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Brix Smith: Valley of the Dolls
New album: Fizzing with energy, a blistering album of feisty brilliance à la Hole or Breeders, this is possibly the ex-Fall and The Extricated singer’s finest work yet, a debut solo LP featuring a female supergroup that includes My Bloody Valentine’s Deb Googe on bass
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Pozi’s new LP Smiling Pools
New album: Minimalist yet expansive, restlessly upbeat with a dark undertone, a second wonderfully fresh, innovative and alternative indie LP by the drums, violin and bass trio of Toby Burroughs, Rosa Brook, and Tom Jones
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Madison McFerrin: I Hope You Can Forgive Me
New album: Smooth, dreamy, ethereally beautiful soul, trip-hop, R&B low-key gospel and electro-pop in this entrancing debut LP by Brooklyn singer and the daughter of Bobby (Don’t Worry, Be Happy) McFerrin, whose style is very different to her jazz vocalist father
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Desert meets country: Tinariwen’s Amatssou
New album: A fabulous new release by the north Mali nomadic group whose distinctive Tuareg Saharan desert blues is beautifully combined with a country style, with added pedal steel and violin, and a title that is is Tamashek for ‘Beyond The Fear’
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Rahill: Flowers At Your Feet
New album: Cool, stylishly original trip-hop, jazz, alt-rock and pop by the New York Iranian-American singer-songwriter Rahill Jamalifard on a deeply personal release which also includes guests Beck and Jasper Marsalis
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Alison Goldfrapp: The Love Invention
New album: Working without Will Gregory for the first time in her 25-year career, Alison strikes out with catchy breathy bangers of synth disco and electro-pop with help from producers Richard X and James Greenwood (aka Ghost Culture)
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James Howard: Peek-a-Boo
New album: Like a slow caress of wry beauty, a deliciously paced alt-folk-Americana debut by the English producer and multi-instrumentalist with a collection aptly described as 'twinkling like a glitterball in an abandoned dancehall’
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Cloth: Secret Measure
New album: Gently spun, delicately understated and cleverly crafted, dreamy, angular guitar pop-rock with a light touch of synths from the Glasgow twins Rachael and Paul Swinton
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Fatoumata Diawara: London KO
New album: The Mali star returns with an third LP, mixing Afro-futurism and feminism wassoulou traditions and western, but also celebrating her links the UK and and collaborations, notably with co-producer Damon Albarn, and other guest including Angie Stone and Roberto Fonseco
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BC Camplight: The Last Rotation of Earth
New album: Sublimity and tragedy meet once again in this brilliantly beautiful, darkly humorous sixth album by Manchester-based US singer-songwriter Brian Christinzio, charting his latest disaster – after nine years, the sudden breakup with his fiancée
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Comfort: What's Bad Enough?
New album: Truly original and arresting cross-genre electronica-postpunk-hip-hop by the Glasgow sibling duo of vocalist and transwoman Natalie and instrumentalist brother Sean McGhee who challenge gender norms and ideas of beauty
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The Lemon Twigs’ fourth LP, Everything Harmony
New album: Rolling back the years to classic 70s Laurel Canyon songwriting with echoes of the Byrds and Beach Boys, the multi-talented New York brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario return with a fourth that’s perhaps their best since 2016 debut Do Hollywood
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Durand Jones: Wait Til I Get Over
New album: After three acclaimed albums with band The Indications, the Louisiana singer returns with a fantastic solo LP, themed around his hometown of Hillaryville, and packed with beautiful, powerful soul numbers of grit, melancholy, joy and defiance
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The Orb - Prism
New album: The veteran dance music and ambient noise duo still with co-founder Alex Paterson return with a vibrant release of cosmic electronica, dub and reggae, house, drum n’ bass, guest vocalists plus newscaster and other sampled voices
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Susanne Sundfør: Blómi
New album: Strange and strikingly beautiful, the sixth album by the Norwegian singer-songwriter is a mix of classic 70s piano-pop and alternative folk, with echoes everything from Karen Carpenter to Rufus Wainwright
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GoGo Penguin: Everything Is Going To Be OK
New album: An evocative, imaginative, cinematic ninth LP by the inventive Manchester experimental jazz trio this time with track ideas first utilising electronica turned into their vibrant acoustic playing of interweaving piano, drums and bass
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Tiny Ruins: Ceremony
New album: Gorgeously intricate, beautifully paced experimental folk comes in this fourth LP by the band of New Zealand’s Hollie Fullbrook, with songs that are poignant, melancholy, but also intelligently uplifting
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Skinny Pelembe: Hardly The Same Snake
New album: The eclectic experimentalist from Doncaster, aka Doya Beardmore, with roots also in Birmingham and Mozambique, comes up with a powerful, visceral new LP, spanning indie, avant-pop, hip-hop, rock, electronica, gospel and soaring soul
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Avalon Emerson’s new LP: & The Charm
New album: The San Francisco-born, Arizona-raised DJ and producer’s debut LP, after 2020’s Rotting Hills EP, is indeed a charm, one of dreamy electro-pop, not the first or last to be influenced by Cocteau Twins, but one also with lots of oddball originality and vivid, photography-like lyrics
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Nabihah Iqbal: Dreamer
New album: The London electronica artists and DJ, formerly known as Throwing Shade, brings a mix of dancefloor with the dream-like, sensual, breathy and ethereal, with echoes sometimes of Cocteau Twins, but also of New Order
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