12 new albums to stream today

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.

American Football: American Football

American Football can’t help but turn their disgust at their own flaws into some of the most impressive, progressive, winding, melody-rich songs of their career. Half-familiar flavors of the Cure, Steve Reich, Mazzy Star, West African rhythms/percussion, and funereal fanfares filter through arena-rock textures, baroque-pop grandeur, and twee-pop playfulness. It’s a difficult record, to be sure; made in the midst of two members’ divorces, familial pressures, alcoholism for some, sobriety for others, and alarmingly bleak discussions of lost hope and rock bottom. At the same time, LP4 adds water back onto the canvas to reshape the colors—sonically and thematically. Long gone are the days of a band having to build on the legacy of LP1 or else pivot to outrun it. Here, they use the framework at their disposal to outgrow everything. This is the record that makes the most sense for American Football. The record they had to make to survive. Parenting, alcoholism, divorce, starting over in your late forties—LP4 makes “Never Meant” sound like blink-182. Heck, it makes LP3 sound like LP1. The stakes are so much higher than they were in 1999. In some ways, it’ll be a surprise if these songs translate or resonate at all. This is so far from the fleeting, college-era lovesickness that first defined American Football. Everything feels far more permanent, or it should feel permanent these days—that’s why Kinsella laments the never-drying ink in which his story is written, the tangled mess he’s made of things, the death of his soul. —Hayden Merrick [Polyvinyl]

Emily Nenni: Movin’ Shoes

When Emily Nenni sings, you dance, so it’s no wonder she’s calling her new record Movin’ Shoes. But Nenni is a charmer with a pedal-steel grin, Memphis soul, and Muscle Shoals groove. “Livin’ in Shame” is my pick for the best country song of the year so far, thanks to the Deslondes’ John James Tourville’s car-blinker guitar riffs and James Woodall’s lubed-up pedal steel. Not too many players are inspired by Linda Ronstadt’s Motown covers nowadays, but “What Have I Done Wrong,” in its William Bell-meets-Aretha Franklin aroma, is drop-dead winsome, affably retro, and slides in sideways. It’s a bar song, no doubt about that, but it curves and glares like the climbing daytime sun. Nenni’s style reminds me that not every wheel needs to be reinvented, just lubed up enough to turn. “What Have I Done Wrong” is a tailored nine-piece suit with all of her bandmates’ contributions sewn into it, be it Tourville on synth, Booker T. and the M.G.’s drummer Steve Potts behind the kit, Woodall on a dobro, or Marc Franklin, Art Edmaiston, and Kirk Smothers’ brass accoutrements. But I find Nenni to be the most compelling thread here, when she’s calling herself “faulty by design” and begging to be understood. Her weary, wandering heart sounds like a safe place to be imperfect. “What Have I Done Wrong” is a firecracker with a mile-long fuse. Movin’ Shoes is a command, not a suggestion. —Matt Mitchell [New West]

Isaiah Rashad: IT’S BEEN AWFUL

It’s been five years since Isaiah Rashad’s The House is Burning. How’s he been doing in the interim? Well, according to the Tennessee rapper himself, IT’S BEEN AWFUL. And while that may be true, his latest album sure as hell isn’t. It’s got the classic, vibe-heavy Zay flow we’ve been missing for years, but boasts more sonic variety than his previous work. On the serene “BOY IN RED” he’s back collabing with SZA, a combination that has yet to miss; “SUPAFICIAL” feels like a shoo-in for the annual song of the summer debate; the melody of “NUTHIN 2 HIDE” is sticky-sweet and hard to forget. It is, truly, a perfect album for the summer—that is, if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics, which cut far deeper than you’d expect. IT’S BEEN AWFUL chronicles the shit Zay’s been through in the past half-decade, from addiction and relapses to public scandals and interpersonal conflict. On “Happy Hour,” he spits: “What do I despise more than myself / And all that I’ve become?” The juxtaposition between form and content is stark and brilliant, allowing the album to serve as both a breezy viber and a deep-dive into Rashad’s own psychology. —Casey Epstein-Gross [TDE/Warner]

Kacey Musgraves: Middle of Nowhere

As a tribute to Kacey Musgraves’ native Texas, Middle of Nowhere is compelling. The warm splashes of pedal steel on the title track and “Back on the Wagon,” performed by Dan Dugmore and Paul Franklin, respectively, conjure the country coloring of Musgraves’ early days. Tashian’s plucky banjo on “Abilene” and Rob Burger’s trilling accordion on “Horses & Divorces” are vital forces that augment the songs’ lived-in settings. Musgraves’ syllable-heavy verses on the penultimate “Mexico Honey” slip off her tongue with the urgency of bottled-up feelings, as if she just can’t contain herself any longer and is ready to let it all spill out: “Let’s keep staying up all night / Holding on so tight / Smile even though I know I’m gonna / Cry when I gotta leave.” She recruits two fellow Texans for the album’s two best songs. Her former opp Miranda Lambert’s appearance on “Horses & Divorces” is a fun ode to common ground (Texas, exes, etc.) that squashes years-old beef. “We both love Willie / But I mean really / What asshole doesn’t like Williiiieeeee,” the pair sing, their voices swirling together on that final held note, and you can practically see them burying the hatchet. And who shows up but Willie Nelson himself on the following track, “Uncertain, TX,” a smooth transition that carries over the spirited accordion and tacks on some twelve-string guitar and cowbell for good measure. “If you don’t know you’ve got it all / and your character is made of straw / you’re gonna blow away with the wind,” they duet, using an actual Texas town as a springboard to bemoan noncommittal romantic partners. —Grant Sharples [Lost Highway]

Lip Critic: Theft World

Theft World opens with “Two Lucks,” a dance-punk DEVO-meets-Death Grips banger that transports us to “junk space” where the protagonist is “a junk god,” all of which Bret Kaser delivers in his signature nasally yelp. Near the outro, that sermonizer voice transmutes into a bloodletting scream: “Because You! Are the hell! That I made! For myself!” On “Debt Forest,” we meet a character known as the ATM man who seems ripped straight out of a Toby Fox game. “I try to keep the score / but end up wanting more,” Kaser shouts, channeling the B-52’s and MSPAINT in equal measure, underlining the insatiable avarice that capitalism can’t exist without. We pay a visit to a grocery store casino on “Shoplifting,” where a regular visit (as regular of a visit to a combination-grocery-store-casino can be, that is) sparks a patron’s childhood memory that sends them spiraling into a spell of existential dread. “You’re not getting to heaven,” God told them at this very checkout stand 20 years ago. It’s funny and disquieting all at once. It’s a boon that the music itself matches Kaser’s outlandish lyrical premises. Dual drummers Danny Eberle and Michael Sandvig are locked in like two professional Smash Bros. players, dashing and dodging and landing powerful blows. Their kinetic performances add to the adrenalized gambling stakes of “Jackpot,” which recounts a narrative of a man who hides coins underneath his skin, and they make the tingling body horror that much more palpable. Their rapid-fire syncopations fuse into a vertiginous onslaught of rollicking toms on “Drumming with Izzy,” interspersing occasional jolts of cymbals to keep you on your toes. “Yard Sale (230 Take)” is a blast of full-on hardcore synth-punk bristling with Kaser’s curdled screams and Eberle’s and Sandvig’s relentless pulverization. It’s got a 101% chance to ignite the pit into a frenzy. —Grant Sharples [Partisan]

Maya Hawke: Maitreya Corso

Maitreya Corso’s loose storybook conceit earns Maya Hawke points for taking a creative risk and it acts as an intriguing framework for exploring adult disillusionment and youthful whimsy. Like her previous records, Maitreya Corso is guided by technically assured production from Hawke and her husband/creative partner Christian Lee Houston, whose own solo work has a similarly amiable indie folk-pop vibe. The two of them, along with Hawke’s other regular collaborators Benjamin Lazar Davis and Jonathan Low, imbue the album with tender, delicate instrumentation that properly evokes a fairy/folktale ambiance. Opener “Love of My Life” is one of the project’s strongest tracks, a Jon Brion-style jam contoured with country-pop twang that gives real bite to Hawke’s buoyant pining. “Heavy Rain” is an inspired highlight, filled with uber-lovely guitar riffs and wispy Fleet Foxes-adjacent self-harmonizing from Hawke. The swaggering, jangly distortion of “Green Dragon” also adds a catchy, compelling edge to Hawke’s associative images of growing up during the early-Aughts. —Sam Rosenberg [Mom+Pop]

Modern Woman: Johnny’s Dreamworld

I’ve been looking forward to Modern Woman’s debut record Johnny Dreamworld since the release of their first single, “Dashboard Mary,” back in January. As I wrote then: “When Sophie Harris sings, you can feel it in your ribs…The song unfolds as a charged overnight vignette—age gaps, bad decisions, long drives, the queasy silence of the morning after—rendered with a novelist’s eye for detail and restraint. Musically, it thrives on tension and contradiction, gliding between hush and abrasion as violin, saxophone, and rhythm section pull against one another, at least until the song’s final stretch, which is all riotous distortion.” I couldn’t be happier to announce that Johnny Dreamworld lives up to these expectations and then some. The London-based art-rock group pulls on Harris’ addictively emotive voice like taffy, surrounding it with theatrical post-punk and avant-garde surreality every step of the way. The band’s range is ridiculous: the title track alone moves seamlessly between rage-filled, razor-sharp screams and soft, drum-forward balladry. “Killing a Dog” opens on acoustic finger-picking but builds into pure walls of noise by the three-minute mark. “Fork/Heart” starts eerie and sparse, all dissonant notes beneath Harris’s Kate-Bush-esque ability to flip into head voice as if balancing on a knife’s edge. “The Garden” is a slow, raw piano ode, funereal and intimate in all the right ways. It’s an utterly gorgeous record, one I have no doubt I’ll be returning to again and again throughout the rest of the year—and, for what it’s worth, it also boasts one of the year’s best album covers. Cinema! —Casey Epstein-Gross [One Little Independent]

Pope: BFM

Revved up, relaxed, and rollicking, Pope’s BFM is a triumphant return for the New Orleans band after nine-year break. Moody and colorful, the spacious LP volleys between a sense of contemplation and one of abandonment. Hints of Nineties alternative and Aughts pop-punk intertwine with familiar indie-rock refrains to make an album that feels textured and mature. Vocalists and songwriters Alejandro Skalany and Matt Seferian alternate as frontmen, guided forth by drummer Atticus Lopez. “Point of View,” a blasé, Pavement-esque song supported by a sparse, steady baseline, explores feelings of discontent and failures to communicate. “There’s something there that you can’t use / Consolation and some more bad news / Criticize the thought while all the kids are sat there laughing / You’re crawling ‘round in a haunted house,” Skalany sighs. “Back to the Center,” a lo-fi, summery track, holds an easy weight: “What’s become of you?” Seferian teases. “What’s the plan / Yeah, what’s the move?” Despite the LP’s acronymic name, which stands for “Big Fucking Music,” the record possesses a distinct ability to rein itself in. Much of the album’s second half is light and floaty, held in place by a thoughtful self-limitation that, blessedly, doesn’t seem to affect the band’s ruffian energy. Pope are all grown up, but they’re not too good for the music that raised them.—Miranda Wollen [Rite Field Records]

Sub*T: How My Own Voice Sounds

Sub*T’s debut album, How My Own Voice Sounds is grunge-pop perfection, all snarls and revving riffs. The duo that met online from opposite sides of the country is now rising through the ranks of New York’s bustling indie rock scene, armed with power pop melodies that spiral, distort, and combust at their massive ’90s radio rock choruses. Members Jade Alcantara and Grace Bennett tap into the perfect balance of commercial catchiness and deadpan haze. They’ve got the attitude to make their lush, expertly crafted tracks sound effortless. “Illusion of control but you’re really letting go,” they sing on the opener “Overcomplicate.” It’s an apt description of how the record sounds: like a band finding its voice and making its influences their own. —Grace Robins-Somerville [Self-Released]

Tori Amos: In Times of Dragons

Tori Amos’ take on American politics in 2026 is unlike the archetypal dramas or Rorschach test blots of earlier works like Boys for Pele and From the Choirgirl Hotel. All the characters on In Times of Dragons—the bears in Provincetown, the gasoline girls, Fanny Faudrey, a High Priestess in a New Orleans vampire revue, and “the gays I haven’t been allowed to talk to”—are promised in opener “Shush” and, when Amos finds the bravery to flee, we meet each of them one by one across seventeen songs. Naturally, the album culminates with fictional Tori Amos turning part-dragon and duking it out with her Lizard Demon husband. On closer “23 Peaks,” she asks the Order of the Dragon (a real 15th-century chivalric group of aristocrats and monarchs) to remove her wings. But they tell her that the wings will grow back again and again, each time more painful than the last, until she accepts her transformation. Amos, ever the detailed and dauntless chronicler of women’s lives, uses pageantry as a prompt for listeners, hoping that audiences will consider their own complicity, complacency, and courage in this anti-egalitarian, autocratic era. In Times of Dragons presents a staggering, high-concept narrative about healers, witches, daughters, Celtic gods, motorcycle gangs, drag(on) queens, fairy-tale bears, and multiversal love affairs with Irish deities. —Matt Mitchell [Universal/Fontana]

youbet: youbet

youbet fuses the playful with the dark, influenced by Nick Llobet’s childhood favorites—Nintendo 64 games and the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack—as well as later discoveries—flamenco, hill country blues, and the poetry of Leonard Cohen (whose first album didn’t come out until he was thirty-three). The writing on youbet focuses on travel and touring, evident in lyrics like “Honest job it don’t pay / Teach our kids in some way” (“Receive”) and “I’m as gone as the road” (“Worship”), as well as in compositions intentionally crafted to be fun to play live. Any themes of darkness are often brightened by the surrounding instrumentation—finger-picking that is sometimes twinkly, sometimes crunchy, but always deft, and eerie pop melodies stabilized by a hearty rhythm section. Produced and mixed by Katie Von Schleicher and Julian Fader, youbet is replete with hooks and moments of cinematic splendor: the psychedelic guitar fuzz and synth blend on “Embryonic”; the mesmerizing riff of “Bad Choice,” whose chorus opens up like a parachute. Llobet’s voice is hard to pin down. He also struggles to describe it, but acknowledges his conscious effort to sing more provocatively. It’s a little raspy, a little breathy—urgent yet floating, aloft within fantastical compositions yet anchored by lyrics imbued with the messiness of living. —Johanna Sommer [Hardly Art]

Zara Larsson: Midnight Sun: Girls Trip

Summer is coming, and it’s finally time to have some good old-fashioned fun again. Pop princess Zara Larsson, who’s experienced the meteoric career resurgence the social media age affords only its luckiest denizens, has made good use of her second shot. On Larsson’s double album, each 2025 song is accompanied by a 2026 “Girls Trip” remix with the hot musical women of past, present, and future: Robyn, Madison Beer, JT, Tyla, and Shakira, to name a few. The cameos make Midnight Sun: Girls Trip the campy, silly, sexy record it promised to be. On the “Girls Trip” version of Larsson’s ubiquitous “Midnight Sun,” PinkPantheress adds her silky Brit-purr to Larsson’s beachy celebration. On “Hot & Sexy,” Larsson teams up with Tyla for bubbly dance track about being, well, hot and sexy. Is the album a little smooth-brained? Sure. As it should be! I don’t know about you, but I’m not asking for Zara Larsson to deliver me moody treatises on the postmodern human condition. I want her to talk about the beach, and that she does—with a lovely jubilance that infects the listener with a distinct desire to play hooky and run around somewhere warm in very little clothing. A sweet surprise is “Saturn’s Return,” in which Malibu and Helena Gao join Larsson to celebrate her new life. “Could be wrong, could be right / But this song is mine,” Larsson sings in her sugary soprano, the happiness practically seeping from her veins. “It feels so good to know I don’t know what I’m doing,” she opines. It’s a truth we’d all love to believe with Larsson’s conviction. —Miranda Wollen [Sommer House/Epic Records]

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