Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - January 16, 2026

The most exciting and terrifying parts of dreams (or nightmares) are the ones we recognize. Familiar fragments collide and reassemble into something strange. Things we thought we knew are turned upside down or ripped apart and sewn together backwards. That unnerving thrill — the shiver of recognition followed by disorientation — is at the core of Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1, the latest collection of covers from prolific music provocateurs Xiu Xiu. Jamie Stewart, Angela Seo and David Kendrick warp and distort classics spanning decades and genres — from 1950s rock n’ roll to new wave, Robyn to Throbbing Gristle. Xiu Xiu are no strangers to interpretation. Since the group’s inception in 2002, they’ve regularly paid homage to artists they revere — from New Order’s “Ceremony” (featured on Chapel Of Chimes EP) to David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” (for 2008’s Women As Lovers). They’ve done tribute albums — 2013’s Nina, honoring Nina Simone, and 2016’s Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks — cementing their reputation for considered reimaginings. Across twelve tracks, Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1 compiles a heady selection of monthly covers the band began releasing in 2020 through their subscription series via Bandcamp, expanding their bewildering universe to commune with artists throughout time. For Xiu Xiu, covers aren’t about improvement, but reverence. “We never approach them thinking ‘how can we improve these’ but really ‘what can we learn from these,’” Stewart says of the process. Xiu Xiu explores the music that’s moved them, as if each artist were a singular creative deity. The result is “a small honorific offering to the muse that created us.” Some covers are a shadowed vision of the original, zooming in on the song’s pronounced aura. The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” bratty defiance funneled through industrial pulses and slithering percussion — a ticking time bomb of acidic distortion and rebellion. Their version of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” is reborn with howling ‘60s organs, flute spirals, and swirls of reverbed vocals. It feels older than the original, as if Question Mark & The Mysterians or 13th Floor Elevators have been drawn into the conversation. Other reworkings with Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own,” or GloRilla’s “Lick Or Sum” unearth new understandings of contemporary hits.  Certain songs provided unexpected obstacles. “In Dreams” tested the limits of Stewart's vocal prowess; Coil’s “Triple Sun” allowed them the opportunity to study a band that listeners are constantly linking them to; Stewart was moved to tears while recording Daniel Johnston’s “Some Things Last a Long Time”— “If there ever were a sincere and wounded voice in the world it is his.” On XMFX, Xiu Xiu reshapes echoes of pop history into séances, lucid dreams, and sonic rituals — breathing new life into music’s past through a years-long, sustainable practice.

The wait is finally be over. More than seven years since Rocky’s last offering, 2018’s Testing A$AP Rocky releases his next masterpiece Don’t Be Dumb album featuring artwork from the legendary director Tim Burton.

Courtney Marie Andrews has long been celebrated as an artist who challenges herself, and who finds new interplays of Folk and Americana.. Also a vivid poet and accomplished painter, she brings a multidisciplinary richness to her work that shines throughout her 9th studio album, Valentine. Valentine is Andrews’s most sonically explorative record – she plays flute, high strung guitars, myriad synths, and draws heavy inspiration from her art outside of music. Co-produced with Jerry Bernhardt and recorded almost entirely to tape, the album features complete in-studio performances that prize raw performance rather than perfection. Andrews’s voice is gorgeous and acrobatic always, but on Valentine it finds a new depth, an assertiveness that brings new dimension to its biggest anthems and its softest moments. 1. Pendulum Swing2. Keeper3. Cons and Clowns4. Magic Touch5. Little Picture of a Butterfly6. Outsider7. Everyone Wants To Feel Like You Do8. Only the Best for Baby9. Best Friend10. Hangman

Third studio album by the American singer-songwriter, featuring the singles 'Make You Mine', 'Yes Baby' and 'Bittersweet'. About the album, she stated: 'After writing the album, it feels like each song lives within this metaphorical locket for safekeeping. Each album feels like an era and once the albums are out in the world, the chapter for me, usually with what I wrote about, is closed'.

No need to worry, it’s only the end of the world… welcome to The Demise Of Planet X. Having put the Do into DIY in a 15 year (and counting) career that has seen their idiosyncratic but irresistible blueprint of minimal electronics and maximal insight adopted as a creative manifesto by a generation of artists following in their wake, while evolving from lo-fi beginnings to Top 5 albums, sold out tours and festival headline slots, who better than Sleaford Mods’ Andrew Fearn and Jason Wiliamson to chart civilisation’s unravelling? While the world might be going out with a whimper rather than a bang, the opposite is true of The Demise Of Planet X. Akin to how Judgement Day visions inspired Hieronymus Bosch’s most vivid and wonderful paintings, ‘Demise…’ has yielded some of Sleaford Mods’s most complete and expressive work so far. The anger and the wit, the beats and bleeps still sear with the Nottingham duo’s customary uncompromising energy, but across the album they are augmented by new ideas and collaborators that add a fresh depth, empathy and guile to the band. The Demise Of Planet X is still resolutely a Sleaford Mods album, but it is one that goes to places the duo have never reached before. “Everywhere you look these days, someone’s lamenting the world’s devolving conditions. But English duo Sleaford Mods do it with a rare and unmistakable authenticity” - FLOOD. “A two-man wave of civil unrest.” - MOJO A1. The Good Life (feat. Gwendoline Christie & Big Special) A2. Double Diamond A3. Elitest G.O.A.T (feat. Aldous Harding) A4. Megaton A5. No Touch (feat. Sue Tompkins) A6. Bad Santa B1. The Demise of Planet X B2. Don Draper B3. Gina Was B4. Shoving the Images B5. Flood the Zone (feat. Liam Bailey) B6. Kill List (feat. Snowy) B7. The Unwrap