Spring is here, and, with it, a new crop of albums. Replenish your musical flowerbed with a selection of long-dormant shrubs (Vampire Weekend, Beth Gibbons, Justice), prolific perennials (Adrianna Lenker, Khruangbin), and, in Taylor Swift, a climber that seemingly won’t stop growing until the whole garden is in its shade. Look out, too, for keenly awaited returns from Bat for Lashes, Jlin, Julia Holter, Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, St. Vincent, Mdou Moctar, Waxahatchee, Pet Shop Boys, and Les Savy Fav, plus more from sprightly newcomers Blue Bendy and Saya Gray. And, if all else fails, there’s always Beyoncé, whose country album, Cowboy Carter, is due in late March to remind us how to wear summer hats.
A. G. Cook: Britpop
Britpop is the next album from producer and PC Music founder A. G. Cook, who split the 24-song LP into three distinct parts: Past, Present, and Future. The record will veer between electronica, Britpop, and “future music,” per press materials, as Cook toys with the tropes of mainstream pop and the experimental sounds he’s pioneered over the past decade. The title track features longtime Cook collaborator Charli XCX, who is responsible for a tart vocal loop throughout the single. Britpop is the follow-up to Cook’s pair of 2020 solo albums, Apple and 7G.
–Madison Bloom
Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future
Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker pries open a cobwebbed memory box on Bright Future. The album’s lo-fi confessionals delve into heartbreak and childhood to tell the story of a life, pared back like field recordings retrieved from some ancient nomad dwelling. Working with contributors including Nick Hakim, Lenker decorates her stark poetry with guitar, piano, and violin, as heard on the original version of Big Thief favorite “Vampire Empire,” conjured here as an otherworldly transmission.
–Jazz Monroe
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Amen Dunes: Death Jokes
On Death Jokes, the latest entry from Amen Dunes, songwriter Damon McMahon departs from the glimmering Americana of his 2018 LP Freedom. Across these strange and sometimes angular tracks, McMahon splices in sound bytes culled from YouTube, a Richard Pryor set, snippets of a J Dilla interview, and other sonic curios. While recording Death Jokes, McMahon enlisted bassist Sam Wilkes, as well as producers Christoffer Berg, Kwake Bass, Panoram, and Money Mark. The resulting 14 tracks are occasionally edged with harsh electronics, while lead single “Purple Land” bobs along to a subdued reggae pulse before splintering into a frayed drumbeat.
–Madison Bloom
Arab Strap: I’m Totally Fine With It 👍 Don’t Give a Fuck Anymore 👍
Anyone unfamiliar with veteran troublemakers Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton need look no further than I’m Totally Fine With It 👍 Don’t Give a Fuck Anymore 👍, a crash course in the Scottish duo’s irreverent charms. “They’ve got your attention, deluders and doxers; self-righteous, self-styled renegades,” Moffat sings on the opener, skewering “the juvenile jilted” of our time. They continue in noisily acerbic fashion, careening between romance and cynicism, menacing synths and barnstorming riffs, exploding the folly of modern life and dredging for hope in the rubble.
–Jazz Monroe
Bat for Lashes: The Dream of Delphi
Natasha Khan is readying her first studio album as Bat for Lashes in five years; The Dream of Delphi follows 2019’s Lost Girls. The new 11-song release casts Khan’s experience of early motherhood through a folkloric and mystical lens. Upon sharing the title track, Khan referred to it as the thematic core of the album. “It’s like a spell being cast,” she said. “It’s the conjuring, the manifestation, the drawing-down of Delphi from the ether.” The mythic and maternal motif is carried through in songs like “Letter to My Daughter” and “The Midwives Have Left.”
–Madison Boom
Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown
A decade in the making, Beth Gibbons’ formal solo debut arrives some 16 years after Third, her last album to date with Portishead. In the intervening years, she has sung with orchestras, covered Black Sabbath and David Bowie, and collaborated with MF Doom and Kendrick Lamar—but, only now, spurred by grief and ennui, has she pulled together a full-length. Lead single “Floating on a Moment,” Philip Sherburne notes in a track review, sounds “like an unplugged take on Dummy’s heartbroken noir,” with “electric guitar snaking through vibraphone, Hammond organ, hammered dulcimer, and pedal steel.” The album promises work of similar intensity, staging an inquiry into death and aging. “I realized what life was like with no hope,” Gibbons said of the inspiration in press materials. “And that was a sadness I’d never felt.”
–Jazz Monroe
Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter
Beyoncé shocked us all—again—when she announced her new album during the Super Bowl. Even more surprising, she released two bluegrass-influenced singles: the banjo-dominated boogie “Texas Hold ’Em” and the organ-backed grand ballad “16 Carriages,” which subtly tips its hat to Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train.” Following Renaissance, her tribute to the dance music legacy forged by Black women and queer people, Beyoncé embarks on a new musical journey as a storyteller, delving into the “overlooked history of the American Black cowboy,” and reclaiming country-western music à la “Daddy Lessons.” The album, Cowboy Carter, has contributions from Elizabeth Lowell Boland, Rhiannon Giddens, Raphael Saadiq, Hit-Boy, Nathan Ferraro, Killah B, and more.
–Boutayna Chokrane
Billie Eilish
With just four words and one emoji, Billie Eilish fanned the flames: “my album is mastered.” The singer-songwriter has continued to tease her third studio album as she and her brother, Finneas, accpet hardware for their Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe–winning Barbie song “What Was I Made For?” The spare, introspective ballad could well be a sign of things to come on the Happier Than Ever follow-up.
–Matthew Strauss
Blue Bendy: So Medieval
Blue Bendy have spent years bubbling in London’s indie undercurrents, taking their time to branch away from monologue-rock towards witty indie-pop chronicles that are as indebted to Broadcast and Destroyer as Dry Cleaning or Black Country, New Road. On So Medieval, one-liner maestro Arthur Nolan and the shambolic band rip through silly, catchy, sometimes absurd anthems, reckoning with the travails of a music career while fending off online trolls or blagging free flights by pretending someone died. It’s a debut as fun and assured as any the scene has produced.
–Jazz Monroe
Camera Obscura: Look to the East, Look to the West
Look to the East, Look to the West marks Camera Obscura’s first album in over a decade. It follows the death of the Scottish twee group’s longtime keyboardist, Carey Lander, in 2015 after being diagnosed with bone cancer; during an extended hiatus to grieve, founding members Kenny McKeeve, Gavin Dunbar, and Lee Thomson kept in touch and tapped Donna Maciocia to join them in Lander’s place while writing new music. Camera Obscura announced the album with the loping, twangy lead single “Big Love,” which features Tim Davidson on pedal steel.
–Eric Torres
Charli XCX: Brat
We may not know precisely when Charli XCX is dropping her Crash follow-up, Brat, but we do know that it will arrive this summer—just the season for sweaty club devotees. We also know that it contains 15 tracks, clocking in at 41 minutes and 23 seconds, to be exact. One of those cuts is the brash and spectacular “Von Dutch,” an Easyfun-produced banger that Charli XCX debuted during a Boiler Room warehouse set in February. Charli XCX shared the single with a rough’n’ready music video directed by Torso, who chases the pop star with a handheld camera as she bolts through the expanse of France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, sustaining some minor “injuries” along the way.
–Madison Bloom
Charlotte Day Wilson: Cyan Blue
Toronto singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Day Wilson is readying her second full-length, Cyan Blue, which follows her standout debut, Alpha, from 2021. Wilson worked with producers Leon Thomas and Jack Rochon on Cyan Blue, which contains lead single “I Don’t Love You” alongside 12 additional tracks. While writing the album, Wilson attempted to brush off her perfectionist tendencies, which she called “a bit stifling.” “I’m more interested in capturing feelings in the moment as they happen and leaving them in that moment,” she said.
–Madison Bloom
Diiv: Frog in Boiling Water
Diiv recently fulfilled a lifelong dream: filming a Saturday Night Live parody with “host” Fred Durst. For the performance, the band played “Brown Paper Bag,” the lead single from its new album, Frog in Boiling Water. The album follows 2019’s Deceiver and marks the second LP from the current iteration of Diiv: vocalist and guitarist Zachary Cole Smith, guitarist Andrew Bailey, bassist Colin Caulfield, and drummer Ben Newman.
–Matthew Strauss
Dua Lipa: Radical Optimism
Even between album cycles, Dua Lipa stayed scheming, dominating the airwaves with her Barbie single “Dance the Night.” She’s now readying the Future Nostalgia follow-up Radical Optimism, made with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, Danny L Harle, Tobias Jesso Jr., and Caroline Ailin, and featuring the singles “Houdini” and “Training Season.” Dua Lipa is ready to bask in the spotlight once more and have fun doing it.
–Nina Corcoran
Empress Of: For Your Consideration
It’s been nearly four years since Empress Of released her ambitious, largely self-produced third album, I’m Your Empress Of. In the meantime, Lorely Rodriguez launched her own record label, Major Arcana, along with the imprint’s debut single: an Empress Of track called “You’ve Got to Feel,” featuring Amber Mark. In 2022, Rodriguez released the five-song Save Me EP, which features the standout, downtempo club cut “Dance for You.” Last year, Rodriguez dropped a pair of singles—“Kiss Me,” featuring Rina Sawayama, and “Femenine.” Both singles are on For Your Consideration.
–Madison Bloom
Fabiana Palladino: Fabiana Palladino
Singer-songwriter Fabiana Palladino will release her long-awaited debut album this spring. The Paul Institute member recently shared a first single, the slow-burning Jai Paul collaboration “I Care,” as well as pop-funk song “Stay With Me Through the Night.” Further contributors on the self-produced LP include Rob Moose, drummer Steve Ferrone, and Palladino’s father and brother, bassists Pino and Rocco Palladino.
–Eric Torres
Girl in Red: I’m Doing It Again Baby!
Girl in Red’s second album—the spectacularly titled I’m Doing It Again Baby!—arrives roughly three years after her studio debut, If I Could Make It Go Quiet. The 10-song LP includes lead single “Too Much,” a tale of unrequited love that arrived with a campy, old-Hollywood–esque visual last month. Girl in Red revealed that the song is about feeling self-conscious for expressing happiness and excitement within relationships. “I think culturally people tend to be too cool to have fun or to show true excitement and emotions,” she said in press materials. “I’m so tired of that facade.” The literal bleeding-heart imagery in the video hints at gushing, romantic songwriting across Girl in Red’s sophomore effort.
–Madison Bloom
Gossip: Real Power
After more than a decade-long hiatus, Gossip are back to reclaim their spot atop the dance-punk pyramid. Real Power, their sixth studio album and follow-up to 2012’s A Joyful Noise, promises to champion chosen family, creative expression, and escaping trauma on the dancefloor. That much can be heard in lead single “Crazy Again,” where Beth Ditto sings about the thrill of crushing hard without the promise of anything more, as well as “Act of God” and the title track.
–Nina Corcoran
I. Jordan: I Am Jordan
I Am Jordan, the debut album from I. Jordan, centers around joy, according to the UK club producer: “It’s about my joy as a trans person, and trans joy generally, working with trans people, making all this fun music together,” Jordan said about the follow-up to their For You and Watch Out! EPs. The 12-song set includes the lead single “Real Hot n Naughty,” which features Sex Education actor and rapper Felix Mufti on vocals for a pulsing dance floor-filler which they described as “a real queer northern dance anthem.”
–Eric Torres
Ibibio Sound Machine: Pull the Rope
London dance group Ibibio Sound Machine will release their next LP, Pull the Rope, later this spring. The follow-up to 2022’s Electricity includes the singles “Got to Be Who U Are,” as well as the title track. The band—led by singer Eno Williams and multi-instrumentalist Max Grunhard—worked with producer Ross Orton on the new record, which is marked by funk-indebted dance cuts bouncing to rubbery bass and space-age synths.
–Madison Bloom
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 when the album, completed in March, arrives later this year. While details are thin on the ground, she has teased a “crazy collaboration” for the record. Formalities of hype aside—knowing Ice Spice, that could be literally anyone.
–Jazz Monroe
Iron & Wine: Light Verse
Sam Beam is back with his first proper Iron & Wine album in seven years. Light Verse, which follows 2017’s Beast Epic, is stirring, patient, and curious—descriptors that aren’t necessarily far off from those of previous Iron & Wine records, but which bloom in new ways this time. Lead single “You Never Know” bends upright bass, piano, and acoustic guitar towards a swelling finale of strings like a sunbeam that splits into a rainbow prism. Beam’s Fiona Apple collaboration “All in Good Time” is a similar musical refraction, suggesting fans should prepare for a heart-tugging listen.
–Nina Corcoran
Jessica Pratt: Here in the Pitch
Folk-pop artist Jessica Pratt will return with her first album in five years, Here in the Pitch, this May. The album is led by the mystical “Life Is,” which nods to lush 1960s pop and gauzy psychedelia. Pratt has said the follow-up to 2019’s Quiet Signs is inspired by Los Angeles’ hippie era after the singer-songwriter became “obsessed with figures emblematic of the dark side of the Californian dream.”
–Eric Torres
Jlin: Akoma
Electronic maestro Jlin stages a grand return with Akoma, the producer and composer’s first standalone solo full-length since the landmark 2017 LP Black Origami. An illustrious guest list, including Björk on opener “Borealis” and Philip Glass on “The Precision of Infinity,” attests to the Indiana producer’s tightrope walk between the dance and classical vanguards. The latter song seamlessly melds “Mad Rush” snippets into Jlin’s rhythmic universe, while “Speed of Darkness” and the Kronos Quartet–featuring “Sodalite” play like fever-dream extrapolations of her early footwork beats.
–Jazz Monroe
Julia Holter: Something in the Room She Moves
Julia Holter’s official follow-up to her 2018 opus, Aviary, takes place in “a world that’s fluid-sounding, waterlike, evoking the body’s internal sound world,” the Los Angeles composer and singer-songwriter said in press materials. After spending much of the post-Aviary interval working with movies, including Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Holter’s filmic vision has never sounded more diffuse. Full of meandering hooks and improv expulsions, the LP attends to both the death of loved ones and the birth of Holter’s daughter, whom she would lull to sleep with Beatles songs—prompting the album title’s flip of George Harrison’s “Something” lyric.
–Jazz Monroe
Justice: Hyperdrama
Some 17 years after debut album †—and another eight since their last record, Woman—French house party-starters Justice are staking their claim to the contemporary pop landscape. The Tame Impala collaboration “One Night/All Night,” which led the LP, fuses disco and electronic sounds in a way that the duo says characterizes the album (Philly soul nostalgists may be intrigued to hear the enfants terribles of bloghouse name-dropping Salsoul Orchestra as an influence), slowly raising the tempo ahead of their imminent Coachella comeback set.
–Jazz Monroe
Kacy Hill: Bug
Arizona-born indie-pop singer-songwriter Kacy Hill follows 2021’s Simple, Sweet, and Smiling with a new album she made in collaboration with producers Bartees Strange, Sega Bodega, and Jim-E Stack. Bug also features songs with Nourished by Time (“My Day Off”) and Donna Missal (“Here I Am”). “Making this album marked a distinct change in my mindset as I shifted away from specific expectations, and instead focused on the curiosity and joy I felt while making music,” Hill has said.
–Matthew Strauss
Kamasi Washington: Fearless Movement
Kamasi Washington is back with a project that he has called a “dance album.” Sort of. “It’s not literal,” the renowned Los Angeles jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader has said. “Dance is movement and expression, and in a way it’s the same thing as music—expressing your spirit through your body. That’s what this album is pushing.” Guests on Fearless Movement include André 3000, Thundercat, Terrace Martin, Patrice Quinn, George Clinton, BJ the Chicago Kid, and D Smoke.
–Matthew Strauss
Khruangbin: A la Sala
Khruangbin bring their cushy, internationalist spin on louche dance music firmly into the lounge on A la Sala. Named for a phrase that the band’s Laura “Leezy” Lee used to shout as a girl—“to get everybody in the living room; to get my family together”—the record returns the festival-conquering trio to its original mission: three musicians in the lab, raiding their record collections to evaporate neo-soul, spaghetti western licks, and noirish funk into an alluring haze.
–Jazz Monroe
Les Savy Fav: Oui, LSF
Ahead of a performance at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in July, Les Savy Fav are releasing their first album since 2010, Oui, LSF. The intensity of singles “Legendary Tippers” and “Guzzle Blood” show that the New York post-hardcore favorites haven’t lost their edge.
–Matthew Strauss
The Libertines: All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade
The Libertines’ heyday was astonishingly brief—by the release of their self-titled second album, in 2004, the dream was all but over—but it cast reverberations through British rock music. Even as the landfill indie scene, which formed in their wake, rapidly died out, the influence of songwriters Pete Doherty and Carl Barât echoed into the recent generation of chatty, London-based bands who split the difference between Clash-indebted punk and U.S. indie-rock. After several false starts, the Libertines returned to the studio in 2015 for their first comeback album, Anthems for Doomed Youth, and now they are back again. They announced All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade with a throwback single called “Run, Run, Run,” which Barât said is about escaping the temptation “to get stuck in a ‘Run-run-run’ rut, constantly trying to relive our past.”
–Jazz Monroe
Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me
Maggie Rogers co-produced Don’t Forget Me—her follow-up to 2022’s Surrender—with Ian Fitchuk. Mixed by Shawn Everett and mastered by longtime collaborator Emily Lazar, Rogers’ third album was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York. “Most of the performances you’ll hear are first takes,” she said in a statement. “We decided to leave all the pieces that make the recordings feel real and feel human.” The 10-track Americana LP, which she likens to “the mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room,” includes singles “So Sick of Dreaming” and “The Kill,” debuted during her North American tour last year.
–Boutayna Chokrane
Maya Hawke: Chaos Angel
On her third album, Maya Hawke channels experiences of thwarted ambition and folly into the story of a destructive “chaos angel” raised to believe they are the god of love. “On the journey home, she goes back through all the places she thought she destroyed,” the singer-songwriter and Stranger Things star explained in press materials. “And in the rubble, wonder and beauty and magic grew.” Her songs are fleshed out with filigree and shaggy swing but remain as delicate and intimate as ever.
–Jazz Monroe
Mdou Moctar: Funeral for Justice
Funeral for Justice “presents an even bigger and brawnier version of what fans have come to expect from Mdou Moctar,” Andy Cush wrote in a recent article on the band. “Moctar’s lyrics,” Cush wrote, “delivered in the Tuareg language Tamasheq, often address the plight of his people and of Saharan Africans more generally.” The new album—a true band effort, featuring lead singer and guitarist Mdou Moctar, rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, and bassist and producer Mikey Coltun—follows 2021’s Afrique Victime.
–Matthew Strauss
Normani: Dopamine
We’ve been anticipating Normani’s debut solo album (along with the rest of the known world) for quite some time—pretty much ever since the former Fifth Harmony member dropped her sweeping hit “Motivation” and its choreo-heavy music video. A few collaborations followed: a “Motivation” remix with 21 Savage, a joint track with Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj, and two-handers with Megan Thee Stallion (“Diamonds”) and Cardi B (“Wild Side”). She also dropped the solo single “Fair” in 2022. All the while, we waited. In February, Normani finally gave us a little more information: The album, titled Dopamine, would materialize at long last. But we’re still holding our breath for a release date…
–Madison Bloom
Nourished by Time: Catching Chickens EP
After causing a sensation with last year’s debut Erotic Probiotic 2, Nourished by Time has signed to XL Recordings for a new EP, named after the scene in Rocky II in which a trainer makes the boxer catch chickens as a test of agility. In his effortlessly masterful fashion, the Baltimore singer-songwriter and producer nimbly melds heartstring-stroking soul, peppy alt-rock, and euphoric synthpop into a suite of irresistible future anthems.
–Jazz Monroe
PartyNextDoor: PartyNextDoor Four (4)
Canada’s PartyNextDoor was just 20 years old when he released his self-titled debut in July 2013. Now 30, the R&B and hip-hop singer, songwriter and producer is releasing the fourth installment of the PartyNextDoor series, led by the singles “Resentment” and “Real Woman.” “This is the hardest I’ve ever worked on an album. This is the proudest I’ve felt,” he recently told Billboard. “I’m excited to grind even more for the next [one]. I’m in love with how hard you should work for it.”
–Matthew Strauss
Pearl Jam: Dark Matter
Pearl Jam are getting the fan treatment, however unintentionally, on Dark Matter. The band hired Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt—a self-described longtime fan of the band who, according to bassist Jeff Ament, has “encyclopedic knowledge of our history”—to produce the album. Ament credits Watt’s infectious excitement as a resource during the three weeks Pearl Jam recorded their Gigaton follow-up. Based on lead single “Dark Matter,” it sounds like the Seattle grunge icons tapped into their younger, louder selves again.
–Nina Corcoran
Pet Shop Boys: Nonetheless
Pet Shop Boys are back on Parlaphone—the label of their 1980s and ’90s imperial era—for their new album. It’s a fitting reunion for a duo whose imprint on pop music is deeper than ever, from influencing stadium bands to plotting their own enormous shows as part of their ongoing Greatest Hits Tour. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe set the tone for the new campaign with a video for sad banger “Loneliness,” their first official single in four years.
–Jazz Monroe
Saya Gray: Qwerty II EP
Saya Gray—producer, songwriter, multi-instrumental hell-raiser—is following her Qwerty EP with a second installment of delirious anthems that swerve between hyperpop, R&B, prog, and art-rock. The Toronto-based, Japanese Canadian musician channels an uncontainable energy into miniature digital dystopias that are by turns intimate and explosive—and never short of irresistible pop hooks.
–Jazz Monroe
Shabaka: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
Shabaka Hutchings made his name leading the influential Sons of Kemet and the Comet Is Coming, but, on his debut full-length as Shabaka, the UK jazz lodestar changes tack. Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace swaps raucous raptures for meditation, leaving his saxophone at the door in favor of various woodwinds. Another born-again flutist, André 3000, joins him, as do fellow explorers Moses Sumney, Esperanza Spalding, Floating Points, Laraaji, Saul Williams, and Elucid.
–Jazz Monroe
Sheryl Crow: Evolution
Sheryl Crow, now a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, comes back very soon with her first album since 2019, Evolution. She’s previewed the new album with “Alarm Clock,” “Do It Again” (not a Steely Dan cover), and the title track. And the deluxe version of Evolution features one more track, the Peter Gabriel collaboration “Digging in the Dirt.”
–Matthew Strauss
St. Vincent: All Born Screaming
Annie Clark self-produced her seventh record as St. Vincent, which “meant sitting with a lot of self-doubt,” she said in press materials. “Like Bowie says, ‘When you feel that your feet aren’t quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.’” The result of that exploration is a raucous LP that channels Nine Inch Nails and Steve Albini, pitching Clark “at the precipice of life and death,” she’s said. With collaborators including Cate Le Bon, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Josh Freese, M83 collaborator Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa, Clark set out “to fuck people up.” Of the title, she added, “If you’re born screaming, that’s a great sign, because it means you’re breathing. You’re alive. My god. It’s joyous. And then it’s also a protest. We’re all born in protest in a certain way.”
–Jazz Monroe
Still House Plants: If I Don’t Make It, I Love U
Guitarist Finlay Clark, vocalist Jess Hickie-Kallenbach, and drummer David Kennedy are Still House Plants, and If I Don’t Make It, I Love U is the band’s third album. The trio recorded the new album in London with Shaun Crook and Darren Clark, and singles “M M M” and “No Sleep Deep Risk” offer a preview of the group’s angular art-rock.
–Matthew Strauss
Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department
Taylor Swift apparently spent two years quietly crafting the follow-up to Midnights, The Tortured Poets Department. And the Swifties are now spending their time figuring out the new album’s themes, aided by clues like the name of ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s old WhatsApp group with Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott (“The Tortured Man Club”). Swift has yet to share any singles from the album as she continues her Eras Tour.
–Boutayna Chokrane
Tyla: Tyla
Tyla earned a Top 10 hit and her first-ever Grammy earlier this year for her irresistible, amapiano-meets-R&B summer hit “Water”—all before even releasing her debut album. She’ll remedy the album absence with her upcoming self-titled LP, which features “Water,” plus the recently released singles “On and On,” “Butterflies,” and “Truth or Dare.” Unfortunately, the South African singer had to cancel her world tour in support of the album while she recovers from an undisclosed injury, but the up-and-comer has said she hopes to be back onstage by the summer.
–Eric Torres
Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us
It felt like an eternity between Vampire Weekend’s third and fourth albums. Well, the six years that separated Modern Vampires of the City and Father of the Bride are not all too different from the five that separate the latter and its follow-up, Only God Was Above Us. Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson recorded the new album in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. Koenig produced the album with Ariel Rechtshaid, and it was mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar. Singles preceding the LP are “Capricorn,” “Gen-X Cops,” and “Classical.”
–Matthew Strauss
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Various Artists: Funk.BR - São Paulo (NTS)
Funk.BR - São Paulo, a new compilation from the label wing of NTS, the beloved London radio station, corrals a riotous mix of Brazilian funk superstars and newcomers like DJ Dayeh and DJ Bonekinha Iraquiana. The 22 tracks, all previously unreleased, chart the emergence of the mandelão sound, which has zigzagged between demonic and hypnotic offshoots as it spreads beyond São Paulo favela parties.
–Jazz Monroe
Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
For a few hours, Katie Crutchfield imagined what it might be like to go pop on Tigers Blood, her upcoming album as Waxahatchee. Instead, she trusted her gut and let country seep into her intuition-driven songwriting, a process she describes as natural and comfortable. Joined throughout by Wednesday’s MJ Lenderman on electric guitar, Crutchfield elevates Waxahatchee to a fortified, admirable form on a new album that’s as immediate as the all-timer lead single “Right Back to It.”
–Nina Corcoran
Yaya Bey: Ten Fold
Brooklyn’s Yaya Bey returns this May with her third LP, Ten Fold. It’s the follow-up to her 2022 album, Remember Your North Star, and 2023 EP, Exodus the North Star. Once more, Bey blends neo-soul, jazz, and reggae, and also draws from her Muslim and Caribbean heritage. “The album is called Ten Fold cause I grew up Muslim and my dad’s name is Ayub which is the same story as Job in the Bible,” she posted on X in January. “And because Job was faithful whatever he lost God gave it back to him Ten Fold. As a second generation musician I always told myself I would be the Ten Fold.”
–Boutayna Chokrane
