New Music — the songs you need to hear this week

This week’s pop drop comes from Doechii and Lady Gaga. “RUNWAY” is a high-camp track tied to “The Devil Wears Prada 2” soundtrack. It’s technically a duet, though Doechii clearly has the upper hand here. She struts through it like she owns the floor, while Gaga feels more like a flicker at the edges. The production is shiny, maximal and aware of its own spectacle. When Doechii purrs, “I can turn the dance floor into a runway,” it lands less like a boast and more like a mission statement. You can bank on the fun factor with Bruno Mars as a lyricist here. It struts, it shimmers. The lights snap on.

Ella Langley — who was the first lead female artist to have a country song reach #1 on the Hot 100 since Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em”—released her new album “Dandelion” and with it the single “Bottom Of Your Boots.” What works here is how clever the hook gets set up. “If you’re gonna love me/Better love me to the moon and back/From the bottom of your boots/To the top of your hat,” Langley sings. We appreciate her twang too, of course, but it’s the way she wields it that matters most. A closer listen to “Be Her” reveals a neat linguistic trick: her and hurt nearly collapse into one another in the mix. “I just want to be her so bad/It hurts so bad,” plays right on the seam where desire and pain start sounding like the same thing.

Kehlani and Missy Elliot link up on “Back and Forth,” a track from Kehlani’s self-titled album arriving later this month. It reads as both evolution and acknowledgement—Kehlani honing her palette while Missy Elliott adds texture that feels grounded and loose all at once. In the bridge, Missy Elliott comes through like she’s mid-phone call, lightly scolding someone as the track cuts around her. “I’m grown/Not a teen,” she sings. The conversation goes back and forth, conveniently so.

Holly Humberstone is back with her first album in three years. “This album encapsulates two years of loving, learning, yearning, growing up, embracing changes and navigating being a young woman in the modern world,” she wrote on Instagram. That brings us to the album title: “Cruel World.” The record gestures toward the cultural scripts that pit young women against one another. The clearest expression of it comes on “Pageant Queen.” It’s got that sad, “look at what’s going on here” feeling. “The stage is yours/Don’t forget to have a ball/One day I’ll make you love me/Come on and make me pretty,” she sings. The song leans into the experience of being a performer, like what it’s like to be pulled apart while you’re still onstage. As the final song, it feels like a kind of tragedy. But maybe that’s the point of the world she’s constructed—one that’s, by design, a little cruel.

We’re pinning this week’s best release on “Bring Home My Man” by Maya Hawke. If you didn’t know, she’s acting (Robin in “Stranger Things”) and singing—and it’s the latter we’re especially drawn to here. There’s something siren-like in Hawke’s voice that pulls you in, then suddenly you’re deep in her streaming catalog. We were big fans of her last album “Chaos Angel” so all of that leaves us waiting on the new record with real anticipation. From the robot-voiced “Devil You Know” to the softer “Bring Home My Man,” she’s already covering a lot of ground sonically. “MAITREYA CORSO” comes out May 1. We’re stomping the ground, throwing out the blankets and waiting it out.

—Dawson Therre