XO Skeleton is the supple, steady, uncanny new album by La Force: a mixture of haunted pop and hot-blooded R&B that glistens at the meeting-point between life, death and love. “In dreams, the dead and living are the same,” Ariel Engle sings on “October,” her voice shimmering. “Maybe that’s why I’m better in the dark.” The finality of death? The protection that another person’s love can or cannot bestow? These are body questions, matters of breath and flesh and pulse, which is the stuff at the centre of all of La Force’s music—beginning on her 2018 debut and also outward, into Engle’s electrifying work with Broken Social Scene, Big Red Machine, Efrim Menuck, Safia Nolin, and AroarA, her duo with her husband, Andrew Whiteman. La Force’s voice is stunning—somehow luscious and also wise—but so is her point of view—steady, sensitive, physical. Engle made the album at home, in the house where she grew up, where she got married, where her father died—a place that’s “both completely dead and completely alive,” she says: a structure at the threshold of her inner and outer worlds. Off and on for two whole years, Engle’s old friend, co-producer Warren Spicer (Plants and Animals), would work in her basement until lunch, allowing songs to unfold at heartbeat pace. She’s been “unhealthily obsessed” with death, she says, since she was a child, and XO Skeleton is a kind of reckoning: a coming-to-terms with the oblivion that bookends a life, but also the “gooey centre” of love, loss, touch, and memory. Throughout, XO Skeleton is electric + vivid, and also tactile + grimy. It bends and turns with its every shift of pulse—35 mournful minutes; but also searching, turned on. Like a body, you might say. Or the memory of one.
Install our app to receive notifications when new upcoming releases are added.

Recommended equipment and accessories
-
Denon DP-400
Featuring a high-precision, belt-driven mechanism and an adjustable tonearm that ensures optimal tracking and minimal resonance
-
Pro-Ject Phono Box DC Pre-Amp
Compact, high-performance phono preamplifier for both MM and MC cartridges, delivering a clean, detailed signal with minimal noise.
-
Ortofon 2M Red Cartridge
Features an elliptical stylus that accurately tracks the grooves of vinyl records, delivering a rich, detailed sound with an output voltage of 5.5 mV
-
Vevor Ultrasonic Cleaner
Thoroughly clean and restore your vinyl records, removing dust, dirt, and grime from every groove without damaging the surface
-
Pro-Ject Debut Carbon EVO
Featuring a one-piece carbon fiber tonearm, precision-tuned motor, and a heavy steel platter with TPE damping, it ensures superior stability and sound quality.
Featured Upcoming Vinyl
-
Cwfen Sorrows (Translucent Red)
New Heavy Sounds
August 8, 2025 -
The Beaches No Hard Feelings
Beaches Touring Inc.
August 29, 2025 -
Brogeal Tuesday Paper Club
Play It Again Sam
October 17, 2025 -
Patrick Shiroishi Forgetting is Violent
American Dreams Records
September 19, 2025 -
Halima Sweet Tooth (Red)
Drink Sum Wtr
September 19, 2025 -
Curtis Harding Departures & Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt
Anti
September 5, 2025 -
Alison Goldfrapp Flux (Yellow)
A.G. Records Ltd.
August 15, 2025 -
Sophie PRODUCT (Deluxe)
Numbers
August 8, 2025 -
Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke Pareidolia
Drag City
August 29, 2025 -
Cardi B AM I THE DRAMA? (Apple)
Atlantic
September 19, 2025 -
Marissa Nadler New Radiations
Sacred Bones
August 15, 2025 -
Runnner A Welcome Kind of Weakness (Blue)
Run For Cover
August 29, 2025 -
They Are Gutting a Body of Water Lotto
Ato Records
October 17, 2025 -
Hunny Spirit!
Epitaph
January 16, 2026