It can be tough to keep track of all the upcoming albums due out in 2023. Impossible, really. But we can certainly try to cover the new music releases that stand out. We’ll continue to update this list of upcoming new album releases on our radar every Thursday throughout the year. Click on the linked entries to read more about an album.
Upcoming Albums out May 26
AJJ: Disposable Everything
Arlo Parks: My Soft Machine
Boy & Bear: Boy & Bear
Gia Margaret: Romantic Piano
Joe Perry: Sweetzerland Manifesto MKII
Kevin Morby: More Photographs (A Continuum)
Matchbox Twenty: Where the Light Goes
Miya Folick: Roach
Simply Red: Time
Sparks: The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte
Stuck: Freak Frequency
Water From Your Eyes: Everyone’s Crushed
Staff Pick | Arlo Parks: My Soft Machine
After a year spent touring with Harry Styles, Clairo and Billie Eilish, among others, Arlo Parks’ sophomore album, My Soft Machine, the awaited follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut Collapsed in Sunbeams, is finally on the horizon. With a title lifted from Joanna Hogg’s 2019 film The Souvenir, Parks is aiming to reckon with the highs and lows of her 20s. “This record is life through my lens, through my body—the mid-20’s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating P.T.S.D. and grief and self-sabotage and joy, moving through worlds with wonder and sensitivity—what it’s like to be trapped in this particular body,” Parks said of My Soft Machine in a statement. Lead single “Weightless” is a fit of electronic joy that puts Parks’ soft vocals on a pedestal at the track’s forefront, a trend that continues across the singer-songwriter’s entire record. —Matt Mitchell
Upcoming Albums out June 2
Avenged Sevenfold: Life Is But a Dream…
Beach Fossils: Bunny
Ben Folds: What Matters Most
Ben Harper: WIDE OPEN LIGHT
Buckcherry: Vol. 10
Beach Fossils: Bunny
Bully: Lucky for You
Cowboy Junkies: Such Ferocious Beauty
Gal Pal: This and Other Gestures
Generationals: Heatherhead
Gringo Star: On And On
Jack Johnson: In Between Dub
Jake Shears: Last Man Dancing
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: Council Skies
McKinley Dixon: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!
Militarie Gun: Life Under the Gun
Protomartyr: Formal Growth in the Desert
Rufus Wainwright: Folkocracy
RVG: Brain Worms
Sophie Ellis-Bextor: HANA
Tanya Tucker: Sweet Western Sound
The Aces: I’ve Loved You for So Long
The Alarm: Forwards
Tommy Stinson: Wronger
Staff Pick | Ben Folds: What Matters Most
After eight years, Ben Folds returns with a new album What Matters Most. The multi-talented singer/songwriter, musician and composer from North Carolina first found success as the frontman and pianist of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five in the late ’90s, and followed that a decade later as a solo artist. His versatile approach to writing and composing, along with performing arrangements of his music with symphony orchestras and a cappella groups, has led to a varied career that includes an impressive 20-minute concerto with the Nashville Symphony in collaboration with yMusic. The first single from the album, “Winslow Gardens,” is a light, springy tune backed by his iconic keys. The lyrics hint at a couple going away for a trip and finding themselves in that place much longer than expected. Ten weeks turns to ten years, while it all feels like just ten minutes—you lose track of time as small routines with your loved ones become the only things that matter. The swirling, repetitive melody at the end of the chorus, “You started all over / We’ve started all over again,” makes you feel like you’re in a that time loop with the characters—and it’s not particularly a bad feeling, but a comforting one. —Rayne Antrim
Upcoming Albums out June 7
Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors: Strangers No More
Upcoming Albums out June 9
Christine and the Queens: Paranoïa, Angels, True Love
Dream Wife: Social Lubrication
feeble little horse: Girl with Fish
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Weathervanes
Jenny Lewis: Joy’All
Jess Williamson: Time Ain’t Accidental
King Krule: Space Heavy
Laura Cantrell: Just Like a Rose: The Anniversary Sessions
Nicolas Allbrook: Manganese
Philip Phillips: Drift Back
Squid: O Monolith
The Boo Radleys: Eight
The High Water Marks: Your Next Wolf
This Is the Kit: Careful of Your Keepers
Youth Lagoon: Heaven Is a Junkyard
Staff Pick | Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Weathervanes
Jason Isbell is back with a new album, Weathervanes, his sixth with his Muscle Shoals band the 400 Unit—Sadler Vaden, Jimbo Hart, Derry deBorja and Chad Gamble—and his ninth overall since leaving the Drive-By Truckers. The band released the first single “Death Wish” from the new album, written and produced by Isbell and due out June 9 via Southeastern Records/Thirty Tigers. “Did you ever love a woman with a death wish / Something in her eyes like switching off a light switch,” he sings to open the driving Southern rock song with beautiful strings by Morgan O’Shaughnessey. “Everybody dies but you gotta find a reason to carry on.” The song flips the script on Isbell’s own experience reaching rock bottom with alcohol and drugs in 2012 and finding support and intervention from those who loved him. Written and produced by Isbell and recorded at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio, the album features Isbell’s wife Amanda Shires, harmonicist Mickey Raphael, Sylvia Massy, Ian Rickard and O’Shaughnessey. —Josh Jackson
Upcoming Albums out June 14
waterbaby: Foam
Upcoming Albums out June 16
Ben Howard: Is It?
Bonny Doon: Let There Be Music
Deertick: Emotional Contracts
Django Django: Off Planet
Ezra Williams: Supernumeraries
Far From Saints: Far From Saints
Gov’t Mule: Peace…Like A River
Hand Habits: Sugar the Bruise
Home is Where: the whaler
Jack River: Endless Summer
Killer Mike: Michael
Maisie Peters: The Good Witch
Michelle Ndegeocello: The Omnichord Real Book
Queens of the Stone Age: In Times New Roman
Tim O’Brien: Cup of Sugar
Yusef (Cat Stevens): King of a Land
Staff Pick | Bonny Doon: Let There Be Music
Detroit indie-rockers Bonny Doon have a new album on the way. Let There Be Music will drop on June 16th on Anti- Records, and the first single, “Naturally,” is already available. The first release since the band’s pair of albums in 2017 and 2018 comes after guitar/vocalists Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo joined Waxahatchee to play on her album Saint Cloud and join her on tour. Then the band was sidelined because of health—drummer Jake Kmiecik suffered complications from his Crohn’s disease and Colombo dealt with a brain injury and Lyme disease. It’s great to have the trio back making music again, and lead single “Naturally” shows that they’ve only improved as they’ve taken time for healing. The chill vibe is elevated by tasty understated guitar and keys. “There’s a lot to talk about,” Lennox sings, “and we’ll let it happen naturally.” —Josh Jackson
Upcoming Albums out June 23
Albert Hammond Jr: Melodies on Hiatus
Cory Hanson: Western Cum
Eliza Gilkyson: Home
Geese: 3D Country
Jason Mraz: Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride
Lloyd Cole: On Pain
M. Ward: supernatural thing
Pardoner: Peace Loving People
Sid Simons: Beneath the Brightest Smiles
Skating Polly: Chaos County Line
SWANS: The Beggar
The Watson Twins: Holler
The Wedding Present: 24 Songs
Wye Oak: Every Day Like the Last
Upcoming Albums out June 30
bdrmm: I Don’t Know
Hayden Pedigo: The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored
Johanna Sternberg: I’ve Got Me
Lucinda Williams: Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart
Sweeping Promises: God Living is Coming For You
Upcoming Albums out July 7
Grouplove: I Want It All Right Now
Julie Byrne: The Greater Wings
PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying
Taylor Swift: Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
Staff Pick | Julie Byrne: The Greater Wings
American singer/songwriter Julie Byrne’s last album, Not Even Happiness, was a sight to behold: a paradoxical, inspired document of lonesomeness; a treatise of lush vocal harmonies and digital textures. But that was six years ago, and a new chapter has begun for Byrne, whose long-awaited third LP—The Greater Wings—is arriving on July 7 via Ghostly International. Lead single “Summer Glass” is a spectral, glittering affair. Positioned directly in focus is Byrne’s talismanic voice, which bellows and breaks atop a cinematic synthesizer. The keys fade out and into an orchestral climax, as Byrne sings about devotion. It’s a powerful return from one of our sharpest songwriters, who’s given us a portrait of something otherworldly on “Summer Glass.” —Matt Mitchell
Upcoming Albums out July 14
Alaska Reid: Disenchanter
Being Dead: When Horses Would Run
Colter Wall: Little Songs
Lukas Nelson + POTR: Sticks and Stones
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog: Conncection
Palehound: Eye on the Bat
Staff Pick | Alaska Reid: Let There Be Music
If lead single “Back To This” was any signal that Alaska Reid is one of the most-exciting up-and-coming acts around, then new track “She Wonders” will surely have everyone convinced. The Montana-born and Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter’s first offerings from her debut LP Disenchanter have been nothing short of stellar. Co-produced by A.G. Cook (Beyoncé, Charli XCX), Disenchanter is a 10-track collection of coming-of-age songs, emotional landscapes and fantastical rememberings of everyday life. After “Back To This” and “She Wonders,” July 14 can’t come soon enough. “She Wonders” is not just a mystical, distorted slice of electronic alt-rock; it’s an awe-inspiring piece of storytelling from Reid, who’s quickly establishing herself as a literary force unbound by any textbook sonic architecture. Beginning like a mid-1980s synth-wave track and erupting into a woozy 1990s resplendent, “She Wonders” centers the focus on Reid’s lush, lullaby vocals that skate across a narrative of disenchantment and exhaustion from playing live shows and finding small stardom. —Matt Mitchell
Upcoming Albums out July 21
Allegra Krieger: I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane
Blur: The Ballad of Darren
Greta Van Fleet: Starcatcher
Guided By Voices: Welshpool Frillies
Half Japanese: Jump Into Love
Oscar Lang: Look Now
Nils Lofgren: Mountains
Strange Ranger: Pure Music
Upcoming Albums out July 28
Bethany Consentino: Natural Disaster
Joni Mitchell: At Newport
Madeline Kenney: A New Reality Mind
Post Malone: Austin
Upcoming Albums out August 2
The Bright Light Social Hour: Emergency Leisure
Upcoming Albums out August 4
Chris Farren: Doom Singer
Girl Ray: Prestige
Stolen Jars: I Won’t Let Me Down
The Front Bottoms: You Are Who You Hang Out With
Upcoming Albums out August 11
Easy Eye Sound: Tell Everybody
Public Image Ltd.: End of World
The Hives: The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons
Upcoming Albums out August 18
East Forest: Music For The Deck Of The Titanic
Genesis Owusu: STRUGGLER
Grace Potter: Mother Road
Hozier: Unreal Unearth
Rhiannon Giddens: You’re the One
Upcoming Albums out August 25
Buck Meek: Haunted Mountain
Cindy Wilson: Realms
Crooks & Nannies: Real Life
Hiss Golden Messenger: Jump for Joy
Turnpike Troubadours: A Cat in the Rain
Upcoming Albums out September 1
Ghost of Vroom: Ghost of Vroom 3
The Pretenders: Relentless
Upcoming Albums out September 8
Coach Party: Killjoy
Low Cut Connie: Art Dealers
Upcoming Albums out September 15
Nation of Language: Strange Disciple
Thirty Seconds to Mars: It’s The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day
Staff Pick | Nation of Language: Strange Disciple
Since hitting the scene in 2020 with their stunning debut LP Introduction, Presence, Brooklyn-based trio Nation of Language have been consistently churning out delicate, soulful synth-pop swagger ripe with post-punk influences and poetic, thoughtful lyrics. Together, Ian Devaney, Aidan Noell and Alex MacKay are steadfast in their trajectory, quickly ascending into the echelons of the musical zeitgeist. The 2021 album A Way Forward cemented Nation of Language’s greatness, and the band capitalized on that with a pair of singles—”Androgynous” and “From the Hill”—in 2022. A third album, Strange Disciple, is coming in September, but, for now, we have “Sole Obsession” to gush over. As always, the synths are shimmering, the bass and drums waltz together in perfect harmony and frontman Devaney’s vocals careen like the perfect amalgamation of Bernard Sumner and Andy McCluskey. It’s a perfect dancefloor number about devotion and human compulsions. To accompany the tune, Nation of Language have released a sublime, cinematic music video that aids in the band’s exploration of desire and fixation. —Matt Mitchell
Upcoming Albums out September 22
Arkells: Laundry Pile
Kylie Minogue: Tension
Teenage Fanclub: Nothing Lasts Forever
Upcoming Albums out November 17
Dolly Parton: Rockstar