With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Jessie Ware, the National, Indigo de Souza, Avalon Emerson & the Charm, Dazegxd & Quinn, Lisa/Liza, JFDR, and Baby Rose. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good! [Interscope]
Jessie Ware reaffirmed her seat on the disco-revival throne with “Pearls,” a single from her fifth album, That! Feels Good!, and sashayed deeper into the dancefloor with piano house song “Free Yourself.” She has framed the album as a “conversation” with her LGBTQ+ fans: “They wanted me to be this kind of dominatrix commander to them,” she told Pitchfork. “They relished it, and they willed it on. So I was like, OK, I’ll give you a bit more of that!” Read more in the feature “Jessie Ware’s Pleasure Principle.”
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The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein [4AD]
The National enlisted Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, and Sufjan Stevens for their first album in four years, named for the cursory foray into Mary Shelley’s classic that helped Matt Berninger hurdle his writer’s block. First Two Pages of Frankenstein features the singles “Tropic Morning News,” “Eucalyptus,” and, with Bridgers, “Your Mind Is Not Your Friend,” as well as “New Order T-Shirt,” which came with exactly the merch tie-in you would expect.
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Indigo De Souza: All of This Will End [Saddle Creek]
Indigo De Souza balances self-scrutiny with no-bullshit ferocity on her third album, cramming poignant observations and whistle-along hooks into blasts of anthemic alt-country, synth-rock, and alt-rock. The North Carolina–based singer and songwriter announced All of This Will End with “Younger & Dumber.”
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Avalon Emerson & the Charm: Avalon Emerson & the Charm [Another Dove]
Best known as an eclectic DJ and producer, Avalon Emerson grabbed the microphone and pivoted to gauzy dream-pop for her debut album, a masterclass in making the ethereal resonant. Working with retro-pop maestro Bullion, Emerson drew inspiration from the likes of Cocteau Twins and the Magnetic Fields (whom she covered on her 2020 DJ-Kicks compilation), as well as dancefloor legends like Todd Edwards. Read the feature “Why Techno Rule-Breaker Avalon Emerson Traded Club Bangers for Featherlight Dream-Pop.” Plus, watch Emerson’s new “Astrology Poisoning” music video.
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Dazegxd & Quinn: DSX.FM EP [DeadAir]
Brooklyn DJ and producer Dazegxd set out to reclaim drum’n’bass as an explicitly Black artform on the riotous DSX.FM, his new record with the songwriter and producer Quinn. Inspired by legendary 1990s hardcore label Moving Shadow, as well as late-night East Coast radio, the collaborative EP operates in the realm of hyperpop but testifies to the umbrella genre’s uniquely porous borders—equally suited to soundtracking an underground club, a jungle head’s trip down memory lane, or a terminally online poster’s nervous breakdown. Read Pitchfork’s feature “Quinn Is Too Real for the Internet.”
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Lisa/Liza: Breaking and Mending [Orindal]
Liza Victoria wends through fingerpicked folk, whispery Americana, and the odd psychedelic flourish on her latest as Lisa/Liza. The Portland, Maine, singer-songwriter made the album while “working through heavy aspects of living with chronic illness,” writing in fleeting periods of health, she said in press materials. “Music was a friend to me during this, and I know it will continue to be.”
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JFDR: Museum [Houndstooth]
The Icelandic singer and songwriter Jófríður Ákadóttir (aka JFDR) writes exploratory, spine-tingling synth ballads that huddle within wintry electronics and sound design. On her third studio album, recorded between Brooklyn and Reykjavík, she spectrally intones icy melodies over vast compositions rendered with a band of synthesizer and string players that includes Love in Exile’s Shahzad Ismaily.
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Baby Rose: Through and Through [Secretly Canadian]
Since her 2019 debut album, To Myself, Baby Rose has earned a reputation for epic soul exhortations that seem drawn against their will from trembling, cavernous lungs. In the four intervening years, the Atlanta singer-songwriter has had song syncs in Insecure and Grownish and taken part in J. Cole’s Grammy-nominated Dreamville compilation Revenge of the Dreamers III. Now, she is back with an eclectic follow-up that includes the Smino collaboration “I Won’t Tell” and, on “Fight Club,” a guest appearance from Georgia Anne Muldrow.
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