Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - May 1, 2026

When the idea of recording a 4th album came up (for the second time), American Football knew things were going to get darker. After touring a year's worth of sold-out 25th Anniversary shows around the world and releasing a covers album (featuring Iron & Wine, Ethel Cain, Blondshell & more), the quartet of Mike & Nate Kinsella, Steve Lamos, and Steve Holmes, linked up with producer / engineer Sonny Diperri (My Bloody Valentine, M83, Kurt Vile) to record what would become their most substantial record to date. Blending atmospheric textures with emotive, post-rock style catharsis, LP4 is unlike anything American Football have recorded thus far, yet it fits right in with their evolving and beautiful catalog. Recorded during a 10-day retreat at Panoramic House in Stinson Beach, CA, LP4 finds the band intentionally walking into the abyss - themes of divorce, upheaval, and uncertainty are at the forefront, yet the band sounds more engaged and legitimized than ever before. Opening track, "Man Overboard," showcases each member's strengths - the un-matched style and jazz swing of Lamos' drumming, the lyrical vulnerability and multi-instrumental mastery of both Kinsellas, and Holmes' signature guitar work - all of it swirling together like a shoegaze tornado, the guitars and bass surging into something twisted and warped. Other standouts like "Blood On My Blood" showcase the band's unique use of alternating time signatures while "Bad Moons" (the longest track the band has ever recorded) includes some of Kinsella's most intense lyrics yet. The album also features additional guest vocals from Turnstile's Brendan Yates ("No Feeling"), Wisp ("Wake Her Up"), and Rainer Maria's Caithlin de Marrais ("Blood On My Blood"). LP4 is an ambitious artistic statement from a band who have continued to push the boundaries of genre and culture. It's a gorgeous and elaborate album, one that takes it's time to show you it's beauty, while hinting at the darker parts that are trying their best to stay hidden.

I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere," Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie suspended drone on "The Age of Innocence". "I wanted to try / And go very far." These are the first words we hear on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who's in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago. Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures. Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on "Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45", making each word count.On "Keepsake" meanwhile, she sounds as if she's alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. "Untitled II", the album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that's been present since her first EP, 2019's ---. "[I] always picked the slowest, saddest songs in the entire repertoire," she explained to them in 2021, recounting her teenage dream of being a jazz singer. "I would arrange them in a way that was just really slow and quiet, that was always just my vibe." Purring over a brushy, decelerated rhythm and funereal piano, Roxanne glances the edge of a hot spotlight, cutting through the stage smoke with her glassy evocations.And when she interprets the Robert Schumann's lied "Stille Tränen" on "One Shall Sleep", she turns Justinus Kerner's words into a whispered echo of her own grief, narrating the 19th century poem over syrupy synthesizers and strings. There's a light emerging on the horizon, though; burying her past on the choral standout "Cover Me", Roxanne shifts the pace and the mood on "Atonement", lifting her voice into a gentle lilt. "Running alone," she concedes at last. "Running forward and looking ahead / With a long road to go.

Hiss Golden Messenger - I'm People. The brand-new album from Hiss Golden Messenger and the first release with Chrysalis Records. I'm People is a vivid, deeply human album born from a period of rupture, renewal, and vast American wandering. Written across Bolinas, the North Carolina Piedmont, and a Santa Fe motel room, the record traces the artist's search for clarity through landscapes both external and internal. These songs move through heartbreak, aging, fatherhood, desire, disillusionment, and the hard-won hope that remains after the spirit has been scraped bare. Produced with Josh Kaufman at Dreamland, a decommissioned church outside Woodstock, the album carries the warmth of musicians playing live in a circle, stained-glass light filtering across guitars, drums, and upright bass. Contributions from Bruce Hornsby, Sam Beam, Marcus King, Sara Watkins, Amy Helm, Eric D. Johnson, and members of Dawes enrich a sound world that feels immediate, vulnerable, and fully alive. "I'm People is an intensely human record, and so one that needed to feel immediate, vulnerable, and fully dancing; something you could touch, sing along to, know about, recognize, relate with. I know what the record is to me and I bet it's not so dissimilar from what it's about to you, at least in the broad strokes: The heartbreak and exhilaration, the absolute black comedy of being a person on this razor's edge that is America circa 2025. What other choice do we have than to be hopeful?" - MC Taylor on I'm People. Hiss Golden Messenger is a Grammy nominated artist based in North Carolina, with multiple Album Of The Year and Best Americana Album awards, reaching #2 in the Americana Charts and performances and tours across the world, including the UK and Europe + performances on US TV; Late Night With Seth Myers.

Middle of Nowhere is the sixth studio album from eight-time Grammy Award-winner Kacey Musgraves and is made for two-stepping. The collection draws from a love of Texas dancehall classics, humorous takes on the human condition, and the space where traditional Country borders many sounds, including Norte?o and even Zydeco. Fresh yet familiar, and classically Kacey: honest, fearless, immersive, and always ready to wink at life's twists and turns. Rodeo Clown Edition LP is pressed on mix-colored vinyl. Retail Exclusive.

Lip Critic's 2024 Partisan debut Hex Dealer was one of the most-hyped experimental releases of that year ("Like the B-52s on ketamine" -Paste) and signaled the Brooklyn band's arrival as a borderline-batshit creative force. Theft World is their next chapter, built again from the chaos of two drummers locked in psychic combat, a sampler that sounds like it was struck by lightning, and frontman Bret Kaser's paranoid preacher energy. But where Hex Dealer leapt from one absurdist vignette to the next, Theft World plays like a fully locked-in transmission. Themes orbit around the concept of theft, not just as a political force or digital dilemma, but as a surreal, emotional constant. Club rhythms and hardcore breakdowns pull as much from Tyler the Creator's 'Igor' and Korn as they do Skrillex and Soul Coughing, coming together to soundtrack a world that's constantly being striped apart and resold.

Recorded in New York between Reservoir Studios in New York City and Dreamland in upstate New York, the album was co-produced by Christian Lee Hutson and Jonathan Low. It stands as an ode to Maya's musical community, created alongside close friends and collaborators Benjamin Lazar Davis, Will Graefe, Michael Riddleberger, and Odessa Jorgensen. The album's packaging draws from Maya's own watercolor paintings, developed in collaboration with Shane Gelinas.

McLusky are a band who were a band, weren't a band, then are a band again. They formed in the late nineties and unformed, for the first time, in 2005, after three albums, opinions of which can be found on the internet.the path to re-becoming a band started in 2014, with the band playing sporadic shows to raise money for a local venue threatened with closure and after some misadventures, which can be put down to life in it's most wonderful forms, in 2025 they released their first record in twenty years, and now in 2026, they continue with more new music in the form of this 6-song mini album.the band's return has been met with excitement, especially from the press where places liked npr exclaimed "Progressive, weird, snotty post-punk with a real sense of humor and grandiosity. This music is just bursting with creativity" and pitchfork said "Famously explosive live, McLusky sound just as noisy on their comeback album... Enjoy the ride."the album features four new songs recorded in fall 2025 along with a couple songs from their Bandcamp-only comeback ep in 2023.

Before she became Mel C of the Spice Girls, Melanie Chisolm found herself swept up in the UK's burgeoning '90s rave scene partying to the sounds of Prodigy and Grooverider. Her new solo album 'SWEAT' is a love letter to those heady and formative days; an invitation to party, to find community on the dance floor and joy in a dark world. Recorded between London, Stockholm and Sydney, 'Sweat' fuses her past and present - the sport and the spice, the forgotten teenage raver and the accomplished DJ. 

Clear Vinyl, Printed inner sleeve in 3mm spine sleeve. Seefeel return with their first full-length album in fifteen years - a beautiful, hazy and blissed out collection of fractured melodies and vaporous textures. In some ways, this can be regarded as Seefeel's 'dub' album - the deceptively cloud-like arrangements of Mark Clifford are somewhat ambient adjacent at low volume, but blasting out of a proper sound system, the cavernous bass undertow and skilful employment of effects are more apparent, messing with the listener's perception of time and audio placement. As always with Seefeel though, it never drifts too far into cold experimentalism or synthetic texture, the heavily manipulated vocals of Sarah Peacock lending the tracks a vital human element, with processed guitar loops allowing slivers of melody to drift through the trails of delay. The longtime perception of the band as sitting at the overlap point between electronic music and experimental guitar music meant that they were often overlooked during their original lifespan, not making music that was instantly recognisable to either scene. Over the years though, this blurring of genre lines increasingly looks prescient of where music was headed, steadily building a catalogue of music that hasn't aged in quite the same way as some of their contemporaries. Their influence has been cited by a new generation of artists such as Maria Somerville and Yu Su, and they return in 2026 with Sol. Hz, a collection of new tracks that further reinforce the idea that Seefeel's time has finally come.

The Black Keys Peaches! is the Akron duo’s fourteenth studio album (their sixth since 2019), a visceral and raw 10-song collection described by singer Dan Auerbach as the band’s “most natural record” since their 2002 debut, . In similar DIY spirit, the album was recorded with all musicians playing in the same room with few overdubs, and is the first record mixed entirely by the band themselves since 2006’s Magic Potion. The songs chosen reflect Auerbach and bandmate Patrick Carney’s obsessive record-collecting habit, which in recent years has escalated into an ongoing series of Record Hang DJ-set dance parties where they spin vintage 45s for packed, high-energy dancefloors in the coolest spots across the globe. The cover art for Peaches! is based around an iconic image from Memphis-born photographer, William Eggleston, and marks the return of Patrick’s brother, Michael Carney, overseeing the art direction.

The Charmer, Toadies first full-length studio album in nearly a decade, also happens to be one of the last records recorded by famed engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey) before his death in 2024. The raw, guitar-driven collection places the platinum-selling band firmly back in the Alternative Rock pantheon that sparked their early success, while sounding right at home with the dozens of younger contemporary rock bands they've influenced.

"In Times of Dragons is a metaphorical story about the fight for Democracy over Tyranny, reflecting the current abhorrent non-accidental burning down of democracy in real time by the `Dictator believing Lizard Demons' in their usurpation of America." - TORI AMOS. 2-LP set on 180g vinyl.

Every band worth it's salt has a member who worked in a record store. In METZ, the fearless noise rock trio who released five full-length albums on Sub Pop between 2012 and 2024, it was singer and guitarist Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records in his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock 'n' roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. Hoopla, the catchy, melodic second LP from Edkins's solo project Weird Nightmare, mixes and matches these influences in fun and exhilarating combinations, displaying his sophisticated musical mind. Bursting to life with hooks and earworms, Hoopla is that one tape that never gets ejected from the car stereo, but plays on repeat, soundtracking the summer. New and nostalgic at the same time, Hoopla will perk up your ears.Weird Nightmare's self-produced, and decidedly lo-fi, self-titled debut was recorded at home during the pandemic and released by Sub Pop in 2022. Weird Nightmare displayed Edkins's indie rock sensibility, with a penchant for undeniable hooks and massive sing-along choruses. On the new studio album Hoopla-co-produced with Spoon's Jim Eno and recorded at Seth Manchester's Machines with Magnets-Edkins expands Weird Nightmare's dimensions even further. New musical textures such as piano, bells, and castanets fuse with Edkins' straightforward songwriting to give these tunes a shiny luster. It's like a beloved indie director leveling up to their first studio feature. If Weird Nightmare's debut was an underground crowd pleaser akin to Richard Linklater's Slacker, then Hoopla is Edkins's Dazed and Confused. Resplendent with sunny guitar pop, Hoopla was produced with just the right amount of fuzz and crunch. The immediate, unfussy recording brings you right into the studio with Edkins and his rhythm section: Loel Campbell on drums and bassist Roddy Kuester. This is top-shelf power pop; these sharp jolts of adrenaline could slip into a radio rock block between The Replacements and Elvis Costello & the Attractions. Or fit just as easily alongside Sharp Pins, Ratboys, and Alvvays.At it's heart, this album is an optimistic, shining light in our strange time. Through Weird Nightmare, Edkins wants you to know that he is still in love with the world, and he invites the listeners of Hoopla to feel the same. Take this chance to seize a glimmer of widescreen pop magic in our used-up old world. You deserve it.

Young the Giant is an American rock band from Irvine, California known for their dynamic live performances and a sound that blends soaring vocals, intricate instrumentation, and introspective lyricism. The band is composed of Sameer Gadhia (lead vocals, Jacob Tilley (guitar), Eric Cannata (guitar), Payam Doostzadeh (bass), and Fran?ois Comtois (drums). Since their breakout in 2010 with the platinum-certified singles "My Body" and "Cough Syrup," Young the Giant have become one of alternative rock's defining voices, blending anthemic energy with deeply personal storytelling. Across five studio albums - Young the Giant (2010), Mind Over Matter (2014), Home of the Strange (2016), Mirror Master (2018), and American Bollywood (2022) - the band has amassed over 2.5 billion global streams and built a reputation for ambitious, human-centered artistry.