New Music Latin is a compilation of the best new Latin songs and albums recommended by Billboard Latin and Billboard Español editors. Check out this week’s picks below.

Christian Nodal, “Un Vals” (Sony Music México)

After surprising listeners with the first single from his upcoming album —“Incompatibles,” a predominantly pop track — Christian Nodal returns to his mariachi roots with “Un Vals.” Written by the artist himself, the song stands as an anthem for love, both musically and lyrically. “I will love you slowly while the world rushes by,” sings the Mexican music star in a line that encapsulates this declaration of eternal love. The gentle quality of the accordion notes, heard from start to finish, lends the track a special cadence — one further enriched by the sounds of classic trumpets and the guitarrón. — TERE AGUILERA

Blessd, El Mejor Hombre del Mundo (Cigol Music Group/Warner Music Latina)

Blessd unveils his latest album, El Mejor Hombre del Mundo (the best man in the world), a declaration of his aspirations, just days before welcoming his first child. Arriving alongside the kickoff of his first U.S. tour, this 12-track album breathes fresh melodies into the Colombian singer’s signature streetwise sound. Guided by the creative vision of Ovy On The Drums, the project unites powerhouse collaborators like Myke Towers, Crudo Means Raw and Anuel AA, crafting a vibrant soundscape that fuses mainstream appeal with raw, heartfelt storytelling. El Mejor Album del Mundo unfolds as a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and growth. The focus track, “Si Las Paredes Hablaran,” pulses with intimate energy before bursting into salsa rhythms, symbolizing Blessd’s own artistic evolution. He ventures into new musical landscapes with the infectious Caribbean groove of “Contigo Sí,” while “Gracias Mi Dios” delivers a touching message of gratitude and resilience, serving as a reminder that none of us are ever truly alone. — INGRID FAJARDO

Luísa Sonza, Brutal Paraíso (Sony Music Brasil)

Ahead of her Coachella debut this weekend, Luísa Sonza drops an ambitious 23-track opus, Brutal Paraíso. Produced by the likes of Roy Lenzo (Lil Nas X) and Tommy Brown (Ariana Grande), the album showcases the Brazilian pop sensation’s versatility across genres and languages, blending elements of baile funk, R&B, bossa nova and pop into a genre-hopping fever dream. Highlights like “Amor, que pena!” see Sonza pairing her sensual vocals with delicate bossa nova guitars and piano flourishes. Other standout tracks include “Loira Gelada,” a New Wave-inspired escapade, and “Fruto do Tempo,” which features bright, poppy production that complements her voice beautifully.

She enlists Colombian star Sebastián Yatra on the bilingual, funk carioca-leaning “Tu Gata” and Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko on the risqué “Safada.” Undeniably ambitious, Brutal Paraíso teeters between plenty of brilliant moments and occasional chaos amidst its sprawling tracklist. Still, Sonza’s fearless experimentation and knack for bold collaborations make her one of Brazil’s most exciting and boundary-pushing pop stars. — ISABELA RAYGOZA

Cimafunk & La Tribu, “Cocinarte” (Mala Cabeza Records/Thirty Tigers)

With a vibrant blend of funk and Cuban rhythms, Cimafunk and La Tribu fire up the stove for “Cocinarte” — a sensual, playful song that revels in double entendre. “All I want is to cook you up… The grease is already sizzling hot,” go some of the lyrics. Its sophisticated musicianship captivates the listener, incorporating autochthonous rhythms such as son, dicharancho and bolero. As the first single from Cimafunk’s upcoming album, TE TOCA — scheduled for release in May — “Cocinarte” is an explosion of flavor, perfect for the dance floor. — SIGAL RATNER-ARIAS

Jay Music, “La Ventanita (Remix)” (Jay Music Inc.)

On “La Ventanita (Remix),” Guatemalan artist Jay Music recruits Cuban hitmakers Nando Pro and La Companioni to give the timeless Latin party song a modern reparto twist. Originally released as a merengue in 1992 by Dominican star Sergio Vargas, “La Ventanita” metaphorically refers to a “little window of love” that has closed following a breakup. Keeping the song’s sentiment intact — with lyrics that describe having a literal shattered soul and longing for someone — the former Billboard On The Radar Latin artist adds his own cheeky and saucy verses, chanting: “You shut the window on me, so I walked in through the door/ I’m doing things my way — come on, place your bet/ I’ve got a proposition for you: a night of pure madness, until the sun comes up,” as an attempt to win back that special lady. Sonically, Jay revamps the classic merengue into a reparto rhythm backed by reggaetón, rumba and the signature clave instrumentation that’s key to the Cuban genre. The official music video was filmed by Robot Vision at the popular Cuban social club Neme Gastro Bar in Miami, where Jay was accompanied by a group of viral Cuban dancers. — JESSICA ROIZ

Julieta Venegas & Yahritza y Su Esencia, “La Línea” (Altafonte/Lolein Music)

The drama impacting families and couples separated by immigration policies in the U.S. serves as the unifying thread of “La Línea,” the third single from Julieta Venegas’s upcoming album, Norteña, set to be released in May. In this moving love song — narrated in the first person — the Mexican-American singer-songwriter is joined by regional Mexican music phenomenon Yahritza y Su Esencia, bridging generations and realities through the sounds of the accordion, guitar and trombone, with lyrics that stir deep emotions: “That bitter line leaves us with no way out/ It makes us think that this is the end/ But you know well, my love, we’ve already seen so much/ Our love remains strong; this won’t extinguish it,” they sing. The track takes on even greater significance given that the sibling trio experienced firsthand the pain of a separation caused by immigration issues. Although it depicts complex and sorrowful situations, Venegas asserts that her song is ultimately “about love and hope.” — NATALIA CANO

Pancho Barraza, 35 Aniversario (Vol.1) (FONO/Pachy Music)

For an occasion as significant as his 35th career anniversary, regional Mexican music singer Pancho Barraza presents 10 tracks bearing his distinctive signature style, accompanied by banda, norteño and even Latin pop arrangements. “Todo o Nada,” a collaboration with Lucero, surprises right from the start, with piano chords hiding the entrance of a tuba in an excellent fusion. On “Amarte a la Medida,” featuring Olga Tañón, the pop elements take center stage — with violins and trumpets adding a special touch. The same holds true for “Discúlpame,” on which Piso 21 infuses their signature romantic style while Barraza contributes his characteristic emotional depth.

Elsewhere on the album, his fellow Sinaloans from Banda MS appear on “El Último Minuto,” delivering their classic Sinaloan sound, while Los Dos Carnales inject energy into “Borracho de Besos” with their accordion work. The focus track, “Ojalá,” is the icing on the cake: a blend of vallenato and Mexican music that invites listeners to dance and showcases Barraza in a whole new light. — T.A.

Check out more Latin recommendations this week below:

Kacey Musgraves is living up to her Instagram handle (@spaceykacey), because she might have just seen some inhabitants of outer space while on a recent flight.

On her Instagram Story on Friday (April 10), the country singer-songwriter looked and sounded serious as she told followers about the “craziest f–king orb UFO experience” she’d had on a plane ride from Fort Worth, Texas, to Nashville. “We just watched these orbs — there were three of them — but I was about to lay down and take a nap and saw these lights that caught my eye and just didn’t look normal.”

“They were definitely, like, trailing each other,” she continued, noting that her manager Bobby also saw the flying objects. “These orbs were not moving like any craft we can control. They were intermittently coming and going, forming triangle patterns. Sometimes they would get extremely bright and change color, change size.”

Musgraves went on to say that she watched the orbs for about 45 minutes, and they “followed” her flight from the Little Rock area all the way to her destination. After the plane touched down, the musician spoke to the pilots, who apparently told her, “We’ve seen these every single night.”

“All the other pilots are seeing them, too, and nobody knows what they are,” Musgraves added, recounting what the pilots told her.

She also shared several videos they’d taken of the orbs. Filmed from a distance at night, the clips are grainy and difficult to make out, but the sources of light flying around outside Musgraves’ flight are visible.

Musgraves is just the latest musician to report having seen aliens at some point. Kesha, Nick Jonas and Post Malone have all detailed their encounters with the abnormal, and Demi Lovato took a retreat to Joshua Tree in 2020 to go orb-spotting. Plus, Tom Delonge of Blink-182 is a longtime proponent of extraterrestrial research.

The “Follow Your Arrow” singer is currently gearing up to release a new album, Middle of Nowhere, which drops May 1. So far, she’s dropped only lead single “Dry Spell” from the project.

Baltazar, an AI-powered analytical platform that can aid in royalty valuation thanks to the ingestion of $2 billion worth of music statements protected by anonymizing architecture, has added Shot Tower Capital, a boutique investment bank specializing in music industry assets, and its asset valuation unit, RedBrick Advisors, to its growing list of design partners. 

Built by Swedish company Chapter Two, Baltazar allows users to ingest their royalty information, but silos it so they can access it when needed (and so others can’t see it). Collectively, the ingested information enhances Baltazar’s overall data library in volume while also making the platform smarter, allowing users to gain financial analytical insight to assess valuation and provide revenue forecasting, according to Chapter Two and Shot Tower Capital executives. It is one of a few emerging analytical platforms — another is the Mogul catalog valuation dashboard — aimed at helping the financial sector and industry executives make economic sense of the growing trillions of annual micro-transactions and the resulting royalty payment flow. 

“Music has always been a data-rich industry, but the tools to interpret that data have lagged behind,” Shot Tower Capital managing director Rob Law said in a statement. “As music matures into an institutional asset class, the technology powering it must evolve just as quickly. This partnership reflects the next step in our commitment to leading that evolution — ensuring the market has the sophisticated, data-driven infrastructure it needs to scale with confidence.”

While the $2 billion worth of ingested royalty information is a good place to start, the platform will only get better as more financial data is ingested, according to the company. As it stands now, that $2 billion includes historical royalty information that comes from a CMO (collective management organization) and private acquisitions deals like the sale of a stake in producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins‘ catalog to HarbourView Equity Partners. 

In total, the ingested data comes from more than 100,000 catalogs, according to Chapter Two. The volume breaks out to 62% in revenue from master rights and 37% from publishing rights, but the company says that data comes more from publishing catalogs than master recording catalogs.

Going forward, Shot Tower will feed Baltazar financial information from whatever deals it’s working on, which helps the platform learn. In addition, Shot Tower will also play the role of stress testing the system and providing feedback, according to Chapter Two CEO Michel Dahlbert Traore. Shot Tower is “pushing us on correctness,” he says. “They are asking, ‘Can you trace all decisions the system has made?’ Also, Shot Tower wants to know what is assumed and what is fact — they will help make this institutional-grade.”

Chapter Two was founded in 2021 by Traore, COO Filip Stromsten, and chief music officer Ida Brink. It is backed by Swedish House Mafia’s Axwell, King.com video game creator and founder Sebastian Knutsson, and Stride.VC, a London-based seed-stage tech fund, according to company literature. Traore describes Baltazar as the “Bloomberg Terminal for music assets.”

Royalty statements from around the world can be radically different, but Baltazar allows users to upload messy, incomplete and incompatible data and organize it with proprietary AI, Traore elaborates. First, it identifies the data, he explains, which allows a second step to kick off — namely, cleaning up the data, which addresses things like double counting and spacing between numbers that a computer can’t understand. A third step fixes those things. It does this by ingesting, rationalizing and cleaning up data to provide standardization across revenue flows from around the world, and quickly putting it into a structure that allows users to tailor royalty information into understandable analytics. This can allow for apples-to-apples comparisons, according to Chapter Two’s literature on Baltazar.

As Sachin Sagger, co-founder of Shot Tower Capital’s valuation unit, RedBrick Advisors, said in a statement, “Reliable valuation starts with reliable data. Baltazar strengthens the analytical foundation required for high-quality valuation and transaction decision-making. This technology furthers our ability to provide additional transaction support and services to our clients.”

In normal times, artists say that understanding royalty statements can be difficult. In today’s music industry, “in order to make sense of [royalty payments], you need to put in a lot of work,” says Traore. “Over the years, institutional buyers solved that issue manually with a bunch of analysts.” That’s where Baltazar comes in. “We are building an infrastructure to get to the source of earnings,” he says. Or, as Chapter Two’s press release puts it, Baltazar is a new intelligence platform designed to standardize music royalty analytics and copyright valuation for institutional markets. In a few hours, “Baltazar gets you from raw statements to actionable data,” he adds.

As things stand now, Traore says there is no publicly available data source that shows what a catalog should be making, nor is there enough data publicly available that allows for accurate forecasting. These are things that Baltazar was built to address, he adds. 

Currently, Chapter Two is targeting sophisticated institutional investors and financial advisors that are buying or looking at music assets. But eventually, as the system’s infrastructure is built out, the company claims it will serve every stakeholder across the music industry. For instance, later this year, “we want to roll something out for rights holders, starting with business managers,” Traore says. “You would need a good driver who understands the system to get the most out of the tool.” 

Beyond that, the next phase would target labels and distributors that pay advances and need models to forecast. Eventually, the hope is that it can also evolve to be used for auditing royalty statements. “For now, we are not focused on the auditing aspect, but that may come,” says Traore. “With every ingestion, the system gets smarter.”

What’s more, Chapter Two expects that other providers, like valuation and auditing services, will build out capabilities on top of the Baltazar platform — or that perhaps a management firm will create a nice user interface to let its clients navigate their financials. With chat and query capabilities, a songwriter wouldn’t need a forensic guru to find out how much their song catalog made in Japan in 2021, for example.

In order to access Baltazar, users will have to become subscribers, says Traore, which will be based on the size of the company and usage. One of the advantages of becoming a subscriber is that it would allow financial firms not to invest so heavily in analyst and technology staffing, since Chapter Two maintains a staff of about eight tech people who are continually tweaking the system to improve it, says Shot Tower’s Law.

Baltazar “provides the raw horsepower that experts need to see the ‘why’ behind a valuation, not just the ‘what,’” said Traore in a statement. “For those who live in these numbers, data quality is the entire game.”

Dermot Kennedy has made history on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart dated April 10 with his new album, The Weight of the Woods.

By landing the top spot, Kennedy is the first Irish solo artist to have each of his first three studio albums score the No. 1 placement. This week’s achievement follows the 2019 debut Without Fear and 2023’s Sonder to rule the U.K. charts.

In its second week, RAYE’s This Music May Contain Hope slips just one place to No. 2. The epic 17-track LP gave the British star her first U.K. No. 1 album. The set landed at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 in its opening week.

Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving is at No. 3, while her song “Rein Me In” with Sam Fender is at No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart. 

Harry Styles’ Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally rises two places to No. 4. On Friday (April 10), the LP was named the U.K.’s biggest album of 2026 so far, amassing 226,000 combined chart units since its release in March.

Fresh from the opening night of its global tour, BTS’ recent chart-topper ARIRANG is at No. 5. The group kicked off its upcoming 85-date tour in Goyang, South Korea, on Thursday (April 9) before hitting North America on April 25.

Arlo Parks has earned her third top 40 record with Ambiguous Desire at No. 11. The Londoner won the Mercury Prize in 2021 with Collapsed in Sunbeams (No. 3) and released its follow-up My Soft Machine in 2023 (No. 9).

Kehlani and Missy Elliott aren’t afraid to indulge in a little “Back and Forth” on the “Folded” singer’s sensual new single. The track from Kehlani’s upcoming self-titled album due out on April 24 is the latest preview of the two-time Grammy winner’s fifth album, the follow-up to 2024’s Crash.

It finds Kehlani in their signature lights-low R&B groove, with Elliott kicking thing off with some bold bars, boasting, “You know it’s some hot s–t/ Let me say what I’m gon’ say, let me stay on the topic/ Girl, woman, I do what I wanna do/ Why you trippin’ when I come right home to you?” over the song’s languorous beat before Kehlani steps in on the whispery first verse.

“Why you so quiet?/ The silence hit like sirens/ If looks could kill, well then, tonight might get violent/ When the fit too fire, you always get too firin’,” Kehlani sings as Elliott interjects some of her signature excitable “woo”‘s to punctuate the affair.

The pre-chorus amps up the heat, with Kehlani singing, “And by-y-y-y-y/ By doing this later, I do us a favor / And by-y-y-y-y/ Don’t ruin my makeup, be there when you wake up,” before dipping into the singsongy chorus that pays homage to Elliott’s legendary late friend and collaborator Aaliyah’s 1994 debut hit single “Back & Forth.”

“I ain’t goin’ back and forth tonight, I’m goin’ out/ I ain’t goin’ back and forth tonight, I’m goin’ out/ It’s last call, you the last thing on my mind,” Kehlani croons on the refrain. By the time Elliott gets to her verse, she’s heated when a man tries to tell her how to present herself in a sassy back-and-forth that ends with an explicit shoutout to Aaliyah.

“Ayo, where you goin’?/ I’m going out, what you mean?/ Oh, yeah, with who?/ I’m going out, I’m ’bout to leave/ And you wearing that?/ Yeah, I’m grown, not a teen/ Who you riding with?/ I’m ’bout to drop my Lamborghini,” Elliott raps. “N–ga, I ain’t doing this tonight/ I’m ’bout to drive off, oh, you mad? Yeah, aight/ You know I be home, I’ma see ya when I see ya/ All that back, back and forth got me feeling like Aaliyah.”

The new song comes after an epic run for Kehlani in 2025, which included the crossover anthem “Folded,” which landed the singer several chart milestones, with the track peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking her first top 10 on that singles chart. The song also hit No. 1 on three other Billboard charts: Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Rhythmic Airplay. Another single released last year, “Out the Window,” reached the top 10 of the Rhythmic Airplay and Hot R&B/ Hip-Hop Songs charts.

Kehlani will be receive the Impact Award at Billboard Women in Music 2026, which will take place on April 29 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. They will also do a special performance at the event hosted by Keke Palmer.

Listen to “Back and Forth” below.