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 Ari Lennox, Lucinda Williams, and Cat Power. 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.)
Ari Lennox: Vacancy [Interscope]
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Courtesy of Interscope
After a ten-year stint with J. Cole's label Dreamville, Ari Lennox's new album marks a turning point in her career, a new chapter she's calling her “soft girl era.” But Vacancy, her first record solely under Interscope, doesn't completely abandon the self-possession and sensuality that's become synonymous with her sound. Executive produced by Elite, it also welcomes some familiar touch points into the mix—the title track sees her back in the studio with “Pressure” producer Jermaine Dupri, and the opening track “Mobbin' In DC” nods to her DMV roots.
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Lucinda Williams: World’s Gone Wrong [Highway 20]
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Lucinda Williams has billed her new album as a “commentary on modern America,” and she's one of the few musicians working today with the pedigree to provide one worth hearing out. If the track titles on World's Gone Wrong are any suggestion, "Something's Gotta Give" but “We've Come Too Far to Turn Around.” Williams fleshes out her assessment across nine original songs and a Bob Marley cover, bringing in heavyweight vocalists like Mavis Staples, Brittney Spencer, and Norah Jones to join in harmony.
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Cat Power: Redux [Domino]
The Greatest, the album that catapulted Cat Power to mainstream ears, turned 20 this week; to mark the milestone, she gathered some formidable old-school bandmates for a new EP. Recorded with the Texas blues supergroup Dirty Delta Blues, Redux's A-side features a new arrangement of “Could We" and James Brown's “Try Me," the latter of which set the tone for the now-lost sessions that would produce The Greatest. The B-side is a cover of Prince's “Nothing Compares 2 U” dedicated to the Memphis Rhythm Band's guitarist Teenie Hodges, a close collaborator of Chan Marshall's who died in 2014.
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Various Artists: Naive Melodies [BBE Music]
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As the all-ages fans flooding the aisles of David Byrne's 2025 Radio City Music Hall show made clear, Talking Heads have one of the most enduring catalogs in modern American rock music. Naive Melodies, a new compilation on BBE curated by Drew McFadden, aims to make the group's often-undersung Afro-diasporic influences as indelible as the “Psycho Killer” chorus. In step with McFadden's 2021 David Bowie tribute Modern Love, Naive Melodies gathers a collection of innovative Black artists to reframe Talking Heads' catalog in the lineage of the soul, gospel, Latin, and spiritual jazz they drew from. The 18-track album reimagines favorites like “Once in a Lifetime,” “Road To Nowhere,” and “Burning Down the House” through the eyes of Liv.e, Aja Monet, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Theo Croker, and more.
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Gesaffelstein: Enter The Gamma [Columbia]
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French producer Gesaffelstein is a connoisseur of big-room electro, and as the genre has crept back into fashion, his fingerprints have appeared on major pop records from Charli XCX (BRAT) and Lady Gaga (MAYHEM). His first live album, Enter The Gamma, aims to bottle that crowd-roaring energy for this broader audience. The new album compiles 14 recordings from his 2024 world tour of the same name, swerving away from the rock and synth-pop of 2024's GAMMA back to driving four-on-the-floor.
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Megadeth: Megadeth [Tradecraft]
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When Megadeth released “The End Is Near” last August, they did so in appropriately apocalyptic fashion: with a video of cities burning and civilians in peril. Whether Armageddon looms or not, the metal legends' 17th and final album is upon us—and after 40 years, they intend to go out thrashing. Megadeth is a worthy final conclusion to the quartet of ex-Metallica member Dave Mustaine, bassist James LoMenzo, drummer Dirk Verbeuren, and guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari. But for anyone seeking the kind of shredding catharsis that just can't be recorded, the crew have also planned a global farewell tour.
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Roc Marciano: 656 [Marci Enterprises]
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Three projects in under three years? That's light work for Roc Marciano, a rapper as prolific as he is painstaking. His entirely self-produced latest album is a fresh helping of introspection and street vignettes that are as sharply-observed and smoothly-delivered as ever. Across 12 tracks, he only taps one artist for a feature: Harlem's Errol Holden, who appears on “Rain Dance” and “Trapeze.”
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