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 and EPs from Blur, Ludwig Göransson, Lauren Auder, Valee & Harry Fraud, Los, NewJeans, and Strange Ranger. 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.)
Blur: The Ballad of Darren [Parlophone]
Blur’s first album in eight years, The Ballad of Darren, is also their first “proper” LP since 1999 opus 13, Damon Albarn has said, referring to the Graham Coxon–less Think Tank and the disjointed gestation of 2015’s The Magic Whip. “Across the album, Albarn describes heartbreak and chemical temptations while the band drifts along in a crystalline reverie, insulated by James Ford’s double-glazed production,” writes Jazz Monroe in his review. “The Narcissist” and throwback anthem “St. Charles Square” preceded the LP.
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V/A: Barbie the Album [Atlantic]
Greta Gerwig is not the only beloved entity to be drawn into the Barbieverse by the magnetism of famous-doll IP. Mark Ronson oversees the project, recruiting a “chic, diverse roster” that includes “artists whose identities weren’t fully represented by Mattel until around 2016, when in response to declining sales, the brand started thinking more actively beyond leggy white women with big tits,” as Cat Zhang notes in her barbed review. The full soundtrack lineup includes Tame Impala, Charli XCX, and Haim, alongside Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, PinkPantheress, Nicki Minaj, and Ice Spice, among others. If nothing else, bask in the knowledge that all this will soon be over. Until the next Mattel film.
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Ludwig Göransson: Oppenheimer (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) [Back Lot Music]
On the other end of the frivolity spectrum, here we have movie supercomposer (and longtime Childish Gambino collaborator) Ludwig Göransson with his soundtrack to the film that reckons with the guy who made the atomic bomb, and asks whether that was a good idea. Göransson, who also soundtracked Christopher Nolan’s previous film, Tenet, primarily used tetchy violins to capture what Nolan euphemistically called “the highly-strung intellect and emotion of Robert Oppenheimer.”
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Lauren Auder: The Infinite Spine [True Panther]
Lauren Auder conjures up a dreamworld of sumptuous, electronic baroque pop on her official debut album. Written between London and her childhood hometown in the south of France, The Infinite Spine spins a utopian future narrative out of her experiences of pop-music euphoria and trans womanhood, including on the Mura Masa–produced single “The Ripple.”
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Valee & Harry Fraud: Virtuoso [Srfschl/Fake Shore Drive]
Virtuoso is a full-length collaboration between New York producer Harry Fraud and lax Chicago rapper Valee. A long-time Valee fan, Fraud produced the record in its entirety, and the two men enlisted a dynamic set of MCs to contribute to its tracklist: 03 Greedo, Z Money, Twista, and RXK Nephew among them. Washington, D.C., artist Mavi and fellow Chicagoan Saba teamed up with Valee and Fraud on their recent Virtuoso single “Watermelon Automobile,” while Action Bronson guests on “Vibrant.”
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Los: War on Drugs 2 [Daisy Lane]
Detroit rapper Los returns with his latest album, War on Drugs 2, following 2021’s F**k da World and more. The new record features “Lying to U,” a synth-driven track that distorts Los’ flow with jagged distortion, as well as the more straightforward “Back 2 Ballin.” The rapper tapped producers like Rawbone, Dat Boi Will, Moneyman, and Topside to compose the 13-track project.
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NewJeans: Get Up EP [ADOR]
NewJeans’ second EP continues to swarm the same K-pop pleasure centers as last year’s self-titled breakthrough record. The five-piece girl group teased the record with “Super Shy,” which combines UK garage, Jersey club, and drum’n’bass with the band’s vintage R&B hooks and compulsive K-pop smarts.
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Strange Ranger: Pure Music [Fire Talk]
Pure Music is a new album from Philadelphia indie rock outfit Strange Ranger. They sequestered themselves in an upstate New York cabin amid raging snowstorms to record the follow-up to 2021 mixtape No Light in Heaven. In addition to their usual lineup, the group enlisted guitarist and banjo player Tyler Bussey and captured vocals from Ellie Eiger and Blake Ortiz-Goldberg.
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