Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - August 22, 2025

Adrian Sherwood delivers a brand new full-length work for 2025, The Collapse Of Everything. A meticulously constructed album from the master mixologist, pushing his ever adventurous sound into new frontiers. Although underpinned by a natural dub sensibility, the music presented on The Collapse of Everything fluidly crosses genre borders and seamlessly fuses a wide range of influences from a lifetime of listening and producing. Featuring Brian Eno, Doug Wimbish, Keith Le Blanc, Cyrus Richards, and more. Mastered and cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery. Artwork by Peter Harris.

Ami Taf Ra is an LA-based artist of North African heritage who has a long held passion for musical and cultural fusion. ‘The Prophet and the Madman’ — is a musical interpretation of the timeless writings of Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist Khalil Gibran. Heralded for her seamless fusion of Arabic musical traditions like Moroccan gnawa with jazz and gospel, the album is beautifully cinematic and epic in scope. Composed, produced and arranged by Ami Taf Ra and legendary saxophonist, composer and frequent collaborator Kamasi Washington, the album features contributions from a stellar cast of musicians including: Ryan Porter, Miles Mosley, Brandon Coleman, Tony Austin, Cameron Graves, Ronald Bruner Jr., Allakoi Peete, Kahlil Cummings and more. A nexus for experimental sound, Brainfeeder (the label owned by LA icon Flying Lotus) is an apt home for Ami Taf Ra’s artistry, rooted in boundary-pushing cultural fusion and a rich legacy of iconic Arabic vocalists like Abdel Halim Hafez, Umm Kulthum, Warda, Asmahan, and Fairuz. Kamasi’s musical contribution infuses a rich lineage of spiritual jazz, afrocentric philosophy, and orchestral grandiosity.

Ava Max has officially entered her most fearless era yet, one defined by brutal honesty, resilience, and unmatched pop. From heartbreak survivor to self-love icon, she’s not just back, she’s bolder than ever with her third full-length album, Don’t Click Play. In this body of work, you can hear a woman embracing her power and stepping into the artist she was always meant to be. It’s not just an album, it’s a declaration. The project was built during a time of heartbreak, betrayal, and personal reinvention, and it shows. She returned to the studio not to escape the pain, but to face it head-on. Ava says, “But this entire album was made to prove people wrong.” With Don’t Click Play, she doesn’t just push back the narrative—she kicks the door down. It’s raw, it’s personal, it’s the Ava everyone wants. She’s taking it to the max.

On her forthcoming CiCi album, Ciara reclaims her narrative with clarity, confidence, and a full-spectrum sonic experience that marks her most dynamic era yet. The project — which includes standout singles like “Ecstasy,” “How We Roll,” “Wassup,” and “Run It Up” — effortlessly bridges her legacy in R&B and pop with fresh, future-forward production and unapologetic storytelling. The CiCi era isn’t just a return — it’s a reinvention. Across the album, Ciara blends sultry grooves, empowering anthems, and melodic dance records that reflect both her personal evolution and artistic growth. Each track reflects a refined sense of purpose: she knows exactly what she wants to say and how she wants to say it. Whether celebrating freedom, sensuality, or power, CiCi is an album about owning your voice, your joy, and your journey. Over the last two decades, Ciara has consistently pushed culture forward — from setting dance floors ablaze with iconic choreography to defining the sound of modern R&B-pop. With CiCi, she not only reintroduces herself to a new generation, but also strengthens the bond with her core audience, continuing to build an intergenerational community of fans who ride with her every evolution. It’s bold. It’s intimate. It’s CiCi — raw, radiant, and ready to reign.

With I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, Dean Johnson makes a pact with the listener: He will sing you his truth in the most heartfelt and charming way possible, if you promise to keep an open mind. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is essentially an anthology that bridges Johnson’s earliest days as a songwriter with his present-day outlook and abilities. There are songs that have been in his setlists for years, and others that will be new to fans. Each of its 11 tracks contains jocular social commentary or lovingly rendered affairs of the heart. The album’s songs about love and relationships offer another way to interpret its title: as a parting thought to an ex. Like John Prine or Kris Kristofferson’s country-adjacent sound, devastating humor and economical profundity refracted through a barroom’s haze, the album is filled with easygoing twang, sad characters, universal truths and the absurdity of everyday life. “Carol” recounts the numb consumption and dissipating cultural attention that is besieging America. There’s a search for optimism amid meditations on dying in a plane crash in “Before You Hit the Ground.” Romance that is best forgotten steers “So Much Better” — only Johnson could weave electroconvulsive therapy into a gentle, chuckle-inducing missive on unbearable heartbreak. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends floats in a liminal plane between timely and timeless, its minimalist instrumentation elevating Johnson’s affecting voice to new heights.

Deftones have always defined boundless creativity in the music space. Across nine prior studio albums, they have carved out an unmistakable sonic identity — ferocious yet dreamlike, while making space for constant refinement and surprise. Now, decades on from the groove-forward sound of their era-defining debut, Adrenaline, and following a long line of masterpieces including 2000’s White Pony, 2010’s Diamond Eyes, and 2020’s Ohms — an album that earned them their second and third Grammy nominations — they return with one of the most focused statements of their career: private music.

The twelve songs on Blue Reminder walk a kind of emotional tightrope between hope and a kind of quiet anxiety, the record itself batting around the question of what one does when happiness actually comes knocking. At the core of these songs the genuine joy of love and self-actualization are always balanced against the potential fear of losing those things once you’ve found them. This collection of songs largely eschew the more insular nature of earlier Hand Habits records, instead veering into the guitar-forward vibe of 90’s indie rock, with deftly assured songs that could exist in the same sonic universe with Aimee Mann or Neko Case, with the sort of left of center shifts in tone and lyrical observations that would not be out of place on a Cate Le Bon tune. Throughout the songs, guitars fuzz, drums move to the forefront, and the occasional horn or wurlitzer pass through. Everything feels elevated. “I think it's so corny to write love songs,” admits Duffy, who is somewhat loath to think of Blue Reminder as simply a love record. “I can’t deny that a lot of these are ostensibly love songs, but they are also love songs through my very specific kind of lens. It is about how falling in love does feel both terrifying and exciting, but this record is about commitment in a lot of ways. Committing to a person , to an idea, to being a more honest version of yourself. While Duffy doesn’t necessarily want the entire narrative around Blue Reminder to circle around romantic love, or to perhaps suggest that it’s only romantic love that allows us to be actualized or fulfilled, it does feel important to celebrate the joy of such things at a time when queer and trans people are largely being vilified. In a moment where there is so much fear and uncertainty, loudly articulating happiness and giving voice to healthy relationships feels like a profound pushback against all the darkness.

Hunx and His Punx, the California punk outfit featuring Seth Bogart, Shannon Shaw, and Erin Emslie, return with their first album in 12 years, Walk Out On This World, out via Get Better Records. Known for their glam-punk attitude and ties to the queercore and garage rock scenes, the band originally released three celebrated records between 2010 and 2013 before taking a hiatus.

7x Grammy-winner Jon Batiste returns with a new album, BIG MONEY. An exploration of the real currency of life as we know it today, Batiste melds classic and modern styles of R&B, Americana, soul, roots, jazz, gospel and more to create sounds of jubilee and diasporic expression. The soundtrack of a movement. Social music.

Acclaimed singer, songwriter and performer Kathleen Edwards returns with her highly anticipated new album, Billionaire, August 22 on Dualtone Records. Evoking her debut, Failer, the new 10-song album is full of Edwards' trademark lyrical sharpness and unflinching observations and was produced by Jason Isbell and Gena Johnson.Celebrated as one of the forebears of modern alt-country and Americana music, Edwards is beloved by fans and fellow musicians, and praised by The New York Times for her, "droll, observant and unsparing tone that is all her own. In her best lines, Edwards has the conversational vernacular and emotional eloquence of a great short-story writer."Since debuting in 2003, Edwards has released five albums, including 2020's Total Freedom - her first after stepping away from music for almost a decade. Released to overwhelming acclaim with pieces at The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and more, Pitchfork called it, "a creative breakthrough, written solely for the thrill of discovery," while Rolling Stone declared it as, "devastatingly great." Most recently, Edwards released a covers EP featuring special guests Isbell, Bahamas and Daniel Tashian and including renditions of Isbell's "Traveling Alone," Bruce Springsteen's "Human Touch," The Flaming Lips' "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate," Tom Petty's "Crawling Back To You" and more. She has been nominated for multiple JUNO and Americana Awards and, in 2012, was awarded the SOCAN Songwriting Prize.

Laufey's third album, A Matter of Time, is a beautiful masterpiece of introspection about the anguish that comes with life and love. Laufey has captivated a generation with virtuosic songs of love and self-discovery by manifesting her vision of jazz and classical-infused pop music. But after becoming the youngest ever recipient of the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album (for Bewitched), the Icelandic-Chinese composer, singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist feels freer than ever to, as she puts it, “let my heart wander.” For her third album, A Matter of Time, Laufey teams with fellow producers Spencer Stewart and Aaron Dessner to break the set of expectations she herself set, serving up a transcendent sound and honest writing that cuts to the heart. It’s the culmination of an incredible journey that began with her playing cello with the Iceland Symphony as a teen before writing her first charting single while studying at Berklee College of Music. 

Guitar is the first studio album from Mac DeMarco since 2019's Here Comes The Cowboy. Following the two most recent releases - the 199-track One Wayne G and the instrumental, tour-inspired collection Five Easy Hot Dogs, Guitar features 12 new songs written, performed and recorded in its entirety by Mac between November 16th-28th in 2024 at his home studio in LA. Mac writes, "I think Guitar is as close to a true representation of where I'm at in my life today as I can manage to put to paper."

HEARTS SOLD SEPARATELY is Mariah the Scientist’s exciting and emotional follow up to 2023’s To Be Eaten Alive . Thanks to the explosive launch of “Burning Blue,” Mariah’s meteoric rise to becoming one of the top women in R&B is evident and punctuated by this piece. The album is Mariah’s contemporary take on what she describes as “the war on love” and our collective duty to fight for it. She pictures herself, and most women, as toy soldiers who will lay their lives on the line for the sake of love— just to realize that men view them as nothing more than disposable playthings used strictly for entertainment.

This is The Passionate Ones. It’s not an album. It’s a sermon. A twelve-track exorcism howled from the underbelly of late-stage capitalism, written, produced, and conjured entirely by Marcus Brown. This ain’t soul revival. This is soul revenge. Crafted between London, New York City, and Baltimore—each city leaving fingerprints on the sound—The Passionate Ones channels Marcus’s global process with local truth. Born and raised in Baltimore, Brown’s work is profoundly shaped by the city’s rich and eclectic musical heritage, where jazz, punk, indie, hip hop, and R&B collide in raw, genre-fluid harmony. You can hear it in the tension and release, the way the tracks slip between worlds and histories. The Passionate Ones is a scream at the billboard promise of success: It was never the car that was the lie—it was the idea that you’d ever get to drive it. And Marcus Brown knows it. He’s not whispering revolution. He’s crying through a busted speaker with blood on the woofer. Each track hits like a confession soaked in gasoline. One of the standout moments comes on the eighth track “Jojo,” featuring a vocal appearance by UK producer and vocalist Tony Bontana. His presence is haunting, grounding the song in a quiet power that amplifies the album’s spiritual undercurrent without softening its fire. This isn’t just heartbreak. This is class solidarity sung through a cracked molar. Brown’s voice burns as it soothes. Like that good medicine. And through the smoke, we see ourselves: overworked, underpaid, and refusing to go numb. This record isn’t background noise. It’s a boot to the teeth of resignation. It’s love without capitalism. Faith without churches. Labor without applause. It’s a blueprint for building your own altar in the ruins of the American Dream.

Old Dominion’s sixth album, Barbara , is a 13-track journey that blends their signature melodic, guitar-driven sound with deeper reflections on life, love, and mortality. Known for crafting unforgettable hooks, the band leans into more mature themes without losing their optimistic spirit, exploring the highs and lows of life with honesty and heart. From the opener “Making Good Time,” with its phased pre-chorus and tumbling drums that sweeps from youthful ardor to moving through life, recognizing the purity in coming of age and how it shapes who we become, the Shane McAnally/Old Dominion-produced album seeks to understand the way life and love can rise and fall. It’s the euphoria seeing a certain kind of free-spirited woman can induce on “Break Your Mama’s Heart,” the rhythmic philosophy of what it all means with “Water My Flowers” and the elegy for a good friend found in “Miss You Man.” “The thing about this crazy career, so many incredible things have happened, but so much life has also happened,” says lead singer Matthew Ramsey. “We’ve had people pass away, chapters close, people falling in love, obviously health challenges. When we write for Old Dominion, especially this time, we’re bringing more of ourselves into the room. These are our songs, so they should be pulled from our lives. You don’t realize as you’re writing necessarily, but when we listened to these 13 songs, we all realized: it’s our most personal record ever.”

Drum and bass royalty Pendulum release their first new studio album in 15 years, the highly anticipated fourth album, Inertia. Inertia follow EPs Elemental (2021) and Anima (2023) and 2024 single "Napalm," - of which, all 9 songs feature on Inertia, forming a key part of the story that culminates in the epic 16-track record. The record features collaborations with Bullet For My Valentine, Scarlxrd, AWOLNATION & Wargasm. 2 LP set, widespine jacket.

"Bruised Lung." "No Hope." "Care Less." "Climb the Walls." "Everybody Dies." Scanning the tracklist of Songs in the Key of Yikes, one is given to wonder: Is Superchunk okay? In a world that's arguably darker than the one that greeted Wild Loneliness in 2022 or What a Time to Be Alive in 2018, are any of us okay? "It's always been the case that everyone is going through something that you may not be aware of," notes Mac McCaughan. "This is currently more true than ever-but also the case that we are all going through some things together. In the face of that, what good is art and where is happiness found? (Spoiler alert: I don't know.)" In seeking an answer, Songs in the Key of Yikes unleashes a sound that is triumphant and bright in the darkness, Majesty Shredding in overdrive. Lead single "Is It Making You Feel Something" sets the tone early with the band-McCaughan, Laura Ballance, Jim Wilbur, and Laura King-building an anthem out of the potential for joy, diving into slop-polluted waters ("now fakes are faking everything / that once made your poor heart sing") and emerging with a pearl. "No Hope" is similarly resilient, McCaughan's lyrics painting a crushing scene before entering it's titular refrain. He repeats the phrase nine times, pauses a beat, and transforms it's sentiment entirely, breaking the chant with the line "and here we are singing." The lyric is sharp, at once a simple observation and a profound statement of being, the song's crushing nights and endless days no less so on it's account, but McCaughan's voice finds a certain sweetness in having endured, and continuing to do so. Paradoxically, the energy of Songs in the Key of Yikes borders on and sometimes spills into euphoria, as in "Stuck in a Dream" which emerges like a mirage-born oasis between "Everybody Dies" and "Train on Fire," a full-sprint crowd pleaser suitable for pogoing in the pit. "Care Less" is a dark, comic mirror to that energy, a garage-y jam in which an acid-tongued McCaughan seeks refuge from the storm by pretending it's not raging right outside his door. This strategy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. It's a song on a Superchunk album, and Superchunk albums are arguments against insularity, parties large enough to host everyone. This one, in addition to welcoming Laura King into the fold after two years as their touring drummer, features contributions from Rosali Middleman ("Bruised Lung" and "Everybody Dies"), Bella Quinlan and Holly Thomas of Quivers ("Cue"), and touring bassist Betsy Wright ("Care Less"). The album was engineered by Paul Voran (The Menzingers, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and Eli Webb, and mixed by Mike Montgomery (The Breeders, Protomartyr). Together, they reach no conclusions on what good art is in the face of crisis. They also make great art. Songs in the Key of Yikes is a signature Superchunk album: visceral and timeless and catchy as hell-a cathartic balm for these oppressive times that will feel even better once we've figured our collective shit out.

Three Days Grace returns with Alienation — their 8th studio album and a landmark moment in rock. For the first time in over a decade, original frontman Adam Gontier is back joining Matt Walst on vocals along with Neil Sanderson (drums), Brad Walst (bass) and Barry Stock (guitars) the twelve tracks on “‘Alienation’ all play a pivotal role in defining this significantly new, but nostalgic, chapter of the band. The album is a journey through inner collapse and outward defiance—The songs reflect isolation as a condition of existence, not just circumstance. Some of what we write about - anxiety, addiction, heartbreak, disconnect, are often a different wave of the same storm. And yet, buried in all the wreckage is something human—still reaching out

Tops - musicians David Carriere, Jane Penny,Marta Cikojevic, and Riley Fleck - write timelessmusic that reliably threads immediacy and depth.Bury the Key, their first full-length since 2020 andwith new label home Ghostly International, is acaptivating reintroduction for the Montréal band:ever refined, undoubtedly masters of their melodiccraft yet unafraid of evolving and testingthemselves against different, at times darker tones.The album faces feelings once locked away,engaging the give-and-take between happiness,hedonism, and self-destruction. While ofteninhabited by fictional figures, their glowing,grooving, self-produced songs draw from personalobservations: intimacy (both inside and outside theband), toxic behavior, drug use, and apocalypticdread. When recording started, they noticed a shiftand leaned in, jokingly dubbed "evil Tops," saysPenny. "We're always kind of seen as a soft band orlike naive or friendly in a Canadian way, but wemade it a challenge to really channel the worldaround us." Through the lens of a looming epochand the clarity that comes with age, Tops dip into amore sinister disco realm with Bury the Key, givingtheir soft-focus sophisti-pop a sharpened edge.

'It's A Beautiful Place' opens with zero-gravity instrumental ‘One Small Step’ – a fitting prelude for what is one giant leap for New York duo Water From Your Eyes. The album is a gleaming megalopolis, a satellite view of eras and musical forms, a reframing of the y2k songbook that is at once awe-struck and mindful of its place in the vastness. “It ended up being about time, dinosaurs and space,” says Nate Amos. “We wanted to present a wide range of styles in a way that acknowledges everything’s just a tiny blip.” The duo recorded the bulk of 'It’s A Beautiful Place' last summer, just as they have every other WFYE release: in Amos’s bedroom. But this time, much of the writing and recording were shaped around the dynamics of a full-blooded live group: “When you’re playing with a band you tend to write with one in mind - this was the first time I wrote anything imagining us playing anywhere bigger than a basement”, he observes. Throughout the album is a clear sense of a band who have honed their curveballs into home runs. Looming and melancholy, wide-eyed and petrified, it's Blade Runner meets WALL-E, it's Kubrick and Asimov with a hint of Jay and Silent Bob. These are songs that look outward, conscious of our smallness and questioning our place in the universe while admiring the surrounding beauty. “A song can feel like everything, communicating vast emotional landscapes,” says Amos, “but your favorite album is less important than any person. That person is less interesting than any mountain. That mountain is boring compared to any planet. That planet is only a part of a solar system. If music and all other human practices are meaningless on a cosmic scale why does it still feel so important?”

Winter's newest record and Winspear debut, Adult Romantix, is a farewell love letter to LA-"a tunnel of summers and memories"-inspired by Mary Shelley's gothic-romantic literature and '90s rom-coms. Leading up to her emotional coast-to-coast move, Samira Winter spent roughly two years writing songs in a transitory state: often in between tours, in different cities and sublets. Nostalgic and wistful, the album blends swirling guitars, cigarette-glazed vocals, and icy breakbeats floating between strummy bliss and melancholic desire. Influenced by touchstones like Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped, the forlorn acoustic rock of Elliott Smith, the slippery electronic-rock of Dean Blunt, and California shoegaze à la Further and Starflyer 59, Adult Romantix vacillates between dewy, strummy ecstasy and moody, nighttime desire.

The Clearing is the brand new album from Wolf Alice. Written in Seven Sisters and recorded in LA with Grammy-winning, master producer Greg Kurstin last year, The Clearing reveals where Wolf Alice stands sonically in 2025. They deliver a supremely confident collection of songs bursting with ambition, ideas, and emotion.