Kacey Musgraves’s Tex-Mex Kiss-Off Leads Ten Songs Worth the Argument

Kacey Musgraves bids adiós bilingually on "Weekend in Texas," the lead track of her upcoming "Middle of Nowhere Vol. 2: Tex Mex Tapes," due in January. The song contemplates a weekend of tequila and Mexican beer over twangy guitar, mariachi horns, Tex-Mex organ and, yes, plenty of cowbell. It doubles as a statement on cross-border musical and cultural ties. "I said adiós to his ego / 'cause he ain't my amigo anymore," she sings. Easygoing, but pointed. The playlist comes from Jon Pareles, The Times culture correspondent and chief pop critic for 37 years.

What else is new?

Michael Kiwanuka sounds utterly forsaken on "California," from his new album "Fudge." His voice is a scratchy near-whisper over minor chords: "I've been gone, gone, gone for way too long." Even an orchestral crescendo can't disguise the frailty.

The duo @ — Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak, a name that defeats search engines — strum warped folk on "I Know You Are (But What Am I Thinking)," wandering between jig and waltz as unexpected instruments sprout. "I can't believe that you're really staying," they harmonize, marveling at a relationship that survived its own sabotage.

Laila! — 20-year-old Brooklyn singer, songwriter, programmer and producer Laila Smith — stacks countless vocals on "So Much So Much," from her second album, "We'll Never Be This Young Again." A slow-motion wallow in anticipation: "There is so much I want to do with you." Midway, the track dissolves into cascading harmonies, abandoning the beat entirely.

Los Angeles band Dummy confronts artificial intelligence on "Full Spectrum Dominance," from "do you love the color of the sky?" Dissonant wah-wah guitar and a funk beat with a touch of Stereolab back Emma Maatman: "You just take anything you like." The computer-graphic video reads as taunt or capitulation. Your call.

Puerto Rico's Chuwi merges Afro-Caribbean tradition and 21st-century electronics on its debut album "Libertad" ("Freedom"). Cuba's Daymé Arocena guests on "Veo Veo," accelerating through yambú, batá and guaguancó rhythms (three Afro-Cuban drumming styles) toward a single aim — "pa liberar," to get free.

Why does "Timewaster" hit hard?

The Olivia Tremor Control's "The Same Place" is a 27-track magnum opus two decades in the making, and a memorial to two departed songwriters. "Waste don't waste your time at hand," goes the scrappy, upbeat "Timewaster," which takes its metaphysics lightly. Bill Doss died in 2012; Will Hart died in 2024. The pair, veterans of the 1990s neo-psychedelic Elephant 6 collective, reconnected and began recording in 2010, but the project was shelved after Doss's death. Hart revisited it in 2023 and left plans to finish it; Elephant 6 musicians followed through. Now the line "We all fade into the never-ending struggle" lands differently.

Instrumental pick and chart entry

Producer Nikki Nair's "Groundhogs," from the EP "Majestic Animals," demands headphones: snares, bass, bells, perhaps marimba, late-breaking piano, strings and handclaps turn plain 4/4 into splashy sonic acrobatics.

Canadian songwriter Cameron Whitcomb hits No. 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 with "Kingdom of Fear." Like Mumford & Sons gone feral, his songs escalate from acoustic strumming to full rock stomp. "I won't be that person that calls you when I'm hurting," he vows. Thirty seconds in, he's shouting. It follows the formula of his earlier hit "Quitter."

What happened 20 years ago?

Amy Winehouse released "Back to Black," her second and final studio album, on Oct. 27, 2006. Her jazzy syncopations made confessions of betrayal and self-destruction sound playful, knowing, almost jokey. A newly expanded reissue adds a 2007 live concert from Amsterdam's Paradiso, with Winehouse improvisatory and tight, in superb form. The reissue arrives as the strongest argument yet that the recordings have outlived the tragedy.