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Rounded pop sound but still with an edge: Rina Sawayama’s Hold The Girl
New album: With her 2020 debut, Sawayama, the British-Japanese singer’s career was predicted on this site to go up and up, and so it has proved with this dazzlingly strong new album of high-octane pop opowerfully voiced melodies and intelligent, candid lyrics
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The Beths’
New album: Deliciously enjoyable new album by the New Zealand indie quartet, with strong melodies, lyrics that carefully balance the melancholy, thoughtful and feelgood, not least the title track which ponders the irony of knowing in great detail someone you are no longer in a relationship with
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The Paranoyds’ second album Talk Talk Talk
New album: Catchy, clever, kooky, sassy and at time space- and sci-fi-themed, a vivaciously engaging second indie pop-garage-rock LP by the Los Angeles quartet who channel The Bangles and Devo with a wry look at the state of the world
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Sudan Archives returns with her expansive, innovative second album
New album: The scintillating second album by Ohio’s LA-based multi-instrumentalist and singer Brittney Parks showcases her innovation across hip hop, R&B, electronica, jazz and beyond with looping ingenuity, improvisation, and sharp feminist, dark lyrics about life as a black woman
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Jockstrap’s debut LP out on Rough Trade
Debut album: Wondrously wild, inventive experimental pop debut LP by the duo of Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye, whose entrancing fusion of electronica, classical strings, dance music and witty, agile sonic combinations sometimes slip playfully into reverse
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Souvenirs by Pale Blue Eyes
New album: A marriage of south Devon and Sheffield in the form of couple Matt and Lucy Broad and bassist Aubrey Simpson forms this more elevating, richly sonic indie release that has echoes of New Order, krautrock and Cabaret Voltaire electro-synth pop
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Fluid songwriting: Bret McKenzie: Songs Without Jokes
New album: A solo release by half of Flight Of The Conchords presents a challenge to escape the comedy schtick, but the New Zealander manages tuneful seriousness, particularly on eco themes, by echoing Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and Dory Previn with mix of 70s piano pop, showtunes and jazz styles
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Unloved’s third album, The Pink Album
New album: This third LP by trio behind the soundtrack to TV series Killing Eve, Belfast producer David Holmes alongside singer Jade Vincent and musician Keefus Ciancia, is a huge, sprawling cinematic 22-tracker filled with alluringly oddball, woozy, dark pop, electronica, 60s French noir and psychedelia
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Stella Donnelly: Flood
New album: Second album by the Australian brings a refreshingly simple, humorously ironic indie-pop with cutting, personal songs about relationships, provocative but honest lines metaphorical themes of the world
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New album: This third LP by the Australian artist typifies her intelligently written, nuanced, taut, intensely performed dream pop and alt-country, packed with confessional hidden narratives and subtleties, her expressive, fragile voice with stripped back accompaniment
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Laufey knows all about …
New album: An exquisite debut by the Los Angeles-based Icelandic-Chinese jazz-pop artist, whose pure voice, alongside mostly acoustic guitar or piano backing, brings a timeless collection of gentle, old-school, charming, candid, singer-songwriter love songs reminiscent of Karen Carpenter to Peggy Lee
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Ezra Furman’s superb All Of Us Flames
New album: The sixth LP by the brilliant, visceral, angelic American is perhaps the finest to date, an impassioned, tour de force, Springsteen-esque cri de coeur for the LGBTQ and Jewish communities, but also stirs hearts of all who feel oppressed or alienated
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The shapeshifting Phoebe Green
Debut album: Vibrant, inventive, mischievous pop first LP by the down-to-earth Manchester singer, whose songs offer a humorous, unpretentious twist on the usual heartbreak and love song material, and a palette of pleasingly original electro-pop beats and synth sounds
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Panic!’s irrepressible Brendon Urie
New album: “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” once remarked Queen’s Brian May, and this entertainingly over-the-top seventh LP from Brendon Urie channels that philosophy in a rock-pop extravaganza channelling the genre turned up to 11
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Hot Chip return to reach out with Freakout/Release
New album: This eighth LP by the London synth-pop band of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard and co is filled packed with Prince-inspired funk, and catchy melodies, and though not as wild as the title suggests, is still a slick, liquidly fun release that ticks the Hot Chip boxes
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Chopper by Kiwi Jr
New album: Third LP in three years after Cooler Returns and Football Money by the four-piece indie band from Toronto, with wistful, melancholy, carefully observed flighted numbers packed with images from tales of corrupt mayors, Kennedy curses, sex tapes, and deer rifles
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AHudson Mohawke: Cry Sugar
New album: A vibrantly energised otherworld, an innovative concoction of experimental electronica, trash-pop to classical, gospel, 70s soul, house and more by the prolific LA-based Glaswegian DJ and producer Ross Birchard in his fourth LP and first for seven years
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Panda Bear and Sonic Boom: Reset
New album: An ingeniously fun collaboration Animal Collective founder Noah Benjamin Lennox, English producer Peter Kember in a project that takes the intros from 1950s pop songs to create new ones with added vocals and electronica
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Fable’s debut album, Shame
Debut album: An outstanding debut of powerful, intimate songs by the English singer-songwriter Holly Cosgrove from Paignton, Devon, who, with co-writer Jonas Persson, brings an aura of innovative, tender menace with echoes of Portishead, Billie Eilish and Fiona Apple
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Max Pope: Counting Sheep
Debut album: Smooth, finely crafted, lyrically thoughtful fusions of funk, pop, bossa nova, blues, jazz and rock with a cleverly summer, lazy understated feel by the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from south London and Brighton
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