Best New Albums: This Week’s Records to Stream

Paste is the place to kick off each and every New Music Friday. We follow our regular roundups of the best new songs by highlighting the most compelling new records you need to hear. Find the best new albums of the week below, from priority picks to honorable mentions.

Bruce Springsteen: Tracks II: The Lost Albums

The new, 83-song box set from the Boss features unheard material recorded between 1983 and 2018, including seven LPs: LA Garage Sessions ’83, Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, Faithless, Somewhere North of Nashville, Inyo, Twilight Hours, and Perfect World. “The Lost Albums were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” Springsteen explained in a press release. “I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.” The E Street Band sounds potent and in-sync on the Perfect World cut “Rain in the River,” a special balance so rarely found on such a stadium-sized recording, and a revelation, considering their absence on most of Springsteen’s releases from the ‘90s. “I often read about myself in the ’90s as having some lost period or something,” the Boss said. “And really, I was working the whole time.” “Rain in the River,” a song as new as it is old, makes good on that confirmation. Go get lost in the hours of Springsteen’s throwaways, which are, unsurprisingly, just as good as the music he cared enough to release all that time ago. —Matt Mitchell [Sony]

Daisy the Great: The Rubber Teeth Talk

“All I wanna know is, will I be alright? / Will I be alright for the rest of my life?” I couldn’t agree more. New York duo Daisy the Great’s third LP, The Rubber Teeth Talk, finds Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker in full Rock God mode. Produced alongside Catherine Marks (St. Vincent, boygenius, Wolf Alice), The Rubber Teeth Talk is energizing, catchy, and sharply self-aware, traveling between rock-adjacent tangents—twang on “Mary’s at the Carnival,” dream-pop on “Lemon Seeds,” overmodulated grunge on “Bird Bones”—while keeping grit, distortion, and guttural emotion at its core. Reverby opener “Dog” kicks off with a high-pitched synth loop that explodes into a riff-heavy 2000s-era rock track. The vocals are stacked to infinity, delivered in their signature run-on sentence cadence, building intensity with each repeat of the chorus. The production throughout is crisp and clean, which only makes the chaos hit harder. The record is as intense as it is gentle. The wispy falsettos and laid-back acoustic riffs on “Mary’s at the Carnival” offer a moment to catch your breath. “Swinging,” about getting too high on laughing gas at the dentist, is a standout—bass-heavy and rhythm-forward, it flirts with spoken word and King Gizzard-style, psychedelic storytelling before melting into something whimsical and synthy. The Rubber Teeth Talk is packed with attitude—single “Ballerina” carries a Courtney Barnett-like exasperation (“I’ll never have any fun if all I do is sit and whine”), while “Lady Exhausted” names that fatigue outright, ending in an operatic, Heaven’s Gate-style climax. I’m convinced the sound of Dugan and Mina’s voices alone could lure me to the ends of the earth. —Cassidy Sollazzo [S-Curve]

Durand Jones & The Indications: Flowers

It’s been four years since Durand Jones & The Indications last made a record together, but the trio has certainly remained busy, as Jones and his bandmate Aaron Frazer both released solo albums in the interim. But the Indications are back in full force now, with Flowers. Lead single “Been So Long” is textbook Durand Jones, a mature and sexy squeeze of soul goodness. Written at Blake Rhein’s home studio in Chicago, “Been So Long” is the result of, as Frazer puts it, the band taking “the spirit of play that started the project and add[ing] in the wisdom and lessons we’ve acquired through the years.” There’s a great essence to “Been So Long,” with its title pointing to the Indications’ longest period of no touring in 10 years. And what better way to welcome yourselves back into focus than with a deeply beautiful track evoking your hometown’s extensive, influential soul heritage? “Been So Long” is a hypnotic gesture of immeasurable craft. The soulful directions of “Flower Moon” and “Really Wanna Be With You” are just as impassioned, with the former chugging slowly through an anchor of horns Marvin Gaye would have loved and a falsetto from Frazer that beckons the ghost of Eddie Kendricks. Paste has loved this trio for a long time. There’s a reason why their Paste Session is the only one available on streaming: No band deserves the glory more. Everything Durand Jones & The Indications do is dripping in talent. —Matt Mitchell [Dead Oceans]

Frankie Cosmos: Different Talking

Greta Kline has always been good at applying a light yet controlled touch to weighty themes, and the ones that animate Different Talking—the recollection of painful memories and gaining a new perspective on them as an adult—are sometimes put to good use. “One! Grey! Hair!” comes closest to capturing the album’s ideas successfully, with the punctuation marks in its title drolly lamenting Kline’s anxieties about getting older. On the song, Kline states with sharp specificity the paradox of the passage of time (“Time is both frozen and moving faster than we can see”) before a delightful key glide, one of Different Talking’s most charmingly disarming moments, pulls everything back to the present. The moving “You Become,” a dreamy ditty bathed in lovely synths, shows Kline radically accepting the dissolution of her past relationships: “How could you ever stop being friends? / That you would never stop loving them / But I guess / That rule doesn’t apply to me.” And Kline’s emphasis on certain words, like the way she draws out “meeee,” works to great effect, adding a sweet little cherry on top of the song’s poignant, succinct depiction of the fickle nature of friendship. It’s in these moments that Different Talking extracts the best of what Frankie Cosmos has to offer: simple construction, complex emotions. —Sam Rosenberg [Sub Pop]

Read: “Frankie Cosmos Delivers More of the Same on Different Talking”

Lorde: Virgin

Virgin is a complicated record. Its songs confuse me. They anger me. They inspire me. I want to untangle their motifs yet never want to hear some of them ever again. “What Was That” should be the best pop song of 2025 but “I remember saying then, ‘This is the best cigarette of my life’” is one of the worst lines Lorde has ever committed herself to. Then, on the acapella, Imogen Heap-reverence of “Clearblue,” she lets go of the best line she’s ever written: “I rode you until I cried.” Much of Jim-E Stacks’ production on Virgin dissolves into itself, though “Clearblue” is a great exception—with Lorde rhapsodizing about pregnancy tests, a “broken blood” passed down generationally, and the memory of “being this alive” through a vocoder with a harmonic accompaniment from Dev Hynes drifting beneath her. The Dexta Daps-sampling “Current Affairs” and “Secrets From a Girl”-reminiscent “GRWM” (an acronym for “get ready with me”) hint at bombast but never fully embrace it, instead allowing Lorde’s references to Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s leaked sex tape and current TikTok trends sound cleverly trapped in a limbo between cultures. Album opener “Hammer” finds its destination by relying heavily on Jim-E Stack’s arrangement of teardrop keys, clipped vocals, and choppy percussion, and a delightful crest of drums in the finale of ballad “Man of the Year” flanks the restless, flashy synth tangents of “Favourite Daughter,” Virgin’s song of the summer-ready centerpiece. —Matt Mitchell [Republic]

Read: “Lorde Welcomes Us Into Her Mess on Virgin”

Lauren Stevenson: Late Great

Laura Stevenson’s new album (and first since her sef-titled 2021 effort), Late Great, features my favorite song of hers in years. “Honey” is as stunning as it is heartbreaking, as Stevenson, who went through a breakup shortly after becoming a mother, voices her invasive, self-deprecating thoughts as she contends with what went wrong in her relationship. “Tell your tale behind your beaded veil, I am escapable, I am unable not to fail / Fail anyone I ever met, I’m not еnough, I never am / An enеmy, a nobody, I’m not enough, I’ll never be it, honey,” Stevenson sings, with sweetened vocals against country-tinged instrumentals. In her mix notes to producer John Agnello, she told him she wanted the track to “sound like a thousand angels screaming and crying.” It’s that kind of artistic vision that makes you become enamored with Laura Stevenson and her music, even as she swears she’s incapable of being loved. —Tatiana Tenreyro [Really]

Sharpie Smile: The Staircase

The Staircase is one of the poppiest records Drag City has ever put out. It’s the product of Dylan Haldey and Cole Berliner, members of Kamikaze Palm who’ve assembled a new project, Sharpie Smile. It’s an idiosyncratic collection of feel-good, bright production and sweet-on-the-ears textures—think the keyboard work on a Caroline Polachek record or the psychedelia of Magdalena Bay’s most conventional efforts. “The Staircase” is one of the best songs I’ve heard all year, and it’s not even the best song on the album. No, that title belongs to the thrashing, sub-bass blow-outs and Auto-Tune in “The Slide.” I’ve loved stepping into the drum ‘n’ bass of “So Far” and the visceral, humid synths on “The Letter,” too. The Staircase isn’t just some throwaway album from a side-project, it’s a whole new sound of possibility for Haldey and Berliner. —Matt Mitchell [Drag City]

Smut: Tomorrow Comes Crashing

Smut is reemerging with sharpened edges and a newfound sense of force. Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the Chicago-via-Cincinnati rock group’s most focused work to date, forged in frustration and held together by connection. Written and recorded with the band’s new rhythm section in place (drummer Aidan O’Connor and bassist John Steiner), the songs mark a shift from the sprawling grief of 2022’s How the Light Felt, in which vocalist Tay Roebuck reflected on and reckoned with the death of a younger sibling, towards something more immediate. Road-tested on a tour in support of SPELLLING and captured live at Red Hook Studio in New York with Momma’s Aron Kobayashi-Ritch, the album confronts the exhaustion of DIY life with raw precision and a deep sense of trust. Roebuck channels it with a cutting focus, whether reflecting on industry pressures (“Spit”) or the dehumanization of women online (“Syd Sweeney”). —Cassidy Sollazzo [Bayonet]

Read: “As Tomorrow Comes Crashing, Smut Finds Its Core”

Willi Carlisle: Winged Victory

Over the three years since Peculiar, Missouri, Willi Carlisle has remained dedicated to practicing such unconditional empathy in his music. In fact, he’s only grown more ferocious in articulating his mission statement, stripping it of unpretentious metaphorical drapery and whittling it down to its most pointed form on the title track of his newest album, Winged Victory: “I believe in the impossible / That no one is expendable!” Isolated, the beamingly idealistic couplet might warrant an eye-roll, but Carlisle doesn’t treat it as the fluffy stock phrase lesser songwriters might. In the song, it sounds like a genuine lightbulb moment, sparked by a distinctly Carliselian plot development. Traversing the open roads one night, chewing on meaty concepts such as love’s ephemerality, the mystery of songcraft, and the false promise of linear social progress, the troubadour narrator stops in Arkansas—Carlisle’s longtime home base—where he encounters a donkey named Winged Victory. The dissonance between the animal’s ungainliness and grandiose, aerial-coded moniker is undeniably comic and rich with symbolic potential. Carlisle’s recollection of the creature certainly sells that possibility: His cartoonish, chest-on-fire bellow conveys the sense of wonder generally reserved for sightings of equines who have literally sprouted cherubic wings from their bristly backs. Without saying so explicitly, he urges: Come! Look! The unlikeliest things, he emphasizes, can catalyze profound revelations. —Anna Pichler [Signature Sounds Recordings]

Read: “Willi Carlisle Honors and Expands Folk Music Tradition on Winged Victory”

Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: Adrian Quesada: Boleros Psicodélicos; Blonde Redhead: The Shadow of the Guest; FELLY: Ambroxyde; Gelli Haha: Switcheroo; Kevin Abstract: Blush; Nick León: A Tropical Entropy; Pig Pen: Mental Madness; Pleasure Pill: Hang a Star