With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Wednesday; Cardi B; Nine Inch Nails; Kieran Hebden & William Tyler; Joanne Robertson; Lola Young; Joan Shelley; Múm; Kitba; and Jordan Patterson. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Wednesday: Bleeds [Dead Oceans]
Wednesday have always been a rock band of enviable guitar skills, but never more so than on Bleeds: The slide guitar turns from romantic to sour in “Elderberry Wine”; the heavy metal breakdown in “Pick Up That Knife” is lavish and jarring; the rolling guitar licks on “Phish Pepsi” are pure jam-band bliss. As the Asheville, North Carolina, band merges country twang with shoegaze fuzz, Karly Hartzman punctuates her stories with the evocative vocals—blood-curling screams of “Wasp,” an instantly familiar wordless hook in “Townies”—that elevate Wednesday to singular status. Less a follow-up to their instant-classic Rat Saw God than an extension of its hazy Southern world-building, Bleeds is Wednesday at their best—again.
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Cardi B: Am I the Drama? [Atlantic]
It’s been 84 years—well, more like seven—since Cardi B released her debut album, Invasion of Privacy. Which is not to say she hasn’t kept busy, notching up a streak of collaborations as well as having two kids (with a third on the way). The oldest song on Am I the Drama?, the world-conquering Megan Thee Stallion collaboration “WAP,” dates all the way back to 2020. To make up for lost time, the album packs 23 tracks and features from the likes of Summer Walker, Cash Cobain, and Tyla into its 71 minutes. Jay-Z and Janet Jackson also appear in spirit: “Imaginary Players” and “The Pleasure Principle” get interpolated on “Imaginary Playerz” and “Principal.” You can probably guess which is which.
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Nine Inch Nails: Tron: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) [Interscope]
The Tron film franchise keeps its grip tight on the trailblazers of electronic music: first with Wendy Carlos scoring Tron in 1982, then Daft Punk digitizing Tron: Legacy in 2010, and now Nine Inch Nails casting their health-goth shadow over Tron: Ares. In the hands of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, with unexpected assists from Boys Noize and Hudson Mohawke, the soundtrack is sleek and neon-hued, yet stripped-down in delivery. Here, Nine Inch Nails revel in the darkness while letting some light bounce off their shades as well.
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Kieran Hebden & William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s [Temporary Residence Ltd.]
Despite their frequent collaborations over the years, William Tyler and Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden have never recorded a proper full-length together—until now. Recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville, 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s delves into electronic minimalism, dreamy club, and experimental guitar, all seven songs imbued with the dull glow of starry skies. Hebden and Tyler name Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Joe Ely as influences, but on songs like “If I Had a Boat” and “Spider Ballad,” their joint effort sounds closer to the pervasive loneliness of old-school American country music, propelled by minimal house.
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Joanne Robertson: Blurrr [AD 93]
The smudged, hazy quality of Joanne Robertson’s newest record is by design. Written during the gaps between her painting sessions and the endless job of raising a child, Blurrr drifts between ideas and color palettes, ambient hums and finger-picked guitar, without fretting over what might be left behind in the process. Joining her throughout the album is the composer Oliver Coates, her longtime friend and collaborator, whose unmistakable cello keeps Robertson anchored, lest she drift too far.
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Lola Young: I’m Only F**king Myself [Island]
There’s more to Lola Young than her viral hit “Messy,” or at least that’s what she proposes on I’m Only F**king Myself. The British singer-songwriter makes a bid for pop stardom on her third album, pushing the buttons on the mixing board to emphasize her sturdy voice, conversational flow, and the feeling that you’re hearing her uncensored self—even if the album title keeps its asterisks firmly in place. While her 2024 breakout single goes pop-rock, I’m Only F**king Myself waves some space into the fold, giving songs like “One Thing” and “Dealer” the unbothered flair of fellow vocal-heavy Londoners Raye and Adele.
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Joan Shelley: Real Warmth [No Quarter]
Joan Shelley has called her new album “a capture instead of a meticulous construction.” The Kentucky songwriter recorded Real Warmth quick and dirty across sessions with Doug Paisley, Nathan Salsburg, and the Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman, among others. Drawing upon religious hymns and traditional folk, Shelley sounds like she’s discovering these songs in real time as she sings them. Driving, percussive arrangements impart a sense of mysticism to “Here in the High and Low” and “Ever Entwine,” while “For When You Can’t Sleep” and “Who Do You Want Checking in on You” hew closer to classic Nashville. Real Warmth is country music for an uncharted—or, perhaps, long-forgotten—country.
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Múm: History of Silence [Morr Music]
For Icelandophiles who semi-learned the words to Sigur Rós and Sin Fang records back in the day, the wait for Múm’s return has been long enough. History of Silence, Múm’s first album in 12 years, nestles into the fibers of their longtime sound: whispered lyrics, gauzy strings, melodica, and percussive ambiance. Although their seventh studio album and follow-up to 2013’s Smilewound’s gets its name from dead air, Múm are lively and present throughout, be it the shimmering sounds of “Kill the Light” or the vividness of “Mild at Heart.” Recorded, deconstructed, reassembled, and refined over two years, History of Silence is a humble comeback that savors every second.
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Kitba: Hold the Edges [Ruination]
Kitba makes bedroom-pop music that harks back to a time before “bedroom-pop” was really a thing. On Hold the Edges, the Brooklyn-based harpist and singer-songwriter, otherwise known as Rebecca El-Saleh, composes hall-of-mirrors synth ballads with the sumptuous textures and sing-songy quality of Frou Frou, their vocals, often Auto-Tuned, a nervy mix of the shellshocked and declarative. The mazy single “Soften,” one of many breakup songs on the LP, is about “being angry long after you feel you should be, wondering when your hardened heart will soften,” they said in press materials. “It’s twisting inside and chaos, vibratingly bright and tense.”
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Jordan Patterson: The Hermit [Ozella’s Child]
Jordan Patterson’s characterful, laptop-collaged folk songs project an air of the epic, even when whispered, self-scrutinizing, and not particularly long. But, like her tourmate Cameron Winter, the Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter is all gravitas: sweeping structures and casual asides, every strum and string swell loaded with meticulously stylized emotion—in stirring evidence on The Hermit’s singles, like the quietly theatrical piano ballad “Racecar.”
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