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, projects, and EPs from Fever Ray, Miley Cyrus, Lonnie Holley, Sleaford Mods, Lia Kohl, Scree, Nia Archives, Conway the Machine & Jae Skeese, and MSPaint. 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.)
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics [Mute]
Karin Dreijer’s third record as Fever Ray is “a more calm and peaceful album than the last one,” 2017’s Plunge, the outré pop maestro told Pitchfork’s Sasha Geffen in a recent feature. Dreijer’s brother and the Knife counterpart, Olof Dreijer, worked on several tracks, and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross feature on “Even It Out,” which Dreijer said is about getting “revenge on your kid’s bully.” Relatively calm and peaceful, then, but still determinedly Fever Ray. Read that feature, “Fever Ray’s Voices of Desire,” and the track review of “What They Call Us.”
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Miley Cyrus: Endless Summer Vacation [Columbia]
Three years after her rugged rock-pop LP Plastic Hearts, Miley has returned with Endless Summer Vacation. The 13-song album features a host of participants, some more likely than others. There’s the Brandi Carlile-featuring “Thousand Miles,” a pair of songs co-written by Sia (“Violet Chemistry” and “Muddy Feet”), and “Handstand,” a track penned in collaboration with…Harmony Korine. Other contributors include James Blake, Mike Will Made-It, Tobias Jesso Jr., and more. Cyrus teased the album with the single “Flowers.”
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Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My [Jagjaguwar]
On his third solo album for the indie folk powerhouse Jagjaguwar, Lonnie Holley—a visual artist who is now just as well known for his searching, skin-prickling music—incorporates elements of funk, soul, and jazz into his trademark, poetic ambient music. “The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s,” he rasps on the title track. That song features R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, and you’ll find Bon Iver, Moor Mother, Sharon Van Etten, and Rokia Koné elsewhere on the record.
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Sleaford Mods: UK Grim [Rough Trade]
For more than a decade, Sleaford Mods have been dispensing vituperative savagery, ratty rebukes, and vitriolic invective to the piss-takers and poseurs of their native England. In the process, the soulfully gruff duo became unlikely emblems of the country’s ascendent underground rock scene, influencing a generation of hoarse speak-singers with festival-ready grievances. Their latest, UK Grim, turns its withering gaze to issues including patriotism and isolating technologies, rallying guests Florence Shaw (of Dry Cleaning) and Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro (of Jane’s Addiction) for the cause.
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Lia Kohl: The Ceiling Reposes [American Dreams]
Fresh from a string of releases on the exploratory label Longform Editions, Lia Kohl makes her debut on American Dreams Records with The Ceiling Reposes. The album layers enveloping improvised melodies with found sounds, many taken from the radio—weather reports, prayers, talk shows, advertisements, and song snippets among them. A single of sorts, “The Moment a Zipper,” preceded the album.
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Scree: Jasmine on a Night in July [Ruination]
Scree are a Brooklyn trio making instrumental music in the tradition of the Dirty Three and the Necks. Guitarist and bandleader Ryan El-Solh founded the group in 2010, and Jasmine on a Night in July serves as the first Scree full-length. Rounding out the band are upright bassist Carmen Q. Rothwell and drummer Jason Burger. Read about Rothwell’s Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere in Pitchfork’s list of “The Best Jazz and Experimental Music of 2021.”
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Nia Archives: Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall EP [Hijinxx/Island]
After releasing the excellent six-song record Forbidden Feelingz last year, London-based singer and producer Nia Archives has returned with Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall EP. Her new collection of lo-fi jungle cuts includes the singles “Conveniency,” “So Tell Me…,” and “Baianá.” “Across the EP I’m broadly talking about growing up as a person, reaching new levels of maturity, love and loss, rejection, estrangement, the come up and the come down,” the artist explained in a press release.
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Conway the Machine & Jae Skeese: Pain Provided Profit [Drumwork Music Group/Empire]
Former Griselda MC Conway the Machine took Jae Skeese under his wing roughly three years ago, when he appeared on the deluxe version of Conway’s From King to a God LP. Now, the Buffalo, New York rappers are releasing their first full-length collaboration. Pain Provided Profit includes lead single “Metallic 5’s,” a woozy cut helmed by Conway’s blunt verses and Skeese’s raspy affronts. The pair also joined forces on 2021’s “Blood Roses.”
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MSPaint: Post-American [Convulse]
Post-American is the debut album from Hattiesburg, Mississippi quartet MSPaint. The band comprises vocalist Deedee, bassist Randy Riley, synth player Nick Panella, and drummer Quinn Mackey, who play a combination of synth-punk, hardcore, and heavy rock—all without a guitar player. The LP follows the band’s 2020 self-titled debut EP. Post-American includes the singles “Titan of Hope,” “Delete It [ft. Militarie Gun],” and “Acid.” The album also features a guest spot from Soul Glo vocalist Pierce Jordan on “Decapitated Reality.”
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