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 Future & Metro Boomin, Maggie Rogers, Still House Plants, Shabaka, Nia Archives, Girl in Red, Blue Bendy, Elyanna, and Red Hot Org & Meshell Ndegeocello. 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.)
Future & Metro Boomin: We Still Don’t Trust You [Epic/Freebandz/Republic/Boominati Worldwide]
Just three weeks ago, Future and Metro Boomin released their first collaborative album, We Don’t Trust You. The album lit a fuse in the rap world, in no small part due to a song with Kendrick Lamar, “Like That.” On that track, Lamar took aim at Drake and J. Cole, and Cole already fired back at the Compton native with “7 Minute Drill.” He’s also already apologized for dissing Lamar.
Future and Metro Boomin are back at it with We Still Don’t Trust You. The new double album features the Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, Lil Baby, Ty Dolla $ign, and, yes, J. Cole. Notably, We Still Don’t Trust You also includes “This Sunday,” a previously leaked track that might date back to 2015 and bears a striking similarity to Drake’s Views highlight “Feel No Ways.” Stay tuned for more fireworks.
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Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me [Capitol]
Maggie Rogers wrote and recorded Don’t Forget Me in a five-day session with producer Ian Fitchuk, who applied his trademark mix of commercial Nashville songwriting with cosmic glints of disco and psychedelic rock. The album “keeps Rogers’ voice front and center, swelling to complement her on each chorus,” Claire Schaffer writes in Pitchfork’s review. “It’s a welcome change from past albums, where the songwriting could sometimes feel like window dressing to Rogers’ more ornate compositions.”
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Still House Plants: If I Don’t Make It, I Love U [Bison]
After years bubbling up through the British experimental underground, Still House Plants arrive in style on third album If I Don’t Make It, I Love U, perfecting a luminous strain of slowcore-infused art rock. Constructing inner-city laments from guitar, drums, vocals, and very little else, the minimalist trio skitter from freeform abstraction into melodic ruptures, with singer Jess Hickie-Kallenbach grounding the songs in keening emotion.
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Shabaka: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace [Impulse!]
In 2022, Shabaka Hutchings disbanded his London jazz group Sons of Kemet and embarked on a mononymous solo career with his Afrikan Culture EP. Now, he has released his debut full-length: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace. The LP features illustrious guests including André 3000, Moses Sumney, Esperanza Spalding, Floating Points, Brandee Younger, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams, and Elucid, while Shabaka, best known for his acrobatic sax playing, swaps the instrument for a selection of woodwinds.
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Nia Archives: Silence Is Loud [Hijinxx/Island]
London producer Nia Archives follows her excellent 2023 release, the Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall EP, with her debut album, Silence Is Loud. The jungle-powered, experimental pop LP also touches on relationships, the power of silence, family, and loneliness—the latter of which is examined in early cut “Crowded Roomz.”
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Girl in Red: I’m Doing It Again Baby! [Columbia]
Norwegian singer-songwriter Marie Ulven announced her second Girl in Red LP, I’m Doing It Again Baby!, with lead single “Too Much.” That track came with a video nodding to vintage Hollywood musicals and the horror of heartbreak. As Ulven said in press materials, the new LP deals with themes of self-love and confidence. “Finding my self-esteem, allowing my girlfriend to love me, allowing someone to love me for the first time,” she said. “Saying yes to life. This record’s a little bit more fun and playful, and there’s a lot more humor.”
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Blue Bendy: So Medieval [The State51 Conspiracy]
Blue Bendy formed in 2017 amid the ascendant wave of verbose London post-punks, before synth whiz Olivia Morgan joined in 2018 and awakened the joys of Stereolab-style frivolity. On their debut album, So Medieval, frontperson Arthur Nolan, an acolyte of Orange Juice and Pavement, helms an indie-pop orchestra, telling tall tales of continental misadventure full of absurdist bon mots and comic non sequiturs.
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Elyanna: Woledto [Universal Arabic Music]
Woledto is the debut album from Palestinian Chilean artist Elyanna, who merges traditional Arabic sounds with modern production. The new record, its title translating to “I Am Born” in Arabic, includes the bracing single “Al Sham.” “It’s something I’ve never heard before, yet it feels nostalgic,” Elyanna said of the album in a press release. “It holds so much culture.”
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Red Hot Org & Meshell Ndegeocello: Red Hot & Ra : The Magic City [Red Hot Organization]
On Red Hot & Ra : The Magic City, bassist and composer Meshell Ndegeocello reimagines the work of the cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra. The nine pieces on the album are not so much covers, but interpretations of Ra’s ideas, melodies, and lyrics, reshaped into all new compositions. Ndegeocello enlisted Marshall Allen, the 99-year-old saxophonist and current leader of Sun Ra Arkestra, for the project, as well as Pink Siifu, Immanuel Wilkins, Darius Jones, Justin Hicks, Deantoni Parks, Kojo Roney and many others. Ndegeocello, who produced the album alongside Hector Castillo, has referred to Sun Ra’s work as “a living organism.” “Once you immerse yourself in his work, his life, you recognize there’s a fork in the road,” she said in press materials. “You really have to make choices, because there’s so many other realms and dimensions to explore musically.”
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