Nilüfer Yanya, ‘Cold Heart’
With her new single, “Cold Heart,” Nilüfer Yanya sets aside her trusty fuzz-toned guitar. Amid undulating keyboard chords and programmed beats, she sings about desire, separation, resentment and heartache: “I don’t wanna bear this burden ’cause it hurts like hell,” she sings. Many of her previous songs have built toward grungy catharsis, but in “Cold Heart,” the chords keep cycling around her; she’s still enmeshed.
Bambii featuring Jessy Lanza and Yaeji, ‘Mirror’
Bambii, a Jamaican-Canadian D.J. turned producer and songwriter who’s based in Toronto, keeps reconfiguring a sparse, syncopated bass riff and twitchy, flickering breakbeats in “Mirror.” Jessy Lanza sings in English and Yaeji sings and raps in English and Korean, pondering connection and identity — “I look in the mirror / I see your eyes” — as the rhythms ricochet.
Indigo De Souza, ‘Heartthrob’
Indigo De Souza brings unbridled enthusiasm even to situations she comes to regret. For “Heartthrob,” De Souza and her songwriting and producing collaborator, Elliott Kozel, kick up the tempo and pile on the guitars. The chorus is exultantly physical: “I really put my back into it,” she sings over two galloping chords. Meanwhile, the verses are full of lessons learned — “He really tricked me / I let him touch me where he wanted” — that still don’t prevent her from hoping to find “a full cup / a true heartthrob.”
Sami Galbi, ‘L’mjmr’
Sami Galbi — a Swiss, French and Moroccan musician based in Lausanne and Casablanca — applies electronic expertise to modal, Arab-inflected North African styles like rai and chaabi. “L’mjmr” from his new album, “Ylh Bye Bye,” flaunts Auto-Tuned vocal harmonies, trap percussion and buzzing synthesizer lines without losing the Moroccan essence of the tune.
“Sing that lullaby to the abyss,” Jack Barnett chants in “A Season in Hell,” neatly summing up one of the missions of his band, These New Puritans. “A Season in Hell” sets up a bleak industrial beat, then laces it with somber, Bach-like church-organ lines as Barnett envisions being “Tied to the wheel, nailed to the ground / Put to the sword, fed to the hounds.” At the end, Caroline Polachek adds wordless, keening near-screams to perfect the gloom.
