What to listen to this weekend

ALBUM OF THE WEEK Jenny Lewis: “Joy’All”

On her fifth solo, singer-songwriter (and former frontwoman for Rilo Kiley), Jenny Lewis comes off as a super cool aunt, or maybe older cousin — the one who always finds adventure and attracts drama, and whose existence refutes the supposed dullness of middle age. “My 40s are kicking my ass / And handing them to me in a margarita glass / I was infatuated with an older man / and then I dated a psychopath,” she sings with blasé charm on “Puppy and a Truck,” a hilarious anthem for the rootless and independent.

“Joy’All” is a joyous alt-country romp from a veteran artist whose songwriting feels as sharp as ever. “I’m just trying to get laid,” Lewis admits over shuffling percussion and glimmering slide guitar on “Psychos,” the album’s infectious opening track. On the twangy “Apples and Oranges” she describes her new lover to an ex with brutal candour: “He’s hot and he’s cool / He’s nothing like you.”

Hidden beneath the tough exterior, there’s tenderness, too. On the R&B-inflected title track, Lewis refers to an incident that “almost destroyed” her as a teenager. “I’m not a toy, ya’ll / I got heart.”

ALSO RECOMMENDED Big Freedia: “Bigfoot”

After last summer’s blockbuster single “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé became the unofficial spokesperson for “the Great Resignation,” a pandemic-era movement that supposedly empowered disgruntled workers to quit their jobs. But the song’s driving force was actually the New Orleans bounce icon Big Freedia, whose 2014 song “Explode” was sampled liberally, and whose rousing directives provided the dance-pop anthem with its slogan: “Release ya anger / Release ya mind / Release ya job / release the time!”

Twelve months later, Big Freedia is back with a brand-new heater. “Muthaf---ing Sasquatch stompin’ through your city / Comin’ for the big bags nothin’ itty bitty” she proclaims with booming authority over ground-shaking brass and clacking snares. Arriving just in time for Pride, “Bigfoot” is a potent return from the artist, whose first album in nine years, “Central City,” arrives later this month.

There’s an endearing sense of purity that underlies ‘Loveher,’ the first solo single from Romy, best known as the guitarist and co-vocalist of The xx

Romy: “Loveher”

There’s an endearing sense of purity that underlies “Loveher,” the first solo single from Romy, who is best known as the guitarist and co-vocalist of the influential indie rock trio The xx. Featuring production from in-demand English artist Fred Again, whose iridescent piano chords and driving house beat recall the dance-pop melodrama of Robyn, the track builds from timid communion — “Hold my hand under the table / It’s not that I’m not proud in the company of strangers / It’s just some things are for us” — into a soaring affirmation: “Love her, I love her, I love her, I love her,” she sings in a gentle falsetto in the song’s outro. The song has been described as a “proud and positive queer love story,” but the emotions it contains are clearly universal.