Featured New Album Releases

Walk off the Earth

R.E.V.O.

Columbia

Pop/Rock

Experimental sunshine pop for the 21st century, complete with xylophones and trinkets, maverick rhythms, and a charming, fun spirit of adventure.

— Steve Leggett

Suede

Bloodsports

Universal / Warner Music

Pop/Rock

Suede deliver an elegantly lean, quietly forceful, wholly successful comeback with Bloodsports.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Marnie Stern

The Chronicles of Marnia

Kill Rock Stars

Pop/Rock

Indie rock's premier shredder lets her hooky songwriting do the heavy lifting on her expansive and rousing fourth album, The Chronicles of Marnia.

— Gregory Heaney

Justin Timberlake

20/20 Experience

RCA

Pop/Rock

Produced beside Timbaland and J-Roc, the charismatic entertainer's first solo album since 2006 is pleasant, safe, and tedious.

Low

The Invisible Way

Sub Pop

Pop/Rock

Produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the latest from this slowcore mainstay shows a long-running band still in a very real state of evolution.

— Fred Thomas

Simone Dinnerstein / Tift Merritt

Night

Sony Classical

Pop/Rock, Classical

Night works as both a treatise on night and a pleasing, low-key hymn to daily re-emergence and redemption.

— Steve Leggett

Original Soundtrack

Spring Breakers [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

Atlantic / Big Beat / Big Beat Records

Electronic, Pop/Rock, Stage & Screen

Weird and wild, this pool party gets strange as Skrillex, Gucci Mane, and Drive composer Cliff Martinez provide the soundtrack.

— David Jeffries

Duane Allman

Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective [7 CD Box Set][Limited Edition]

Rounder

Pop/Rock, Blues

This towering seven-disc box set accords needed respect to one of the greatest guitarists ever.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Kacey Musgraves

Same Trailer Different Park

Mercury / Mercury Nashville

Country

Musgraves' sharp songwriting makes this more than a collection of songs just aiming for the country charts.

— Steve Leggett

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Specter at the Feast

Cooperative Music / V2

Pop/Rock

BRMC pay homage to the late Michael Been on their introspective and atmospheric seventh studio album that still contains plenty of noise rock snarl.

— Matt Collar

Original TV Soundtrack

The Walking Dead, Vol. 1

Republic / Universal Republic

Stage & Screen, Pop/Rock

The first collection of music from the smash hit zombie drama focuses on gritty rock and folk rather than Bear McCreary's score.

— Heather Phares

Palma Violets

180

Rough Trade

Pop/Rock

Produced by Pulp's Steve Mackey, the Palma Violets' debut is filled with rousing choruses and ragged romance.

— Heather Phares

Deptford Goth

Life After Defo

Cooperative Music / Merok

Pop/Rock

Deptford Goth's bruised electro-pop delivers a uniquely cozy take on life's bittersweet moments.

— Heather Phares

Elements of Life / Little Louie Vega

Eclipse

Fania

R&B, Electronic, Latin

Wedding Latin, African, and Brazilian rhythms to gospel, soul, pop, funk, and jazz, this is the album only Louie Vega could have delivered.

— Thom Jurek

KEN mode

Entrench

Season of Mist

Pop/Rock

The Canadian trio delivers a merciless musical gut punch on its fifth album, Entrench.

— Gregory Heaney

Ellen Allien

LISm

BPitch Control

Electronic

Originally commissioned as music for a French dance production, Allien spans experimental rock and bubbly techno on this 45-minute track.

— Heather Phares

Steven Bernstein / Sex Mob

Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti: Sexmob Plays Fellini

Royal Potato Family

Jazz

After an eight-year studio hiatus, the band returns with an engaging, inventive take on familiar and obscure themes from Fellini's films.

— Thom Jurek

Josh Rouse

The Happiness Waltz

Bedroom Classics / Yep Roc

Pop/Rock

A return to the style of early-2000s albums like Nashville filled with smooth, thoughtful singer/songwriter pop.

— Tim Sendra

Phosphorescent

Muchacho

Dead Oceans

Pop/Rock

On his sixth album, this yelpy indie Americana artist dabbles with more experimental elements but the songwriting is still the star.

— Fred Thomas

Fol Chen

The False Alarms

Asthmatic Kitty

Pop/Rock

Featuring new singer Sinosa Loa, Fol Chen crafts more cerebral-yet-alluring electro-pop on The False Alarms.

— Heather Phares

Billy Bragg

Tooth & Nail

Dine Alone

Pop/Rock, Folk

The English folkie's first outing since 2008 signals a shift from the stalwart activism of previous albums to a more internalized dialogue.

— James Christopher Monger

Thalia Zedek / Thalia Zedek Band

Via

Thrill Jockey

Pop/Rock

With her first album in five years, this veteran indie songwriter taps into a melancholia that feels more triumphantly cathartic than depressive.

— Fred Thomas

Tig Notaro

Live

Secretly Canadian

Comedy/Spoken

A unique and riveting experience, this live album captures the comedian's announcement to the world that she has cancer.

— David Jeffries

Waxahatchee

Cerulean Salt

Don Giovanni

Pop/Rock

On her second album, bandleader Katie Crutchfield wraps her harrowing lyrics in just enough distance and melody to keep the project from imploding.

— Fred Thomas

William Tyler

Impossible Truth

Merge

Pop/Rock

The guitarist and friends wonderfully revisit the ghosts of the singer/songwriter era and track the disappearing American landscape.

— Thom Jurek

Alice Smith

She

Rainwater

R&B

The soul-rooted cross-genre singer and songwriter tops her seven-year-old debut and incinerates Cee Lo's "Fool for You" in the process.

— Andy Kellman

Brandt Brauer Frick

Miami

!K7

Electronic

Thrilling, sometimes bleak chamber techno from the German trio, who are aided by several vocalists including Om'Mas Keith and Gudrun Gut.

— Andy Kellman

Alex Calder

Time

Captured Tracks

Pop/Rock

The Canadian's debut is an off-kilter home-recorded EP full of catchy, but slightly creepy, pop tunes.

— Tim Sendra

Karl Bartos

Off the Record

Bureau B

Electronic

The former Kraftwerk member combines archival tapes with new recordings for this enjoyable journey back to "Ohm Sweet Ohm."

— David Jeffries

Clutch

Earth Rocker

Weathermaker Music

Pop/Rock

Clutch keep the rock train a-rollin' with their tenth album, Earth Rocker.

— Gregory Heaney

Ensemble Pearl

Drag City

International, Pop/Rock, Stage & Screen

The supergroup of Stephen O'Malley, Michio Kurihara, Atsuo, and William Herzog, perform the powerful music from Gisele Vienne's theatrical work.

— Thom Jurek

Hurts

Exile

Sony Music

Pop/Rock

The Manchester duo's sophomore album is a grand, apocalyptic masterpiece that mixes '80s synth pop and contemporary R&B in a wholly original fashion.

— Matt Collar

Dump

Superpowerless [Bonus Tracks]

Morr / Morr Music

Pop/Rock

James McNew's first album under the name Dump features songs home-recorded between 1991 and 1993.

— Stewart Mason

Stornoway

Tales from Terra Firma

4AD

Pop/Rock

A sweet, soulful, and surprisingly epic-sounding sophomore outing from the Oxford-based indie pop quartet.

— James Christopher Monger

Various Artists

Love for Levon: A Benefit to Save the Barn

Time / Time/Life Music

Pop/Rock, Country, Blues

This tribute, held on October 3, 2012 at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is itself like one of Levon Helm's Ramble shows writ large.

— Steve Leggett

Tomasz Stańko / Tomasz Stańko New York Quartet

Wislawa [2 CD]

ECM

Jazz

This double-disc by the Polish trumpeter and his agile New York band deftly celebrates the work and influence of the late poet Wisława Szymborska.

— Thom Jurek

Alice Sara Ott

Pictures

Deutsche Grammophon

Classical

Pictures, Alice Sara Ott's live recital album, was recorded at St. Petersburg's White Nights festival in 2012.

— Blair Sanderson

Benjamin Grosvenor / James Judd / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Rhapsody in Blue

Decca

Classical

Benjamin Grosvenor's second Decca release demonstrates his aptitude for effervescent piano concertos by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Gershwin.

— Blair Sanderson

Alex Cline

For People in Sorrow

Cryptogramophone

Jazz

This ambitious reimagining of Roscoe Mitchell's signature work by an all-star ensemble is both reverent and visionary.

— Thom Jurek

Various Artists

20 Jahre: Kompakt Kollektion 1

Kompakt

Electronic

Just over two dozen highlights from the mighty Cologne label's vast catalog of all-purpose house and techno.

— Andy Kellman

The Ocean Blue

Ultramarine

Korda Records

Pop/Rock

The cult indie pop band's first full-length album of original material since 1999 and follow-up to its 2005 Waterworks EP.

— Matt Collar

Liam Hayes

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III [Original Score]

Nightfever

Stage & Screen, Pop/Rock

This stylish chamber and soul-pop soundtrack is equally true to the Roman Coppola film for which it was created as well as Hayes' larger body of work.

— Heather Phares

The Staves

Dead & Born & Grown

Atlantic

Pop/Rock

The leaf-strewn, babbling brook to Mumford & Sons' relentlessly stormy ocean.

— James Christopher Monger

Stephen Layton / Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Polyphony

Bach: St. John Passion

Hyperion

Classical

There are some real pleasures here: the crackling dramatic bass interplay between Neal Davies' Jesus and Roderick Williams' Pilate, and the creamy arias of soprano Carolyn Sampson, to name two.

— James Manheim