Tinashe - Popstar (Album). Popstar is Tinashe’s eighth album, out September 25 on her own label with Nice Life and Atlantic. It runs sixteen tracks in about 39 minutes, so most songs land between two and three minutes, and there isn’t a single guest feature on it. That’s rare for a major-label pop record, and it reads like a statement. The album plays like a career in miniature: the hunger, the fear that nobody’s watching, the grind, and then the strange feeling of finally be

M83- I Wrote You A Letter (Album). I Wrote You a Letter is M83’s tenth album and Anthony Gonzalez’s first full-length since Fantasy in 2023. Gonzalez has said it reflects a few years of feeling disillusioned with the world, and that he wanted something less calculated and more spontaneous this time. He made it with Benoît de Villeneuve, Joe Berry, and Clément Libes, and put it out on his own label, Other Suns. It’s nine tracks and about 40 minutes, and it’s mostly instrumenta

Slow Pulp- Melodie (Album). Melodie is Slow Pulp’s third album, and it’s their first with an outside producer, Elliott Kozel, who worked on it alongside the band’s own Henry Stoehr and Emily Massey. The Chicago band (they started out in Wisconsin) has always sat somewhere between fuzzy ’90s alt-rock and dreamy indie, and this time they lean into pop hooks without losing the haze. It’s eleven songs, most of them around three minutes, and it’s over before you notice. “Yellow an

Beck- Ride Lonesome (Album). Ride Lonesome is Beck’s fifteenth album and his first batch of new songs since Hyperspace in 2019. If you came for the goofy, genre-hopping Beck, this isn’t that. This is the sad, acoustic Beck of Sea Change and Morning Phase, with a lot of the same people back in the room (Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Jason Falkner) and Nigel Godrich mixing. Beck has said he finished a version of it years ago, sh

Distance in Static is Bonobo's eighth album, and he has said it may be the last one in the traditional sense. The title comes from the idea of listening for meaning inside static, like tuning a shortwave radio and trying to understand something far away. That idea runs through the whole record, which is full of voices and old recordings drifting in from different places. It has fourteen tracks. "Dawn" is a short instrumental, so there are no lyrics, but it works as a prelude

Ezra Collective - Here Because Of Hope (Album). Ezra Collective's fourth album is seventeen tracks long and split into three sections that follow Black music from Africa to the Caribbean and then to London. The band describes it as a journey from pain to joy, with hope as the thing that connects them. I went in curious, since jazz isn't something I usually listen to front to back, and I came out with mixed feelings. "Part 1" is a short spoken word introduction read by Letit

Dexys Midnight Runners - LOVE (Album). This is Dexys Midnight Runners' seventh studio album, and it's their first release under that full original name since 1985's Don't Stand Me Down. Kevin Rowland has kept the band going under the shortened name Dexys since 2003, but he's decided to revert to what might genuinely be the group's final album. It's ten songs, produced by David Holmes, and it's built almost entirely around Rowland looking back on his own life, his childhood

ADÉLA- PRIMA (Album). This is ADÉLA, a Slovak pop artist releasing her debut album. Eleven songs, thirty-one minutes, executive produced by Dylan Brady of 100 gecs and Blake Slatkin, following her earlier EP, The Provocateur. She's said she wanted the album to sound like exactly what it is: a 22-year-old figuring herself out, balancing confidence with vulnerability. It opens with "KGB," which is essentially a flex track from start to finish. She brags about working night shi

Interpol- This Mirror Weighs a Ton (Album). Interpol - This Mirror Weighs a Ton (Album) Here's the album review with every song title bolded and in quotes: Interpol's eighth album dropped, and honestly I wasn't expecting much going in; they've been around forever at this point, and a lot of bands their age just start coasting. Twelve tracks, still mostly that guitar-heavy post-punk sound they built their whole career on, but there's some new stuff mixed in this time: strings,

Mike D 5D- Thank You (Album). Mike D - Thank You (Album) Here's the album review with every song title bolded and in quotes: This is Mike D's debut solo album, thirteen songs and thirty-nine minutes long, moving between big beat, drum and bass, electro, and lo-fi hip hop without settling into just one sound. "Switch Up" opens the album and does not ease you in at all. The beat is frantic and drum and bass-leaning, the drums are blown out, the vocals are distorted, and he sou

Jorja Smith - What Are The Odds (Album). This is Jorja Smith's third studio album, following Lost & Found and Falling or Flying. It is 12 songs and 37 minutes long, and it marks the first time she has fully committed to dance music, after only touching on it briefly earlier in her career. The album was produced by P2J and moves between UK garage, two step, UK funky, and Afro house, while still keeping her personal, sometimes heavy songwriting at the center of it. It opens wit

Nate Sib - Reborn (Album). This is Nate Sib's debut full-length album, following two earlier EPs, For You and For Us. It is only 10 songs and 25 minutes long, so it moves quickly. The whole album is built around him almost dying from a fentanyl overdose and getting clean afterward, so the title Reborn is meant literally, not just as a metaphor. The sound is still the glossy, busy pop style he is known for, but this time he mixes in a few more stripped-back, personal moments.

The Womack Sisters - The Womack Sisters (Album). This is the debut album from the Womack Sisters, three sisters named BG, Zeimani, and Kucha, and their family tree is honestly kind of insane; they're the granddaughters of Sam Cooke, daughters of the duo Womack & Womack, and nieces of Bobby Womack. They were literally singing before they could walk and toured with their parents and uncle growing up, but apparently a bunch of labels weren't interested in the throwback soul soun

Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Weekend (Album). This is Phoebe's third solo album and her first one in six years, since Punisher came out back in 2020. in between she did the whole boygenius thing with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, but this is her first time back on her own, and it's a big one, 16 tracks, 52 minutes, dealing with grief over losing her dad, her broken engagement to Paul Mescal, and falling in love again with her now partner Bo Burnham, who she calls "Bobby" through mos

Man/Woman/Chainsaw - Cannonball (Album). This is Man/Woman/Chainsaw's first full album and it's 11 tracks, 41 minutes, mixing art rock, chamber pop, and kind of a punk edge all in one place. sounds like a lot going on at once but it actually holds together way better than you'd think. It opens with "Only Girl," which has violin running through it with these tight little verses that build up into a big chorus, Vera Leppänen basically begging someone to commit to her and gettin

Role Model - Chuck Timely & The Hourglass (Album). This is Role Model's third album, and it's built around this idea of a fictional guy named Chuck Timely, basically a time traveler dealing with love, loneliness, and trying to figure his life out. His last album, Kansas Anymore, was mostly about heartbreak, but this one moves into more of an up and down single life phase, less "my heart is broken" and more "dating in your late twenties is a lot." The sound is also way more co

Arca - XXXXX (Album). XXXXX is 16 tracks, and it's darker and more experimental than a lot of what Arca's done before, industrial, fractured, kind of mechanical sounding the whole way through, like she built this whole cyborg world and the album is just letting you walk around in it for 47 minutes. It opens with "No End," which honestly doesn't feel like a normal opening track at all, more like a portal or a doorway into the album than an actual song with a beginning and end.

Ariana Grande - Petal (Album). Here's the album review with every song title bolded and in quotes: ok so this is Ariana's EIGHTH album which is crazy, and it's her first full one since Eternal Sunshine in 2024 which feels like so long ago now. this whole era is giving darker and way more guitar-y than anything she's done before, like less big pop belter Ariana and more moody, ghostly, kinda haunted sounding Ariana, which is a cool idea honestly even if it doesn't totally work

Charli xcx - Music, Fashion, Film (Album). This is Charli's eighth studio album, arriving two years after "Brat" turned her into an actual, honest-to-god pop star instead of just the internet's favorite secret weapon. Following that up was never going to be simple, and instead of chasing the same high, she and longtime collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane went and built something scrappier and way more guitar-forward. It shows immediately. The album opens with "Rock Music,"

Tyla - A*POP (Album) Here's the album review with every song title bolded and in quotes: This is Tyla's second studio album, arriving after her breakout single "Water," which has now racked up over a billion streams on Spotify. The album opens with "Is It Love," a track about wanting a relationship that's genuine and passionate — one where both partners are actually willing to be vulnerable, instead of relying on empty words. Tyla spends the song questioning whether someone's