Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Bruce Springsteen, ‘Repo Man’
While Bruce Springsteen was recording the somber songs on “The Ghost of Tom Joad” in 1995, he was also, it’s now revealed, blowing off steam with rowdy, lighthearted songs like “Repo Man,” the latest preview of his archival collection “Tracks II: The Lost Albums.” It’s a Chuck Berry-meets-Buck Owens country-rocker that has Springsteen hollering, “You shouldn’t have bought it if you couldn’t have paid!” It’s also a showcase for skidding, careening, scene-stealing solos by Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar, abetting Springsteen’s stunt driving as he turns class warfare into comedy.
S.G. Goodman, ‘Snapping Turtle’
“I grew up hard on bottom land where only crops should grow / Watched people reap what the demons sowed,” S.G. Goodman sings in “Snapping Turtle,” from an album due June 20. She’s from Kentucky, where she grew up and still lives; the cracks and scratches in her voice hark back to Appalachian roots. “Snapping Turtle” is a stoic, six-minute march, a two-chord jam with eerie resonances opening up under drums and guitars. Goodman sings about memories she can’t escape — including a friend who had “a life beat down” — and the bitter lessons of the small town “where my mind gets stuck.”
Sofi Tukker featuring Liniker, ‘Intensity’
Sofi Tukker — the duo of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern — sets aside its usual electronic production on its new album, “Butter.” Instead, they visited Brazil, enlisted the producer Marcio Arantes to assemble a mostly acoustic studio band and invited Brazilian musicians like Seu Jorge as guest singers. Most of “Butter” remakes (and unplugs) songs from the duo’s 2024 album, “Bread.” But “Intensity” — with guest vocals from the Brazilian songwriter Liniker — is a new song. Over syncopated acoustic guitar and a crisply sputtering, samba-rooted beat, Hawley-Weld and Liniker celebrate a partnership that’s “way too much / It’s the right amount for me.”
yeule, ‘Dudu’
Named after the nonsense syllables in its hook, “Dudu” has such a blithe, shiny pop facade that the verses could easily go unnoticed. Yeule — a style-hopping, electronics-friendly songwriter and producer from Singapore — sings about unrequited love that’s turned pathological. “Overdosed from the pain / Woke up in a bed, restrained,” yeule sings. “I screamed and screamed and screamed your name.” But the vocals are so nonchalant, surrounded by whizzing synthesizers and kicked along by a robust backbeat, that the heartache almost evaporates.
DannyLux, ‘Sirena’
The Mexican American songwriter DannyLux has thrived by playing up his sensitive side, and “Sirena,” the single from his new album “Leyenda,” is no exception. In a waltzing corrido that updates the traditional acoustic guitars with a sheen of reverb, extra vocal harmonies and a sudden shift of texture before the second verse, he insists he’s been hypnotized forever by a woman’s beauty — though he also reminds her that “Other guys would put a price on your body, a price on your kisses.” He’s more sensitive, of course.
