Model/Actriz, ‘Cinderella’
Agitation is built in to “Cinderella,” from the where’s-the-downbeat intro to the dissonant note that repeats — irregularly — through nearly the entire track. As an industrial dance beat assembles itself, crumbles, and reappears, the vocalist Cole Haden wrestles with the vulnerability of revealing himself to a partner, finally deciding, “I won’t leave as I came.” PARELES
Jenny Hval, ‘To Be a Rose’
The Norwegian pop experimentalist Jenny Hval takes on a familiar lyrical image — the rose — and turns it into something highly specific and alluringly strange on this first single from her upcoming album, “Iris Silver Mist.” “A rose is a rose is a rose is a cigarette,” she sings atop a spare track that features light, hypnotic percussion and subtle blasts of brass. As the arrangement gradually builds into something fuller, Hval sketches a vivid childhood memory of her mother smoking on a balcony, “long inhales and long exhales performed in choreography over our dead-end town.” ZOLADZ
J Noa and Lowlight, ‘Traficando Rap’
The 19-year-old Dominican rapper J Noa and her producer, Lowlight, crank up brash horn riffs and hyperactive bongos to hark back to Sugar Hill Gang’s “Apache” and its source, the Incredible Bongo Band’s version of “Apache.” She boasts about her talent, her business and her bank accounts in crisp, rapid, nonstop syllables, punctuated with a “la-la” refrain that’s joyful in its arrogance. PARELES
J. Cole, ‘Clouds’
Even the title — “loud” embedded in “Clouds” — speaks to the verbal ambitions of a grown-up J. Cole as he faces his own “gray hairs” and a rapidly changing world. The track is a two-chord vamp topped with electric piano improvisations, while Cole’s rhymes confront the confounding mess that is 2025. He has to brag: “The planet’ll shake when I’m performing.” But he’s also worried about “billionaires who don’t care the world’s gonna break / as long as they make money off it, pain brings profit” and about songs “generated by the latest of A.I. regimes” that will make some people ask, “What happened to human beings?” He can’t answer that question. PARELES
Deradoorian, ‘Set Me Free’
Angel Deradoorian, best known as the bassist and singer with Dirty Projectors until 2012, reaches back to Bach — or maybe Procol Harum — in “Set Me Free.” With a processional beat and harpsichord tones, she sings — joined by her own choral harmonies — about trying to rise above earthly disappointments to accept “an invitation cosmically.” The song hopes, a little paradoxically, that its constrained, formal elegance can summon liberation. PARELES
