush harmony vocals, she sings about an uncertain but determined step forward, with “Questions about what my future holds now / And thoughts of where I’ll end up, where I’ll be.” Then she’s joined by Lianne La Havas as an alter ego or fellow traveler: “Hope that all this is worth it,” they sing together. PARELES
Rebekka Karijord, ‘Sanctuary’
Sampled, manipulated vocal syllables and the trained voices of the contemporary vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth accompany Rebekka Karijord in “Sanctuary,” an eerie, futuristic lullaby sung to her daughter. It contemplates the climate disaster faced by the next generations: “Has the ocean reached your doorstep, and the sun turned hostile?,” she wonders, and she mourns: “Our sanctuary’s broken.” PARELES
The Lumineers, ‘You’re All I Got’
“Automatic,” the new album by the Lumineers, plunges into the torments of a breakup: regrets, recriminations, self-doubt, shattered assumptions, lingering need. In “You’re All I’ve Got,” Wesley Schultz bemoans the loss of “All the years we walked hand in hand” over strummed minor chords and tolling piano notes. Even as he knows it’s over, he makes a falsetto plea: “You’re all that I got / And I can’t give it up like Sisyphus below the rock.” PARELES
William Tyler, ‘Concern’
William Tyler, from Tennessee, deploys folky guitar and sophisticated electronic production in his instrumental tracks. “Concern,” from his next album “Time Indefinite,” turns cyclical guitar chords into something like chimes; it also toys with pitch shifts and, eventually, draws in the sounds of old tape recordings of a choir to suggest the beginnings of an anthem. PARELES
