Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - September 19, 2025

On Jestures, Atmosphere's sprawling new album, Slug digs into the friction of middle-aged domesticity and stability, uncovering the quiet tensions that shape creative life. Long past the belief that great art needs great pain, he challenges the trope that creativity must be born from trauma. Instead, Atmosphere's fifth release of the 2020s reflects a more grounded kind of struggle-one rooted in reflection, routine, and the work of becoming.The album's ambitious structure mirrors it's introspection: 26 songs, each titled with a different letter of the alphabet and sequenced from A to Z. Even guest appearances follow suit-Evidence lands on "Effortless," Kurious on "Kilowatts," and Musab, Muja Messiah, and Mike the Martyr appear on "Mash." Many tracks are strikingly short-one or two verses at most-delivering sharp ideas with precision and restraint.More than a look back, Jestures is a meditation on movement and meaning. Slug weaves memory and present-day reality over Ant's richly textured beats, blending electro-glitch, warm twang, and cinematic drones. It's a mosaic of life's overlooked moments-how a partner's habits, a child's quirks, or a passing sound can reveal something new. What emerges is a story of progress, building toward a future defined by resilience and creative clarity.

Black Lips return with a brand-new studio album, Season Of The Peach, a 40-minute rock and roll odyssey, tripping through DIY genres where garage rock meets new wave pop, and disgruntled country shakes hands with epic western soundtracks. The 14-track album captures the energy and spirit of early Black Lips while simultaneously applying new approaches to songwriting. The album is a musical merry-go-round, a journey featuring road-weary tales from the underbelly of a lights-out America. It’s bookended by “The Illusion” parts one and two: a barroom quest for hope, fear, and hate, thwarted at each turn by a sense of resignation, “you reach for the sky / but it’s an illusion.” Elsewhere, “Wild One” plays out like a Morricone romp through another day in Hell. A mantra for the hungover, a skin-crawling lament in praise of the wild at heart. “Tippy Tongue” sees Black Lips take on 60s girl group soul, like The Shangri-Las and Ronettes infiltrated by Jayne/Wayne County, paying homage to Buddha Records. Meanwhile, “Kassandra” has a guitar sound scrubbed clean for a Sunday, chiming its way through ever-spiralling salvos like The Chocolate Watchband with Zappa on vocals. “Zulu Saints” is an upbeat country honk, a good-time brush with bravado, peppered with Cole on an incredulous radio phone-in show, looking for black-eyed peas and winning big on the slot machines. For the recording sessions they holed up in the bucolic surroundings of drummer Oakley’s new Sound At Manor studio in the Catskills (the first album recorded there since Oakley built the studio in 2020). In this idyllic setting, the band disconnected from city life and committed their music to analogue tape, part of their quest to embrace spontaneity and capture the energy of a live Black Lips show on record.

GRAMMY® Award-winning, multi-diamond selling superstar Cardi B has officially launched the next chapter of her career with the announcement of her highly anticipated sophomore album, AM I THE DRAMA? available everywhere September 19. Marking a bold evolution in her sound and storytelling, the project arrives after her record-breaking debut album Invasion of Privacy — not just aiming to top it, but showing how far she’s come and how much more she has to say. To kick off this new era, she dropped her first single “Outside,” available everywhere now.

Joan Shelley follows her critically-acclaimed 2022 album The Spur with Real Warmth. Her 7th album, recorded in Toronto with producer Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), the 13-tracks feature many guests from the city's fertile music scene (Tamara Lindenman, Doug Paisley). Shelley has toured the world with Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin, Wilco and others. She has played Lincoln Center, Newport Folk Festival, appeared on the covers of both Acoustic Guitar Magazine and Fretboard Journal and as a guest on WTF with Marc Maron and Fresh Air.

Written between painting sessions and also whilst raising a child, Blurrr is a record of loose and playful intuition. Robertson’s vocals and guitar drift, murmur and whisper across the record; fostering a deep intimacy as unknown emotions rise up from the well. Robertson’s intuitive approach to music making co-exists alongside her improvisatory and collaborative nature. She has collaborated regularly with artists such as Elias Rønnenfelt on Heavy Glory, Dean Blunt on Backstage Raver and Black Metal, and Sidsel Meineche Hansen on Alien Baby. In Blurrr Robertson turns to previous collaborator and friend: cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates.

The debut collaborative album from world-renowned UK producer, Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), and American guitarist, William Tyler. Inspired by their shared deep connection to 1980s American country and folk artists such as Lyle Lovett, Nancy Griffith, Joe Ely and David Grissom. A cover of Lyle Lovett's song “If I Had a Boat” is the most literal pull from this ‘80s country sound, accompanied by soft synth tones.

Over the past decade, East London artist Kojey Radical has cemented himself as one of the most creative and unique voices in British music. His debut album Reason to Smile (2022) was released to critical acclaim, and saw him emerge as one of the defining voices in UK culture. Now, the 32-year-old he releases his second album Don’t Look Down. “I wanted to make this album more personal and more honest,” he says, “we have to be able to accept that the messenger has flaws and all.

The return of Lola Young with this year's massive POP album. It’s sweet, subtle, and a little sarcastic, perfect for those days when you need to scream into the void and still look cute doing it. Call it “basic,” call it iconic, either way, it’s yours to define. It’s for the emotionally weathered, the quietly strong, and anyone who’s ever had to laugh through the pain. Emotional baggage isn’t included, but if you know, you know. Raw, rare, and real, this one’s just for you.

Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Tom Meikle, known by his artist moniker Mappe Of, first emerged on the scene with the highly acclaimed, self-produced, 'A Northern Star, A Perfect Stone' in 2017. The album immediately captivated listeners with its sonic landscape, an ethereal avant-folk tour de force that belonged to no time or place. The high-concept full-length 'The Isle of Ailynn' followed in 2019, showcasing Tom’s skill and talent for songwriting and production. After a long hiatus forced by the pandemic, Mappe Of is poised to re-enter the music scene with fresh works that promise to continue his journey of musical exploration and boundary-pushing creativity.

After a ten-year absence that left a palpable void in the hearts of millennial emo kids, Motion City Soundtrack are finally back-and yes, it's everything we hoped for. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World (out September 19) feels like coming home: a dizzying, emotionally articulate blast of guitar-laced pop-punk that reminds us why this band meant so much in the first place. It's a sonic time machine, sure, but it never gets stuck in the past. Instead, it builds on it-older, a little bruised, but somehow more alive. Justin Pierre's voice still wobbles gloriously between a scream and a sigh, only now it carries the weight of experience, not just anxiety.Rather than reinventing themselves, Motion City double down on what they've always done best: big hooks, bigger feelings, and that perfect tightrope walk between chaos and control. Tracks like "Particle Physics" (with Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy) and "Your Days Are Numbered" (featuring Mat Kerekes of Citizen) channel the kind of clarity that only comes after surviving your own worst years. In a world drowning in lazy nostalgia, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is a rare and welcome return that feels less like a reunion and more like a long-overdue continuation

Múm are returning with a new album on Morr Music. »History of Silence« is the first full body of work by the Icelandic collective since 2013's »Smilewound« and their seventh studio album to date—recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years. Vibrantly oscillating around a carefully curated palette of electronic and analogue sounds, the eight new tracks reflect the group's continuous strive to explore sonic spaces through subtle yet gripping songwriting. For a long time now, múm have been exploring the idea of distance in their music. In the beginning, this was born purely out of necessity. Founded in Iceland in the late 1990s, the members soon began embarking on journeys across the world—collectively while touring, but also individually, exploring new places to live and create. Settling in, moving on, catching up: The concept of distance soon became an integral part of the collective's process. »History of Silence« leans into this idea, with space and time becoming indispensable pillars of the arrangements. While being coherent and structured, they echo their origins from different seasons, cities, and spaces—neatly stitched together with unparalleled craftsmanship. They breathe an overall airy and intimate atmosphere, yet resonate with the structural heft of time. On »History of Silence« time manifests in unexpected, liberating, and mesmerizing ways. It does not move reliably forward; it drifts, takes twists and turns, even disappears completely. Electronic textures blur into acoustic sounds, voices flicker and dissolve, melodies stumble and repeat. The arrangements often feel like they’re wandering, gently resisting direction. »Our Love is Distorting,« for instance, begins with a subtle piano motif, playing hide and seek with feedback noises, digital artefacts, and lush—yet very quiet—string arrangements, before gradually forming into a distinctive song. It's a perfect illustration of múm's general approach on this album. »Mild at Heart« turns this idea upside-down, flowing freely from start to finish with moments of silence sprinkled in—serving to emphasize the musical elements. The music on »History of Silence« moves like weather: unexpected, intimate, quietly detailed. Contrasted with vivid phrases, rhythmic shifts, and small hooks, the album offers a new angle of compositional clarity and vision. Work on »History of Silence« began at Sudestudio in southern Italy. Additional recordings were made in Reykjavík, Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, New York, and Prague. The strings were recorded by Sinfonia Nord at the Hof concert hall, Akureyri, arranged and conducted by Ingi Garðar Erlendsson, who has worked with the band for many years. The orchestral elements don’t dominate the record—instead, they surface gently, adding depth and resonance to the songs without disturbing the songs' fragility. Contrary to what the album title suggests, »History of Silence« is a collection of bold and colorful songs, no matter how muted they might sound at times. They tickle like a feather drifting through the wind, ending up in unexpected places, stimulating long-forgotten thoughts and feelings, intimate moments of introspection. The songs move through the echoes those moments leave behind: the emotional traces of things unsaid, the weight of stillness. Offering closeness by means of distance and much-needed support. Bless.

Synthpop, minimal wave, post-punk, goth, new romantic - fans and critics alike have dug deeply into their vintage thesauruses to describe the beguiling work of Nation of Language. And if you can't precisely define the band, that's the point. Frontman Ian Richard Devaney has become prodigious in expanding what synthesizer-driven music can evoke, such that his output is as much an extrasensory journey as it is an all-too-human destination. With that experience in mind, he wrote the band's fourth album - the spectral, spacious Dance Called Memory - in the most humble of ways: chipping away at melancholia by sitting around and strumming his guitar. Nation of Language's first two albums, Introduction, Presence (2020), and A Way Forward (2021), came as pandemic godsends: gorgeous, relatable soundtracks to our collective doldrums. But it was their last LP, Strange Disciple (2023), that catapulted the group from cultural standouts to critical darlings, with the album being named Rough Trade's Album of the Year. With that release, Pitchfork wrote that the band "are learning what it means to get bigger and better." This is Devaney's calling: soulfully translating individual despair into a comforting, collective mourning. The single "Now That You're Gone," which radiates and reverberates with a devastating wistfulness, was inspired by witnessing his godfather's tragic death from ALS, and his parents' role as caretakers for this ailing friend. At it's heart, the song is a reflection of how friends can be there for each other, and also highlights a theme throughout the record: the pain and lost promise of friendships that fall apart. On Dance Called Memory, the band once again collaborated with friend and Strange Disciple producer Nick Millhiser (LCD Soundsystem, Holy Ghost!). "What's so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don't need to do what might be expected of us," says synth player Aidan Noell, who, along with bassist Alex MacKay, rounds out the Nation of Language lineup. They imbued Dance Called Memory with a shifted palette - sampling chopped-up drum breaks on "I'm Not Ready for the Change" for a touch of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine, or smashing all of the percussion of "In Another Life" through a synthesizer to cast a shade of early-2000s electronic music. Ultimately, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. "There is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I've been drawn to at different points. I've read about how Kraftwerk wanted to remove all of the humanity from their music, but Eno often spoke about wanting to make synthesized music that felt distinctly human," Devaney says. "As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought. In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators I'm focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that... Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy."

NewDad, fronted by enigmatic songwriter and vocalist Julie Dawson, are an alternative three-piece from Galway, Ireland. Their influences vary from legendary bands like The Cure, Pixies, R.E.M., and My Bloody Valentine, to more contemporary acts, such as Big Thief and Beabadoobee. NewDad make music that confronts the horrors of the modern world. Julie's lyrics find beauty in her pain, with a unique perspective on her generational despair that resonates broadly. With writing that regularly evokes imagery of water and religion, she reflects on the band’s upbringing on the West Coast of Ireland through her songwriting. Altar is the second album from Ireland’s next great guitar band, and the third album from their prolific frontwoman Julie Dawson in less than 2 years. It’s a grungey alt-rock future classic that jolts between anger-fueled anthemics on the one hand, and darkly intimate and melancholic introspection on the other. They’ve built a dedicated cult following with their acclaimed debut Madra and if they’re good enough for the godfather of goth they’re good enough for you…

Nine Inch Nails returns with over 70 minutes of new music for the motion picture Tron: Ares, the first soundtrack / score work from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that will live under the Nine Inch Nails moniker; consisting of all original music, complete at 24 tracks. Reznor and Ross bring their Grammy and Oscar-winning sonic vision to the Grid, crafting a soundtrack that hums with menace, melancholy, and momentum. More than an album, its architecture in sound: pulsating synths, distorted textures, and haunting melodies that rewire the Tron universe from the inside out. It is the collision of analog soul and digital dread—a score that doesn't just accompany the film, it possesses it.

Forgetting is Violent is the most powerful release to date from Los Angeles saxophonist and composer Patrick Shiroishi (The Armed, Wild Up), with timely suites that meditate on racism and addiction. The music developed in part through extensive solo touring opening for Emma Ruth Rundle, in which Shiroishi brought effects pedals to the forefront. For the first time on a solo LP, Shiroishi has brought in collaborators: a who’s who of heavy music, including Aaron Turner (SUMAC), Gemma Thompson (Savages), and Mat Ball (BIG|BRAVE). With liner notes by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hua Hsu, Forgetting is Violent is Shiroishi’s latest masterwork. We recommend snapping this one up while you can, because we expect copies will fly.

Sarah McLachlan first emerged as a global phenomenon over three decades ago, introducing an unprecedented new voice into the pop canon: soulful, spellbinding, and supremely capable of transforming pain into transcendence. On her first album of new material in 11 years, Better Broken finds the Canadian singer/songwriter widening her creative circle and furthering her legacy with songs that speak an uncompromising but radically illuminating truth about the state of the human condition. Standard black vinyl.

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What's the point of living if we're not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday's new album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that-like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band's highlight reel so far-thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Leeds is not only the best Wednesday record-it's also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman-founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist-credits Wednesday's tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that's been both rewarding and relentless. "Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential 'Wednesday Creek Rock' album," Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened it's trademark sound, how they've refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. "This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like," she said. "We've devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out-and I feel like we did." Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who's been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates-Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake "M.J." Lenderman (guitar)-worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism-not only it's tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman's masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman's agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman's specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else's.