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 Haim, Hotline TNT, Yaya Bey, U.S. Girls, Facta, Bambii, Maxo, Cocojoey, and Nikki Nair. 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.)
Haim: I Quit [Columbia]
After going supernova with Women in Music Pt. III, Haim continue their mission to create their own universe of California rock with I Quit. The sister trio streamlines its sun-spangled pop sensibilities for an album, says Anna Gaca in Pitchfork’s review, that “advertises its credentials as American rock’n’roll, quoting Abraham Lincoln and Bruce Springsteen in opener ‘Gone,’ exploring acoustic folk with fresh attention on soon-to-be-underappreciated hits like ‘Love You Right’ and ‘Blood on the Street,’ and inviting co-producer Rostam Batmanglij’s love of vintage acoustic texture, breakbeats, and left-field sound design into a combination of influences that sometimes goes a little haywire.”
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Hotline TNT: Raspberry Moon [Third Man]
Raspberry Moon is Hotline TNT’s first album as a full band, and the scale is immediately evident. Tsunamis of shoegaze and astral alt-rock backdrop Will Anderson’s lovesick blues and songs of rebirth, as his four touring bandmates—as well as producer Amos Pitsch—summon the project’s most blissfully anthemic tunes yet.
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Yaya Bey: Do It Afraid [Drink Sum Wtr]
Yaya Bey gets back to the basic principles on Do It Afraid. “What do I do to make myself feel good?” she asked herself while writing the record. “I put music on in my house. I dance.” The resulting album spins a joyful, soca- and reggae-tinged take on her trademark smoky soul-jazz grooves, even as she laments the exploitation and accumulation of the world she lives in. Bey invites Barbadian artist Father Philis to sing on her self-produced “Merlot and Grigio,” with BadBadNotGood, Exaktly, and Butcher Brown among the co-producers elsewhere.
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U.S. Girls: Scratch It [4AD]
Meg Remy decamped to Nashville to record her latest U.S. Girls album, enlisting local players including Charlie McCoy and the Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence for the Bless This Mess follow-up. A plug-and-play approach brought forth the playfulness of Remy’s songwriting, lending a Motown flourish to her usual mix of sophistipop textures and filmic storytelling. Among its nine songs are “Bookends,” a 12-minute centerpiece evoking an existential Isaac Hayes, and “Dear Patti,” a lament about missing a Patti Smith set.
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Facta: Gulp [Wisdom Teeth]
On Gulp, his new mini-album and the follow-up to his 2021 full-length, Blush, London-based DJ Facta slips back into his steady pulse of UK bass and house with a knack for keeping ravers on the dancefloor. Spanning seven songs, including the chopped vocals and rewired dub of singles “BDB” and “Slope,” Gulp plays like a DIY craft event to make your own slime: synthetic, fluorescent, and speckled with die-cut glitter. Over a decade into owning his Wisdom Teeth label, Facta has learned what makes a record stand out not just among an artist’s catalog, but the genre in which it rests.
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Bambii: Infinity Club II [Because Music]
Infinity Club II, the sequel to Bambii’s debut EP, Infinity Club, takes the Toronto DJ and producer’s anything-goes approach to dancefloor-melting rave music to delirious extremes. Dubstep and jungle breaks careen between global pop tracks and drum’n’bass reduxes, like the Jessy Lanza and Yaeji–assisted “Mirror.” Ravyn Lenae, Lady Likez, Sadboi, and Aluna are among the other guests.
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Maxo: Mars Is Electric [Smileforme]
More often than not, Mars Is Electric sounds like a dual-screen experience where you don’t even realize there’s two videos playing at once until they end. Over 10 tracks, Maxo bends his delivery from soulful pangs (“Human ?”) to wiry staccato shouts (“Donahoo’s Chicken”) while the beats beneath him switch through synthesizer loops, meditative chimes, retro vinyl samples, and more. In 2023, the Los Angeles rapper released two albums back to back. This go-around, he’s decoded how to deliver that same overstimulated effect on a single LP.
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Cocojoey: Stars [Hausu Mountain]
Cocojoey, the alias of Chicago-based composer and producer Joey Meland, is the first new signing in three years to the vaunted experimental label Hausu Mountain. On Stars, Meland collides together synth-pop, jazz fusion, metal, prog, and hyperpop in meticulous, maximalist productions that somehow feel airy rather than oppressive. That is thanks, in large part, to Meland’s sense of childlike wonder—not so far from that of fellow synthesizer maestros Dan Deacon and Anna Meredith.
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Nikki Nair: Violence Is the Answer EP [Future Classic]
Nikki Nair applies a kid-in-a-candy-shop approach to dance music on surprise new EP Violence Is the Answer, ladling moreish pop hooks into compositions as puckish and pleasing as the best of Numbers, label of his former collaborator Hudson Mohawke. Yunè Pinku, Uffie, Blaketheman1000, and Harmony join him for the party.
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