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.

Blood Orange: Essex Honey

Whether he’s blending 80s new wave with R&B guitar licks (Cupid Deluxe, Coastal Grooves), or fusing spoken word with jazz piano, found traffic sounds, and deep-cut gospel samples (Freetown Sound, Negro Swan), Dev Hynes’ left-field pop combinations form an anthropological collage that is less narrative than it is an outline of a “feeling.” The feeling Essex Honey commands is grief, specifically the death of Hynes’ mother in 2023. But because of his instinct for abstraction, Hynes is able to translate this nebulous emotion without veering into didacticism or appearing overwrought. In his hands, grief becomes amorphous, resisting cliche and expectations—much like the artist himself. The phases in Essex Honey cycle mostly through denial and depression, most frequently when Hynes is physically back home, reflecting somberly on his bucolic childhood in Ilford—the very place he received classical cello training. On the ballad “Countryside” a synthesized snare taps along as Hynes asks to be “Take[n] back,” imagining that if he returned home, perhaps “[you’d] still [be] alive.” “Somewhere In Between” then suddenly dips back into the darkened mood of the opening track “Look At You.” The shrouded piano and its hook return, now with a distant, Stevie Wonder-esque harmonica, and a watery guitar. Caroline Polacheck then comes in with the original refrain of “hard to look at you” while Hynes adds a contrasting one: “I just want to see again.” —Sam Small [RCA/Domino]

Read: “Blood Orange, Between the Strings”

CMAT: Euro-Country

Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson—who performs under the moniker CMAT—has been active for a while now, having released her debut LP If My Wife New I’d Be Dead in 2022. But it’s her third album, EURO-COUNTRY, that has turned her into one of the year’s biggest pop stars. As its title suggests, CMAT draws inspiration from country music but makes it her own, with a soulful country-pop sound reminiscent of Shania Twain, while also honoring her Irish roots. EURO-COUNTRY is a deeply personal exploration of how CMAT’s cultural identity has shaped her life, incorporating the Irish language into her lyrics and getting candid about growing up in a country with such a complex history. She does so in a way that combines cheekiness (like crowning herself as the “Dunboyne Diana” in “When A Good Man Cries” and trash-talking a certain English celebrity chef in “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station”) with a discussion of serious matters, such as the misogyny women face in the entertainment industry and Ireland’s Celtic Tiger financial crisis. There isn’t a lyric that’s struck me as much this year as “I was 12 when the das started killing themselves all around me” in the title track’s chorus, and it’s even a bigger feat that despite its brutally dark words, the song has become such a massive hit on TikTok. Through her bold lyrics and ultra-catchy sound, CMAT is helping expand conversations and shake up the world of pop music—which is exactly what we needed this year. —Tatiana Tenreyro [AWAL ]

Flyte: Between You and Me

On Between You and Me, their fourth album, Flyte reunited with legendary producer Ethan Johns (Laura Marling, Kings of Leon), who had worked with them on live versions of their last record. Taylor also duets with prominent ‘90s singer-songwriter Aimee Mann on the album single, “Alabaster.” But, by-and-large, Will Taylor and Nick Hill approached their studio sessions with Johns wanting openness and spontaneity, relying on real-time intuitions and responses to each other in live recordings. Flyte “simply want to sing about their lives in the moment,” and “prefer for their albums to be emotionally complete pictures.” And on Between You and Me, they hold the modesty and gentleness needed to capture and preserve these moments from their lives. They know that revelations in hindsight come from not forcing a response, but from staying open to what emerges with hands earnestly and humbly outstretched. Flyte aren’t far from their roots either. Their sonic singularity comes from the creative exchange between Taylor and Hill, an intimacy reminiscent of their early reverberant and harmonically stunning covers of various heroes of theirs (Jackson Browne, Alvvays, and many more). They seem to share a kinship in tender disposition—Taylor’s timbre leading something like a quivering lullaby whilst Hill joins in harmony in choruses, or when the two exchange acoustic lines in instrumental sections. Particularly notable in the latter case is “Hello Sunshine”, where Taylor’s vocals play second chair to rhapsodies of bright, exchanged fingerpicking, where he and Hill are almost playful with one another. —Andrew Ha [Nettwerk]

Read: “Flyte Are Modern Romantics on Between You and Me“

Hayley Williams: Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party

Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party is undoubtedly Hayley Williams’ best offering of solo music yet, and there’s an argument to be made that it’s among her most impressive music period. What the title suggests and what the music provides are dueling objectives: Williams is confident and unglued, producing songs that rival the marquee parts of Riot! and After Laughter. What she sings in “Negative Self Talk” is true: “I write like a volcano.” This is not the work of the woman who leads Paramore, but a reminder that Williams’ talents are broader and far more contrasting than Paramore’s safest conventions. Ego, in all of its boundary-nudging, alt-pop glory, sounds like a reset for a musician who has long deserved it—because let’s not forget that, in 2003, Williams signed to Atlantic Records as a solo artist at the age of 14. The label wanted to make her a pop singer, but she wanted to be in a band. 22 years later, Williams is free, naming her own label “Post Atlantic.” She even cuts right to the chase about the contract baggage on “Ice In My OJ,” screaming “I’m in a band! I’m in a band!” until the blister erupts.

With no tracklist or sequence to adhere to, Ego is a grab-bag of enjoyment. But the miscellany is never reduced to randomness, only a curation of strengths. “Mirtazapine,” a tribute to anti-depressents (“you make me eat, you make me sleep”), uses lovey-dovey tropes to break containment. In a glaze of distorted guitars, Williams shouts to the heavens, “Who am I without you now?” Her voice strains the farther the instruments crawl. While “Zissou” offers a tame yet sensual respite, “Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party” takes a clever swipe at, presumably, Morgan Wallen (“I’m the biggest star at this racist country singer’s bar”). And if you’re looking for something that resembles Paramore’s style, the self-love treasure “Love Me Different” will put you front row. There, the band’s touring multi-instrumentalist Brian Robert Jones lends a lush montage of guitar and bass to Jones’ gooey synth programming, until Williams’ singing crests into a stirring repetition: “I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want.” —Matt Mitchell [Post Atlantic]

Read: “Hayley Williams Is a Superstar Two Decades In the Making On Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party”

Lathe of Heaven: Aurora

Put a poppy post-punk album in front of me and I’ll probably eat it up. I don’t care if it sounds like everything else. But Lathe of Heaven’s new release, Aurora, is different. There’s some spectacular synth-pop unfurling across this thing, like the title track. It sounds like some great underground song from Europe circa-40 years ago. Funnily enough, it was made by four Brooklyn musicians with a knack for allegorical ear-candy. “Matrix of Control” has streaks of crushing guitar that’ll put you on your ass, while “Catatonia” goes full growl, harnessing a type of punk vocabulary that’s nearly robotic. “Exodus” is shiny, almost in an R.E.M. way, while “Rorschach” thrums and skitters. But “Portrait of a Scorched-Earth,” a praise song for Gaza, cements Aurora as a necessary album flashing its teeth at colonialists. Sacred Bones pushes artists who sock dingers; Lathe of Heaven is the next band up. —Matt Mitchell [Sacred Bones]

Margo Price: Hard Headed Woman

Frankly, the closest Margo Price has come to casting herself in another’s image, be it derived from another singer or foisted on her by popular culture, is her choice of title for the first single on her latest release, Hard Headed Woman. With “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down,” she’s invoking The Handmaid’s Tale as well as Kris Kristofferson’s words of solidarity for Sinéad O’Connor at Madison Square Garden in 1992; taken together, she’s wielding a catchphrase forged by a creative spirit other than hers. It’s what Price does with the phrase that’s important, though, not the mere innocent act of reference. Anyone can nod to and riff on their inspirations. Calcifying them into a sound that no one else could produce? That’s an artist’s challenge. Hard Headed Woman is Price’s tribute to coarse defiance and self-determination, born from and tied to this specific terrible, horrible, no good, very bad period of United States history, but entrenched in her experiences and sensations; it’s personal, political, and as such, very much a Margo Price album. Unlike Strays, which trades easy categorization for a swath of touchstones ranging from outlaw country to psychedelica, Price shunts Hard Headed Woman squarely onto the honky tonk track; the guitars twang, the bass makes its jovial undulations, and their sound combined gives an upbeat impression despite Price’s unvarnished ire. She doesn’t write anthems, but boy, she spins downright anthemic lines here, track after track. —Andy Crump [Loma Vista Recordings]

Runnner: A Welcome Kind of Weakness

Fuck it, maybe the eighth time is the charm. The last single from Runnner’s new album, “Claritin,” is the best one yet—and it only took Noah Weinman a year to get us here. He’s been rolling out the longest red carpet imaginable for A Welcome Kind of Weakness, dispersing songs sporadically since late 2024 in the lead-up to its release tomorrow. I liked “Coinstar” a lot, and “Spackle,” “Chamomile,” and “Untitled October Song” have been pleasant to revisit, but “Claritin” is the best Runnner song since, hell, “Ur Name On a Grain of Rice” four years ago. Written while recovering from an Achilles injury and inspired by Coldplay, this joint is spectacular and swirling, featuring backing vocals from Noah’s sister Charlotte (who performs under the name Horsepower) and crushing streaks of rock and roll. It’s somewhat about allergies, sure (“move dust around on phantom lines” bangs), but it’s mostly about the threat of losing yourself in stillness. “Is it so discouraging if I don’t feel anything?” Weinman sings, amid a torrid, orbiting cloud of drum machine commotion and guitar crests. You can’t ask for a better capstone on a project than “Claritin” bookending the A Welcome Kind of Weakness hype parade—a savory reminder that Runnner is a quiet, DIY assassin in the current storm of homespun twangtronica. —Matt Mitchell [Run For Cover]

Sabrina Carpenter: Man’s Best Friend

A year after releasing Short n’ Sweet, a very fun pop record that yielded hit songs and turned its maker into a Grammy-winning superstar, Sabrina Carpenter is already onto the next chapter. Man’s Best Friend, co-produced by Jack Antonoff and John Ryan, is another great display of Carpenter and Amy Allen’s songwriting chemistry. The music is playful and slippery, channeling disco, funk, country, and Laurel Canyon pop in one package. Antonoff and Ryan raise the dose on string arrangements, upscaling Carpenter’s bombast with symphonic, swelling ornaments. As a lead single, “Manchild” signaled a potential return to the sound that made a song like “Juno” so good in 2024. But that was a misnomer, as Man’s Best Friend experiments with styles to almost a historical extreme. Some of these songs, like “Nobody’s Son” and “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry,” might be growers down the line, but the sequence of “Manchild,” “Tears,” “My Man on Willpower,” “Sugar Talking,” and “We Almost Broke Up” is the best pop-album run since Gaga in March. And then, on side two, “Go Go Juice,” “House Tour,” and “Goodbye” flash Carpenter’s vocal chops, as she oscilates between churchy rhapsodies and stadium-sized harmonies. Her songs about sex are blunt and ecstatic, her ballads charm like a musical number, and everything in-between crests through ideas about heartbreak, misogyny, and partying. Man’s Best Friend is whatever you want it to be. —Matt Mitchell [Island]

The Beaches: No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings opens up with a tinny, grunge-y, ‘90s guitar sound on “Can I Call You in the Morning,” an apt introduction to the ambivalent theme of the record, reminiscent of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These varied feelings are a result of the four best friends’ unique approach to collaborative songwriting. Their lyrics are a blend of each member’s own personal experiences and their reactions to each other’s experiences. This mix of different perspectives makes the songs they write—about new love, messy breakups, regret, and everything in between—more layered. An example of that lives on this record in “Did I Say Too Much,” a remorseful song about Earl’s recent breakup. It’s endearing to hear how much these bandmates love and care for each other. Other songs on the record inspired by the same breakup take a lighter approach, like the tongue-in-cheek “I Wore You Better,” which boasts some of my favorite lines from the record, including the hilarious, “Do I have a sign on my back, ‘Poly girls ransack me until I’m left on empty’?”—which is made even more magnetic by Jordan’s electric delivery. Enman-McDaniel says the fun nature of “I Wore You Better” was intentional—that they didn’t want all of the breakup songs and queer songs to be too mellow. As hinted at in the lyrics, the song explores the painful experience of being treated like an experimental phase by a partner you’re fully invested in, which Earl notes is a common shared experience in the queer world. —Kaitlin Stevens [AWAL]

Read: “The Beaches on Breakups, the Power of Fan Culture, and Going to Therapy”

The Berries: The Berries

The Berries, the moniker of Hotline TNT, Happy Diving, and Big Bite collaborator Matthew Berry (no, not that one), unveiled his eponymous album today, and tracks like “White Peach” and “Wind Chime” are slow-burn, sensual guitar vamps. “Salt of the Earth” came straight from the garage, while “Something Better” quiets the album into a solemn ramble, where pedal steel flutters in and out until poet Julia Lans Nowak’s voice takes over. Bruce Springsteen is my favorite musician of all time, but I am not resistant to Bruce Springsteen soundalikes. And “Angelus” uses five minutes to build into a swaggy chord rupture not unlike one of the Boss’ famous runouts. The cover of The Berries has already been likened to Born to Run, and “Angelus” certainly sprawls like the similarly blasé “Backstreets.” But Berry doesn’t growl through any chorus. Instead, he injects a loping, Wild Pink-style quaver into his take on Heartland gusto. The “band” on The Berries features Kora Puckett of Narrow Head, Ethel Cain drummer Bryan De Leon, and Corey Madden of Color Green, but it’s Berry and his rambling guitar front and center. —Matt Mitchell [Self-Released]

The Beths: Straight Line Was A Lie

Four albums in, it’s pretty clear the Beths have earned their stripes. The band has been around for over a decade at this point, and if there are any lingering questions regarding their razor-sharp chops—or singer-guitarist Elizabeth Stokes’ ace songwriting prowess—well, that person probably hasn’t been listening. 2020’s Jump Rope Gazers was mostly about proving that their superb debut, Future Me Hates Me, was no fluke, delivering sugar-coated indie-rock anthems while firming up the Beach Boys-esque harmonies deployed over their Superchunk-meets-a-sock-hop sound. And if 2022’s Expert In A Dying Field wasn’t exactly an evolution, it certainly demonstrated a band who had locked into its style, and was simply proceeding to deliver the goods. That dependability serves them well on Straight Line Was A Lie. While all the usual parts are here—catchy riffs, sing-along choruses, earnest ballads, ebullient rockers, all of it paired with Stokes’ lovely, evocative lyricism—there’s a newfound maturity and expansiveness to the songwriting and arrangements. The first couple records maintained a rough-and-tumble indie vibe, but as with Expert, things here shift even further into an impressively polished result. Guitarist Jonathan Pearce’s production skills have leveled up to match the ambition of Stokes’ increasingly involved compositions. Far more than anything that’s come before from The Beths, Straight Line is a headphones album, reveling in layers of instrumentation and sonic tinkering that reward close listening. —Alex McLevy [ANTI-]

Read: “Dependability Serves The Beths Well on Straight Line Was A Lie”

The Hives: The Hives Forever Forever The Hives

For a lad whose sobriquet is “Howlin’,” Pelle Almqvist, the Hives’ cofounder and frankly one of modern rock’s most compelling frontmen since 2000, spends most of The Hives Forever Forever The Hives barking. He’s pissed. “Everyone is a little fucking bitch, and I’m getting sick and tired of this,” Almqvist shouts on “Enough Is Enough,” the record’s kickoff ditty, instantly setting the tone for the 11 remaining songs (plus two filler tracks). No matter your latitude and longitude, the sentiment applies to you. Even Almqvist and his fellow Swedes can’t escape humanity’s trend towards autocratic madness; apparently fed up with comedy treating the country’s non-interventionist policy as a punchline, its center-right government submitted a NATO application in 2022, with the support of the Sweden Democrats—who are, contrary to English apprehension of the word, right-wing. The Hives are, in short, specially qualified as a garage-rock band to produce a state of the union of sorts, which also functions as a statement of purpose and self-reflection. If the album’s title alone isn’t a hint, The Hives Forever Forever The Hives fixates partly on legacy; it’s their second album released in as many years, following an 11-year gap between their fifth record (2012’s Lex Hives) and sixth (2023’s The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons), and yet Almqvist and the gang take time out of their overarching agenda of razzing idiot tyrants and spoiled billionaire man-children to acknowledge that long absence of new material. —Andy Crump [PIAS]

Read: “Forever Is a Pleasure on The Hives Forever Forever The Hives”

Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: Anna Tivel: Animal Poem; Erykah Badu & The Alchemist: Abi & Alan; Ganser: Animal Hospital; Have Mercy: the loneliest place i’ve ever been; Jens Kuross: Crooked Songs; Modern Nature: The Heat Wraps; Nova Twins: Parasites & Butterflies; Pinkshift: Earthkeeper; Rodney Crowell: Airline Highway; Slow Crush: Thirst; Westside Gunn: Heels Have Eyes 2; Zach Top: Ain’t In It For My Health