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Ella Mai, ‘Over and Over’
The English R&B songwriter Ella Mai often uses supple melodies to probe murky relationships. “Over and Over” oozes forward in very slow motion as she details a romance that proceeds in cyclical power struggles that have “high stakes, no rules.” She admits, “I like to mess with your mind to keep the fire alive,” and when she backs off, he charms her anew: “Just when I think it’s ’bout to end, I love you over again.” The hesitant guitar chords behind her and the ache in her voice suggest it’s not the happiest situation.
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Radie Peat, ‘The Moon and Stars’
Radie Peat, the singer in the Irish trad-rock band Lankum, continues to magnify the bleakest parts of Celtic tradition on her solo album, “No Human Tongue Can Tell.” In “The Moon and Stars,” the singer laments being seduced and abandoned by a lying man; one verse refers to the herb rue, historically used to induce miscarriage. Peat layers her voice into a baleful choir as the track builds to a thunderous march.
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Ana Lua Caiano, ‘Um Mais Um’
The Portuguese songwriter Ana Lua Caiano is a one-woman studio band, deploying keyboards, drums and electronics, and multiplying her voice. In “Um Mais Um” (“One More One”), from her album “Devagar Que a Vida É Curta” (“Slowly, Life Is Short”), she gathers percussion, samples screams and overdubs herself into an army of women, marching to confront mortality: “One more one, another day has passed.”
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Jeanne River, ‘PP2’
Pings and plinks, including some prepared-piano notes from Cameron Winter of Geese, accompany the songwriter Jeanne Hill, who records as Jeanne River, in her debut single, “PP2.” It’s a quasi-lullaby with cryptic lyrics — “Canary in a coal mine / when scales come falling from your eyes” — that sounds live and transparent, only to have surreal vocal overdubs suddenly materialize in the mix.
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What’s New in Instrumental Music
Rizan Said, ‘Choubi Kawniyya (Cosmic Choubi)’
The Syrian producer Rizan Said played keyboards behind the singer Omar Souleyman for two decades, carrying the hypnotic stomp of dabke, Syrian wedding music, to the wider world before going solo in 2015. “Choubi Kawniyya (Cosmic Choubi),” from his album “Ma Waraa Al-Shaabi (Beyond Shaabi),” pushes nasal, modal dabke melodies toward psychedelia, stacking up synthesizer tones and triggering percussion from multiple angles.
