Aldous Harding’s music has never been crystal clear. She’s known to weave songs full of strange images and nonsensical lyrics, pulling you in and out of different realities and characters using her distinctive armory of voices. But something about her newest record, Train on the Island, feels like she’s letting the listener in a little closer than usual.

On bitknot, feeble little horse converts what’s been, historically, a kind of hardened laptop twee into something new, confident, and legitimately different. This album sees them shape torqued walls of emotion and sound into a driving, dynamic kind of self-presence operating in a field of illusions.

Ensconced and sculpted by their standard downtempo beats and murky synths, the narrative core of this sprawling project is fairly straightforwardly a meditation on the strangeness of religion, but also, in particular the strangeness of the mismatch between our technical abilities as a species and our capacity to think through their implications.

The slices of life crafted by musician and visual artist John Andrews and his bandmates, collectively known as The Yawns, always have a coziness to them. Though the subjects of his newest record, STREETSWEETER, are quaint characters and experiences from his Brooklyn neighborhood–snowy sidewalks, the first couple times meeting a new friend–the world they exist in feels tangible, capturing a tenderness not often portrayed as the city’s main facade.

Friko’s sophomore album, Something Worth Waiting For, sees the newly expanded quartet fill into bigger, older, and wiser shoes. It is a passionate collection of tracks steeped in restless optimism and a lucidity to the sadness of life, coupled with sweeping arrangements and their signature expressive vocals.

On Something We All Got, cootie catcher channel a primitive and direct (and weirdly wholesome) in between plundered textures and pitch-twisted, weaving melodies.

The sensorial world here is disorienting, spiraling, cyclical. Drums clash in time with a riffing guitar, striking like the second hand of a clock. It breaks down and rebuilds itself repeatedly, balancing chaos and calm on a knife’s edge.

It’s a Fcukers summer: The dance duo draw inspiration from Atlanta’s sound and meld EDM styles to create a novel, invigorating dancefloor of their own on debut record Ö

There have been few times in my life where the opening to an album is so transformative to my understanding of what a genre is as a whole. The most recent song of memory was IDLES’ “Colossus”, opening up Joy as an Act of Resistance . I waited for almost 5 years for something to grip me so quickly. Enter The Scratch, a Dublin, Ireland-based 5-piece band that blends traditional Irish melodies with a tenacious metal and punk approach. The Scratch’s third studio LP, Pull Like a

The 4-piece from Atlanta have made a significant name for themselves on an international scale over the years. Rooted in glam rock and goth tones, Starbenders have cumulatively forged their sound into an epic of pop rock. The Beast Goes On does not look back when walking away from explosions. This new album has Starbenders showcasing their most raw sound yet paired with their cool over-the-top performances. Kimi Shelter in Atlanta (Photo: Sam Kapoor) Kimi said what? The LP be

Nothing’s About to Happen to Me , the 8th full length studio album from art rock icon Mitski, sees her retaining her characteristic maximalist Spaghetti Western color palette but mapping it to more insular, sundown sojourns in lieu of theater kid party anthems. The result is something that feels like it reflects both perennial anxieties and perennial truths. It seems intuitive that a significant amount of a person’s internal disposition becomes visible through their reaction

On one holy day in September 1995, the biggest names in British music, and the young indie, underground scene, gathered together in a studio. Less than a week later, HELP was released to the world by War Child Records. The record was created in response to the turmoil that was unfolding in Bosnia and Herzegovina then, and the proceeds were used to quickly aid children affected by the conflict. Not only was the cause great and just, the album gave us a beautiful, melancholy