The Playlist: Previously Unreleased Hendrix, and 10 More New Songs

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Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos — and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. This week, Tracey Thorn returns, Chick Corea and Steve Gadd team for a double album, and the Chainsmokers turn moody.

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Jimi Hendrix, ‘Mannish Boy’

Jimi Hendrix took his brand-new Band of Gypsys, with Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass, into the studio for the first time on April 22, 1969. They tore into the Muddy Waters song “Mannish Boy” with a succession of pummeling, wriggling riffs and stop-time interludes that had the band hanging on every Hendrix impulse. The track is from “Both Sides of the Sky,” a collection of previously unreleased late-1960s Hendrix coming out in March; parts of it were incorporated in “Mannish Boy” on the 1994 Hendrix album “Blues.” But that was an edited, composite version pieced together from multiple takes. This real-time single take has a bucking, churning momentum all the way through. JON PARELES

Tracey Thorn, ‘Queen’

Warm, buzzy synthesizer chords and a hyperactive syncopated cymbal are the assured backdrop for Tracey Thorn’s voice as she savors the fullness of her lower register in “Queen,” the song that will open her March 2 album, “Record.” The lyrics aren’t so sure: “Am I queen/A magisterial has-been,” she mulls, and wonders, “Do I ever find love? Or am I still waiting?” J.P.

Chick Corea and Steve Gadd, ‘Wake-Up Call’

Mr. Corea, a pianist and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, has worked off and on with Mr. Gadd, a drummer, for about 40 years. They recently rekindled that relationship in a serious way, and on Friday they released “Chinese Butterfly,” a double album, recorded with a quintet, that should not go unnoticed. The first disc eases you in, with five pieces referring to various touchstones of the famous ’70s and ’80s fusion sound. But listen to the second disc, which contains three extra-long group digressions, and you’ll find yourself prowling through new territory. “Wake-Up Call” comes from that latter half. All of 18 minutes, the track was composed by Mr. Corea and Lionel Loueke, the Beninese virtuoso guitarist-vocalist; it starts in a canopied haze, rattling percussion and teasing flute beckoning you in. Then: a percussive melody, a brief energetic lull, and we’re off and moving. Mr. Gadd drives things with a loosely energetic hand, and the flutist Steve Wilson takes a bristling solo — but stick around for the extraterrestrial electric keyboard work from Mr. Corea near the end, bringing it all to a phantasmagoric close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Dolltits, ‘Locker Room Talk’

I’m on vacation this week, which means more time for internet deep dives, which means a higher caliber of unexpected discovery. Such is “Locker Room Talk,” by Therina Bella and Magie Serpica, a pair of Staten Island women. It’s acoustic folk-punk agit-pop, with sweet harmonies on lyrics comprised almost entirely of words uttered by President Trump: “I moved on her heavily,” “When you're a star, you can do anything” and, of course, “Grab them by the…,” well, you know. It is an impressive logistical feat, and an impressive aesthetic one as well, a radical reframing of public nastiness pulsing with the spirit of 1960s protest folk, 1990s Lilith Fair and 2010s D.I.Y. warehouse punk. JON CARAMANICA

The Venus Project, ‘Won’t Hurt’

“I pray that I’m not a ghost,” Georgia Nott sings in “Won’t Hurt,” making her voice small and frail as she sings about pretending to be more confident than she feels. Crystalline guitar picking carries her into more surreal realms with phantom percussion and flickering electronic sounds, making her way toward a fuller, self-consoling chorus that simply repeats: “It won’t hurt.” Ms. Nott is half of the New Zealand duo Broods with her brother Caleb. But she recorded “Won’t Hurt,” and the rest of her solo album, as the Venus Project because women handled everything: music, production, visuals. J.P.

3MA, ‘Moustique’

A trio of virtuosos on plucked-string instruments from disparate musical cultures — Ballak‚ Sissoko from Mali on kora, Driss El Maloumi from Morocco on oud and Rajery from Madagascar on the valiha — make transnational teamwork look and sound easy in this live studio version of a track from 3MA’s late-2017 album “Anarouz.” Speedy, ultraprecise unisons and a round-robin of improvisations minimize what must have been complex choices on tuning, mode and inflection; the music shimmers as fingers fly. J.P.

The Chainsmokers, ‘Sick Boy’

Brooding piano rock balladry from the country’s most maligned dance-pop duo isn’t necessarily an unexpected turn, but lyrics in “Sick Boy” about, it seems, political division and the falsity of public life is a drop too far. “Feed yourself with my life’s work/How many likes is my life worth?” Drew Taggart wonders, as he slowly undermines his group’s frat-rave past in favor of a more earnest direction that might necessitate a new name: Wokesmokers? Chainpilots? Public Enemy? J.C.

Johanna Warren, ‘Inreverse’

Johanna Warren's acoustic guitar, her only accompaniment, picks through patterns that barely change throughout “Inreverse.” Its near-drone accompanies a minutely examined and revelatory emotional upheaval, a view of a failed romance sung with meditative grace and intimations of heartache, ending with a forever unanswered question: “Could you not see?/I was terrified/of what I knew I could be.” J.P.

Brazilian Girls, ‘Pirates’

Is this a roommate arrangement or a ménage à quatre? Some kind of cheerful conjunction is teased at in “Pirates,” from what will be the first Brazilian Girls album since 2008, arriving in April. It’s a perky, steady-pulsing new wave-electro tune with Sabina Sciubba’s voice stacked into a lush harmony chorus (mostly in French) and lyrics that make a point of: “You me him and I sleeping together/not sleeping together.” Seems congenial enough. J.P.

Lea Bertucci, ‘Patterns for Alto’

Aether: a medium that in the wave theory of light permeates all space and transmits transverse waves. That’s Merriam-Webster, offering a definition that’s as mystifying as it is clear. Which is to say, it’s a good place to start if you’re going to listen to “Metal Aether,” the forthcoming album from Ms. Bertucci, an improvising alto saxophonist and composer and whose music is a kind of scientific sound poetry. On this record, she mixes recordings of other instruments — passed and filtered through analog tape — with warbling saxophone. The album’s first track, “Patterns for Alto,” bears some resemblance to the work of the fellow saxophone monastics Colin Stetson and Travis Laplante, but there’s less fascination with the instrument’s heft here — more of a will to utterly question the terms of physical embodiment. “Metal Aether” is out on a limited vinyl pressing Feb. 9. G.R.

Mouse on Mars featuring Justin Vernon, ‘Dimensional People Part III’

Hesitation and anticipation are the essence of “Dimensional People Part III,” the collaboration by the Berlin electronic duo Mouse on Mars and Justin Vernon, better known as Bon Iver. It’s an even more abstract extrapolation of Bon Iver’s 2016 album, “22, a Million,” and the dance-floor-defying catalog of Mouse on Mars. Sustained and ephemeral electronic sounds conjure unearthly open spaces, and Mr. Vernon sings hovering lines like “Ready to pass the torch” and “Did it hurt you?” Physical instruments like saxophones and horns appear and wink out. It’s not a song; it’s sound as a temporal phenomenon, a few minutes of sculpted attention. J.P.