This week’s best new albums 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.

Dove Ellis: Blizzard

“To the Sandals”: A debut single hasn’t stuck with me like this since JADE’s “Angel of My Dreams” got dropped on my head last year. But Dove Ellis sounds like he’s been here forever. The song, which is about “reflections on a failing shotgun marriage in Cancún,” and was mixed by the great Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Dijon), summons the ghosts of Radiohead and Black Country, New Road without depending on their styles for relevancy. What I’m trying to say is: Dove Ellis copies the homework but changes the answers. He gravitates toward tonal contrasts; instruments collide until they coalesce. The guitar reminds me of David Gilmour’s on “Wot’s… Uh the Deal?” and Ellis’ vocal isn’t too far away from Thom Yorke’s, his decaying holler never raising itself above Fred Donlon-Mansbridge’s wilted saxophone. With 30 seconds left to spare, the song takes a strident plunge, piecing corroded fragments of woodwind, acoustic guitar, rattling percussion, and Ellis’ now-distant vocal together with scotch tape. In his conclusion, Ellis delivers either a list of destinations or a collapsing salutation: “To the back teeth, to the front teeth, to the split tyres, to the penthouse, to the milk deal, to the wax seal, to the cracked heel, to the sandals.” Every song could sound like this and I’d still beg for a thousand more. Luckily Ellis has given us a whole album’s worth. Blizzard is marked by one of my favorite tracks of the year, “Love Is.” Inaugurated by a sparse piano melody, “Love Is” erupts into this wonderful, erratic flush of rock and roll. The drums sound like they’re being pounded on in the next room over, and Ellis’ voice vibrates nearly into a falsetto. But beneath all the fundamental stuff is this undertow of curdling distortion, attic noise, and skinny, bursting strings. None of it ever erupts, only the guitars and the phantom of Ellis’ refrain. This is pop music caught in the bardo. I think I’ll come back and visit from time to time. —Matt Mitchell [Black Butter/AMF]

Jane Remover: ♡

Remember last year when Jane Remover released some of the best pop music of the year, like “Magic I Want U,” “Flash in the Pan,” and “Dream Sequence”? Me too! It seems that Jane couldn’t let 2025 end without dropping her third project, the ♡ EP, which features all four of her 2024 singles plus two new songs, “So What?” and “Music Baby.” The EP is a detour from the rage-dance bombast of Revengeseekerz and the subterranean guitar drones coating the Venturing tape. I quite like it when Jane goes deep into a pocket like this, where the glitches are grand and the hooks are plentiful. In a press release, she described the EP as “dancing with tears in your eyes, feeling the music in your chest being in love with your friends drunk in the backseat of an Uber windows down on a summer night, a feeling you can never recreate the summer that changed everything. It’s pronounced 🫶.” As we enter the clickable doldrums of list season, expansive release days are hibernating until January, maybe even February. Luckily I can coast into this weekend with ♡ in my pocket. “Music Baby” has been on repeat all morning. —Matt Mitchell [deadAir]

Joanna: Hello Flower

This is a cool one for your weekend radar: the long-lost debut Joanna album, Hello Flower, has been resurrected by New Feelings. Now the world can get hip to the strange and skronking world of Neil Holliday, Terry Lloyd, Tyrone Holt, and Carl Alty—a payoff for the cult following the band amassed when they were hot shit in the late-‘80s Madchester scene. Someone found the Hello Flower tapes in a Manchester apartment loft, and now we get to hear the earliest iterations of what would become a contagious and unignorable Britpop phase in rock history. The tape is just eight songs long, but all of them tap into these raw-hemmed, funky guitar riffs teetering on the rim of psychedelia. Holliday sings about poverty, bad cops, and corrupt politicians like it’s 2025, crying out “But you wouldn’t see it happen in England, ‘cause we’re all civilized” on “Gardener’s World.” “Bandit Country” is rips, and “Weather Vane” sounds like it might have inspired a certain pair of brothers to start writing music. The band is clearly letting all of their ecclecticisms pull them every which way, and I’ve had a good time chasing down every whim. It would’ve been cool to see Joanna tour with the Stone Roses back in the day, but the Hello Flower songs will just have to do. —Matt Mitchell [New Feelings]

Melody’s Echo Chamber: Unclouded

The first Melody’s Echo Chamber album was so good that I promised to listen to all of Melody Prochet’s subsequent releases at least once. True to my word, I have been sitting with Unclouded this week, and it’s scratching an itch. With this band, you know what you’re getting: technicolor production, big orchestration, psych-pop grooves, a strange idea here and a retro melody there. I dig a project that sticks to what it does best, and an effervescent ‘60s splendor is served well by Prochet and producer Sven Wunder’s shared affinity for soul music. That’s why “In the Stars” and “Broken Roses” sound so great, so timeless. Session drummer Malcolm Catto (Madlib, DJ Shadow) comes in for a hi-fi freakout on “Eyes Closed,” while “Daisy” opens the door for the El Michels Affair to turn in one of the sharpest collabs of this concluding year. Consistency can be versatile. Unclouded doesn’t reinvent the wheel or usurp Melody’s Echo Chamber’s potency, but Prochet won’t let you leave without having a good time. —Matt Mitchell [Domino]

Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Live God; Redveil: Sankofa; The Deep: KPop B!tch; V/A: Passages: Artists in Solidarity With Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers; Voices From the Lake: II