5 new releases we love: Whitney folks around, Little Brother returns, and more

Joyero, Release The Dogs

[Merge, August 23]

As half of Wye Oak, Andy Stack makes an extraordinary amount of sound for one person: It’s a joy to watch him drum with one hand while playing a keyboard or triggering a sample with the other. So it should come as little surprise that his first solo venture—under the name Joyero—does wonders with layers: a drum loop here, a humming keyboard there, an acoustic guitar poking its head out in just the right way. It’s all balanced by Stack’s heretofore under-heard voice, which is more melancholy intonation than singing for the most part—it’s more like another instrument on Release The Dogs than the focal point. His lyrics are worth craning your neck to decipher, though: These nine songs offer an impressionistic but gorgeous examination of heartbreak. So not only is he proficient in a dozen or more instruments, but at lining up beautiful words with their sounds. With the number of records and bands he’s been a part of, it’s almost unfair that this counts as a debut album—it’s so far ahead of most. [Josh Modell]

Pusha T, “Sociopath” and “Coming Home”

[Getting Out Our Dreams, Inc./Def Jam Recordings]

Pusha T’s got two decades of work playing the villain— the Marlo-quoting, phlegm-spewing, Drake-murdering antichrist of hip-hop. But anyone doing a spit-take over the straitlaced social activism of new single “Coming Home” hasn’t been listening too closely to the emcee, who has never shied away from specifying American conservatism as the fuel to his fire. The track, which is intended to promote the rapper’s commendable Third Strike Campaign, sounds beamed in from 2007, with Kanye layering chipmunk soul beneath an extremely unexpected contribution from Ms. Lauryn Hill. She sounds great, of course, and it all works, but Pusha sounds much more at home rapping through gritted teeth on his other new single, the Daytona outtake “Sociopath.” It’s as close as the rapper’s ever gotten to a love song, extolling his partner’s ruthlessness until she grabs the mic and finishes the song for him like it was a bottle of Veuve he was sipping. Pusha may not be a villain IRL, but there’s a reason he always plays one. [Clayton Purdom]