The Playlist: Zayn’s Bizarrely Great Sleaze Rock and 13 More New Songs

An almost excellent mid-to-late 1980s sleaze-rock throbber from an extremely modern mid-to-late 2010s pop idol, “Sour Diesel” is a bizarre direction for Zayn, who since leaving One Direction has struggled to find a rhythm of his own. But its oddity might also be its audacity — this is his most promising solo song yet, triumphing over his own vocal reluctance and also a faint whiff of the theme from “Night Court.”

— JON CARAMANICA

“Wait till the world is mine,” Billie Eilish warns in a quiet, close-up moment near the song’s beginning. Her voice is subdued, but her ambition is unbounded, soon to be fortified by programmed EDM beats — pattering, blipping and swooping. Lorde once sang, “We’ll never be royals”; Eilish emphatically disagrees.

— JON PARELES

It is not that Chance the Rapper has never been irked before, never made aggrievance the center of his music. “You don’t want no problem, want no problem with me,” he croaked on “No Problem,” a nevertheless cheerful song from his last album, “Coloring Book.” But after years of exultant cheer and joyful praise shouting, it’s jarring to hear Chance the Rapper finally seethe. That’s unmistakably what’s happening on “I Might Need Security,” one of four new songs, which captures the moment when the scrutiny that comes with fame curdles into something more unbearable, and when the weight of responsibility begins to be a bit too heavy to bear. There are glimmers of Chance’s inventiveness here. “I mean I’m only 25 but I’m ‘Motown 25'/ Bet I get a statue in my hometown when I die,” he raps, boastful but just a touch indignant. He bemoans the way he has been covered in the media, and urges Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, to resign. He also announces in the song that he bought the local news website Chicagoist. News is an impartial business — it is not about grudges. And celebrity requires a thick skin. In moments in recent years, Chance has been someone who has been tender to the touch, whether in responding to a Twitter user who critiqued his wedding proposal, or in leveraging his power to pressure MTV News to remove a post that was critical of him. “I’m not no nice guy, I’m just a good guy,” he raps here. But part of being the good guy is accepting that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

— JON CARAMANICA

On DRAM’s new EP of modern synthetic funk, “That’s a Girl’s Name,” this is the best song, a cheeky tease that sounds like a seduction but is really a warning: If you don’t treat her right, someone else will.

— JON CARAMANICA

Founded in Puerto Rico and resettled in Brooklyn, New York, Balún makes electronic pop with airy high vocals and pointillistic counterpoint pinging around a core of Caribbean rhythms — what might have happened if the Cocteau Twins had thought a lot more about dancing. The band has been trickling out songs for years, but its full album, “Prisma Tropical,” is released on Friday.

— JON PARELES

The soul singer Swamp Dogg wrenches new drama from a song made famous by Nat King Cole, abetted by the glitchy upheavals of production by Ryan Olson of Polica with assistance from Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), from an album due in September called “Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune.” Orchestral brasses and strings, computer-harmonized vocals and stray electronic echoes and blips place the song’s plea in a treacherously unpredictable soundscape.

— JON PARELES

The master pianist Erroll Garner was known for his plush, fluent harmonies and his lilting fluidity. But he could be an unselfconsciously emotional player, too, often clawing at the boundaries of his own style. In live performances especially, Garner was liable to toss unsuspecting listeners about, making you grab for balance before settling back onto the tracks. On this version of “Night and Day,” from the newly unearthed 1964 live recording “Nightconcert,” he starts with punches of rough, elliptical blues playing, his hands tangling with each other. Then he barrels into the song’s theme, keeping a stubbornly syncopated pattern going in the left hand. As the performance continues, he often ups the momentum by interrupting it; there is some latent tension underneath all that gentility.

— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Waxahatchee goes acoustic on “Chapel of Pines,” from an album due in September. It is an evocative sketch of a song that reserves its most declarative melody for a wordless guitar and piano pairing. Katie Crutchfield, the band’s singer and lyricist, places the song in Mississippi as it begins, then repeats a simple and profound question — “Will you go?” — eight times. That wordless melody provides what resolution there is.

— JON PARELES

Freak-folk songs often lean toward pastorale and nostalgia, but not “Cell Games and Beyond” by the Cradle, centered on the songwriter Paco Cathcart. Acoustic guitar picking and unassuming vocals turn into a confession of jealousy and an indictment of virtual life. “Your baby is a cyber pirate, he’s wedded to the grid,” he complains to someone he longs for. “And though he may love you he will never let you in.” The singer admits he is not geared for cyberspace: “Things are hard enough just living in one time and place.” And while women’s voices and woodwind ensembles suddenly materialize — from online? — he makes his big pitch: “He can just give you his body/ I’ll give you my mind.”

— JON PARELES

“Icey,” by the young Harlem rapper Melii, is one of the year’s starkest rap hits, with a low, guttural beat stomping underneath Melii’s corner-talk boasts. This new version replaces the casually bilingual rapping on the original with tart Spanish, and she sounds even more at ease in her eye-rolls.

— JON CARAMANICA

On “Full Circle,” out Friday, the 81-year-old Eddie Palmieri revisits classics from throughout his storied career with help from a fierce, fine-tuned salsa orchestra. Palmieri’s 12-piece group is at its core a dance band, but it is also an improviser’s paradise — expert at cutting open swaths of terrain in support of brilliant, idiosyncratic soloists, like the bandleader himself. On “Azúcar,” his dance-floor smash from the mid-1960s, the orchestra’s horns dish out Palmieri’s signature devices — sharp upward runs; coiled, key-climbing arpeggios — with added power. When he sets in to solo, he feeds directly off their energy, grunting and singing aloud as he unfurls a seditious flow.

— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

A misapprehension about the generation of rappers currently thriving on SoundCloud is that they are not interested in lyricism, but the YBN crew has been quietly dismantling that idea one vivid song at a time. First, last year, YBN Nahmir showed casual dexterity on “Rubbin Off the Paint.” And now YBN Cordae has emerged as one of the most promising young lyricists in hip-hop, thoughtful and crafty. His gifts were clear on his response to J. Cole a couple months ago, and last week he released a blistering new song, “Kung Fu,” in which he shows off his flexibility with a flow that bends and turns in unexpected ways. “My future’s a tad bright,” he raps, before lamenting the first hints of fame’s tax: “When they rent is due, and your Benz is new/ And your old friends be resenting you.”

— JON CARAMANICA

If the 11-year-old who less than four months ago was busking in a Walmart can release a stylistically diverse country and roots music EP on a major label that even includes this credible-enough nod to Cajun music, then what excuse do all the bros, post-bros, gentlemen and post-gentlemen have?

— JON CARAMANICA

In this 11-minute live instrumental, the Blow — the duo of Melissa Dyne and Khaela Maricich — savors the capabilities of analog synthesizers. Wavery pitches, melting tones, swooping glissandos, ephemeral loops, controlled static and a soothing yet varying pulse emerge from a thicket of knobs and patch cords, serene but never merely ambient.

— JON PARELES