Notable Releases of the Week (12/5)

redveil by Julien Galan

It’s the first week of December, and a large majority of this year’s major year-end lists came in this week. But the year isn’t over yet, and there are still a few new albums out this week to talk about as well.

I highlight three new records below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Melody’s Echo Chamber, TEED, and the Baxter Dury remix EP. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include the surprise Jane Remover EP, Dove Ellis, Reuben’s Daughters, Roddy Ricch, Voices from the Lake, Anna of the North, Retail Drugs, St. Lucia, Ólöf Arnalds, Lettuce, Kronos Quartet, Isobel Waller-Bridge, Unidad Ideológica, Upon A Burning Body, Tom Smith, Zac Brown Band, Infinite Coles, Nick & June, Joanna, Karri, Caution, Essvus, Shallipopi, DJ Narciso, The Deep, the Confidence Man EP, the Mildred EP, the Meet Me @ the Altar EP, the Fashion Brigade EP, NOFX’s rarities triple album, the Lil Baby Leaks comp, the Nick Cave live album, the Depeche Mode live album, the Warren Zevon live album, the DIIV live album, the 20th anniversary edition of The Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday, Western Vinyl’s Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers, the Oh. What. Fun. soundtrack (ft. Christmas songs from Fleet Foxes, St. Vincent, Weyes Blood, Sharon Van Etten, Jeff Tweedy, Gwen Stefani, The Bird and the Bee & more), and the Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere soundtrack.

We’ll have our own year-end lists soon, but meanwhile, Dave and I talked about five surprises and other takeaways of 2025’s album year-end list season on the new episode of BV Weekly. Stream that wherever you listen to podcasts, and head below for this week’s Notable Releases.

redveil – sankofa (Fashionably Early)
The hip hop auteur brings in live musicians for his most lush, multi-layered album yet.

Rap is in a very interesting place right now. The mainstream is in a worse place than it’s been in years, and the underground has splintered into countless, often-disparate microgenres. One thing we haven’t seen as much of lately is the lush, melodic rap of good kid, m.A.A.d city-era Kendrick, Acid Rap-era Chance the Rapper, and the prettier sides of those early Tyler/Earl records, and one artist that I think could really carry the torch for that sort of thing is redveil. sankofa is his first full-length since his April 2022 breakthrough album learn 2 swim (an eternity in rap years), and it finds him maintaining auteur status, handling rapping, singing, and all of the production. This time, though, he also brings in live session musicians, making sankofa sound even more lush and multi-layered than its predecessor. He also has two guests–Smino and Carolyn Malachi–and even with such a little amount of assistance, sankofa is overwhelming and all over the place. He swerves from nasty bars to choral vocal harmonies, from lively jazz to noisy glitch hop. They kinda don’t make ’em like this anymore, but thankfully redveil does.

HAYWARDxDÄLEK – HAYWARDxDÄLEK (Relapse)
A bleak new collaboration from This Heat drummer Charles Hayward and MC dälek.

HAYWARDxDÄLEK is the new collaborative project from Charles Hayward, drummer of the legendary experimental rock band This Heat, and rapper/producer MC dälek, and their self-titled album finds the dark, dreary, rat-infested middle ground between their two best-known projects. It features long stretches of noise, drone, and dark ambience, all eventually interrupted by MC dälek’s menacing commentary on the social/political climate that we’re currently in. Even in the context of experimental rap, it’s not everyday that you come across a rap album as ominous and bleak as this one.

Deniro Farrar & Child Actor – Raw Materials (Old Soul)
North Carolina rapper Deniro Farrar continues a quiet comeback with his third album of 2025, produced by longtime collaborator Child Actor.

Deniro Farrar was a much buzzier, more prolific rapper in the early 2010s than he was in the early 2020s, but he made a quiet comeback this year with three new albums. Having already released The Shepherd and Stellar Reputation (both produced by Marc Spano), he now releases Raw Materials, entirely produced by Child Actor, who he previously worked with on some of this earliest breakthrough records. Deniro’s voice is calmer than it was in his gritty early days, and he’s moved on from the sinister cloud rap of those early releases into a hazier mix of jazz-rap and chipmunk soul. It’s an impressive maturation from an artist who went through the hype machine wringer and clearly came out creatively unscathed.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Melody’s Echo Chamber, TEED, and the Baxter Dury remix EP.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases and Indie Basement archives.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and the BV interviews podcast.

Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan, and browse the BrooklynVegan shop for more exclusive vinyl.