“Prologue” is actually the final track on Kamasi Washington’s upcoming album, “Fearless Movement,” and it’s dense and bouncy. Double time drumming, frenetic percussion and hyperactive keyboard counterpoint revolve around a melody that rises determinedly on descending chords, while break-neck solos from Dontae Winslow on trumpet and Washington on saxophone extol the hyper-agility and emotional peaks. JON PARELES
Shabazz Palaces — Ishmael Butler from Digable Planets — sets up a sci-fi scenario on “Take Me to Your Leader” from his album due March 29, “Exotic Birds of Prey.” He and a guest rapper, Lavarr the Starr, have to convince a powerful, mysterious queen that “our race deserves to live.” Amidst twinkling electronics and slow throbbing bass, with voices distorted by echoes and effects, they set a strategy of gifts, philosophizing, seduction and “a steady rhythm that can he was surprised.” PARALES
Salt Cathedral,’Off the Walls‘
A decade-long friendship turns into an ecstatic romance in “Off the Walls” by Salt Cathedral, the duo of Juliana Ronderos and Nicolas Losada. “Being together is not our strong suit/but I’m glad we found it,” Ronderos sings in a track that melds hovering electronics, crisp programmed beats, Afropop-tinged guitar curlicues and Ronderos’s multitracked vocals into sheer bliss: “ I feel I never felt it before.” PARELES
4batz featuring Drake, ‘Act II: Date @ 8 (Remix)‘
4batz’s “Act II: Date @ 8” is clearly indebted to the music coming out of Toronto in the early 2010s, when Drake and the Weeknd were laying bricks together to remake the pop sound. And so the slow, sensual, saccharinely off-kilter down-tempo R&B hit — which has been proliferating on TikTok and elsewhere for the past few months — having an old-fashioned Drake-remix bump is a full-circle moment. It’s also a student-teacher convention: 4batz’s rendering of an infatuation has an edge of titilation, while Drake’s is calm and collected. JON CARAMANICA
Somewhere between a hymn and a sea chantey, “All in Good Time” — from Iron & Wine’s April 26 album, “Light Verse” — features Sam Beam’s fiery tenor and the best Fiona Apple’s trademark line about togetherness, separation, memories and lessons learned: “You wore my ring until it didn’t fit,” observes Apple. Piano chords and strings sway as the song’s two former partners reconcile to find, if not reconciliation, a mature sense of resignation. PARALES
Mustafa,Imaan‘
Canadian folk singer Mustafa’s specialty is isolation and longing, which gives them beauty and, somehow, without anxiety. In “Imaan,” the first single from an upcoming album, the subject is about how two star-crossed people try to find ways to connect when faith (and maybe other things) demand that they not do: “You say prayer is easy/And every way you need me is from God/And every way you reach him is flawed.” It’s about the tension between the carnal and the spiritual, but more simply, about two people talking past each other, because the price of talking directly in each other may be too high. CARAMANICA
Swamp Dogg,’The mess under that dress‘
Still a provocateur at age 81, raucous Southern soul veteran Swamp Dogg plans to release “Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St.,” an album backed by bluegrass virtuosos like Sierra Hull on mandolin , Noam Pikelny on banjo and Billy Contreras on fiddle. “Mess Under That Dress” hits as Swamp Dogg sings about a woman who is so volatile, the undertaker is even worried. “You’re bad for business,” he frets. “You will raise the dead.” PARALES
In the early days of corridos tumbados, a generation gap grew between the young performers who injected regional Mexican music with new rhythms and attitudes — and gained widespread attention — and the older musicians who -plugged out for many years to find success within the scene but continues more. unheard of elsewhere. Fortunately, those walls are melting, as evidenced by the spirited collaboration between Fuerza Regida, one of the pioneer bands of the last decade, and Eden Muñoz, the former frontman of the long-running and wildly popular band Caliber 50. This is a tag-team of chest-thumping bravado — not against each other, but together. CARAMANICA
Laufey,’goddess‘
“I’m a goddess on stage, man when we’re alone,” the ever-poised Icelandic pop-jazz crooner Laufey sings on “Goddess,” contemplating a post-show hookup. The tune is an old-fashioned, acoustic piano waltz with a sudden, grandiose buildup. Like many of Laufey’s songs, it addresses a certain contemporary tension, between ideal imagery and earthly reality. PARALES
Moor Mother featuring Alya Al Sultani,’All the money‘
Deep-voiced and completely unflappable, Moor Mother — poet and vocalist Camae Ayewa — turns her attention to the British Empire, and all its colonial exploits, on “All the Money” from her album that “The Great Bailout.” With keyboardist Vijay Iyer’s production floating echoey piano notes over a cavernous bass pulse, swirling echoes and a wailing operatic voice, Moor Mother considers churches and museums and art objects. He lists dates and catalog holdings in the millions; he mentions “thieves masquerading as explorers” and mutters, “Where did they get all the money?” PARALES
