Featured New Album Releases

Kali Uchis

Red Moon in Venus

Geffen

R&B

The highly concentrated third album from the Grammy-winning singer is flush with supple slow jams and celestial ballads.

— Andy Kellman

Burt Bacharach / Elvis Costello

The Songs of Bacharach & Costello

UMe / UMR / Universal

Pop/Rock, Stage & Screen, Vocal

The full fruit of a collaboration between two great songwriters, gathered in a beautifully assembled box set.

— Mark Deming

Willie Nelson

I Don't Know a Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard

Legacy Recordings / Sony Music

Country

A relaxed and heartfelt tribute to the great country songwriter Harlan Howard.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine

slowthai

Ugly

Interscope / Method Records

Rap

U.K. rapper slowthai revisits his punk and alternative roots on his bracing, cathartic third full-length.

— Paul Simpson

Daisy Jones & the Six

Based on a best-selling novel, the miniseries' Blake Mills-produced soundtrack album doubles as the fictional '70s rock band's debut and features Jackson Browne, Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, and more.

Reuben Rogers / Kendrick Scott

Corridors

Blue Note

Jazz

Leading his first trio recording, the drummer/composer reflects on the pandemic, the solitude it imposed on humanity, and our response.

— Thom Jurek

Steve Mason

Brothers & Sisters

Domino / Double Six

Pop/Rock

Mason's nonconformist pop is elevated by a rousing sense of globalist uplift.

— Timothy Monger

Macklemore

Ben

Bendo / Bendoré

Rap

Hardened yet hopeful, this third solo set provides the most vulnerable peek into the pop-rapper's life to date.

— Neil Z. Yeung

Tanukichan

Gizmo

Company Records

Pop/Rock

On their second record, the duo successfully add '90s influences -- both metallic and pop -- to their subdued, dreamlike, and now fuller, shoegaze sound.

— Tim Sendra

Xiu Xiu

Ignore Grief

Polyvinyl

Pop/Rock

Inspired by real-life horrors and imaginary ones, the group channels extreme sounds and emotions into ferocious empathy for the forsaken.

— Heather Phares

Benoît Pioulard

Eidetic

Morr Music

Electronic, Pop/Rock

The singer/songwriter/producer returns to his softly spellbinding electro-folk-pop to find harmony within life's changes.

— Heather Phares

Constant Smiles

Kenneth Anger

Sacred Bones

Pop/Rock

The ever-evolving collective moves away from the indie folk of their last album in favor of dreamy synth pop, but maintains heightened production and clearer presentation.

— Fred Thomas

Gnoomes

Ax Ox

Rocket Recordings

Pop/Rock

Tense but uplifting fourth album from the Russian stargazers, with lyrics sung in the band's native tongue.

— Paul Simpson

Tony Rivers

Move in a Little Closer: The Complete Recordings 1963-1970

Grapefruit

Pop/Rock

Made up of tracks by the Castaways and Harmony Grass, the set is a fine collection of beat group bounce, sunny sunshine pop, and MOR.

— Tim Sendra

Haken

Fauna

Inside Out Music

Pop/Rock

With their original keyboardist back, Haken take listeners on a kaleidoscopic sound excursion through djent, metal, prog, and electronica.

— Thom Jurek

Vince Mendoza / Vince Mendoza / Vince Mendoza & the Metropole Orchestra / Metropole Orkest

Olympians

Modern Recordings

Jazz

The composer and arranger continues his decades-long collaboration with Metropole Orkest in a program of new recordings of vintage works.

— Thom Jurek

Grupo Um

Starting Point

Far Out Recordings

Jazz, International

Excellent unreleased 1975 debut album by mid-'70s Brazilian jazz trio whose members cut their teeth with Hermeto Pascoal.

— Thom Jurek

Jeff Mills

Metropolis Metropolis

Axis

Electronic, Stage & Screen

The Detroit techno innovator's second score for Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi classic is a more abstract interpretation than the version he released in 2000.

— Paul Simpson

Various Artists

Deviation Street: High Times in Ladbroke Grove 1967-1975

Grapefruit

Pop/Rock

Extensive compilation documents an especially fertile time in a West London bohemian arts and music community, made up largely of unreleased material by lesser-known acts.

— Fred Thomas