Bob Dylan’s 17-Minute Surprise, and 8 More New Songs

The Playlist Hear tracks by PartyNextDoor featuring Rihanna, Benjamin Gibbard and others. Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes).

Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes. com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage. Bob Dylan has suddenly released a 17-minute historical reflection, told in facts, bits of dialogue, bleak observations and song-lyric snippets.

Accompanied by piano, drums, bowed bass and fiddle that linger over slow chords, Dylan intones each line with somber clarity. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is its core and central trauma — “the soul of a nation been torn away/and it’s beginnin’ to go into a slow decay” — while Dylan tries to find answers, or at least clues, in music. JON PARELES A summery acoustic R&B number that would have been at home in the mid-1990s, “Believe It” is the marquee track from the new PartyNextDoor album, “Partymobile.

” He’s gentle and a little tentative here, a man making sure he can get back in his partner’s good graces: If I propose, would you say no? Would you break my heart? Would you embarrass me or play your part? Baby don’t fold, my heart is yours And then there’s Rihanna, singing soothing harmony, lightly chastising, playing hard to impress.

He’s looking for certainty; she’s unlikely to give it. JON CARAMANICA Musicianly overkill is Jacob Collier’s vice and, in songs like this, his charm. He sings and plays a studio-full of instruments, and he can’t resist showing off his endless layerings, his dense harmonies, his slyly elaborate key changes. “In My Bones” is a homage to Prince, a studio concoction savoring a “funky feeling in my bones” (and featuring a lone guest instrumentalist, MonoNeon, busily thumb-popping the electric bass).

Kimbra sings where Prince would switch to falsetto; Tank (of Tank & the Bangas) gets a quick rapping cameo. But it’s all about virtuosity; every pause and transition gets a conspicuous musical flourish, and the animated video flaunts every one. PARELES Cooped-up songwriters are going to write songs, and they’re thinking about the same topic as nearly everyone else.