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 and EPs from Lana Del Rey; Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily; Depeche Mode; Rosalía & Rauw Alejandro; Icecoldbishop; Navy Blue; Angel Bat Dawid; Jpegmafia & Danny Brown; Ben Sloan; and 6lack. 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.)
Lana Del Rey: Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd [Interscope]
Nine albums in, Lana Del Rey is continuing her jittery journey into uncharted territory, wending between tradition and pop’s outer reaches. Her broader and looser sound is in evidence on the dreamy, roiling title track and standout song “A&W,” a freewheeling folk-trap ballad that samples music from Del Rey’s own Norman Fucking Rockwell! Father John Misty, Jon Batiste, Tommy Genesis, and, of course, Jack Antonoff contributed to the album. Read the Best New Music review of Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
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Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile [Verve]
For Love in Exile, the singer-songwriting sensation Arooj Aftab joined forces with jazz royalty Vijay Iyer (who plays piano and electronics) and veteran session musician Shahzad Ismaily on bass and synthesizer. The trio’s debut record pairs Aftab’s Urdu vocals with beguiling, entrancing musical inventions, as heard on the single “To Remain/To Return.” As Iyer poetically said of the song in press materials, “I hear Shahzad and myself establishing these haunted cycles, then slowly and delicately transforming them, as Arooj glides across like a dark moon.”
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Depeche Mode: Memento Mori [Columbia]
In the six years since Depeche Mode’s last album, the UK synthpop giants have covered Bowie, been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and released an Anton Corbijn–directed documentary focused, in part, on their mysterious allure to fans in communist countries past and present. Now, their follow-up to 2017’s Spirit is here. Its announcement was bittersweet, following the news of founding member Andy “Fletch” Fletcher’s death. “After Fletch’s passing, we decided to continue as we’re sure this is what he would have wanted, and that has really given the project an extra level of meaning,” Martin Gore said in press materials.
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Rosalía & Rauw Alejandro: RR EP [Columbia]
RR is a three-song EP from Spanish pop phenom Rosalía and Puerto Rican reggaeton star Rauw Alejandro—who are also dating. Each song on the project is co-produced by Dylan Patrice, El Zorro, Noah Goldstein, and Rosalía.
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Icecoldbishop: Generational Curse [Epic]
Los Angeles artist Icecoldbishop began rapping when he was 8, eventually throwing down his glove in local rap battles and naming himself in homage to local legends Ice Cube and Ice-T. By 2017, he had a viral hit with “Porch,” and he has since been tapped to collaborate with the likes of Boldy James, the Alchemist, Kenny Beats, and Rico Nasty. Now, he has issued his major label debut, Generational Curse, a meditation on systemic trauma passed down within families and communities. The song “D.A.R.E.” addresses cyclical drug use, and the album “is essentially stories from a cursed generation,” Icecoldbishop said in press materials. “Nobody has ever figured out how to stop the bullshit from happening from one generation to the next. It’s ongoing.”
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Navy Blue: Ways of Knowing [Def Jam]
Ways of Knowing is Navy Blue’s first streamable album since releasing his standout 2021 LP Navy’s Reprise and, soon after, producing Wiki’s Half God. Led by “Chosen,” the Brooklyn rapper-producer’s Def Jam debut follows three records that got physical-only releases last year: Gift of Gabriel: Rain’s Reign!; Crypt of Carlos: Onward!; and Arc of Atreyu: Neverending! The new record, as vitally personal as ever, is an attempt to elevate and transcend depression and generational trauma, he said in press materials: “I can transmute my grief into something more. I don’t need to be in a state of excavation all the time.”
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Angel Bat Dawid: Requiem for Jazz [International Anthem]
Angel Bat Dawid’s follow-up to her revelatory 2020 live album draws inspiration from The Cry of Jazz, a 1959 film that links jazz history with documentary footage of Chicago’s Black neighborhoods. The jazz composer, clarinetist, and singer weaves together a critique of racial politics with samples from the movie and musical abstractions from a revolving 15-piece band and four-person choir, who collectively create a 12-movement suite. Among the contributors are Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott, whose late bandleader Sun Ra appeared in the original documentary.
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Jpegmafia & Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes [AWAL]
Somehow, left field MCs Jpegmafia and Danny Brown had collaborated only sparingly before “Lean Beef Patty,” the lead single from their first joint album, Scaring the Hoes. The rappers have been teasing the project for over a year, with fans anticipating a collaboration for even longer. The album includes the recently released title track, as well as an appearance from young artist Redveil on “Kingdom Hearts Key.” Certain titles reference big-name artists—some revered, others maligned (see: “Shut Yo Bitch Ass Up / Muddy Waters,” “Run the Jewels,” and “Jack Harlow Combo Meal”).
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Ben Sloan: Muted Colors [New Amsterdam]
Muted Colors is the debut album from Ben Sloan, a percussionist, producer, and visual artist who has worked with the National, Moses Sumney, Beth Orton, and others. The spectral, collaged full-length features some of Sloan’s prior collaborators, such as Sumney, Serengeti, Liz and Josiah Wolf of Why?, and Felicia Douglass of Dirty Projectors. In a press release, Sloan referred to Muted Colors as “an abstracted diary” in which “each track is a vignette. A little colorful, sensational world to briefly indulge.” Sloan toyed with the album’s 10 songs for nearly a decade, splicing samples, voice memos, and field recordings together in vivid tableaus.
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6lack: Since I Have a Lover [LVRN/Interscope]
Since I Have a Lover is 6lack’s first full-length since 2018’s East Atlanta Love Letter. The Atlanta-born artist announced the new LP with the title track and a music video directed by Andrew Donoho. In a press release, 6lack said the single “is the highs of having a healthy love, compressed into song format.” He continued: “It’s a note to self, that I’m no longer who I was or where I was, and that there’s a bigger purpose starting to reveal itself in the things I create. We are simply pushing love, because it’s needed.” In between longer projects, 6lack released his 6pc Hot EP in June 2020.
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