Notable Releases of the Week (8/8)

Blackbraid by Wolf Mountain Productions

What a week it’s been. If you’re anything like me, you got a little too sucked into the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros discourse on Twitter/X (which Edward Sharpe leader Alex Ebert himself responded to, shots fired at The Lumineers and Of Monsters & Men included), and Dave and I talked about that, the latest “Is Rock Back?” discourse, the announcement of Algernon Cadwallader’s first album in 14 years, and more on our podcast BV Weekly.

As for this week’s new albums, you can read about eight below and Bill tackles four more in Indie Basement, including No Joy, OSEES, Wombo, and For Those I Love. This week’s honorable mentions include Phil Elverum & Arrington de Dionyso, The Black Keys, Babymetal, Big Freedia, Anamanaguchi’s first rock album, Machine Gun Kelly, Good Charlotte, Bailey Zimmerman, Young Nudy, Mozzy, Teethe, Chris Staples, Ashley Monroe, Gordi, T. Hardy Morris, Lydia Night (The Regrettes), Malthusian, Theurgion, Asunojokei, Primitive Impulse, The Thing, Field Medic, Hayes Carll, Bryson Tiller, Gunna, Tom Gershwin, alice does computer music, Jonathan Mortiz Trio Secret Tempo, Jake Winstrom, David Franklin Courtright, DJ K, Opin, Mechatok, Old Sea Brigade, Humour, Siichaq, Sinsaenum, Dreamwake, Bad Suns, Halestorm, Jonas Brothers, the Crypt Sermon EP, the Westside Cowboy EP, the Kaash Paige EP, the xNULLIFYx EP, the Galaxie 500 live at CBGB album, and the Peter Gabriel live at WOMAD 1982 album.

Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Blackbraid – Blackbraid III (self-released)
The sounds of the Adirondack mountains meets ferocious melodic black metal on the indigenous artist’s third LP in four years.

Blackbraid III opens with the crackle of a fire pit, followed shortly by a haunting, gentle acoustic guitar. The track is called “Dusk (Eulogy),” and you can practically picture the sun setting over the Adirondack mountains, where the Native American one-man band that is Blackbraid lives. Once the scene is set, Blackbraid III comes pummeling in with the gorgeously ferocious melodic black metal of lead single “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of my Death,” and we’re off. From there, Blackbraid takes us on a ride through some of his most towering black metal compositions yet, breaking up the fury with a few other acoustic interludes, chirping birds, and some hypnotic flute. It’s his third album in four years, and each one has sounded like a natural progression from the last. On this one, Blackbraid beefs up the production and brightens the melodies without letting up on any of his usual harsh intensity. Even in a year that already has a great new Deafheaven album, it’s some of the best and most accessible American black metal in recent memory.

Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You (Daughters Of Cain)
After a 2022 alt-pop breakthrough and this year’s ambient/drone detour ‘Perverts,’ Ethel Cain finds an appealing middle ground on her proper sophomore album.

In the three years since Ethel Cain’s 2022 debut album Preacher’s Daughter turned her into an alt-pop star, she’s shown no interest in playing the game of pop stardom. She’s outspoken in ways that pop stars are often discouraged from being, and earlier this year she released a heavily ambient/drone/noise-inspired album called Perverts that may as well be her very own Process of Weeding Out. Now she releases her “proper” sophomore album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, and Hayden Anhedönia–the real person behind the Ethel Cain character–says this album “closes the chapter” on Ethel Cain. If this really is her last album using that moniker, it’ll be yet another unorthodox decision in a career that’s been full of them.

I get why Hayden is considering Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You Ethel Cain’s sophomore album and classifying Perverts as something different, but Perverts wasn’t a total detour. It helped set the stage for Willoughby, which finds a balance between Perverts‘ long droning passages and Preacher’s Daughter‘s accessibility. Hayden wrote, produced, and performed most of the album herself, with just a few collaborators here and there (including frequent collaborator Matthew Tomasi on every song, and a few tracks that feature Angel Diaz aka Vyva Melinkolya), and she always plays by her own rules. (How many other pop-friendly artists of her stature would end an album with two slow-burning songs that clock in at a combined 25 minutes?) Throughout the album, I hear echoes of Chelsea Wolfe and Zola Jesus’ lo-fi goth, Grouper’s ambient pop, Hum’s guitar work, and Lana Del Rey’s drama, and the combination of all these things sounds even more seamless and more uniquely Ethel Cain than it did on Preacher’s Daughter. And when Hayden’s vivid, candid lyricism kicks in, the moments she captures are so specific that all comparisons go out the window.

JID – God Does Like Ugly (Dreamville/Interscope)
The Atlanta wordsmith’s first album in three years is a grand, ambitious rap album that features Clipse, Westside Gunn, Vince Staples, Ciara, and more.

JID is an Atlanta rapper who always does it big. His albums are all concept albums that all connect to one another, and God Does Like Ugly is no exception. “This is the first step into a new world that I control,” he said when he announced the album. “And. It’s. Fucking. UGLY.” As ever, he delivers autobiographical storytelling at a rapidfire pace, with an approach that suggests he’s obsessed with the art of rapping, down to every word, rhyme, cadence, and syllable. He’s also seemingly only interested in making the kind of grand-sounding albums that people might one day call classics. God Does Like Ugly is fueled by a melting pot of trap, boom bap, chipmunk soul, and actual soul, and every song sounds like it’s shooting for the moon. Even the list of guests is something that could only come from a rap superfan like JID. Clipse continue their big comeback year with an appearance on “Community.” The album begins with an assist from underground rap icon Westside Gunn and later finds time for pop-friendly vocalists like Ciara, Jessie Reyez, Don TOliver, Ty Dolla $ign, and 6LACK to fit in just as perfectly. The show-stealing guest verse on “VCRs” comes from Vince Staples, a rapper who shares JID’s knack for mixing ’90s hip hop traditions with post-genre futurism. Sometimes JID bites off more than he can chew, but there’s no denying his taste and his skillset, and when those two things come together the way they do on GDLU, a lot of magic happens.

DJ Premier & Roc Marciano – The Coldest Profession (TTT)
An architect of ’90s New York boom bap and one of the genre’s most important torch-carriers come together on this nostalgia-inducing-yet-fresh new project.

The story of DJ Premier and Roc Marciano’s collaborative project The Coldest Profession dates back to a chance encounter at the Macy’s in Herald Square. As Preemo announces at the beginning of this record, they ran into each other and Roc asked him when they were going to do a record together. Preemo says he replied, “Yo man, we’re gonna get to it,” and then he adds, “I think it’s time we get to it!” The two previously collaborated when Roc Marci appeared on the 2018 PRhyme (DJ Premier & Royce da 5’9″) song “Respect My Gun,” but The Coldest Profession marks their first 50/50 collab together, and it should come as no surprise that these two are a perfect pair. DJ Premier helped invent New York boom bap as we know it in the 1990s (as one half of Gang Starr and a producer on Nas’ Illmatic, KRS-One’s Return of the Boom Bap, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt, and way too many other records to name), and Roc Marciano has been one of the genre’s most important, prolific, and consistently great torch-carriers of the past 15 years. His music often veers towards something eerie and atmospheric, but over this selection of neck-snapping DJ Premier beats, he delivers nothing but chest-puffed, voice-raised energy. At a time when ’90s nostalgia is everywhere–music, movies, fashion, etc–this is some of the freshest.

Amaarae – Black Star (Interscope)
The depths of African music, Western diva pop, and much more swirl together on one of this year’s most thrilling dance-pop albums.

Even as various forms of international pop music continue to coalesce into one global pop melting pot, there are still few artists breaking down barriers between different countries, eras, and pop subgenres the way Amaarae is. The Ghanaian-American artist pulls from the depths of African pop music as much as she embodies all of her favorite Western pop divas, be it Donna Summer or Janet or Madonna or Cher, whose ’90s hit “Believe” she interpolates and modernizes on Black Star‘s “She Is My Drug.” Black Star is more overtly synthetic and club-friendly than its great 2023 predecessor Fountain Baby; the album it reminds me most of right now is the new FKA twigs album, just with an Afrobeats twist (or alté, the more alternative form of Afrobeats that’s long been used to describe Amaarae). The unique cast of guests includes alt-pop star PinkPantheress, spoken word from supermodel Naomi Campbell, a belted performance from soul legend Charlie Wilson, and a joint collab from UK rapper Bree Runway and house DJ Starkillers on the especially clubby “Starkilla.” Black Star pulls from so many different things but it’s blended together so finely that it all just starts to sound like one thing, with an immense amount of cohesion and consistency. That’s the power of Amaarae.

Charley Crockett – Dollar A Day (Island)
The extremely prolific outlaw country hero is back with his second album of 2025.

Outside of rappers, it’s hard to think of many established modern artists as prolific as outlaw country hero Charley Crockett. Dollar A Day is his 16th album of the past decade, and his second of 2025, following March’s Lonesome Drifter. That one was his major label debut, and clearly Island are not asking him to slow down his process or anything. These two albums are part of a trilogy called The Sagebrush Trilogy, and I can’t imagine it’ll be very long before we get the third installment. It’s a lot to keep up with, but even at his rapid release rate, Charley’s quality control is pretty remarkable. His new album Dollar A Day finds him doing what he does best, churning out rustic country songs that sound straight out of the late ’60s and early ’70s and yet somehow landed him a major label deal in 2025. Even at a time in which country music seems to have a wider audience and a looser definition than ever, Charley stands out from just about every current trend in the genre right now. Maybe that’s part of why his music feels as refreshing as it does.

ShrapKnel & Mike Ladd – Saisir Le Feu (Fused Arrow)
The indie-rap duo of PremRock and Curly Castro continue their 2025 trilogy of albums, each with a different producer from a different region.

Speaking of highly prolific artists (who are rappers), ShrapKnel are back with their second of three 2025 albums, Saisir Le Feu. The duo of Curly Castro and PremRock (the latter of whom also released his great solo album Did You Enjoy Your Time Here…? this year) made three albums with different producers from different regions who they met on tour, and Saisir Le Feu is with the Boston-born, Paris-based Mike Ladd. Mike favors atmospheric, psychedelic production throughout this project, a musical backdrop that’s perfect for Curly Castro and PremRock’s dizzying wordplay. The overall vibe is just different enough from last month’s Raphy produced Lincoln Continental Breakfast that it makes getting another new album so quickly feel exciting, not overwhelming.

Ada Lea – when i paint my masterpiece (Saddle Creek)
The Montreal singer-songwriter’s latest is multi-layered indie folk with a bright outlook.

when i paint my masterpiece begins with a gently plucked instrumental guitar piece, “death phase of 2024 (rainlight),” that sets the tone for the whole record. It’s intimate and organic, like the album, which Montreal singer-songwriter Alexandra Levy (aka Ada Lea) recorded mostly live and acoustic in a single room, with regular collaborators Tasy Hudson, Chris Hauer, and Summer Kodama. It’s not a spare folk album, though; Levy’s feathery vocals and contemplative lyrics are richly accompanied. Harmonica makes a frequent appearance, and there are touches of electric guitar and rising swells of synths throughout, like on the dreamy “just like in the museum” and indie rock-tinged “diner.” None of that takes away from the intimate feel of these songs, though, with their Leonard Cohen references and small, specific details. Levy’s detailed storytelling keeps you feeling close to the scene even as her sonic horizons broaden. [Amanda Hatfield]

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including No Joy, OSEES, Wombo, and For Those I Love.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new podcast BV Weekly.

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