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 Taylor Swift, Bbymutha, Pearl Jam, Chanel Beads, Cavalier, Ekko Astral, Lord Spikeheart, and Big|Brave. 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.)
Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department [Republic]
In February, Taylor Swift won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights. She used the occasion of her acceptance speech to announce a new album: The Tortured Poets Department. Swift worked on her new full-length with Post Malone, Florence Welch, Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff, the National’s Aaron Dessner, Wilco’s Glenn Kotche and more. She also released a companion album, The Anthology, featuring 15 extra songs.
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Bbymutha: Sleep Paralysis [True Panther]
Enlisting producers like Foisey, Bon Music Vision, and Kilder, Tennessee rapper Bbymutha is back with a new album. Sleep Paralysis takes its name from the frightening medical condition—one with which the artist has dealt since childhood. The concept allowed Bbymutha to dive back into long-forgotten memories and craft the 11-song record, which draws upon UK dance and garage music.
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Pearl Jam: Dark Matter [Monkeywrench/Republic]
Dark Matter is the 12th studio album by grunge stalwarts Pearl Jam, following their 2020 LP, Gigaton. Eddie Vedder and his bandmates wrote the new record in three weeks, laying down tracks at Rick Rubin’s famed Shangri-La studio in Malibu with producer Andrew Watt. Vedder referred to Dark Matter as the peak of Pearl Jam’s sound, adding in a press release: “No hyperbole, I think this is our best work.” The group will tour behind the record, starting next month.
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Chanel Beads: Your Day Will Come [Jagjaguwar]
New York producer Shane Lavers is the engine behind New York band Chanel Beads, and he made his debut album, Your Day Will Come, with vocalist Maya McGrory and violinist Zachary Paul. In her review of the album, Sophie Kemp writes, “It is both Lil Peep and Massive Attack; Prefab Sprout and Yung Lean; a record made by people who really freak out about music, who know every twist and turn on Steely Dan’s Aja and are crazy enough to say, But what if we kind of rapped over this?”
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Cavalier: Different Type Time [Backwoodz Studioz]
Brooklyn-born, Louisiana-based rapper Cavalier follows his 2018 solo album, Private Stock, with a new full-length for Backwoodz Studioz. He recorded the new album, Different Type Time, in New Orleans, New York, and California’s Bay Area. Beats on the project come from Cavalier, Ahwlee, Wino Willy, Obliv, Black Cottonwood collaborator Quelle Chris, and more.
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Ekko Astral: Pink Balloons [Topshelf]
Washington, D.C., punk band Ekko Astral make their debut with Pink Balloons. As written by Nina Corcoran in her review, “Ekko Astral sound brash and impulsive,” and “Pink Balloons’ noise-punk barrage hits like a stray elbow in the mascara moshpit.”
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Lord Spikeheart: The Adept [Haekalu]
Nairobi singer, songwriter, and producer Lord Spikeheart is best known for his work in the Kenyan noise duo Duma. The Adept is Lord Spikeheart’s solo debut, and he previewed the LP with “TYVM” (featuring Saionji BBBBBBB), “R.E.M. Fodder” (featuring James Ginzburg and Koenraad Ecker), and “Emblem Blem” (featuring Talpah). The new album is the first release on the musician’s new label, Haekalu Records, described in press materials as “Africa’s premier label focused on dark and heavy music.”
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Big|Brave: A Chaos of Flowers [Thrill Jockey]
Big|Brave made the long list for the Polaris Music Prize in 2021 for Vital. They did it in again in 2023 for Nature Morte. The Montreal trio is now releasing another new album, A Chaos of Flowers. Big|Brave’s guitarist and vocalist, Robin Wattie, was inspired by poems, by Emily Dickinson and others, when writing the new album. “I discovered that most poems from folk traditions or in the public domain seem to be by men—to which I could not quite relate. In my search, I rediscovered some of my favorite works and poets,” she said in a press statement. “It is a feeling of relatability and even astonishment really, with how these writers of different standings and eras and all being female-presenting, each expressing these seemingly similar intense moments of individual experiences, of intimacy and madness. We’re alone, and yet, not.”
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