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 projects from Kacey Musgraves; Four Tet; Tierra Whack; the Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis; Flo Milli; Heavee; BossMan Dlow; Gouge Away; Chief Keef & Mike Will Made-It; and Yung Lean & Bladee. 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.)
Kacey Musgraves: Deeper Well [Interscope/MCA Nashville]
It didn’t take long for Kacey Musgraves to go from teasing to releasing her new album, Deeper Well—just about a month. In that time, she shared two singles—the title song and “Too Good to Be True”—performed on Saturday Night Live, and announced a tour. As for the album, Laura Snapes, in her Pitchfork review, describes Deeper Well as “endlessly pretty” and Musgraves’ “back-to-basics record after 2021’s conflicted Star-Crossed.”
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Four Tet: Three [Text]
Four Tet’s return would have been eagerly awaited, even if he hadn’t spent the three and a bit years since his ambient LP Parallel scaling up so extravagantly. Among Three’s languid confections is the trickle of singles that has accompanied his world-conquering partnership with Skrillex and Fred Again.., as well as the techno shuffler “31 Bloom,” his most urgent track under the Four Tet name in years.
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Tierra Whack: World Wide Whack [Interscope]
On World Wide Whack, billed as Tierra Whack’s debut album, the exuberant rap innovator shifts gear, probing a world of alienation and disillusionment compounded by grief and depression. Her eye for surreal, captivating detail loses none of its gleam, whether she is rapping about an imaginary friend or venturing into murkier backstreets of her past.
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The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis: The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis [Impulse!]
Post-Fugazi instrumental trio the Messthetics join forces with the jazz saxophonist James Brandon Lewis for a collaborative LP that’s by turns raucous, funky, exploratory, and unhinged. Lewis notes in press materials that his bandmates, having come up in Washington, D.C., “are familiar with go-go, with all of the stuff from the area. So I will say that the time feel—it don’t get no better than that.”
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Flo Milli: Fine Ho, Stay [RCA]
Flo Milli is three-for-three when it comes to project titles. For her debut mixtape, in 2020, she asked, Ho, Why Is You Here ? Then, her 2022 debut studio album was titled You Still Here, Ho? With her latest release, the Mobile, Alabama, rapper has a new attitude: Fine Ho, Stay. Flo Milli announced the new album with lead single “Fruit Loop,” featuring her signature snapping cadence and an understated trap beat. She followed that song with the tracks “BGC,” which stands for “Bad Girls Club,” and “Never Lose Me.”
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Heavee: Unleash [Hyperdub]
Heavee turns antic footwork beats into “motivational tools for self empowerment,” as the Chicago DJ and producer put it in press materials, on Unleash, his Hyperdub debut and follow-up to the 2018 Teklife LP WFM. The album comes with a choose-your-own adventure game inspired by 16-bit video games and ancient tapestry artworks, its hero pursuing enlightenment, freedom, and downloads of bonus tracks.
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BossMan Dlow: Mr Beat the Road [Alamo]
BossMan Dlow closed out 2023 with his Alamo Records debut, 2 Slippery. The Port Salerno, Florida, rapper found more success this year with “Get in With Me,” a single that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 in February. He’s now building on his momentum with the new mixtape Mr Beat the Road, featuring guest spots from New Orleans’ Rob49 and fellow Floridian Wizz Havinn.
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Gouge Away: Deep Sage [Deathwish Inc.]
Gouge Away weaponize introspection in anthemic post-hardcore strokes on Deep Sage, their first album since 2018. The Florida band’s maelstrom of thrashing hooks, unvarnished production, and relentless velocity backdrops Christina Michelle’s screams of delirium and agoraphobia, but, also, on songs like “Dallas,” conceals moments of tender beauty.
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Chief Keef & Mike Will Made-It: Dirty Nachos [43B/Ear Drummers/RBC]
Fans are still hoping that Chief Keef releases the long-teased Almighty So 2, but, while they wait, the Chicago rapper has a new mixtape with Mike Will Made-It. The Trap-A-Holics-hosted Dirty Nachos features 2 Chainz, on “Pull Up Ghost Clan,” and Sexyy Red, on “Damn Shorty.”
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Yung Lean & Bladee: Psykos [World Affairs]
Believe it or not, pals and collaborators Yung Lean and Bladee have never released an album together—until now. The Swedish artists made the eight-song Psykos with producers Palmistry and Silent$ky (aka Maggie Rogers and D4vd collaborator Lucio Westmoreland). The surprise album follows Yung Lean’s Stardust and Bladee’s Spiderr.
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