8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Caroline Polachek, Skrillex, Animal Collective’s Avey Tare, and More
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 Caroline Polachek, Skrillex, Avey Tare, Screaming Females, Nappy Nina, Runnner, Mioclono, and Hellripper. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You [Perpetual Novice]
Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, Caroline Polachek’s follow-up to 2019’s Pang is her definitive statement as a solo artist, adding puckish details and far-flung musical cues—including bagpipes on “Blood and Butter”—to her experimental pop. Her oddly addictive anthem “Bunny Is a Rider” features, as do many other post-Pang singles. On “Fly to You,” the former Chairlift singer brings along Grimes and Dido for the ride; elsewhere, the sound palette calls to mind flamenco, trip-hop, and trance. The cumulative effect, writes Cat Zhang in her review, is “like staring up at a giant fresco, the detail so exquisite you can’t decide where to rest your eyes first.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Skrillex: Quest for Fire [Owsla/Atlantic]
Skrillex teed up his first album since his 2014 debut, Recess, with a left turn: “Don’t Get Too Close,” a duet between Bibi Bourelly and Skrillex himself, departed from the marquee dubstep that made his name, mushing together freeform vocal riffs and undulating percussion into a hybrid of pop, emo, and dancefloor bliss. While it doesn’t appear on Quest for Fire, the album features an impressive array of contributors: Four Tet and Starrah (on the 2021 single “Butterflies”), Missy Elliott, Bladee, Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee, and, on two tracks, UK grime don Flowdan, among others.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Avey Tare: 7s [Domino]
7s is the latest solo album from Animal Collective’s Avey Tare, aka Dave Portner. Upon announcing the LP, Portner released two tracks from the project: “The Musical” and “Hey Bog.” 7s follows the artist’s 2019 solo work, Cows on Hourglass Pond. He followed that album with a remix of Spirit of the Beehive’s “It Might Take Some Time” and a one-off single, “Wake My Door.” Animal Collective released their most recent full-length, Time Skiff, last year. Avey Tare is taking his new solo material on the road next month.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Screaming Females: Desire Pathway [Don Giovanni]
To record their eighth studio full-length, Desire Pathway, New Jersey rockers Screaming Females decamped to Pachyderm Studios—the same Minnesota space where Nirvana laid down 1993’s In Utero. Desire Pathway marks the trio’s first LP since 2018’s All at Once and follows a 2019 collection of singles, titled Singles Too. The band issued lead single “Brass Bell” ahead of the new album. In a press release, bandleader Marissa Paternoster referred to the track as “a song about surrendering your autonomy to something so overwhelmingly powerful you willingly relinquish your ambitions and self-worth.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Nappy Nina: Mourning Due [Lucidhaus]
Mourning Due is the latest from Oakland-raised, Brooklyn-based rapper and producer Nappy Nina (aka Simone Bridges). The 14-track LP was recorded in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood between 2019 and 2022. It features appearances from Moor Mother, Mavi, Maassai, Cavalier, Stas Thee Boss, and others. Mourning Due was executive produced by Nappy Nina and Dane.Zone.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Runnner: Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out [Run for Cover]
Runnner is the indie rock project of the Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter Noah Weinman, and Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out is his debut full-length. “A lot of the songs have this narrative arc of rising tension that just leads to me not saying or doing anything,” Weinman said in a statement. “It’s like there’s a signal loss between thought and speech.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Mioclono: Cluster I [Hivern Discs]
Oriol Riverola (aka John Talabot) and Arnau Obiols are Mioclono. Their new album, Cluster I, dates back to 2016 when the electronic producers made their first recordings together at Àngel Sound Studio in Barcelona. Over the years, they continued overdubbing their tracks, culminating in the new collection.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Hellripper: Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags [Peaceville]
There is a song called “Goat Vomit Nightmare” on the Scottish black metal and speed metal band Hellripper’s new album, Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags. If that doesn’t sell you on this thing, keep moving, we don’t know what to tell you.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp