Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 25 April (2025)

Dream Into It, Billy Idol's ninth studio album and first full-length record in over ten years, tells a rich and deeply personal tale of Billy's voyage from young punk rock dreamer to his reset as an MTV leather-gloved icon; then on to all his well-publicized hits, highs, lows, overdoses, and accidents; culminating with a devastatingly honest assessment of the price of fame and the wisdom accrued by getting your act together and embracing family. And even though Dream Into It tells a story it is also, on a track-to-track level, a completely satisfying old school/new school pumping, rocking punk/pop odyssey, as only Billy Idol and longtime guitarist/collaborator Steve Stevens can create, with the able assistance of producer Tommy English and features with rock mavens Joan Jett and Alison Mosshart.

Though Deerhoof long ago established itself as one of the greatest rock groups ever to stride the earth-and if you think that's hyperbole, you haven't spent enough time listening to Deerhoof-they once again discover previously unknown combinations of candy-coated riffs, sideways pop hooks, free-jazz freakouts, and surrealist humor. Joyful and foreboding, cybernetic and deeply human, carrying an implicit note of defiant optimism in their refusal to bow to convention or received wisdom. A firecrackers-for-breakfast, intercontinental-ballistic-blockparty, household-chemicals-that-should-never-be-mixed, electric-jolt-to-body-parts-and-brain-chemistry, combustible love-letter to the human race. Featuring special guest Saul Williams on one track.

From the very beginning, fans have fallen in love with Jensen McRae for thesharp, evocative and clear-eyed songwriting. McRae songwriting is vulnerable,yes, but it's also powerful for not holding back. Now, I Don't Know How ButThey Found Me! Delivers McRae's evolution from a promising young artist to abona fide songwriter and star. "The most profound choices of my life," saysMcRae, "have often felt like things I did before I was ready to do, and I had togrow into them." I Don't Know How But They Found Me! #is about what followswhen you have withstood what you thought might crush you. It's aboutmeeting your limits and learning what you're capable of. "I connected withthe idea that I could've easily collapsed beneath the weight of what happenedto me, but I didn't. I didn't even know it," she says, "but I was bulletproof thewhole time."Born and raised in LA, Jensen McRae has studied and made music for most ofher life. She attended Grammy Camp in high school and graduated from USC'sThornton School of Music with a degree in Popular Music. McRae's debutalbum, Are You Happy Now?, was written mostly when she was just 21, and wasthe first step in developing her now-devoted fanbase. Are You Happy Now?navigates identity from it's deepest foundations - life as a young, bi-racial Blackand Jewish woman - to it's most personal musings - do I trust you, do I trustmyself. McRae's trust in herself has borne out on multiple occasions, mostrecently and maybe most famously in the form of "Massachusetts". McRaeposted a solo verse and chorus, little more than a piece of a demo, and itcaught fire online. Covers, duets, and an avalanche of new fans followed, andMcRae capped the moment with a finished version and a summerlong toursupporting Noah Kahan.I Don't Know How but They Found Me! Takes McRae's now-considerablepowers and hardwires them for mass appeal. Stealth single "Savannah" is onefor the yearners. The pulsing, country-adjacent song immediately brings thebest of Phoebe Bridgers to mind, with McRae singing in an acrobatic whisperover a feather light acoustic guitar. By the time "Savannah" hits it's crescendo,it's crystal clear McRae is an artist with her own singular power, as piano layerswith guitar and McRae delivers a series of scathing indictments with grit andconviction: "You swore you'd raise our kids to end up just like you / well you're afalse prophet / and that's a goddamn promise." Meanwhile "Let Me Be Wrong"is a bona fide anthem, a "buoyant ode to rejecting perfectionism." Built onceagain on a simple vocal and acoustic guitar, "Let Me Be Wrong" builds stepover step in it's defiance; guitars layer, drums pick up the pace, and McRaemakes space for everyone's mistakes. When McRae growls "fuck those girls goteverything" it's a punch of both power and vulnerability, begging to beshouted in unison the biggest possible crowd.The unusual title of her second album is taken from a line in McRae's favoritefilm, Back to the Future. A key protagonist survives a hail of bullets, and theimage resonated with McRae because, she said, she often feels a connectionto some future self guiding her decisions, especially in times of crisis. It alsoinspired the album's cover, as McRae stands in a custom fireman's coat withthe job's official marks and symbols stitched alongside abundant ones of herown. The effect caught her off-guard; "I was surprised how emotional it mademe to be in the fire coat," she says, "forced to stand still, stand powerfully. Icould feel myself becoming a symbol of my own hero's journey." If Are YouHappy Now? was her coming of age, I Don't Know How But They Found Me! #isJensen McRae all grown up.

'UNATONED' is a testament to momentum, an album honed to it's sharpest edge, forged on creative discipline and the hunger to push forward. It drips with melancholy melodies, and yet hammers with bludgeoning riffs, soars with anthemic sing-a-longs of love-lost and sadness, to bellowing power and undeniable confidence. Eleven albums deep, Machine Head remain as fierce, relevant, and unstoppable as ever.

By the time Irish musician Maria Somerville started writing Luster, her landmark label debut for 4AD, she had lived away from her native Connemara for quite some time. Having grown up amongst the wild, mountainous terrain of Galway’s rural west coast, she later relocated to Dublin, where she patiently developed an atmospheric dream pop signature inspired by the landscape of her youth – a spellbinding soundworld of gusting ambient electronics, ethereal guitar strums, sparse percussion, and hushed lyrical vignettes. In 2019, this culminated in All My People, a self-released LP steeped in reverb, nostalgia and a yearning for home that won praise from discerning press and listeners alike. It was upon returning to Connemara, in a house near where she was raised overlooking one of the country’s largest lakes, Lough Corrib, that work commenced on the songs that would eventually become Luster, an album that illuminates Somerville’s music anew, pushing it forward in both sound and spirit. Where All My People conveyed memories and melancholic longing with misty slowcore balladry, these 12 tracks show us an artist who’s more assured in the path her life has taken, and the person she’s become in the process. As she sings in ‘Trip’ – “I can see more clearly than I could before. I know now what's true for me. With the release of Luster, she has signaled the arrival of a new era that will see her play around the world in 2025 accompanied by a live band. Rest assured though, no matter where Somerville goes, she’ll take a piece of home with her – a living, breathing, timeless essence you can sense in every note, as clear as the air by the Corrib.

Totality! It can only be good news. The second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas, years removed from the first, misses no steps and posits low-key revolutions in gravity for everyone instead. LPs divide inevitably into two halves; here, the first side could be typed ‘space’ and the second side ‘time’. With loads of totally principled playing in the communal feel, both sides blur the edges warmly.

The brilliant Salami Rose Joe Louis returns for further adventures in experimental dream pop. Previously earning praise from The New York Times, Paste, Crack Mag, The Guardian, Bandcamp (“glowing bouquets of homespun electric jazz and soul”), and The FADER (“an electrified passage of fusion perfection”), The Line of Best Fit, DJMag, & XLR8R. Olsen conjures her utterly inimitable sound from her long term musical partner – the Roland MV8800 lovingly nicknamed FunFunFun. Olsen, who’s sharpened her chops touring for the likes of Flying Lotus, TuneYards, and Toro y Moi among others, is back on the road in 2025. In May she will support Alice Phoebe Lou and MIKE in addition to North American and European headline dates. 2025 upcoming festivals include San Francisco Jazz Fest, Montreal Jazz Fest, Ottawa Jazz Fest and Rochester Jazz Fest, plus Cross The Tracks in London and Maifeld Derby in Frankfurt. With her innovative production style and captivating live shows, Salami Rose Joe Louis continues to push the boundaries of alternative/electronic/jazz music as evidenced by her recent KEXP live session. Recent collaborations include a feature on Toro y Moi's “Mahal”, a remix for Hiatus Kaiyote, Alice Phoebe Lou’s - Strongboi project, writing credits on Baby Keem’s “Scapegoats” and the 2024 collab album extravaganza “Sarah” with legendary Philadelphian – Flanafi.

One of the most formidable guitarists in recent history, Samantha Fish brings both mind-blowing power and extraordinary emotionality to everything she creates. For help in shaping Paper Doll's magnificently rowdy but deeply nuanced sound, Fish reunited with Detroit garage-rock icon Bobby Harlow and enlisted the core members of her live band (bassist Ron Johnson, drummer Jamie Douglass, keyboardist Mickey Finn), marking the latest entry in an uncompromising and adventurous catalog. 

Written and produced in both North Carolina and her new home of Minneapolis throughout 2024, Bloodless finds Samia reuniting with longtime-collaborator Caleb Wright and Jake Luppen for the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2023's revered Honey, which followed Samia's 2020's breakthrough debut The Baby. Across these thirteen songs, Samia grapples with the hollow form she once embodied — a vessel that gained value through its own absence, until playing dead became its own form of life. With Bloodless, she endeavors to disinter the self buried beneath these carefully constructed personas, ultimately reaching a place of acceptance for her whole, imperfect being.

As Self Esteem, Rebecca Taylor has become the unapologetic pop star she always wanted to be. With her 2019 statement debut Compliments Please, Taylor gave voice to the feelings of insecurity and misogyny-induced frustration that many of us face every day, emboldening a whole new audience with powerful, truth-telling lyricism. Her second album, Prioritise Pleasure, arrived to universal critical acclaim and a slew of award nominations (Mercury Prize, a BRIT Award for Best New Artist, Sky Arts, NME Awards), crowned both The Guardian and Sunday Times Culture's Album of the Year, with the empowering "I Do This All The Time" also named The Guardian's #1 song of 2021. Praised for its fearless ability to tackle important issues around female autonomy, comparison culture and self-love, its intimate, confessional and witty lyricism and anthemic maximalist pop rhythms, the album was a catalyst for an unprecedented few years for Taylor.

Three-time GRAMMY Award-winner Smokey Robinson delivers, What The World Needs Now, a soulful, musical journey blending timeless classics with original songs that offer inspiration and encouragement. Featuring his smooth, iconic voice and warm, heartfelt renditions of "Lean on Me," "What a Wonderful World," "Be Thankful for What You Got" and more, this recording reminds us of the countless beauties of everyday life and the joys of love, unity and gratitude.

What happens when you combine SUMAC: a band that uses the volume, distortion, and guitar-centric approach of metal to make music that has the malleability of jazz and textural exploration of noise with Moor Mother: a poet and sound artist that has deconstructed hip hop to a point where it’s less about rhyme and rhythm (though obviously both are present in her work) and more about oratorical cadence and power. The Film is an album that takes attributes of both artists’ work and finds common ground in shifting musical patterns, and expressive force. The record is a musical thumbing of their noses at the more traditional approaches of their respective fields, an innovative, powerhouse of an album. The Film’s moniker speaks to the fact that it is conceived and delivered as a complete album, a full story or narrative. Moor Mother puts it best: “The idea is to create a moment outside of the convention. This is a work of art. Thinking about the work as a Film, instead of an album or a collection of songs. This task is impossible in an industry that wants to force everything into a box of consumption. You won’t understand or get the full picture until the artwork is completed. This work is developing and is requesting more agency within the creative process.” The Film does have clear themes running throughout – again Moor Mother expounds: “the themes are universal in nature - land - displacement - the climate - human rights and freedoms - war and peace - the idea of running away from the many violent forces and horrific systems of man and empire.”

Sunflower Bean’s fourth album, and follow-up to their self-produced EP ‘Shake’, is their most accomplished work yet. A 10-song powerhouse that elegantly merges arena-rock, art pop, and new wave into a truly unfettered manifestation of their one-of-a-kind artistry. A record that bursts with vitality and vulnerability it both celebrates their history whilst hurtling towards their future. Mixed by Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, St Vincent) & engineered by Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties, boygenius).

Face Down In the Garden is the seventh LP from the critically acclaimed duo Tennis. Offsetting intuitive melodies with unusual arrangements, Tennis returns with music that feels familiar but resists convention. Lead singles Weight of Desire, At The Wedding and Sister highlight Tennis' range as writers and producers, evolving beyond their girl-group roots into what is their most fully-realized effort to date. 

The Moonlandingz debut album Interplanetary Class Classics was filled with sticky pop songs that offered solace and punishment in the months following both the Brexit vote and Trump's first victory. They conspired with Yoko Ono, Sean Ono Lennon, Rebecca Taylor, Phil Oakey and the Cowboy from The Village People to make one of the great albums of 2017, and we needed it. Seven long years later, The Moonlandingz - Adrian Flanagan, Dean Honer and Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family) - have finally returned when we need them most. No Rocket Required features collaborations from Iggy Pop, Nadine Shah, Jessica Winter, and Ewen Bremner. The ten tracks deliver something cosmic on a human scale, reminding us we will always need to organize, fight, collaborate, connect and dance.

Viagr aboys is the fourth studio album from Viagra Boys. Featuring single "Man Made of Meat", the LP sees VB turn inwards, leaving the acid-laced, conspiracy-addled societal commentary of previous LP Cave World behind to journey into the acid-laced, conspiracy-addled landscape within. Absurd, intense and surprisingly tender, viagr aboys shuts out the noise to find that the important part of being alive in the big, stupid world is figuring out that the world inside of you that is equally big and stupid.

After crucial stints in Silver Jews and Lambchop, William Tyler emergedwith a string of inquisitive albums that paired his country rearing andclassical enthusiasm with his ardor for experimentation and fieldrecordings. His productive enclave of instrumental music has not onlyushered in new sounds, but also critical new voices. No other soloAmerican guitarist this century has impacted that fecund scene quitelike him. And on the brilliant, bracing Time Indefinite, Tyler's first soloalbum in five years, he steps at last into the widening gyre he helpedcreate. The guitar is the starting point for an album that will make youreconsider not only Tyler but also the possibilities of an entire field. Avortex of noise and harmony, ghosts and dreams, anguish and hope, itis not just a great guitar record. It is a stunning record by a greatguitarist, a masterpiece of our collectively anxious time.In early 2020, as the world teetered at the edge of unrests stillunimagined, Tyler left LA for Nashville, where he'd lived most of his life.Most of his gear and all of his records stayed, awaiting a presumedrapid return. It, of course, wasn't. So as Tyler dealt with the depression,nerves, and questions of those endlessly tense times, he beganrecording ideas with his phone and a cassette deck, resigning himself tothe distortion inherent in those devices. Tyler was talking with KieranHebden about making a record together, and some of these bits felt liketest cases. As that collaboration crept in other directions Tyler magpiedother sounds. He asked longtime friend, producer Jake Davis, to helpstitch them together, opting to embrace the hiss and wobble and tounintentionally make a record that reflected those times andthese-uneasy, damaged, honest.A seesaw of struggle and survival defines these songs, a map ofanguish and belief and the trails that link them. "This is a mental illnessrecord," Tyler will tell you without shame, as open in life and speech ashe is on tape. "It's music about losing your mind but not wanting to,about trying to come back." He doesn't need to tell you that; you canfeel it, possibly recognize it from your own experience.Tyler's albums have been nests of non-musical influences, as he haspivoted between spirituality and philosophy and summoned thelandscapes of the greater American imagination. Time Indefinite is nodifferent, especially in the way it conjures the deeply personal films ofRoss McElwee. In the mid-'80s, he began to make a movie aboutSherman's march through the South, but it spiraled into a tangledhistory about family, loss, and what we do when our best instinctssurrender to the worst things we can imagine. The record is a nod to thisidea, of time's relentless push and our place in, beneath, and beside it. Itis no great revelation that the lives we lead shape the work we make,whether or not we intend that to be the case. In these songs, you canhear Tyler wrestle with incoming demons out loud-addiction, middleage, loneliness, neurosis. All of our struggles are different, but we areunited in having them. This is the soundtrack that Tyler's create.

Willie Nelson’s new album (his 77th solo studio album and his 154th album overall) is an album that focuses on the songs of Rodney Crowell, the latest in Nelson’s storied history of focusing entire albums on a single songwriter’s work. Willie Nelson and Rodney Crowell are two Texas singer-songwriters whose careers have intersected often since Crowell first heard Nelson’s earliest songs on the radio and saw his shows in Houston in the mid-1960s. Willie first recorded a Rodney Crowell song in 1983 and last did so 40 years later for 2024’s The Border. Produced by Nelson’s longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon and featuring an amazing backing band of Nashville gunslingers accompanying Nelson’s vocals and inspired guitar work on Trigger, the album handpicks 12 songs from the last 50 years, including the title track as a duet between Nelson and Crowell. From early tracks like 1976’s “Banks Of The Old Bandera” (recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker) and 1981’s “Shame On The Moon” (a hit for Bob Seger) to 90s tracks like “What Kind Of Love,“ (co-written by Will Jennings based on a Roy Orbison melody), “Stuff That Works” (co-written with Guy Clark), from early 2000’s cuts written for hit albums by Keith Urban and Tim McGraw to four cuts from Crowell’s beloved 2010s albums and a cut released as recently as 2021.