Pitchfork has selected nine notable new album releases available on streaming services, featuring artists like Kim Gordon and James Blake. The roundup highlights diverse genres from alt-rock to ambient soundtracks. These recommendations aim to guide listeners through the week's music drops.
Pitchfork's weekly feature on new music spotlights releases from a range of artists, emphasizing significant drops across genres. The list includes Kim Gordon's Play Me on Matador, which critiques AI chatbots, tech billionaires, and capitalist plunder, building on her 2024 album The Collective. It features alt-rock elements and Dave Grohl on drums for “Busy Bee.” Gordon described the project as containing “the biggest low end maybe you’ve ever heard” in an interview.
Elucid's I Guess U Had to Be There, produced by Sebb Bash on Backwoodz Studioz, follows his 2024 album Revelator. It explores themes of work burnout and environmental degradation with features from billy woods, Shabaka Hutchings, Estee Nack, and Breeze Brewin.
Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip releases Paris in the Spring on Night Time Stories, a synth-pop album with contributions from the Avalanches, Étienne de Crécy, Paradis’ Pierre Rousseau, Ewan Pearson, Pale Blue’s Elizabeth White, and Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside. Taylor noted it is about “freedom—from constraints, from preconceptions, and from genre.”
Anjimile's You’re Free to Go on 4AD addresses gender, faith, and friendship, with a lyric from “Waits for Me”: “When I was a little girl, I wanted to be free… When I was a little boy, I wanted to be real.”
Other releases include Ora Cogan's gothic folk Hard Hearted Woman on Sacred Bones, Cut Worms' power-pop Transmitter on Jagjaguwar produced with Jeff Tweedy, Laurel Halo's ambient soundtrack Midnight Zone for Julian Charrière’s film on Awe, Noémi Büchi's electronic Exuvie on -OUS, and James Blake's self-released alternative R&B Trying Times on Republic. Blake explained the album emerged amid writing, producing, and managing himself, keeping him “on the phone 24/7.”
A correction fixed the spelling of Sebb Bash's name. All albums are available on platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp.