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.

Avery Tucker: PAW

Paw has a haunted, earthy quality fitting for an autumnal release, its country-tinged guitar riffs and shoegaze-adjacent ambiance viscerally reflecting the melancholy that defines the season, as well as the Montana setting where part of the album was recorded. Avery Tucker grounds his misty, wistful sonic landscape with the sheer power of his voice, oscillating between a whispery snarl and a full-throated yelp, often in the same song. That mix of grit and vulnerability extends to the complicated feelings Tucker wrestles with throughout the record: self-criticism, dissolved connections, and the painful pull of the past. In a way, Paw acts as a solemn epilogue to Forgiveness, which explored similar themes and also carried a mournful tone but experimented a bit more with its production. On Paw, Tucker stands firmly and confidently in the plaintive, edgy tone of his work, confronting his demons head-on and letting the messy emotional residue wash over him. That much at least is true on the angsty opener “Like I’m Young,” a tender-turned-guttural ballad where Tucker ruminates about the eroticism and awkwardness of being sexually vulnerable with another person. He slowly builds the back-and-forth of his anxieties towards a cathartic roar of an ending, guitars blaring and distortion crackling as Tucker cries out, “You know you make it feel infinite / How far I am from being a man!” While the abstracted arrangement of the lyrics is difficult to parse on a surface level, Tucker’s grappling with his gender and sexuality informs the rest of the album’s exploration of how his identities have affected his relationships with his friends, his significant others, and his own sense of self. —Sam Rosenberg [Sunkiss Records]

Read: “Avery Tucker Goes Raw On Paw”

Flock of Dimes: The Life You Save

Each song on The Life You Save wraps around Jenn Wasner’s vocal core with warmth, like a loved one draping a comforter around another. The instrumentation leans on acoustic foundations, with bright, fingerpicked guitar leading the first half of the record. Rhythmically backed by drum and bass, the album also features instrumental flourishes, with Alan Good Parker’s pedal steel on “Long After Midnight” and “Theo” and Caroline Shaw’s violin on “Close to Home” adding color. Electronic accents appear sparingly, adding structure rather than spectacle. On “Close to Home,” a staccato, xylophone-like pop introduces the melody before being countered by electric bass. On tracks like “The Enemy” and “Pride,” Wasner’s guitar work and their occasional, overdriven growls nod to a signature tonality recurring throughout her career—echoing “Price of Blue” on Head of Roses and moments from Wye Oak’s Civilian. Vocally, she is contemplative, patient, and deliberate, letting each line resonate. The album is sonically clean and straightforward, enhancing its focus toward insight and catharsis rather than experimentation. Having previously been more outwardly focused, Wasner confronts the hidden forces that make us complicit in interpersonal dramas, the ones that cast others as characters while obscuring our own roles. She grapples with these currents directly, attempting to release herself from a self-enacted savior complex, most clearly on “Long After Midnight”: “I know the rules but I ignore them / I think I’m good enough to pull this off / You be hell and I’ll be heaven / I’ll be your shot in the dark.” —Andrew Ha [Sub Pop]

Read: “Flock of Dimes Lets Go On The Life You Save”

Hannah Frances: Nested in Tangles

The fenced-in harm across Nestled in Tangles makes for a difficult listen. Even the album’s conclusion suggests that death and tragedy have inescapable perminance. Hannah Frances never reaches for catchiness, only that which soothes the bedlam written within her. “The ways I’ve carried the weight of your absence, reaching for you when I needed you,” she speaks to us, in a spoken-word comedown draped with the sounds of chattering children and music-box hums. “And I will keep reaching, to live here, in the heavy.” The idea of what’s gone and what’s given is a stubborn, angry vibration. Sometimes Frances’ knotty, faraway abstractions (“I reach through limbic estuaries, casting shadows along the entropy and chaos of memory”) compress into clearness and departure (“If there is a way out, let it be through me”). But sometimes they don’t. If Keeper of the Shepherd argued for loss prompting growth and newness two years ago, then Nestled in Tangles concedes now that life-spanning hurt is not to be defeated, only transformed. I return to one sentence in particular, which seems to fall out of Frances like an unhurried tome, when I am desperate for brightness: “It takes living and losing to know what matters.” From the clatter of taut, orchestral trappings emerges a stillness. Nestled in Tangles, unclothed and adrift, shelters in the necessary. —Matt Mitchell [Fire Talk]

Read: “Hannah Frances Lives In the Space Between”

Jay Som: Belong

It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since the release of Anak Ko. Melina Duterte put her Jay Som project on hiatus after the pandemic, feeling like it was the perfect time for a reset. During those years, she doubled down on production, lending her talents to friends like Lucy Dacus, Troye Sivan, Chris Farren, and Palehound. Now, she’s back with Belong, and “Float” is exactly what we needed. With gossamer synths over effervescent pop punk drums and guitar, Duterte finds the perfect duet partner in Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins. It’s a brilliant homage to the genre that influenced her adolescent years, while adding some very Jay Som touches that make it her own. “Cards On the Table” is a tender electro-pop track featuring textured synths, piano, and dreamy vocals. The evolving soundscape feels effortless and vibrant, as Duterte braces herself for another let down in the lyrics: “Lift you up and take me down / Rose-tinted glasses, 60 miles / Windows down, I take your hand. Not everyone is meant to stick around, but at least we learn something when they leave. That’s the ethos of “Cards On the Table,” a philosophy that Duterte says makes this her favorite song off of Belong. We concur. —Tatiana Tenreyro & Camryn Teder [Polyvinyl]

Jerskin Fendrix: Once Upon a Time… In Shropshire

Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire isn’t all about polish, and Jerskin Fendrix balances his characterizations of grief with ugly indulgences. “Jerskin Fendrix Freestyle” especially cuts through the melancholic ballads “Mum & Dad” and “The Universe.” My gut reaction is to call it a fantastic absurdist joke, one that oozes with irony to deflect the vulnerability exposed in the songs before and after it. (Fendrix surprise-released it on April Fools’ Day, alongside a picture of himself giving a thumb’s up while covered in feces, so perhaps he’s aware it’s got the same function in Shropshire as a scherzo in a symphony.) Fendrix raps on “Freestyle,” burying all of his expressions of fear and irrational guilt about death under a rapid-fire splurge of dick jokes, literature references, nonsensical one-liners, and an acrostic of his name that calls himself, among other things, poor, awkward, and impotent. Playing alongside him is a blaring post-rock band, co-composed by Geordie Greep, who brings his jazz fusion to the album’s apocalyptic sound. But for Fendrix—who once depicted imposter’s syndrome in a bombastic power-pop banger (“A Star Is Born” on Winterreise)—tonally dissonant songs often are the most thought-provoking ones on the album, and this is a manic outpouring of everything: frets about one’s education and upbringing, humor, love of nature, and inability to cope with tragedy. The freestyle embodies the album altogether: it’s a throbbing migraine personified; a proper soundtrack for a proper crashout. —Vic Borlando [Untitled (Recs)]

Read: “Jerskin Fendrix Polishes Grief With Ugly Indulgences On Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire”

Madi Diaz: Fatal Optimist

Earlier this year, Madi Diaz scored two Grammy nominations for her last album, 2024’s Fatal Optimist. Quickly, she’s back with something even better: a dramatic, cutting collection of acoustic guitar songs, co-produced with Gabe Wax, that wrap her plucking in spacious, gentle harmonies. It begins with Diaz yanking hope out of a vacancy (“You want me to want less, and I wanted to need less. I can find all of the parts of myself, I can undress without feeling desperate”) and sparse chords. A drum beat shows up once or twice, in “Feel Something,” but most chapters are full of solitude, like the piano ballad “Flirting” or the devastating “Good Liar.” The emotions never relent, as “Ambivalance” chases a touch just out of reach and “Lone Wolf” quakes in hushes of rejection: “Lamb’s gonna lamb,” Diaz sings. “God planned it.” “Heavy Metal” is anything but, until the line “I think falling into love is a miracle” drops onto me. Though Diaz never sounds like she’s itching to burst, her expulsions find a suiter in the closing title track, when her entire band jumps into view. There’s an argument to be made that this is the best album of her career. In fact, I just might. —Matt Mitchell [ANTI-]

Madison Cunningham: Ace

Following the release of 2023’s Revealer, Madison Cunningham underwent a period of heartbreak, rebuilding, and new love. Her songwriting adapted to fill those sunken spaces of change, guiding her through high tides and keeping her afloat. Cunningham’s guitar driven work has stood at the forefront of her catalog, blending frisky folk-rock with flicks of jazz—think The Hissing of Summer Lawns, the product of a woman Cunningham has garnered comparisons to since winning a Best Folk Album Grammy two years ago. She’s imparted her skill as a vocalist and guitarist in collaborations with Andrew Bird, Lucy Dacus, Lucius, and Whitney. Ace, however, finds Cunningham at the piano more often, deep in a sporadic, feelings-forward writing process and intuition she chases for fifty-three minutes. Ace begins with the listless piano of “Shatter Into Place,” drifting like fallen leaves that slot into place on “Shore.” If the interlude paints Cunningham as a wanderer, “Shore” establishes her steady hand, as errant keys settle into moody, anchoring chords and exemplify Cunningham’s giftedness for clean, barefaced melodies that rely on nothing but the minimalist production they’re granted. The song’s simplicity gives leave for a sprawling ballad to unfold, holding the complexities of Cunningham’s tense exploration of a breakup. “I’m running out of places I can store this need I have to talk to you,” she sings of residual, beckoning love. But all of the ballads on Ace doesn’t suggest that Cunningham has abandoned her roots in alt-rock. In fact, some of her loudest tracks (see: “Anything” or “Trouble Found Me”) seem to have culminated in “Skeletree,” where she is totally in her element. The song is alive with chugging percussion, a hefty ensemble of strings, and Cunningham’s signature funky melodies. The song’s fervor lies in the central question, “Did I get your love at the cost of my mind?” Cunningham summons an intensity that begs you to groove to it, peaking at the song’s bridge, where her voice leaps octaves with deadly accuracy. —Caroline Nieto [Verve]

The Antlers: Blight

Musically, the songs on Blight are of a piece with the Antlers’ general approach over the years. The arrangements are subtle and understated, and they often build slowly as they expand into space that allows the music plenty of room to reverberate, even when it’s quiet. On “Consider the Source,” brushed drums from Michael Lerner lend just a hint of propulsion to the song as they join Peter Silberman’s piano and vocals that increase in volume and anguish. “Carnage” introduces electronics alongside piano, creating a sense of coiled tension that mounts until it ruptures into a noisy whorl of guitar and drums. Silberman is rarely in a hurry here, and he lets the songs unfold at a measured pace. That’s particularly true on “Deactivate,” which stretches past seven minutes. The track feels like a communiqué from an apocalyptic near future, and he scarcely pauses to breathe as he murmurs dire descriptions of streets littered with “deflated bodies / empty meat” and still-leashed dogs running loose. The song begins with a repeating pattern on a fingerpicked acoustic guitar and textural synths. Midway through, the synth parts become kaleidoscopic and wash over Silberman’s wordless vocals. It feels like a redemptive moment on an album with precious few of them. Redemption isn’t what Silberman is after on Blight—it’s too pat, too exculpatory, and the Antlers frontman isn’t ready to let anyone off the hook so easily. These songs are more of a subdued wake-up call, an attempt to draw attention to what strikes Silberman, reasonably, as an existential issue. Even when he does dangle the idea of salvation, he does so as a skeptic. —Eric R. Danton [Transgressive]

Read: “The Antlers’ Blight Mourns the Degradation of the Natural World”

Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Liminal; Car Culture: Rest Here; dust: Sky Is Falling; Electric Guest: 10K; Emily A. Sprague: Cloud Time; Foxy Shazam: Box of Magic; Gab Ferreira: Carrossel; Guitar: We’re Headed to the Lake; Mobb Deep: Infinite; Niia: V; NoSo: When Are You Leaving?; Not For Radio: Melt; Osamason: Psykotic; Other Lives: Volume V; Princess Nokia: Girls; Robert Finley: Hallelujah! Don’t Let the Devil Fool Ya