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The Tubs: Cotton Crown
New album: With a Sonic Youth-referencing title, the London-based Welsh indie quartet’s second LP, following 2023’s Dead Meat, is a short, sharp, punchy release of nine jangly, Johnny Marr-influenced guitar tracks, reflecting on love but also with a gut-wrenching, tragic finale
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Edwyn Collins: Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation
New album: A beautifully tender, reflective 10th indie pop solo album by the acclaimed Scottish singer-songwriter and former Orange Juice frontman, with strong, resonant indie numbers on life’s circularity, love, home, health and belonging
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Lady Gaga: MAYHEM
New album: Something of return to form and fun for the superstar singer and actress? Certainly this revisits something of her late 2000s Poker Face- and Bad Romance-era flamboyant, bombastic pop sound where excess and outsider oddness made her name
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Divorce: Drive To Goldenhammer
New album: With a warm, engaging sound, and beautifully crafted, intelligent songs, this excellent debut by the Nottingham indie quartet transcends genres from pop to country, Americana folk to rock with enduring passion and quality
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SASAMI: Blood On The Silver Screen
New album: Following 2022’s excellent alchemic metal and more Squeeze LP, the LA-based classically trained French horn player, singer and composer Sasami Ashworth returns with a cinematic, stylish adventure in well-crafted, mainstream-style pop, aided by producers Jenn Decilveo and Rostam
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DARKSIDE: Nothing
New album: Filled with infectious, mystifying oddball but at times brilliant grooves across a range of styles – krautrock, funk, Latin, indie, psyche, prog rock, warped pop, contemporary classical and jazz among others, this third LP by New York’s Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington sees an expansion of their eclectic experimentation now joined by drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza
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Panda Bear: Sinister Grift
New album: The ever eclectic Animal Collective, Lisbon-based frontman Noah Lennox’s first solo album for five years is an oddly reflective but rather beautiful heartbreak album, one coming out of his divorce, but rich in many styles, from Beach Boys vocal harmonies to reggae, Latin to disco, jaunty 70s pop to psychedelia
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Doves: Constellations For The Lonely
New album: A glorious sixth LP by the Manchester indie band, weathering many ups and downs, including ongoing mental health issues for lead vocalist and bass player Jimi Goodwin who is unable to tour, but despite that, summoning a powerful, dynamic, passionate work of darkness and light, and one of the best in the 25 years since their debut, Lost Souls
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IDER: Late To The World
New album: Sharp, smart, candid and sometimes lyrically caustic synth pop by the London duo Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville in this third LP that highlights many challenges of life and femininity from eating disorder to abortion rights, dodgy relationships to personal insecurity and leaving the past behind
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Albertine Sarges: Girl Missing
New album: Joy, vulnerability, wistful longing, cutting melancholy, sisterhood, resilience, and healing from grief all burst forth in this uplifting new LP by the ever inventive, eccentric, eclectic Berlin-based singer-songwriter with a distinctive experimental indie-pop here includes organs, flutes, strings and layered vocals
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Youth Lagoon: Rarely Do I Dream
New album: The idiosyncratic Idaho songwriter and producer Trevor Powers’s latest LP is a vividly cinematic, darkly humorous, dream-like release inspired by a 2023 discovery of VHS home movies documenting his childhood, and lying boxed in the basement of his parents’ house
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Sam Fender: People Watching
New album: The likeable, powerful tenor-voiced, 30-year-old singer-songwriter from North Shields has hit mainstream success, especially with his last LP, Seventeen Going Under (2021), and while this continues with a sometimes Springsteen-like style, there’s a lyrical melancholy colouring this third LP, on trappings of fame, music industry, and tales of tragedy within his northern working-class roots
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Saya Gray: SAYA
New album: Ingeniously original, eclectic debut alternative folk-pop debut by the Toronto singer-songwriter and producer, following their QWERTY and QWERTY II EPs, weaving a mix of skilfully played guitar sounds, including country pedal steel and acoustic with electronica into a beautiful vocal landscape of offbeat heartbreak love songs
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Bartees Strange: Horror
New album: A diversely eclectic, genre-hopping, powerfully emotional LP of soul, funk, hip-hop, rock, indie, country, house and pop by the Washington DC-based artist, produced by Jack Antonoff, with songs facing fears as a young young, queer, black person in rural America, and inspired by the likes of Parliament Funkadelic, Fleetwood Mac, Teddy Pendergrass, and Neil Young
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Hifi Sean and David McAlmont: TWILIGHT
New album: Twinned with last summer’s LP DAYLIGHT, the duo of Scottish musician and the English soul singer return with the darkside – an absorbing adventure from dusk to dawn, with evocative, cinematic, experimental, old-school synths and electronica and McAlmont’s extraordinary, wide-ranging voice
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Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On
New album: Minimalistic, pithy, nostalgically twangy, wistful, undersyated indie-folk-pop by the Chicago/New York trio of Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece in this second LP with a refreshing sound produced by Cate Le Bon
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Nadia Reid: Enter Now Brightness
New album: Warm, tender, thoughtfully profound, intelligent, finely crafted indie-folk with Laurel Canyon-era and Americana elements by the now Manchester-based New Zealand singer-songwriter on themes of change, motherhood, home, and heartbreak
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Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
New album: With a strong, seasoned new band, the acclaimed New Jersey singer-songwriter takes a new direction, from her more recent country and folk output, into an expansive sheen of synth, indie, rock and a hint of goth, and themes of emancipation, letting go, and relationships
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Matt Berry: Heard Noises
New album: The British comic actor, known now for 20 years, from Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place to Toast of London to What We Do In The Shadows, returns with his other great indulgent passion, as eccentric multi-instrumentalist and singer of 60s and 70s-inspired psychedelic rock and pop on this impressive 11th studio album
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Brooke Combe: Dancing At The Edge Of The World
New album: Classy, classic soul full debut LP by the young Scottish singer from Edinburgh, following 2023’s EP, Black Is the New Gold with finely controlled, mature voice and influences from the likes of Marvin Gaye, Baby Huey, and William DeVaughn
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