Paramore has regrouped after Hayley Williams’s 2020 and 2021 solo albums confirmed how far her music may stretch past punk-pop and new wave. On the title track of its first LP since 2017, “This Is Why” (due in February) Paramore goes for wiry syncopation, not punk drive and energy chords. “You probably have an opinion, perhaps you must shove it,” Williams sings, with biting mock-sweetness, over a backbeat and a hopping bass line. Uneven, clenched guitar chords — with greater than a touch of INXS — goad her as she sneers an irritated response to a sourly divided nationwide temper: “This is the reason I don’t depart the home.” JON PARELES
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, ‘Fleez’
For a lot of their smoldering new album, “Cool It Down,” the as soon as hyperactive Yeah Yeah Yeahs successfully reinvent themselves as purveyors of lush, slow-burning art-rock (see: the apocalyptically beautiful, nearly “Disintegration”-like leadoff single “Spitting Off the Fringe of the World”). “Fleez,” nevertheless, harkens again to the barbed sound of their 2003 debut, “Fever to Inform,” and to the glory days of the indie sleaze sound the New York trio helped pioneer. Satirically — or maybe as a reminder of how indebted that aesthetic was to the echoes of downtown previous — the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do that by interpolating the funky groove and titular chorus of the South Bronx greats ESG’s 1983 single “Moody.” “I make my transformation, and it feels ni-i-i-i-i-ce,” Karen O vamps atop a chunky Nick Zinner riff and a shuffling Brian Chase beat — nonetheless, in spite of everything these years, a chemistry experiment that produces singular sparks. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
LCD Soundsystem, ‘New Physique Rhumba’
LCD Soundsystem’s first new track since 2017, for the soundtrack of Noah Baumbach’s movie of the Don DeLillo novel “White Noise,” is the band’s newest jaunty, motoric grievance about cash and mortality. “I want a brand new love and I want a brand new physique/to push away the tip,” James Murphy proclaims. LCD Soundsystem digs in, as soon as once more, to the late-Seventies second when punk, minimalism and dance music discovered a standard stomping floor. “New Physique Rhumba” is brawny and discordant, juggling sarcasm and sincerity, taunts and yearnings. Its closing stretch, tootling and pounding over an insistent drone, could also be a deathbed revelation, as Murphy belts, “Go into the sunshine!” PARELES
Caitlin Rose, ‘No one’s Sweetheart’
It’s been almost 10 years for the reason that country-influenced indie musician Caitlin Rose’s most up-to-date album, the whip-smart 2013 launch “The Stand-In.” Later this yr, she’ll break that lengthy silence together with her third file, “Cazimi,” out Nov. 18. The most recent single, the stomping, sassy “No one’s Sweetheart” finds the silver lining within the single life, with Rose musing in her figuring out drawl, “Whenever you’re no person’s sweetheart, you make the foundations.” Even higher, she provides, you’re “no person’s idiot.” ZOLADZ
Frankie Cosmos, ‘F.O.O.F.’
Robert Smith was in love on Friday, Rebecca Black needed to get down on Friday and now Greta Kline — chief of the indie-pop undertaking Frankie Cosmos — freaks out on Friday. That’s what the playful acronym “F.O.O.F.” stands for and, accordingly, the newest single from Frankie Cosmos’s forthcoming album “Inside World Peace” is alive with Kline’s signature wry, muted humor. “It’s nonetheless Wednesday, I’ve to attend two extra sleeps ’til I can freak,” Kline sighs, whereas a mildly noodly guitar solo saves up its most raucous power. That the temporary track ends earlier than that promised freakout is the purpose: Kline is extra excited about capturing that hopeful, anticipatory feeling — normally a comforting fiction — that the whole lot will probably be all proper as soon as the weekend comes. ZOLADZ
Nisa, ‘Sever’
“What number of breaks will it take till we are able to’t repair it?” Nisa Lumaj sings in “Sever” from her new EP, “Exaggerate.” The modest, bedroom-pop-like manufacturing stays affected person and contained till it isn’t. Nisa muses, at first simply above a whisper, a couple of deteriorating relationship; her voice is cushioned by synthesizer chords whereas guitar strains poke at her like undesirable realizations. However when the distorted strumming begins, the explosive breakup is inevitable. PARELES
Dram, ‘Let Me See Your Cellphone’
The digital period enabled numerous new avenues for surveillance and jealousy, and the R&B songwriter Dram sings about one in “Let Me See Your Cellphone.” The observe makes use of slow-rolling, classic soul chords, and Dram switches between earnest soul tenor and falsetto as he particulars an accusation — “After I look in your eyes/they don’t shine as shiny as they used to” — and calls for a forensic investigation: “Sort in your passcode so I can see inside your soul.” Cheaters, by now, ought to perceive that they need to maintain sure communications offline. PARELES
“I” is the primary and most austere phase of the 35-minute composition (and album) “Shebang” by the guitarist, composer and digital manipulator Oren Ambarchi. Though he’s joined by different devices in the remainder of the piece, most of “Shebang I” is guitar alone: stressed staccato choosing that’s multitracked, looped and digitally edited, constructing hypnotic polyrhythms round an unchanging chordal root. Within the final minute, cymbals and different sounds be part of him, solely hinting at what the remainder of the piece will develop into. PARELES
Invoice Frisell, ‘Waltz for Hal Willner’
The guitarist Invoice Frisell’s tribute to a longtime pal, the high-concept producer Hal Willner, brings the lightest doable contact to an elegy; it’s from his new album, “4.” The harmonies are a sluggish, clear cascade of clusters from Gerald Clayton on piano, whereas the drummer Johnathan Blake scatters cymbal faucets towards the waltzing lilt. Frisell shares the melody with Clayton and Gregory Tardy on tenor saxophone; every of them departs from the tune briefly, conversational asides earlier than returning to what appears like a fond, shared memory. PARELES
