Copyright Pitchfork
With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Rosalía; Danny Brown; Armand Hammer & The Alchemist; Juana Molina; Dexter in the Newsagent; the Mountain Goats; Olan Monk; Wata Igarashi; G Herbo; and Sorry. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.) Rosalía: Lux [Columbia] Rosalía has always dreamed big, as a pop star with experimental ambitions, but, on her fourth studio album, Lux, the Spanish singer-songwriter pushes the boundaries even farther with a tight grasp on tension, drama, and reprieve. Split into four movements, her 15-song LP was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, as conducted by Daníel Bjarnason, and executive-produced by Rosalía herself; the group’s urgent strings can be heard driving the abrupt lead single “Berghain.” Contributing to the album in various ways are Björk, Yves Tumor, Portuguese fado singer Carminho, Spanish flamenco artist Estrella Morente, Spanish singer Silvia Pérez Cruz, Washington-based trio Yahritza, and the boys choir Escolania de Montserrat i Cor Cambra Palau de la Música Catalana. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Buy at Rough Trade Danny Brown: Stardust [Warp] On his follow-up to 2023’s Quaranta, Danny Brown embraces his new status as hyperpop unc. Nearly every track on Stardust features a guest artist from the greater glitch orbit, among them Jane Remover, Underscores, sibling duo Frost Children, and internet rapper-turned-art-pop auteur Quadeca. It’s hardly a left turn for Brown, who was linking up with Charli XCX and Purity Ring before it was cool and signed to Warp for 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition. He’ll still make a meal of any beat that’s thrown his way—only now he’s backed up by an extended universe of collaborators who actually match his freak. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Armand Hammer & The Alchemist: Mercy [Backwoodz Studioz] The Alchemist makes beats that keep the kush smell on them no matter how much you shake them out, and when Armand Hammer hop on, the contact high is immediate. On Mercy, their latest collaboration, the artists pick up where they left off and pass you the blunt in the form of reclined basslines, dreamy piano runs, and the effortless storytelling of two of modern hip-hop’s best rappers. Elucid and billy woods trade verses sniping the quick rise of artificial intelligence, memorializing their neighborhoods, and trying to slow the roll of soul-crushing news. “What’s the role of a poet in times like these?” asks Elucid. Surrounded by collaborators Earl Sweatshirt, Cleo Reed, Quelle Chris, Pink Siifu, Silka, and others, Armand Hammer and the Alchemist do their best to find out. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Juana Molina: Doga [Sonamos] Time continues to pass, but, with each album she drops, Juana Molina routinely proves that nobody is doing it like her. The singer-songwriter turns experimental ambient music into dark, pulsing electronica fit for a claymation video, luring listeners in with her steady vocals on “Uno Es Árbol” before letting them loose to wander the eerie caverns and spiked peaks of her new album, Doga, on their own. Full of creative improvisations and whirring beats, her first album since 2017’s Halo is both another forward step in her career and a great entry point for anyone who’s never listened to Molina. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Dexter in the Newsagent: Time Flies [RTW] South London’s Charmaine Ayoku, better known as Dexter in the Newsagent, has spent the past year flexing her featherlight take on turn-of-the-millennium pop. She took a guest turn on Jim Legxacy’s Black British Music (2025) and released a string of singles that put her in conversation with fellow Y2K revivalists like PinkPantheress. With Time Flies, Ayoku carves out her own distinct niche—a little less Basement Jaxx, a little more Dido. As Joshua Minsoo Kim wrote in his review, the single “Special” is “the soundtrack to breathlessly awaited texts” and “the moments when, in the midst of a perfect summer night, a thought begins to surface: This could be forever.” Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music The Mountain Goats: Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan [Cadmean Dawn] John Darnielle does not lack for songwriterly flair, but never has the Mountain Goats main-brain leaned into theatricality with such fervor as on the outfit’s new album, Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan. Assisted by none other than Lin-Manuel Miranda, the orchestral album surges through a perilous plot involving the titular Mr. Balkan, who is shipwrecked with his crew on a desert island. “I loved musicals when I was a kid,” Darnielle said in press materials, “but I hadn’t really indulged in them that much until the last seven years or so. And then we did Jenny From Thebes, which I called a ‘fake musical’ a lot… but this one actually is going for it.” Also among Darnielle’s own crew are the Replacements’ Tommy Stinson and producer and co-writer Matt Douglas. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Olan Monk: Songs for Nothing [AD 93] Olan Monk made their fourth album and AD 93 debut, Songs for Nothing, after returning to their home in Connemara and reverting from electronic sounds to a more rustic setup of smeared, gothic guitars, crashing drums, and infusions of folk instrumentation. The resulting mood is as epic as shoegaze and as intimate as campfire song, a counterpart of sorts to Luster by Maria Somerville, who recorded her own album in Connemara and features here on Songs for Nothing. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Wata Igarashi: My Supernova [Dekmantel] Since his anointment in the Tokyo techno scene more than a decade ago, Wata Igarashi has drilled out a formidable catalog that arches from jazz-inflected electronic compositions to the hyper-arpeggiated floor fillers of his new album, My Supernova. Now based in Amsterdam, the producer fills his Agartha follow-up and Dekmantel debut with brain melters like “Shockwave” and the psychedelic undulations of “Supernova.” It is “a self-portrait of me in 2025,” he’s said; sounds like he is having a hell of a year. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp G Herbo: Lil Herb [Republic] G Herbo is back to the fundamentals on the high-stakes rap odyssey Lil Herb. Billed as the end of the Chicago rapper’s Lil Herb era, the project harks back to his early sound with production from fellow Chicagoans No ID, Chase Davis, Oz on the Track, and C-Sick, as well as frequent collaborators Don Cannon, Southside, and Smatt. Jeremih and Anderson .Paak guest on “Whatever U Want” and “Thank Me,” respectively. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Buy at Rough Trade Sorry: Cosplay [Domino] Three albums in, Sorry are practically elder statespeople of the endlessly replenishing south London music scene, widely beloved for their canny indie-pop and folk songwriting and ladlings of post-punk textural intrigue. Cosplay furthers the cause with a dazzling array of comic pop culture references, repurposed arcana, and piquant sonic signifiers from the annals of indie-rock. “We are lost in time,” the band said in press materials. “We don’t have details to grab onto, nothing lasts forever. We just wear things from the past as they are the only thing to hold onto. We are all in an act of Cosplaying something that doesn’t exist.” Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade
