It’s Friday

And “somebody’s gonna figure me out,” Lili Trifilio sings on the first song on the second album by her band, BEACH BUNNY, with a clarity and confidence that suggests she knows that you know that if the immediate object of her affection doesn’t figure her out, somebody else is going to, probably before the next chorus comes around. EMOTIONAL CREATURES is another album of effortlessly catchy guitar-pop choruses framed by nearly as catchy verses about the ups and downs of romance articulated with the kind of emo immediacy that wins you multiple viral TIKTOK hits along with celebrity indie-rock fans like, in this exact case, Bob Odenkirk. He’s headed for a Cinnabon in Omaha, Neb., in a matter of weeks, as any “Better Call Saul” fan knows. Beach Bunny seems poised for something bigger...

Celebrated SoundCloud rapper RICO NASTY’s “tough-as-nails exterior gives way to a sweeter, softer core” on LAS RUINAS, Stereogum’s James Rettig says. It is, for her, “a more low-key, less aggressive project”... FLO MILLI doubles down on her own tough, sassy, wise-cracking exterior on her second (or first, depending who’s counting) album, YOU STILL HERE, HO?, which got a surprise Wednesday release, and which suggests her interior and exterior are in sync. The beats are deliciously minimalist, as if reluctant to get in her way... “The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial / While they’re overturning Roe v. Wade,” BILLIE EILISH sings on “TV,” one of two songs anchored by acoustic guitars on her GUITAR SONGS single, released with no advance notice Thursday. “The melody of each line seems to tumble,” Laura Snapes writes in the Guardian, “each one a crumbling empire delivered in her tremulous, feather-light voice”...

Pianist CHUCHO VALDÉS and alto sax/clarinetist PAQUITO D’RIVERA, principals in the great Cuban jazz band Irakere, reunite on record for the first time in more than 40 years on I MISSED YOU TOO!... COLDER STREAMS is the 11th album by Toronto roots rockers the SADIES, who, in the words of founding singer/guitarist Dallas Good, “certainly don’t claim to have re-invented the wheel. We just are. And have been for a very long time.” It’s their final album with Good, who died in February. “While the haunting echo of Dallas Good’s voice will stick with you,” Maeri Ferguson writes in No Depression, “'Colder Streams' is more than a startlingly beautiful legacy for Good. It is the work of a band at their most accomplished, most driven.”

Also today: New music from Odesza, Joey Bada$$, Jack White, Ty Segall, Shordie Shordie, 26AR, Icewear Vezzo, Mozzy, Nina Nastasia, Tanya Tagaq (remixes), DaniLeigh, Aquakultre, Cuco, Carlos Niño & Friends, Sasha Berliner, Sture Ericson/Pat Thomas/Raymond Strid, Nicolle Galyon (hit country songwriter’s first album), John Moreland, Ben Harper, Julien Baker (b-sides EP, released Thursday), RZA/Bobby Digital (soundtrack to RZA’s graphic novel “Bobby Digital and the Pit of Snakes,” also out today), Eli Fross, Asian Doll, Nwando Ebizie, Karl Sanders (of Nile), Imperial Triumphant, Oceans of Slumber, Witchery, Palisades, Nebula, Sonagi, ZZ Top (live, with the late Dusty Hill), Sam Prekop & John McEntire, Thor Harris, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Dawes, She & Him (Brian Wilson covers album), Bananarama, Gilbert O’Sullivan, quinn, Sean Nicholas Savage, the Kooks, Oh Wonder, Spacemoth, Rusty Santos, Color Green, Pool Kids, the Heavy Heavy and Traams.

Hit Me With Your Best

I’d happily pay $9.99 a month for a subscription music service that was nothing more than this one playlist. The single best thing in the streaming music universe and I don’t think anything else comes close... In Baltimore, JONATHON HEYWARD becomes “the only Black American conductor leading a major U.S. symphony orchestra and just the second in history”... PAT BENATAR isn’t singing “HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT” on her current tour (which hits New Buffalo, Mich., tonight), out of respect to victims of recent mass shootings. The song title “is tongue-in-cheek,” she tells USA Today, “but you have to draw the line. I can’t say those words out loud with a smile on my face, I just can’t. I’m not going to go on stage and soapbox—I go to my legislators—but that’s my small contribution to protesting”... GLADYS KNIGHT, U2, TANIA LEÓN and AMY GRANT will be this year’s KENNEDY CENTER honorees (along with some actor dude from Kentucky who probably doesn’t even play an instrument)... KAROL G, whose nine awards included Album of the Year and Best Girl Power Collab (with BECKY G) and GRUPO FIRME were the big winners at Univision's PREMIOS JUVENTUD Thursday night in San Juan.

Rest in Peace

Blues singer and actress SHONKA DUKUREH, who played Big Mama Thornton in Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis."