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.

Addison Rae: Addison

There’s nothing wrong with paying tribute to a good cigarette. In fact, I encourage it wholeheartedly. Two new pop songs this week do exactly that—Addison Rae’s “Headphones On” and Lorde’s “What Was That”—but it’s Rae’s latest that’s captured my heart. Co-written with Luka Closer and Elvira Anderfjärd, “Headphones On” is the fourth single from Rae’s upcoming debut album, Addison, and it keeps her streak of great pop hardware. “Diet Pepsi” was a life-affirming, say-you-love-me pop classic, while “Aquamarine” and “High Fashion” paid dividends to the Addison faithful who’ve been watching her cook since her AR days. A sugary, Y2K gloss burns at the heart of “Headphones On” but song is a shockingly full of hurt, as Rae reckons with her parents’ divorce (“Wish my mom and dad could’ve been in love, guess some things aren’t meant to last forever”) and imposter syndrome (“I compare my life to the new it girl, jealousy’s a riptide, it pulls me under”) without plodding in heavy-handed nostalgia. “Headphones On” should be in the conversation for Song of the Summer; the “You can’t fix what has already been broken, you just have to surrender to the moment” pre-chorus allows Rae’s R&B and electropop fascinations to perfectly collide. She capped off her legendary debut album rollout with “Fame is a Gun,” the fifth and final teaser where she leans into a future-coded sound, with a hypnotic synth loop that builds into a bombastic dance-pop track, flaunting a percussive 808 and stacked vocals that transport listeners to a technicolor dream world. Her vocals start fuzzy, opening up in the chorus, but Rae keeps her wispy delivery at the center. The song comes with an oddly nostalgic music video that feels part-“Thriller,” part-Suspiria, with Rae existing as both a doe-eyed up-and-comer and a longstanding A-lister. Her videos remain a point of emphasis in her rollout—intentional, curated, building the exact world she wants listeners to step into. Her TikTok fame has proved fully illusory. This is well-done Madonna worship for the doom-scrolling generation. —Matt Mitchell & Cassidy Sollazzo [Columbia]

Hayden Pedigo: I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away

Releasing a new album every two years might not seem as prolific as the output of an artist like Guided by Voices or The Reds, Pinks & Purples, but Hayden Pedigo’s productivity numbers are impressive. The Mexican Summer signee has been putting out solo records every other year, and his newest LP, I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, marks his fifth in eight years. But what’s even more gratifying is that his quality/quantity ratio is perfectly saturated, as every record arrives brimming with impossibly good and intricate guitar compositions. I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away is the third and final installment of his self-coined “Motor Trilogy,” following behind Letting Go (2021) and The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored (2023). Now, I know what you’re obviously thinking… Yes, the title of this record is clearly a Little House on the Prairie reference. Even though our mothers probably grew up loving that show, it’s even more niche now that streaming has outmuscled syndication. Nevertheless, Pedigo is as referential and cultural as they come. I mean, his last record was titled after a Doug Kenney quote. Pedigo is part-man, part-myth, part-Texan, part-picker, and part-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. His music is as warm as it is challenging—a paradox of storytelling that is personal yet world-consuming. For about seven years now, I’ve been trying to put people on to his music, and I think his newest project might finally (and rightfully) put him over. I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away is inspired by everything from Bladee to Led Zeppelin, providing a total and affectionate rewrite of what instrumental could and ought to be. Pedigo may have left Amarillo for Oklahoma, but the Southern tapestry of a song like “Long Pond Lily” could have only been woven by somebody with his feet always in two places. Did someone give Ry Cooder a tab of acid? Hayden Pedigo makes guitar music without stereotype. —Matt Mitchell [Mexican Summer]

Junk Drawer: Days of Heaven

Forgive me for the truncated geopolitical lesson, but it’s a relevant one, since Days of Heaven plumbs the depths of Ulster’s psyche, both in terms of the lasting pain leftover from decades of bloodshed and the province’s potentially bright futures that never came to pass. At times these explorations are cryptic—Junk Drawer aren’t ones for spoon feeding their listeners—but the lyrics’ obscurity only makes the listener want to come back for more. Their first album, 2020’s unexpectedly prophetic Ready for the House, focused more on the personal lives of the band members themselves—siblings Stevie (vocals/guitar) and Jake Lennox (vocals/guitar/drums), Brian Coney (bass/keys) and Rory Dee (drums/guitar/vocals). Junk Drawer’s debut channeled a loose ‘90s sound akin to Pavement and occasionally devolved into a punk dance party; Day of Heaven, however, maintains that playful freshness while broadening their thematic scope and injecting their music with a healthy dose of ‘60s psychedelia. What binds these Days of Heaven together aren’t just dreams of a better future for Ulster, but Junk Drawer’s stunning vocals and hypnotic jams. Stevie and Jake both get their time to shine on the mic—the latter in particular on “Where Goes The Time,” when he does a scarily good Neil Young impression—and their vocal ranges, from deeply rich, sonorous moments to exquisite falsetto, beggars belief. And then there’s the jam of it all; this is a band who know their instruments and each other so very well, and it’s obvious during every hypnotic groove they lock into. It’s easy to get lost in Junk Drawer’s mesmerizing aural push and pull—so much so that you hope the Day of Heaven will never end. —Clare Martin [Pizza Pizza Records]

Lifeguard: Ripped & Torn

Lifeguard’s story sounds straight out of a coming-of-age film. Before graduating high school, the trio got signed to storied indie label Matador, following word-of-mouth success in their local Chicago scene. Thriving from a young age isn’t that surprising anymore. Artists like Billie Eilish, Yung Lean, Justin Bieber, and beabadoobee reached fame by sharing music online before turning 18. But Lifeguard stands out as something special, with an approach to their artistry so advanced and throughout that you’d think they’ve been around for over a decade. Their debut album, Ripped and Torn, not only features a sound quality that feels like an old record, but it features heavy inspiration found in post-punk, krautrock, and dub. “Under Your Reach” opens with discord—feedback from guitar accented by a motorik drum beat, before launching into a jangly melody. When other bands try to replicate the innate sound of that era, the move often falters; they fail to capture the experimental, boundary-pushing essence and scrappiness of luminaries like Television Personalities or Mission of Burma. But Lifeguard, a trio where every member is still in their teens, seamlessly fits in with the bands that inspired them. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited over an emerging act. —Tatian Tenreyro [Matador]

Read: “Lifeguard: The Best of What’s Next”

Little Simz: Lotus

It’s a special level of rap when you can take the lyrics, omit the music, and be left with just a beautiful piece of writing. Furthermore, it takes a special caliber of rapper to construct these phrases and rhyme schemes into reflections of human emotion that are both digestible and entertaining for audiences. I think of generational talents like Black Thought, Rakim, Ms. Lauryn Hill and, in recent years, Little Simz. The London rapper has more than earned her place in any “best lyricists” conversation, repeatedly proving why she is one of the most compelling voices contributing to modern hip-hop. Since her 2021 record Sometimes I Might Be Introvert won both the Mercury Prize and a BRIT Award, Simz hasn’t had to prove anything, but she has continued to air her voice, calling out the whole of the music industry on 2022’s NO THANK YOU for its hypocrisy, greed, and inequality. Opening along an infectious bass groove and soul-infused vocal refrain, “Free” is a bouncing, stirring anthem of self-liberation and resilience. In the first verse, Simz expounds on her definition of love before testing it against her feelings of fear, delivering each line completely composed yet with unclouded emotional intent. Never have I wanted to quote an entire song as much as here. Each bar on Lotus is a masterful display of storytelling and personal affirmation—every line standing resolute for its sharp portrayal of life, trust, obsession, mortality, and knowledge. I think of a 2011 interview with Jay-Z in which he said, “Rap is poetry. It’s thought provoking; there’s thought behind it… If you take those lyrics and you pull them away from the music and put ‘em on the wall somewhere and someone had to look at them, they would say, ‘This is genius. This is genius work,” and if Lotus doesn’t deserve that spot on the wall, no album does. —Gavyn Green [AWAL/Age 101]

MARINA: PRINCESS OF POWER

The anchor to the present on PRINCESS OF POWER is “CUNTISSIMO,” an instant career highlight for MARINA. Pulsing with confidence via indifference, the single delights in amorous trips to Lake Como, puffing on luxury cigarettes, and blowing off exes. Perhaps there’s no better (or more bluntly-spoken) reminder that decadent thrills can continue throughout adulthood and do not, in fact, shrivel up and disintegrate past your mid-30s. It’s far easier, though, to notice where MARINA retreats into girlish frames of mind. Directly preceding the champagne-swilling “CUNTISSIMO” is the first single “BUTTERFLY,” which drew some criticism for its cloying, childlike chorus. “Yeah, I’m a butterfly / You just never see my energy,” she sings on a pitched-to-heaven chorus, effectively merging the interests of 8-year-olds and people who post their crystal collections on Instagram. A similar sickly-sweet tone saturates the bridge of “FINAL BOSS” and punctuates the title track, which peppers its post-chorus with squeals of “Big love! Big aura!” These twee twists are like snaps of bubblegum in your face; a brash, acquired taste, but ultimately a sugar high worth chasing. Elsewhere, playful flourishes of lace and lust rekindle the naivete and untamed sensuality of MARINA’s Electra Heart era. “JE NE SAIS QUOI” traipses around cabaret-esque pop, worshiping a crush at the level of a lovestruck teen (who else would say “You’re hotter than God” unironically?). Infatuation surfaces again on the ballad “HELLO KITTY,” which claws at camp, but whose wordplay never quite scratches the itch for kitsch. —Victoria Wasylak [Queenie Records]

Read: “On PRINCESS OF POWER, MARINA Blurs Her Age Amidst a Kaleidoscope of Vibrant Synth-Pop”

McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive!

Magic, Alive! is McKinley Dixon’s fifth album, and it’s also the biggest risk he’s taken yet—a collection of tracks always flirting with overproduction and clutter. The music is brimming with orchestration; it’s not “everything but the kitchen sink,” but “everything and the kitchen table.” Dixon isn’t afraid to add more voices and hands into his musical soup, and each song is an elixir of jazz-rap, with pockets layered in chain-link grandeur. Every chapter of Magic, Alive! is bigger than him, yet his verses focus on the micro with historical hip-hop citations, literary allusions, and horror films metabolized into heady sonic palettes. Like the illustrations he animates in his spare time, the rarely-pedantic Dixon meticulously sketches expressions of people he both knows and imagines. His lyrical fascinations with mythology are decorated in rare and endangered fits of orchestral patterns; the noisy percussion, mechanical poetry, and blood-boiling strings haunt the magic Dixon is chasing in the epilogue of Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?’s block-bending cynicism but never smear it. As he raps on “Listen Gentle”: “It’s tragic, trying to keep my kindness in my steps with lightning in my eyes.” Dixon sinks his teeth into the Magic, Alive! story on “We’re Outside, Rejoice!,” as he summons a concrete pastoral again but doesn’t wear out its meaning. There are far too many front doors still unopened on his turf to stop painting the neighborhood just yet. A tint of blue washes over the brotherhood at the song’s core: “I love laying with you here in the grass, feels like it was just us in the worlds that passed.” Dixon speaks in Toni Morrison titles while seeking redemption and clinging to memories the bodies around him have sung into life. “My face inhales the sun, grab your hand with no plan then we run!” Magic, Alive! is a conceptual, allegorical achievement—a story of three young kids whose friend passes away, the monuments they build in his memory, and the lives they’d kill themselves to restore. —Matt Mitchell [City Slang]

Read: “McKinley Dixon Finds His Wings in the Bombast of Magic, Alive!”

Pulp: More

The most insistent, stirring moments on More came fittingly with its two advance singles, as the existential, propulsive “Spike Island” did the heavy lifting of reassuring any fans worried about the quality of a new record after so long away right off the bat. It’s an undeniable pop song-cum-pep-talk, seeing Cocker promise himself that “this time, I’ll get it right,” though he makes sure to remind us of the same fact in turn, in case we still hold any reservations. “I was born to perform, it’s a calling,” he intones, before adding a self-deprecating shrug, like he’s caught himself with his feet not touching the ground, “I exist to do this: shouting and pointing.” By the time he’s backed by the galloping thump of “Got to Have Love,” he’s fully locked into barn-burner mode, and you can envision the way he will shout and point to its groove, as only he can. “My Sex,” an album track which the band also debuted on tour last year, feels apiece with the singles as it slinks over searing guitar lines and near-spectral backing vocals. It winks as much as peak-popularity-Pulp in their most playful moments: “My sex Is an urban myth / A lovers’ tiff or a lover stiff / I haven’t got an agenda / I haven’t even got a gender.” Yet, the most satisfying stretch of the record begins with the trotting shuffle of “Tina,” an ode to seemingly every woman Cocker has been intrigued by but never approached, which builds a galaxy around quotidian observations on a commute, as the best Pulp songs do. Strings swell as a group of backing vocals sigh that given name after Cocker calls it out, as if they’re playing the role of the last remnant of her scent when she gets off the train at her stop. From there, “Grown Ups” sprawls in a Kinksian shuffle which the band’s musicians expertly rise to and retreat from over rambling spoken word verses, panicking to make sense of adult life’s chaos—no more linear than childhood, only supplanted with new concerns and obsessions. —Elise Soutar [Rough Trade]

Read: “Pulp Play the Hits and Sweeten the Misses on Comeback Record More“

Turnstile: NEVER ENOUGH

Generally speaking, NEVER ENOUGH presents Turnstile at their most tempered. The Hayley Williams- and Dev Hynes-featuring “SEEIN’ STARS” demonstrates their self-restraint: the knowledge of when to hold back paired with a canny understanding of how to inject some edge into a nu-disco tune, of which there are many contemporary analogs. Throwing in an arena-rock solo from lead guitarist Pat McCrory and groovy bassline from Franz Lyons will certainly do the trick. It also helps that “BIRDS,” potentially the closest they get to good ‘ol hardcore on here, comes directly after it. Even the certified rippers come with some downtime, like the sweaty cool that follows an intense mosh pit, a needed respite after the high-octane adrenaline rush. “BIRDS” is an outlier in the sense that its energy is self-contained. “DULL” and “SUNSHOWER,” on the other hand, take detours from their heavy starting points into various aural terrains. The former charts a course from headbanging hardcore into their version of musique concrète. The latter begins with drummer Daniel Fang’s blistering double-time that’d be right at home on Nonstop Feeling, only to find itself at a New Age endpoint with washes of synth ambience and spiritual jazz flute. Both tracks are apt theses for NEVER ENOUGH as a whole. They’re also microcosms for the State of Turnstile, hardcore’s most famous exports who don’t view punk’s ethos as a rigid rulebook but as a canvas to experiment freely. If NEVER ENOUGH makes anything clear, it’s that Turnstile refuse to be limited by their roots. —Grant Sharples [Roadrunner]

Read: “Bigger Than They’ve Ever Been, Turnstile Aim For the Stratosphere on NEVER ENOUGH”

Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Lateral / Luminal; Caamp: Copper Changes Color; Carmen Perry: Eyes Like a Mirror; Cynthia Erivo: I Forgive You; Finn Wolfhard: Happy Birthday; Gunnar: Sun Faded; Landlady: Make Up / Lost Time; Lil Wayne: Tha Carter VI; Options: Beast Mode; Phoebe Rings: Aseurai; Purelink: Faith; Seth McFarlane: Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements; The Doobie Brothers: Walk This Road; The Ting Tings: Home; WAVVES: SPUN