Danny L Harle: Cerulean
February 13
On his first album in five years, Danny L Harle continues to plunder pure aural ecstasies of dancefloors past and drag them kicking and screaming into the 2020s. In a collider of trance, progressive techno, and various rave tendrils, the British producer draws guests including Caroline Polachek, PinkPantheress, Oklou, Dua Lipa, and Clairo into a dance-pop maelstrom inspired, he says, by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, the video game series Dark Souls, and late Renaissance composers like Claudio Monteverdi and Thomas Tallis. —Jazz Monroe
Daphni: Butterfly
February 6
Dan Snaith’s first Daphni album in four years presents multiple new personalities to live under his Caribou alter-ego. “Daphni music is still music that I’m making primarily for the purpose of playing in my DJ sets,” Snaith says of the Cherry follow-up in press materials. “The majority of the tracks on this record I do play regularly in my sets. But then there are a bunch—slower, weirder—that I don’t usually play… or wait… maybe the point is that I’d only play them in the right club.” Butterfly, in a sense, is an invitation to that club—a portal into a carnival in the deepest recesses of his, and your own, mind. —Jazz Monroe
Death Grips
TBA
“The Writing and recording of our next album is underway,” Stefan “MC Ride” Burnett and Zach Hill wrote on Instagram this past November, alongside pictures of an empty recording studio. “We’re looking forward to the new Death Grips record.” Needless to say, so is every music nerd on the internet considering the band’s most recent album of experimental glitch rap, Year of the Snitch, came out way back in 2018. —Nina Corcoran
Dry Cleaning: Secret Love
January 9
“Don’t give up on being sweet,” a line from the closer of Dry Cleaning’s Secret Love, would ordinarily sound like a too-strong dose of indie-pop naivety. Paired with the droll paranoia and sinister, scrappy riffs of the south London band’s third album, it sounds more like the desperate cry of a revolutionary at the gallows. Amid the record’s sly hooks and Cate Le Bon-produced adornments, Florence Shaw fills Secret Love with unimpressed assessments of capitalist bloodlust and manosphere encroachment, each observed with a twist of deadpan wit and a gallows laugh. —Jazz Monroe
GENA (Liv.e & Karriem Riggins): The Pleasure is Yours
February 27
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Karriem Riggins is one of music’s most versatile drummers, blending elements of jazz, hip-hop, and soul into warm, unshakeable grooves. Liv.e is a wiry, shapeshifting vocalist behind 2023’s acclaimed Girl in the Half Pearl. On The Pleasure is Yours, the duo’s first official album as GENA—the name is both an acronym (“God Energy, Naturally Amazing”) and a reference to Gina, the character Tisha Campbell played on ‘90s sitcom Martin)—the two artists’ styles fit together like jagged puzzle pieces. —Alex Suskind
Geologist: Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?
January 30
Geologist aka Brian Weitz has spent decades recording and performing with Animal Collective and releasing one-off projects (like last year’s collaborative album A Shaw Deal); now, he’s set to release his first proper solo album. The record foregrounds the unique and underutilized instrument known as the hurdy-gurdy and promises a psych-y, eclectic, improvisational kaleidoscope of sound. (It’s also got an impeccable title, named after a phrase Weitz estimates he said “once a day for probably four thousand days in a row” before giving up the habit.) Recorded at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studio, it also features a wide range of contributors—notably, Weitz’s Animal Collective bandmate Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) and his son, Merrick Weitz. —Marissa Lorusso
Gorillaz: The Mountain
February 27
For their ninth studio album, Gorillaz once again turn to a slate of collaborators for inspiration and guest verses, populating the fictional world of its cartoon characters with real-life depth and personality. The Mountain boasts everyone from Sparks on “The Happy Dictator” to Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey on “Damascus,” along with appearances from Dennis Hopper, Johnny Marr, Idles, Kara Jackson, Bobby Womack, Black Thought, and Anoushka Shankar. As that diverse assortment of guests suggests, the album ranges widely in sound and word, with lyrics in Arabic, English, Hindi, Spanish, and Yoruba. Propped up on the peak of the namesake mountain, Gorillaz look out at the world and try to decipher what’s coming up the trail. —Nina Corcoran
Faces
TBA
Fifty-three years is a long-ass time to wait between albums but ‘70s rock staples Faces—who initially disbanded in 1975 and have performed sporadically over the years—promise they still have the juice. Remaining members Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, and Kenney Jones have been writing together on and off since 2020, with Stewart telling the Telegraph in 2021 that the band had recorded some “extremely worthy songs” (“We will get it finished, I promise” he said, about a new record. “No other band sounds like us.”) Jones followed Stewart’s pledge with a 2025 confirmation that Faces had recorded 11 new tracks, most of which will appear on the next album. —Alex Suskind
Flea
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Flea seems like the kind of guy who would already have a half-dozen solo releases under his belt. But the forthcoming album from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist is actually his first. Lead single “A Plea” blends Flea’s slap-heavy bass riffs and peppy trumpet section with lyrics about America’s sordid affairs: “Is the ugly coming, and the guns? (Civil War, Civil War) / Is the army coming, blotting out the sun? (Civil War, Civil War).” Still, Flea maintains he has no interest in “the act of politics.” “I think there is a much more transcendent place above it,” he said in a statement, “where there’s discourse to be had that can actually help humanity, and actually help us all to live harmoniously and productively in a way that’s healthy for the world.” —Alex Suskind
Heavenly: Highway to Heavenly
February 27
Some three decades after their last LP, Heavenly are back with an album to prove their sporadic reunion tours are good for more than a nostalgia kick. In accordance with the twee-pop rulebook written in their past life as C86 darlings Talulah Gosh, Highway to Heavenly summons a whirlwind of romantic glee and righteous rage to combat a new wave of macho orthodoxy. “Scene Stealing” laments manosphere influencers; “Press Return” derides triumphalist technocrats; and the album at large makes the case that, while the heroes and villains have different names, the passions that fueled the band’s golden era still blaze as bright as ever. —Jazz Monroe
Jessie Ware
TBA
Jessie Ware’s fittingly titled That! Feels Good! was stacked with enough disco grooves and triumphant hooks to fuel a Studio 54 reboot. Here’s what we know about the follow-up: It features Barney Lister and Karma Kid; Ware’s friend Coleman Domingo has heard some of it, and track number 12 sounds like “Minnie Riperton decided to walk in another Garden of Eden” and “Gollum [but] slightly more attractive.” I have no idea what Ware means by that so we’ll just have to wait and see if she returns to her dancefloor comfort zone or pivots elsewhere. —Alex Suskind
Jill Scott: To Whom This May Concern
February 13
Before she took a decade-long break from music, Jill Scott was releasing some of the century’s most confident R&B, ushering in a new era for the genre and paving the way for everyone from SZA to Summer Walker. On “Beautiful People,” the first taste of Scott’s long-awaited new album, the Philly native dips back into her early-era spoken-word delivery to describe a kind of love that conquers all (“Our love is bigger than time or race / Our love canceled mountains”). —Alex Suskind
Joyce Manor: I Used to Go to This Bar
January 30
Pop-punk is the genre of youth—until, eventually, it isn’t. As Joyce Manor stare down the end of their 30s, they’re savoring every last drop of rambunctiousness and flippancy through an increasingly opaque lens of nostalgia. Though I Used to Go to This Bar is despondent in title, the trio’s seventh full-length album is playfully irreverent and chipper, continuing the feel-good riffs that have steadily defined their nearly 20-year-long run. Produced by Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz and following 2022’s 40 oz. to Fresno, Joyce Manor’s latest effort suggests youth doesn’t have to be wasted on the young. —Nina Corcoran
Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic
January 16
Tragic Magic is a work of “musical telepathy,” says Julianna Barwick of her latest collaboration with the harpist Mary Lattimore. Recording in Paris after leaving Los Angeles during the devastating 2025 wildfires, the duo amassed analog synths and harps from the Musée de la Musique collection, composing songs that by turns harness the epic scale of classical and choral music, the tingling textural play of ambient, and, in the Vocoder-spangled rush of highlight “Stardust,” something akin to analog space pop. Also among the seven songs are a response to the wildfires, “Melted Moon”; a vaguely medieval set piece composed by Roger Eno (“Temple of the Winds”); and a disarmingly earthy cover of Vangelis’ “Rachel’s Song.” —Jazz Monroe
KMRU: Kin
Prolific sound artist Joseph Kamaru sent the demo for Peel—his 2020 collection of nervy, cavernous field recordings—to three record labels. Only one, Editions Mego, replied. This year, Kamaru makes his official return to the innovative imprint with Kin, a six-track release he began recording in 2021, in his native Kenya. The idea behind Kamaru’s second Mego drop initially came from conversations with the label’s founder Peter Rehberg about what a Peel sequel might sound like. But Kin promises a turn toward something knottier, like its first offering, “With Trees Where We Can See,” an enveloping hug of drone fuzz. —Alex Suskind
Ladytron: Kingdom Undersea
March 20
Electroclash is back. Well, sort of. The new album from Y2K stalwarts Ladytron—best known for the immutable 2002 single “Seventeen”—has far more in common with Pet Shop Boys or their namesake Roxy Music than it does the likes of Fischerspooner. Paradises’ grand, new romantic pop accomplishes something far more impressive than easy nostalgia-baiting: meaningful artistic growth for a group who, over two decades into their lifespan, could’ve coasted into one-hit wonder status several times over. —Walden Green
Lana Del Rey: Stove
Not every Lana Del Rey album announcement is a serious proposition; here’s looking at you, Rock Candy Sweet and White Hot Forever. Now we have Stove, previously known as Lasso and then The Right Person Will Stay. Hopefully, there will be at least one song inspired by Del Rey’s alligator tour guide husband. –Walden Green
Lucinda Williams: World’s Gone Wrong
January 23
Lucinda Williams, who once took six years between albums in the mid-1990s, is currently in the midst of an unprecedented late-career streak. World’s Gone Wrong forgoes the rollicking E Street shuffles and actual Springsteen features of 2023’s Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart in favor of roots rock, blues, and dirt-caked road songs. That Williams continues to go toe-to-toe with her idols—for example, duetting with Mavis Staples on a cover of Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World”—is simply the latest proof that she deserves to be counted among them. —Walden Green
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Madonna: Confessions on a Dance Floor Part 2
TBA
Confessions on a Dancefloor stands as the last great Madonna album, so a prospective sequel will carry with it the hopes and dreams of anyone who’s spent the last 20 years burning prayer candles with her face on them. To her credit, Madge has retraced her own steps by reuniting with Stuart Price, who produced the original Confessions. If and when Confessions on a Dancefloor 2 materializes, only then will we know for sure whether it’s a fifth-decade career coup or just another Hard Candy. —Walden Green
Makthaverskan: Glass and Bones
April 3
Makthaverskan have plugged their guitars right back into their hearts for the follow-up to 2021’s För Allting. Still overspilling with ferocious melancholy, vocalist Maja Milner hoists the beloved Gothenburg alt-rockers out of post-punk lows and into raptures of jangle-pop joy, as on lead single “Pity Party,” about a love so volatile it threatens to immolate your identity. As is the band’s custom, the lyrics might evoke despair, but the furnace of hooks and harmonies suggests total emotional overload is its own kind of salvation. —Jazz Monroe
Mandy, Indiana: Urgh
February 6
The Manchester and Berlin-based musicians behind Mandy, Indiana know the allure of a French accent could make just about anyone succumb to immense pressure, pain, or pleasure. Above distorted, wailing guitars and thundering electronic beats, they used their 2023 debut I’ve Seen a Way to reveal it feels good, actually, to fall under that spell of the pursuer. On Urgh, the quartet amp up that post-punk paranoia and flick on the strobe lights, turning the cramped space into a cacophonous lair where even vocalist Valentine Caulfield’s hollering will spike your skin with goosebumps. “If you hide/You won’t escape me,” she sings in French on lead single “Magazine.” Let the hunt begin. —Nina Corcoran
Massive Attack
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Despite not putting out any new music since 2020, Massive Attack have seen their star rise throughout this decade. Chalk it up in part to the Gen-Z trip-hop revival, and in part to the band’s willingness to put their money where their mouth is politically. Last year, they joined the exodus of artists leaving Spotify in protest of its CEO’s investments in military AI tech, as well as the ongoing No Music for Genocide cultural boycott of Israel. “From next year we will release a cache of work created in the recent past,” Massive Attack wrote on social media in November. Further details remain scant, but if you’re planning to stream the album, a switch to Apple Music may be in order. —Walden Green
Megadeth: Megadeth
January 23
Megadeath’s origin story is thrash-metal folklore: After getting fired from Metallica, singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine founded his own pioneering rock outfit. Forty years later, the flying V-wielding frontman has decided to break the band up after one final album and tour. “We have done something together that’s truly wonderful and will probably never happen again,” he said in a statement. Megadeath’s last release, the self-titled Megadeath, includes some gnarly cover art starring mascot Vic Rattlehead; the fittingly shred-heavy “Let There Be Shred”; and a full-circle cover of Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning,” the 1984 single Mustaine has a co-writing credit on. —Alex Suskind
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Morrissey
TBA
Leave it to Moz to make news without new music. Since his most recent album, 2020’s I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, the singer-songwriter was dumped by BMG, claimed he was selling the rights to the Smiths, and cancelled shows due to online death threats and his own medical issues. He also had to shelve two completed albums—Bonfire of Teenagers and You’re Right, It’s Time—though at least one appears to finally be on the verge of release. After signing with Sire Records in December, Morrissey shared a tracklist to an untitled project without further comment. Whether the songs are from one of the already-announced LPs or a different one remains to be seen. —Alex Suskind
The New Pornographers
TBA
Last spring, the New Pornographers were nearing completion of their 10th album when their recent drummer, Joe Seiders, was arrested for and pled guilty to felony possession of child pornography. The Canadian indie rock supergroup immediately kicked Seiders out of the band and reached out to revered session musician Charley Drayton to remake Seiders’ previously recorded drum parts. Bandleader A.C. Newman describes the follow-up to 2023’s Continue as a Guest as a “narrative-driven” story that deals with accepting loss, ranging from a friend’s death to American democracy. Newman never undermined Seiders’ horrific charges, but he did realize how the album’s themes beat him to the jump of that reckoning. As Newman put it to Rolling Stone, “It was dark, weird, and confusing… So when this happened, there was a part of me that went, ‘Of course this shit is happening. Why would something good happen?’” —Nina Corcoran
Nothing: A Short History of Decay
February 27
When someone writes the book on shoegaze and dream-pop, A Short History of Decay would be a great title. On their fifth album, Philadelphia’s Nothing packs in the tremolo, breakbeats, and swooning, My Bloody Valentine-shaped melodies. Still, it’s frontman Domenic Palermo’s gore-laden lyrics that cut through the haze, a tether to both his own struggles with substance abuse and to the emo and hardcore scenes of his home city. —Walden Green
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Olivia Rodrigo
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Olivia Rodrigo may not have announced, formally teased, or really told us anything at all about her Guts follow-up, but you’d better believe it’s coming. The barest of hints—like her onstage giveaway of her G-U-T-S rings at her tour’s final concert, signaling the era was well and truly over—had already sent the stan hive mind into overdrive, even before she told Nylon, in a recent interview, that she was “having a lot of fun dreaming things up” for a “busy year” in 2026. Plentiful other allusions suggest the wait may not be too painful; the long breadcrumb trail, sprinkled throughout 2025, gives the impression OR3 is just waiting to burst out of her. —Jazz Monroe
Paula Kelley: Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out
March 27
A founding member of Drop Nineteens, Paula Kelley rejoined the Boston shoegaze band in 2023, when they parlayed TikTok virality into a comeback and a new album—their first in 30 years. Kelley’s first solo LP since 2003 is, likewise, of another time; she described the record’s lead single, “Party Line,” as “Spiritualized with Telescopes doing the vocals.” Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out could pass for a long-lost twee pop LP dug out of a milk crate: a little dusty, but not the least bit dated. —Walden Green
Peaches: No Lube So Rude
February 20
“I’m a horny little fucker,” Peaches declares on “Fuck Your Face,” the lead single from her first album in over a decade. Talk about an understatement. Other track titles on No Lube So Rude, her Kill Rock Stars debut, include “Hanging Titties,” “Fuck How You Wanna Fuck,” and the less explicit yet somehow more vulgar “Panna Cotta Delight.” Peaches’ return to music coincides with a cultural moment that’s desperate for a shock to the system, and she’s just the service top for the job. —Walden Green
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Peaer: doppelgänger
January 16
After nearly seven years, New York-based songwriter Peter Katz and his band return with doppelgänger. The group—which also includes bassist Thom Lombardi and drummer Jeremy Kinney—broke through with its third album, 2019’s A Healthy Earth: a clever, math-y indie-rock meditation on quotidian indignities. 2020 lockdowns caused an unintended hiatus, but Katz eventually found himself returning to and refining his songwriting. The resulting record contains ideas from the band’s earliest days that sit along recent compositions: “It really feels like a different person wrote the first song versus the last song,” Katz has said. “In some ways that is what [doppelgänger] is about: Literally changing over time, then looking back to see how different you were.” —Marissa Lorusso
Peter Gabriel: o/i
December
Peter Gabriel continues his inquiry into various future fascinations on O\I, the mirror image of his 2023 record, I/O. Like its predecessor, the new album is being released one song at a time, each with a “Dark-Side” and “Bright-Side” version, on the full moon and new moon of each month, lining up a full album for the end of the year. Thematically, the Genesis alum says in press materials, they reckon with “a period of transition like no other, most likely triggered in three waves: AI, quantum computing, and the brain computer interface.” But the soul of the music remains Gabriel’s unfettered celebration of the mushy bits of human life. —Jazz Monroe
Ratboys: Singin’ to an Empty Chair
February 6
Not only do Chicago stalwarts Ratboys continue to fine-tune their approach to the genre with each record, they also sound increasingly inspired. Maybe the therapy exercise behind Singin’ to an Empty Chair’s title is to thank for how revitalized Ratboys sound on their sixth LP. Julia Steiner pushes herself from power-pop harmonies on “Anywhere” to frantic, pent-up yells on “Light Night Mountains All That” that land like someone fighting to regain control of their life again. Ratboys may be humble Midwesterners with good intentions, but don’t underestimate how calloused their fists are or their willingness to fight for a lasting earworm. —Nina Corcoran
Robyn
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Robyn albums take time: the Swedish pop-star’s scintillating floor-fillers are dense with the stuff of life, not to mention seemingly endless nights spent out on the dancefloor. Since the release of 2018’s Honey, she became a mother and remained a prolific collaborator, all while giving her new record, supposedly titled Sexistential, plenty of time to gestate. Recorded with her longtime collaborator Klas Åhlund, the 2025 single “Dopamine” harkened back to the chrome-plated bangers of Body Talk—as well as the woefully underrated Do It Again EP. Based on the new songs Robyn debuted at a New Year’s Eve concert, she can still capture the same high. —Walden Green
Rostam
TBA
Rostam Batmanglij made his production bones recording evocative, airy pop-rock as a member of Vampire Weekend and later for a coterie of acclaimed artists (recent credits include Carly Rae Jepsen, Samia, and Haim). But the multi-instrumentalist is a gifted solo artist in his own right, with two successful albums under his belt: 2017’s dreamy Half-Light and 2021’s jazz-inflected Changephobia. We don’t know much about Batmanglij’s just-announced third album, arriving this year, only a title (American Stories) and a hint of what’s to come (more slide guitar). —Alex Suskind
Sleaford Mods: The Demise of Planet X
January 16
Sleaford Mods survey their kingdom of the Midlands on The Demise of Planet X, asserting their triumph at the frontline of the decade-plus boom of Quietus-core UK shouter-songwriters. Lining up alongside several fellow alternative national treasures, the duo solicits a music video from Andrea Arnold and vocals from Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins on the Arab Strap-via-Neneh Cherry confection “No Touch,” and—why not?—a verse of maniacal bars from Gwendolyn Christie on the hear-it-to-believe-it lead single “The Good Life.” —Jazz Monroe
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The Soft Pink Truth: Can Such Delightful Times Go on Forever?
January 30
The title, of course, is a slice of black humor: You can count on Drew Daniel—the Soft Pink Truth main brain and one half of the electronic trickster duo Matmos—to take a sober view of the wretched state of world affairs. But, like its title, Can Such Delightful Times Go on Forever? injects a note of upside-down humor and lavish indulgence into the conversation. Presented as a queer refuge from an authoritarian and genocidal timeline, the album doubles as a showcase for a multinational array of string players, whose sighs, swells, and quivers—arranged by Daniel in a style reminiscent of the composer John Adams—lend movie-soundtrack scale to his flurrying compositions. —Jazz Monroe
Steve Lacy: Oh Yeah?
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It feels like light years since Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” ruled the summer. Now the guitarist and singer is readying his third album. The project is still mostly shrouded in mystery but in a recent Rolling Stone cover story, Lacy teased the title, Oh Yeah? (“the question mark is important,” he said) and its first single, the jungle-inspired “Nice Shoes.” He also said he would not drop another project “till yall go appreciate” his last one, Gemini Rights, so go ahead and rack up those streams now. —Alex Suskind
Sublime: Till the Sun Explodes
TBA
It sounds like a marketing exec’s nostalgia-induced fever dream: Jakob Nowell, son of late Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell, fronts his dad’s band at Coachella 2024. Thankfully, it all worked out, with Jakob sounding every bit his father’s son. Now the younger Nowell will carry on the Sublime legacy with a new album, their first release in three decades. Lead single “Ensenada” checks all the boxes: a reggae-and-ska-infused rhythm, lyrics about Southern California and strippers, the word “stoked.” As Jakob recently told People, “There’s no worse feeling than hearing a new record from a band that hasn’t released anything in a hundred years, and it’s just so different.” —Alex Suskind
