Summer is back; the foliage is in full bloom; the spiders in the barbecue are up for eviction; and the bite cream is coming out, as is a selection of fine EPs and albums from artists getting in on the action of everybody’s great vibes. Comebacks abound this season, from esteemed legends (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Milton Nascimento among them) to the cults of Dirty Three, Los Campesinos!, and the Jesus Lizard—plus a new Jamie xx record. It is fundamentally, however, the season of pop, so get ready for Ice Spice, Kehlani, Camila Cabello, and, of course, Sabrina Carpenter to sail out of car windows and back-garden sound systems until the nights draw in and the summer goths regain control.
Alex Izenberg: Alex Izenberg & the Exiles
Alex Izenberg expands his sound on the new full-band album Alex Izenberg & the Exiles. He worked on the album with producer Phil Ek, and he draws from an act that Ek knows well, Fleet Foxes, channeling the group’s sweeping grandeur and retrofitting it to his 1970s-indebted palette. Across the 11 songs, you’ll also detect notes of King Crimson, the Beatles, and David Bowie.
–Matthew Strauss
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Beabadoobee: This Is How Tomorrow Moves
With each record, Beabadoobee grows from her own lo-fi bedroom pop production into a bigger, crisper, more professional sound. That doesn’t mean, of course, that she sacrifices the little details in the process. On This Is How Tomorrow Moves, Beabadoobee hands the production reins to Rick Rubin and lets her songwriting spin indie-rock, airy pop, and alt-rock into a cloud of cotton candy. Singles “Take a Bite” and “Coming Home” showcase that evolution, where her most apt comparisons switch from Pavement and Juliana Hatfield to Michelle Branch and Liz Phair. In that regard, Beabadoobee goes big with her third full-length LP and gets a fitting glow-up to follow 2022’s Beatopia.
–Nina Corcoran
Body Meat: Starchris
Starchris, the debut album from Body Meat (aka Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter and producer Chris Taylor), is inspired by the elaborate world-building in his favorite role-playing video games, with songs informed by boss fights and cutscenes. The inspiration runs so deep that there’s even a Body Meat video game available for Mac and Windows. Taylor’s amalgam of trap, dance, and electronic music can be heard on singles “High Beams,” “Focus,” and “North Side.”
–Eric Torres
Camila Cabello: C,XOXO
Embracing the Charli XCX–ification of pop, Camila Cabello enters her hyperpop era with bleached hair, candy-stained teeth, and her fourth solo album, C,XOXO—just in time for brat summer. C,XOXO also marks the former Fifth Harmony singer’s debut under Interscope after leaving Epic Records in September 2022. The album, Cabello has said, is an exploration of girlhood. Teaming up with heavyweights El Guincho and Jasper Harris, she’s already released the Playboi Carti–featuring “I Luv It” and Lil Nas X collaboration “He Knows.”
–Boutayna Chokrane
Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Destroyer
On My Light, My Destroyer, her third studio album and the follow-up to 2021’s An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, Cassandra Jenkins gives herself permission to get sidetracked. Take singles “Delphinium Blue” and “Only One,” where Jenkins cues up delicate musical tricks—a trilling trumpet, the soft thumping of muted bass—to replicate how these beautiful details wash over her. Like the “two doves wrapped up in filthy and true love” in the song “Petco,” Jenkins fixates on tangled idealities and opposite symbols on her new album; when she can’t untwine them lyrically, she settles for the next best thing: surveying them closely through her songwriting for a better sense of understanding.
–Nina Corcoran
Charly Bliss: Forever
The intoxicating rush of Charly Bliss’ power pop continues on Forever, the group’s first album since 2019’s Young Enough. The band’s synth-pop sheen gets scuffed up on “Calling You Out,” while lead single “Nineteen” rethinks the melodrama of the standard pop piano ballad. Produced by the band’s own Sam Hendricks, Hippo Campus’ Jake Luppen, and Samia collaborator Caleb Wright, Forever pushes Charly Bliss’ strong hooks toward brighter and wide-eyed places.
–Nina Corcoran
Childish Gambino
Donald Glover recently revamped 2020’s 3.15.20, calling the new “finished version” Atavista. The rapper, singer, actor, and director also promised a new Childish Gambino album after spending years suggesting the project would come to a close. While new solo music has been hard to come by, Glover has been fairly active in recent years as a featured artist, appearing on songs like Kaytranada’s “Witchy,” Latto’s “Sunshine,” Black Party’s “I Love You More Than You Know,” and more.
–Matthew Strauss
Chris Cohen: Paint a Room
After three albums for Captured Tracks, Chris Cohen joins Hardly Art for Paint a Room. The Los Angeles singer-songwriter worked on his follow-up to a 2019 self-titled album with multi-instrumentalists Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson. Cohen self-produced and self-engineered Paint a Room, bringing warmth to songs like “Damage” and “Sunever.”
–Matthew Strauss
Clairo: Charm
Clairo’s Charm marks her third LP and third outing with a different, sole producer. After working with Rostam Batmanglij and Jack Antonoff on her debut Immunity and its follow-up Sling, respectively, now Clairo’s teamed up with El Michels Affair’s Leon Michels, known for his analog-crackling hip-hop productions. So far, she’s shared the gently rollicking single “Sexy to Someone.”
–Eric Torres
Dirty Three: Love Changes Everything
As the Bad Seeds line up their first LP since 2019, Warren Ellis has regrouped with Mick Turner and Jim White for the first Dirty Three record in more than a decade. The experimental rock trio led into the album with the stoic drones, guitar-and-drum thunderclaps, and surging crescendo of “Love Changes Everything I,” an enthralling continuation of the rugged post-Americana-rock the artists minted in the 1990s.
–Jazz Monroe
Eiko Ishibashi: Evil Does Not Exist
Evil Does Not Exist, the 2023 movie by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, tells the story of a father and daughter whose humble lives in a small village are interrupted when developers propose building a glamping site nearby. The film takes its time establishing routines, and part of the reason its meditative, calming tone lands so well is because of how Japanese multi-instrumentalist and frequent Jim O’Rourke collaborator Eiko Ishibashi draws those sensations out in her original score. Across its seven tracks, Evil Does Not Exist pushes against its terse, jazzy drumming and gliding strings like the wind—at once gentle, then abrupt, keenly aware of its invisible power and when to utilize it.
–Nina Corcoran
Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)
Eminem teased his latest single, “Houdini,” by saying he was going to make his “career disappear.” And maybe that’s a smart move from the Detroit rapper because nothing sells like scarcity: “Houdini” is one of Eminem’s biggest songs in years, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Up next, at an as yet undetermined summer date, is an album that also suggests a finale, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), the dramatic swan song for the musician’s longtime alter ego, Slim Shady. Time will tell what tricks he plays this time.
–Matthew Strauss
Fake Fruit: Mucho Mistrust
Pinning Fake Fruit down as “a post-punk band” undersells their immediately catchy hooks and ear for pop melodies, but there’s enough edge to their wiry guitars and rubbery bass that rock simply won’t do either. The Oakland trio returns on sophomore album Mucho Mistrust with spunky saxophone, precise lyrics, and a bold sheen courtesy of producer Jack Shirley. Part of the fun of listening to Fake Fruit is trying, and failing, to predict where their songs go next, and both the title track and single “Cause of Death” indulge that alluring musical cat-and-mouse game.
–Nina Corcoran
Fontaines D.C.: Romance
In the five years since releasing debut album Dogrel, Fontaines D.C. have evolved from scrappy post-punk underdogs to shapeshifting rock insurgents, able to swing from gothic balladry to darkly anthemic dream-pop. Fourth album Romance opens with an ominous pulse and industrial clangs and chimes, like Depeche Mode at a wake, before swerving into fleet alt-rock (“Here’s the Thing”) and, on lead single “Starburster,” a sort of psychedelic rap. The intensity rarely lifts, but the band is clearly having a blast, as bloody-minded and scalding as ever.
–Jazz Monroe
Ice Spice: Y2K!
Ice Spice led into her Y2K! era in typical Ice Spice fashion: With a club-ready anthem called “Think U the Shit (Fart).” Expect more where that came from—including the recent single “Gimmie a Light”—when the album arrives in July. While details are relatively thin on the ground, she has teased a “crazy collaboration” for the record—which, knowing Ice Spice, could be literally anyone.
–Jazz Monroe
Jake Xerxes Fussell: When I’m Called
Jake Xerxes Fussell, the playful North Carolina singer-songwriter, mines the folk idiom in songs full of hypnotic fingerpicking and earnest, lambent storytelling that take care to skirt sentiment and over-seriousness. With contributors including Blake Mills, Joan Shelley, Robin Holcomb, and producer James Elkington, When I’m Called, the follow-up to 2022’s Good and Green Again, proceeds under Fussell’s ethos of a folk continuum. As he put it in press materials, “This is all tied into an ongoing world.”
–Jazz Monroe
Jamie xx: In Waves
It’s been a while now since Jamie xx’s bright and summery In Colour, and the xx producer looks to keep the good times rolling with new album In Waves. Guests like Honey Dijon (“Baddy on the Floor”) and Robyn (“Life”) bring a great deal of energy to the full-length, which has additional contributions from the xx’s Romy and Oliver Sim, the Avalanches, Panda Bear, and more.
–Matthew Strauss
The Jesus Lizard: Rack
The Jesus Lizard have been putting together their comeback album, Rack, for five years. The group ultimately coalesced to record the first full-length with producer Paul Allen at Nashville’s Audio Eagle Studio. Fans of the band’s heavy alt-rock will not be surprised, or disappointed, by lead single “Hide & Seek.”
–Matthew Strauss
Johnny Blue Skies: Passage du Desir
A month after releasing his latest album The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, in 2021, Sturgill Simpson had to cancel a number of shows because he had hemorrhaged and ruptured his vocal cords. He returns completely anew, introducing the world to his new nom de plume, Johnny Blue Skies. He produced his new album with David Ferguson and recorded it at Nashville’s Clement House Recording Studio and London’s Abbey Road Studios.
–Matthew Strauss
Kehlani: Crash
Two years after Blue Water Road, Kehlani returns with Crash, her “most free, most fun, most loud, most fueled,” work to date. Promising a full-throttle experience, the Oakland singer-songwriter has dubbed her fourth major-label album the “sexy-ass badass older sister,” to 2020’s It Was Good Until It Wasn’t. The “Coolie Dance Rhythm”–sampling dancehall track “After Hours” and “Next 2 U” are the only official pre-release singles.
–Boutayna Chokrane
Kendrick Lamar
An undercurrent of the spring beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake was that Lamar was going to drop a whole new album. Who knows, did Lamar have a full-length of disses ready to go? Or is he just working on a traditional follow-up to Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers? In any case, “Not Like Us,” a rare non-album single for Lamar, is a top-tier candidate for song of the summer.
–Matthew Strauss
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga’s 2024 has mostly been about movies: There’s her Gaga Chromatica Ball and, of course, a starring role in Joker: Folie à Deux. But, in the first of the films, which documents a 2022 concert in Los Angeles, there’s a teaser for the pop icon’s seventh solo studio album. After Chromatica arrived at the height of the pandemic in 2020, Lady Gaga and her fans may be looking for something celebratory with the next album.
–Matthew Strauss
Lana Del Rey: Lasso
“The music business is going country. We’re going country. It’s happening.” So said Lana Del Rey this February at a Billboard event while announcing her new LP, Lasso, slated for a September arrival. The singer-songwriter mentioned that she and frequent producer Jack Antonoff have been recording new music for the record in Muscle Shoals, Nashville, and Mississippi, but further details about the new album are scarce. Still, if Del Rey’s recent, piano-led cover of the John Denver staple “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is any indication, a full set of country-fried Del Rey songs will be intriguing.
–Eric Torres
Lorde
Details are sparse, but Lorde has been teasing new music for half a year now, beginning with a December post captioned, “Listening to myself.” More recently, she shared a saliva-indebted carousel with a symbol-laden message, “Use the existing tools wherever possible ©𝑳ĿŁု⑷♶ If the tools do not exist you are spiritually obliged to create them © 𝑳ĿŁု⑷♶⚤✬✹❁✰㉗✬✹❁🀥⚭ 𓆝𓃹𓁙.” Make of that what you can!
–Matthew Strauss
Los Campesinos!: All Hell
Los Campesinos! became an instant cult phenomenon when they rose from the ashes of the mid-2000s UK indie scene, an earnest, playful counterpoint to the era’s war between style and sleaze. Nearly two decades on, they continue to nurture an adoring fanbase with sporadic records, gigs, and declamations on the dire British political landscape. The Welsh outfit’s welcome return to the studio, seven years after Sick Scenes, produced chronicles of “drinking for fun and drinking for misery, adult acne, adult friendship, football, death and dying, love and sex, late-stage capitalism,” and plenty more, as the band noted upon announcing the record.
–Jazz Monroe
Lucky Daye: Algorithm
Lucky Daye won Best Progressive R&B Album at the Grammy Awards, in 2022, for the Table for Two EP. The New Orleans artist’s new album, Algorithm, is his first full-length since that victory, and it includes the singles “That’s You,” “Hericane,” and “Soft.” The pre-release tracks showcase Daye’s vibrant vocals, pairing them with electric guitar and light funk, situating him among artists like Miguel and Channel Orange–era Frank Ocean.
–Matthew Strauss
Mabe Fratti: Sentir Que No Sabes
Less than two years have passed since Mabe Fratti released her third solo album, Se Ve Desde Aquí, but her extended universe has grown at such a clip that she now feels like an institution. In between electrifying live shows with her hybrid noise/jazz/alt-rock trio, the Guatemalan cellist has released, among various loosies and collaborations, an album with Héctor Tosta as Titanic and another with Amor Muere, an experimental collective from her adopted hometown of Mexico City. Sentir Que No Sabes distills her experimental and melodic impulses into a roiling avant-rock opus, gesturing to a unique new sound as otherworldly and disarming as it is plainly gorgeous.
–Jazz Monroe
Megan Thee Stallion: Megan
Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion introduced her third album with a trio of reptilian-themed tracks: “Hiss,” “Boa,” and “Cobra” are all laced with Megan’s characteristic quick-handed, no-nonsense bars. In preparation for the Traumazine follow-up, Megan has been on a Hot Girl Summer tour, inviting Houston legends like Paul Wall and Bun B to join in on the live-show antics—it’s anyone’s guess who will pop up on the new LP’s final tracklist.
–Eric Torres
Meshell Ndegeocello: No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin
Meshell Ndegecello’s new album is a tribute to the writer and activist James Baldwin, whose inimitable style, grit, and grace on the page and in life now inform the bassist, vocalist, and songwriter’s music. Co-produced by Ndegeocello and Chris Bruce, No More Water is led by the singles “Love,” “Travel,” and “Raise the Roof,” one of several spoken word interludes on the album that features poet and activist Staceyann Chin and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als, who edited the recent essay collection God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin.
–Eric Torres
Milton Nascimento / Esperanza Spalding: Milton + Esperanza
For years, Milton Nascimento toured to sold-out audiences that sang along to his every word, but not for nearly a decade has the revered Brazilian singer-songwriter spent considerably time in the studio. For his first record since Tamarear, that 2015 record with Dudu Lima Trio, Nascimento joins forces with Esperanza Spalding, the jazz virtuoso and outré rock visionary who has spent her career bridging genres, moods, and disparate musical circles. (Once in a blue moon does a multi-Grammy winner release an album as beguiling as 2016’s Emily’s D+Evolution.) Her unlikely partnership with Nascimento is the product of a friendship that took root in the early 2010s. The tracklist, including covers of the Beatles and Michael Jackson, and guest list—Paul Simon, Lianne La Havas, Shabaka Hutchings, and more—suggests the album will proceed in a spirit of enlightened play.
–Jazz Monroe
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Wild God
More than three years have passed since Nick Cave and Warren Ellis released Carnage—an eternity by their prolific standards. The Bad Seeds have evidently spent the interim period gearing up to bring down the house: The lead single and title track of Wild God is as swaggering and downright uplifting as anything in their catalog. Cave declares as much in press materials, saying, “There’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” It is, he added sweetly, “deeply and joyously infectious…. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”
–Jazz Monroe
O.: WeirdOs
Saxophonist Joe Henwood and drummer Tash Keary document their raucous fusion of sludgy London jazz and plutonic rock on their debut O. album, WeirdOs. The former Black Midi tourmates belong to the ecosystem surrounding south London’s Windmill venue, and they’re also an extension of the dubbed-out musical universe of WeirdOs producer Dan Carey. “It’s total freedom,” Henwood said of the album in press materials. “Two people taking every risk.”
–Jazz Monroe
Omar Apollo: God Said No
The title of God Said No was inspired by the phrase “que sera, sera,” a saying that a friend of Omar Apollo’s offered him amid a turbulent breakup. “I gave it my everything,” Apollo recalled, “And God said ‘no.’” The singer-songwriter spent three months at London’s Abbey Road Studios—stimulated by poets Mary Oliver, Victoria Chang, and Ocean Vuong—working with trusted producers Teo Halm, Carter Lang, and Blake Slatkin, before finishing the record in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami. The 14-track record, led by achy singles “Spite,” “Dispose of Me,” and “Less of You,” also includes contributions from friends Mustafa on “Plane Trees,” and actor Pedro Pascal.
–Boutayna Chokrane
Pat Metheny: MoonDial
On MoonDial, Pat Metheny returns to solo guitar compositions without overdubs, working in interpretations of the Beatles, Chick Corea, and Leonard Bernstein among a suite of his own compositions. His approach to the record—one of “intense contemplation,” he said in press materials—was partly inspired by the hearth-like tone of a nylon-string guitar he had custom-built by the luthier Linda Manzer. MoonDial is also a return to the tuning system he formulated for 2003’s One Quiet Night and 2011’s What’s It All About, his previous, Grammy-winning solo guitar albums. He will tour both the new album and last year’s Dream Box in the autumn.
–Jazz Monroe
Peso Pluma: Éxodo
Peso Pluma is now a bona fide superstar, and that status often comes with abandoning your roots to play to a larger audience. But, instead of choosing between a full urbano pivot or staying true to his corridos tumbados, Pluma is releasing Éxodo: a double album that splits its time between the two genres. He calls on new friends (Anitta, Cardi B, and Quavo) and longtime pals (Tito Double P, Ivan Cornejo, and Natanael Cano) to bring his massive vision to life, all while reveling in his view from the top and the unlikely charm that helped propel him there.
–Nina Corcoran
Polo G: Hood Poet
Polo G had planned to release his fourth album, Hood Poet, in September 2023, but an arrest on kidnapping, robbery, and assault charges delayed the Hall of Fame follow-up indefinitely. The album is back on track for release, and the Chicago-born rapper has increased his activity, too, recently sharing the Hood Poet single “Angels in the Sky.” The track, along with “Distraction” and “Barely Holdin’ On,” showcase Polo G’s trademark blend of melodicism, vulnerability, and hard-nosed truth-telling.
–Matthew Strauss
Porter Robinson: Smile :D
The cheekily titled Smile :D, Porter Robinson’s upcoming third album, promises to be a full-on sugar rush. The producer has said the follow-up to 2021’s Nurture marks a playful departure from his usual style that occurred by happenstance. “the album that I was TRYING to write was this nonstop party — NO sincerity, ALL fun, an album that revels in absurdity for a world that rejects context,” he wrote on social media. “And that was the plan until I accidentally started confessing how I was really feeling, and … you’ll hear the rest.” You can sample Robinson’s pivot on the yearning, guitar-streaked first single “Cheerleader” and its fizzy synthpop follow-up, “Knock Yourself Out XD,” which circles restlessly around the producer’s earnest, unvarnished vocal delivery and an earworm 8-bit melody.
–Eric Torres
Ravyn Lenae: Bird’s Eye
Bird’s Eye is the follow-up to Ravyn Lenae’s 2022 debut, Hypnos. The new album, made in collaboration with DJ Dahi, has, so far, been preceded by two singles: the loping, sunny pop song “Love Me Not” and the silky, R&B-inflected “Love Is Blind.” In an interview with The Fader, Lenae said she made a point of adopting new vocal techniques on the record: “With the music I've been making since Bird's Eye, I’m belting way more. It doesn’t have to sound perfect. I’m letting the emotion drive the notes. I’m still finding my voice.”
–Eric Torres
Remi Wolf: Big Ideas
Remi Wolf has long asserted her independence as a pop star who wants to write hits on her own terms. With Big Ideas, her sophomore full-length, she’s figured out how to go bigger without sacrificing her sense of self in the process. With the splashy, summer-ready “Cinderella” and the cool-headed glean of “Alone in Miami,” Remi Wolf seems to take notes from her sets opening for Lorde and Paramore, incorporating snappy beats that urge listeners to get up and dance with her.
–Nina Corcoran
Sabrina Carpenter: Short n’ Sweet
After the runaway success of her song of the summer contender “Espresso,” Sabrina Carpenter is steaming ahead with a new album. Short n’ Sweet, her sixth LP after an era at the forefront of pop’s middle class, follows 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send. Its second single, “Please Please Please,” made with songwriters Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen, came with a video starring Carpenter’s squeeze Barry Keoghan.
–Jazz Monroe
SML: Small Medium Large
SML, a new quintet of Los Angeles jazz and indie-rock luminaries, have signed to the vaunted Chicago label International Anthem for their debut album. Small Medium Large, which draws on influences from Miles Davis to Fela Kuti and Harmonia, was chopped and excerpted from a pair of shows at Los Angeles’ now-defunct ETA—the venue immortalized by Jeff Parker’s 2022 album Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, an LP that features SML bassist Anna Butterss.
–Jazz Monroe
