Titled “Flux,” it lands somewhere between the sonic extremes of her previous work, marrying heavy distortion with sticky pop hooks. Poppy’s upcoming fourth album follows last year’s “I Disagree,” which earned her a Grammy nomination for best metal performance. In every role, her signature move is to unnerve, whether she’s demonstrating a makeup look for a funeral, singing about body culture or screaming atop thrashing guitars and hurtling hard-core drums. POPPY Since her ascent on YouTube several years ago, Poppy has ping-ponged from one identity to another: She’s styled herself as an internet satirist, a cyborgian pop star and, most recently, a nu-metal frontwoman. But the beauty of the arrangements doesn’t blunt the spikiness of lyrics penned by the group’s frontwoman, Spencer Peppet, as she surveys the emotional wreckage of relationships in the rearview mirror (“Holding you feels like a bomb went off in my chest” she sings, memorably, on “The Twilight Zone.”) Julien Baker, an artist with whom Peppet shares a knack for lyrical vulnerability, lends guest vocals to one track. THE OPHELIAS On their third album, “Crocus,” this Ohio four-piece delivers tender and sometimes unnerving songs of the heart, wrapped in thickets of expressive violin and delicate harmony. 24 Sony Music UK/RCA Records) - Jon Pareles She’s joined by kindred jazzy-R&B songwriters on “And Then Life Was Beautiful,” including Lianne La Havas, serpentwithfeet and Lucky Daye.
NAO With her gravity-defying soprano and lithe, darting melodies, the English songwriter Nao glides through songs about falling in and out of love, sounding buoyant even when she’s downhearted or uncertain. “We Famous,” Kondi Band’s second album, expands its global footprint with contributions from a third member, the London-based producer Will Horrocks.
Boima’s subsequent remix of Sorie’s song “Without Money, No Family” paved the way for the pair’s ongoing collaboration as Kondi Band, named for Sorie’s 15-pin thumb piano, which lends an undulating backbone to glittering, electronic compositions that draw on West African traditions and contemporary dance music. and producer with roots in Kondi’s native Sierra Leone. KONDI BAND This intercontinental, intergenerational group’s story began when a YouTube video of the street musician Sorie Kondi made its way to Chief Boima, an American D.J. If “Imaginary Visions,” her new album with the Danish Radio Big Band, feels like a master class in crisply executed contemporary big band jazz, it’s a class worth attending. For the upstart Japanese big-band composer Miho Hazama, whose arrangements thrive on big gestures, exuberance and bravado technique, that’s not a huge problem. These well-tooled orchestras can offer expert and faithful readings, though it’s often all too apparent that the bands don’t have a particularly lengthy or intimate relationship to the guest’s music. MIHO HAZAMA AND THE DANISH RADIO BIG BAND Top northern European big bands have long invited great composers and arrangers from abroad to collaborate on albums. 24 Gearbox Records) - Giovanni Russonello
On their new album, “Look Out,” a bristling collection of originals, the old feeling is newly alive.
But the Cookers, a group of luminaries mostly now in their 70s and 80s, have managed to retain the rough-and-tumble spirit of their old work, while accepting the laurels that have rightfully come to them. In the years since, our memory of the era has become a bit simplified, and some of its more rugged straight-ahead jazz - made for labels like Strata-East and Black Lion - hasn’t fully made it into the canon. It was a complicated, ungoverned time in jazz, when fusion was upending the genre’s creative economy and even traditionalists were pushing their own boundaries. THE COOKERS There’s something dangerous about putting together an all-star crew of jazz musicians whose careers took off (mostly) in the 1970s. Incisive and introspective as ever, Cara continues to position herself as both pop star and self-therapist. On “In the Meantime,” her third album, Cara’s youthful unease gives way to mid-20s ennui she sings about the passage of time (“What if my best days are the days I’ve left behind?” she wonders on one misty piano ballad), romantic disappointment and feelings of inadequacy. ALESSIA CARA Since landing her first hit with “Here” - a tart, ambling song about being a wallflower - at 18, the Canadian singer Alessia Cara has documented the friction of adolescence and young adulthood with clear eyes and a sharp pen.
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