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Billie Marten: Dog Eared
New album: Beautiful, warm, intimate, gentle, experimental indie-folk by the singer-songwriter Isabella Tweddle from Ripon in North Yorkshire, in this delicious fifth LP, filled with love songs and nostalgic childhood memories, and following 2023’s Drop Cherries, an expansion of excellent musicians in the recording
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Gina Birch’s second solo album, Trouble
New album: The veteran Raincoats co-founder, bass player, songwriter, film-maker and feminist artist’s second solo album is a passionate, political and personal release, outspoken, but also eccentric and eclectically introspective, mixing post-punk, dub, pop and experimental rock
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Alex G: Headlights
New album: This 10th album by the Pennsylvania indie musician, producer, and singer-songwriter Alexander Giannascoli brings a mellower sound than some of his previous LPs, with often gentle, skilfully rendered guitars, dream-like, wistful and fantastical lyrics, and beautifully drawing on Americana as well as key influences Elliott Smith and Neil Young
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Disiniblud’s debut album
New album: Truly mesmeric, exquisitely beautiful, original, intimate, eclectic sounds are summoned up and simmer in this debut collaborative album project by the Brooklyn composers, producers and multi-instrumentalists Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith
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Barry Can't Swim’s second album, Loner
New album: Dance music bangers with an eclectic twist by the popular Scottish electronic musician, DJ producer aka Joshua Mainnie from Edinburgh, who with this second LP after 2023’s When Will We Land?, explores themes of identity amid the beats and clever crate-digging soul samples
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Jessica Winter: My First Album
New album: After a series of acclaimed singles, EPs and collaborations, the south London sweetly high-voiced singer-songwriter’s debut LP is fabulously sparkling, humorous, witty indie-dance-pop, packed with classy, clever tunes, touching moments of reflection, self-love and personal acceptance
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Gwenno: Utopia
New album: After three LPs looking back at her childhood upbringing, now 44, the Welsh singer-songwriter Gwenno Saunders’ polished, candid experimental fourth pop album recalls a period of young adulthood, from dancer in Las Vegas to a pub cleaner and also singer in The Pipettes in London, having adventures, experimenting and struggling with self-determination
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Africa Express Presents ... Bahidorà
New album: The collective that brought Blur’s Damon Albarn together with Malian musicians 20 years ago now assembles artists from four continents, though particularly plants the roots of this superb 21-track double album in Mexico, with a feast of numbers spanning cumbia, hip-hop, kuduro, soul, salsa, pop, reggaeton and more
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Poor Creature: All Smiles Tonight
New album: Mixing tradition and the contemporary with a transportive, striking sound and delivery, ancient, emotional elegiac folk numbers are revived and revitalised in this stirring, stylish debut LP by Irish musicians Ruth Clinton, Cormac MacDiarmada and John Dermody (from the bands Landless and Lankum respectively), produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy
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Wet Leg’s Moisturizer, with guitarist Hester Chambers (left) and singer Rhian Teasdale
New album: The award-winning Isle of Wight indie-pop band’s second album retains all of their mischievous, quirky charm, but also an evolved muscular, punchier, dirtier guitar sound in a collection of clever love songs and kick-ass kiss-offs
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The Reds, Pinks and Purples: The Past Is a Garden I Never Fed
New album: The San Francisco indie-dream-pop-shoegaze band fronted by Glenn Donaldson release a new LP of jangling guitar and beautifully wistful songs, centred around small talk and everyday water cooler moments with an mischievous but heartfelt delivery and a finely tuned sense of pathos and irony
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Half Man Half Biscuit: All Asimov And No Fresh Air
Song of the Day: The prolific indie legends of Birkenhead fronted by the rapier wit of singer-songwriter Nigel Blackwell return with their 16th LP in four gloriously ironic decades, following 2022’s The Voltarol Years
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A tasty diet of clever lyrics: Big Special’s National Average
New album: Following 2024’s LP Postindustrial Hometown Blues, the Walsall duo of Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney return with their distinctive, Midlands earthy drawl, drolly humorous, dark and oddly profound, poetic lyrics on the absurdity of life, filled with killer lines, many animal metaphors, spoken and sung to punchy post-punk and experimental sounds
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Kae Tempest: Self Titled
New album: A fifth LP by the acclaimed London writer and rapper brings further profound and passionate wordplay themed around their identity, personal story, and dark social issue themes, with a newer sometimes synth-pop sound and guests including Neil Tennant and Young Fathers
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Duo Ruut: Ilmateade
New album: A mesmeric, gorgeous new LP of experimental and traditional acoustic psych-folk songs by the Estonian duo of Ann-Lisett Rebane and Katariina Kivi, who write, sing and play facing each other, primarily on the kannel or (Estonian zither), using texts and repetitive motifs of runo song, oral poetry specific to the Baltic Finnic languages, here exploring the deep connections between weather and emotion
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Juan Wauters: MVD LUV
New album: An oddly charming, touching, gently humorous seventh LP by the Queens, NY-based singer-songwriter, returning to his birthplace of Montevideo, Uruguay, to record a tribute set of song to the place where he grew up and capturing a sense of dual identity – immigrant and native son
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BC Camplight: A Sober Conversation
New album: Witty, inventive, droll, painfully dark, self-deprecatory humour, killer lines, and timeless piano-based pop, almost showtune melodies? It can only be the latest set of classic songs by the Manchester-based American singer-songwriter Brian Christinzio, who confronts his repressed past, depression and more with his eccentric, eclectic panache
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S.G. Goodman: Planting By The Signs
New album: A third album of powerful, simmering, lyrically vivid, stripped-back folk, country and Americana by the singer-songwriter from Hickman, Kentucky, portraying stories and characters from a small town, with themes about the importance of and cycles of the natural world, and summoning a sound somewhere between Lucinda Williams and Cat Power
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Isaiah Hull: POCOMANIA
New album: The Manchester-born performance poet, rapper and self-defined “stand-up tragedian” releases a striking, distinctively styled experimental hip-hop debut with a title inspired by his heritage – meaning the Jamaican folk religion combining revivalism with ancestor worship and spirit possession
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Tropical Fuck Storm: Fairyland Codex
New album: The Melbourne quartet return with a fourth LP of unique, acerbic, eclectic post-punk and dadaistic psychedelia – droll, dark, menacing and humorous, here themed underworld of fateful characters facing the collapse of society
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