Earl has spent the past decade or so immersing himself in New York's underground rap scene, resulting in one of the most unique and unpredictable discographies of his generation.
Working in the vein of "laptop twee" acts like friends& and Worldpeace DMT, who fuse the genre-smashing maximalism promised by hyperpop with the whimsical optimism of '00s buzz bands, the material on their 2025 album Shy at first is as dense and dynamic as the songs you try to compose in your imagination.
Sometimes an audience wants to be told, what is this? And I'm refusing to do that. You can find great things in music when you open up to real listening. No one needs to be told 'what something is,' otherwise why would we be making something so straightforward? Be ready to be surprised, to find something new in music, and let the music resonate with you.
Between our daily coverage, our Notable Releases and Indie Basement columns, and our monthly punk and rap roundups, we post tons of new music all the time here on BrooklynVegan. In an effort to keep track of all the new music we're excited about, we've been posting a new playlist each week with many of the songs we love that were (mostly) released that week.
In 'Bad Moons,' the unpredictability lies not in the lyrics like usual, where Mike Kinsella admits he's 'just two little boys in a trench coat' in that languorous voice he can't shed. Instead, the lasting impression comes from his bandmates' graceful turns through delicate post-rock. Aqueous harp and piano eventually give way to a fishing net of guitars, each minimalist line woven tighter than the next.
Footballhead by Calla Flanagan Footballhead by Calla Flanagan If you like emo, grunge, and other rock subgenres of the '90s and early 2000s, you should be getting excited for Chicago band Footballheads upcoming sophomore album Weight of the Truth, which arrives March 20 via Tiny Engines (pre-order). Three singles are out from it now, including Used To Be (which we named one of the best punk & emo songs of November) and the newly-released Diversion, which you can listen to below.
Alex Ian Smith, the primary force behind the New York-based project Railings, sounds nothing like Cobain, but his voice induces similarly vicarious listening. In " Breaking the Bong," the opening track of Railings' 2017 album, ) (, he darts from guttural highs to velvety lows and then breaks into an effortlessly clear falsetto. It warrants the most preposterous-sounding comparisons: Prince meets David Lee Roth; David Thomas with the lung capacity of Benny "The Voice" Mardones.
The Hold Steady's classic third album, Boys and Girls in America, turns 20 this year, and they recently announced dates and cities for the celebrations. They've now revealed full details for the spring dates of Constructive Summer 2026. The Chicago shows are on June 11-13, with a seated "Storytellers Set" at Thalia Hall on June 11, a rock show at Empty Bottle on June 12, and an all-day outdoor show at Salt Shed Fairgrounds on June 13 with Built to Spill, Bully, and Titus Andronicus.
With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week's batch includes new albums from xaviersobased, Shackleton, and Joyce Manor. Subscribe to Pitchfork's New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week.
In the five years that they've been active, it sometimes seems as if Purelink are dissolving right before our eyes. They've never again released anything quite as corporeal or propulsive as their debut EP, which paired visceral dub techno with rolling drum'n'bass. On their 2023 debut album, , glitchy drums crackled in a pastel haze, and last year's was even more ethereal; the trio's individual identities melted together under cover of amorphous arrangements that suggested fogbanks, blizzards, and other zero-visibility conditions.
On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we're sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff's favorite new music.
When Braid broke up, guitarist/secondary vocalist Chris Broach formed The Firebird Band, and the remaining three members - frontman Bob Nanna, bassist Todd Bell, and drummer Damon Atkinson - recruited guitarist Mark Dawursk of Alligator Gun and continued on as Hey Mercedes. They recorded it with Jawbox's J. Robbins, who had also produced Braid's classic 1998 swan song Frame & Canvas, and in many ways, it picked up where Frame & Canvas left off.
What if Portishead's Dummy, Radiohead's Kid A, and Bjork's Homogenic were made today by one band on one record? It might sound something like this. London art-psych band Ulrika Spacek have always had a collage-like approach to their music, taking ideas from jam sessions and using them as raw materials for fully formed songs.
