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 projects from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Destroy Lonely, Doechii, Jon Hopkins, Coco & Clair Clair, YFG Fatso, Lia Kohl, Seefeel, Cold Gawd, and Why Bonnie. 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.)
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Wild God [PIAS]
Nick Cave is blunt in his assessment of his new Bad Seeds album, Wild God. “There’s no fucking around with this record,” he’s said. “When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” He’s also proud of the singles. “The sheer exuberance of a song like ‘Frogs,’” he exclaimed. “It just puts a big fucking smile on my face.” Set aside four and a half minutes for “Frogs,” and 40 more for the full album, to see if you, too, are grinning like the ebullient man you see pictured above.
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Destroy Lonely: Love Lasts Forever [Opium/Interscope]
Atlanta rapper and Playboi Carti apprentice Destroy Lonely announced Love Lasts Forever earlier this summer with his trappy single “Luv 4 Ya.” Now, the follow-up to last year’s If Looks Could Kill has landed, with guests including Lil Uzi Vert and Opium labelmate Ken Carson.
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Doechii: Alligator Bites Never Heal [Top Dawg Entertainment/Capitol]
Doechii released two singles, “Nissan Altima” and “Boom Bap,” ahead of her new mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, after previewing tracks like “Bullfrog,” “Florida Wata,” and “Catfish” in her “Swamp Sessions” videos. On her mixtape, the Tampa-born rapper worked with producers Kal Banx and Devin Malik, engineer Jayda Love, guest artist Kuntfetish, and more. Alligator Bites Never Heal follows the EP She / Her / Black Bitch.
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Jon Hopkins: Ritual [Domino]
Ritual is the new album from Jon Hopkins, who has crafted nine meditative compositions that play for 41 minutes. The British electronic producer hopes that the new project, described as a “ceremonial epic,” acts as a conduit for “opening portals within your inner world.” Working with layers of earthy percussion and vibrating drones, Ritual is music that lets the mind wander.
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Coco & Clair Clair: Girl [Nice Girl World]
Atlanta duo Coco & Clair Clair return, two years after Sexy, with Girl. The new album is teeming with Coco & Clair Clair’s signature wit and wispy cloud rap beats. There’s similar subject matter, too: boys, clothes, and tributes to friendship. Take “My Girl,” which Coco & Clair Clair have described as an ode to “the girls you meet in the bathroom at the club, your idol, whoever it is that makes you feel on top of the world and like nobody can fuck with you.”
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YFG Fatso: A Reaper’s Ceremony [Santa Anna]
YFG Fatso caught ears with “Reap the City P2,” and he’s now got a full-length project, A Reaper’s Ceremony. The Chicago rapper worked with producers including Cicero, DJ Bandz, CudaYouMadeThis, Plu2o Nash, and Working on Dying’s Swaggyono to put a modern spin on his city’s classic drill sound.
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Lia Kohl: Normal Sounds [Moon Glyph]
On Normal Sounds, Chicago cellist and composer Lia Kohl repurposes everyday audio—a buzzing refrigerator, a beeping car alarm—to create layered symphonies of the mundane. She accents these reclaimed noises with cello and synthesizers, as well as wind instruments courtesy of Ka Baird and Patrick Shiroishi. Normal Sounds is a spiritual sequel to last year’s The Ceiling Reposes, which implemented field recordings of AM and FM radio broadcasts.
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Seefeel: Everything Squared [Warp]
Seefeel return, after an extended absence, with Everything Squared. In his review of the album, Jesse Dorris writes, “The pleasure of this half hour [mini-album] lies in its optimism—its faith that so much can be made of so little, still.” He also cites the project’s “Antiskeptic” as a reminder “that Seefeel’s roots are as much industrial as ambient.”
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Cold Gawd: I’ll Drown on This Earth [Dais]
Cold Gawd—the Southern California shoegaze group led by Matthew Wainwright—devoted two years to following up their debut LP, God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here. Most of the songs on I’ll Drown on This Earth were penned shortly after the first LP’s release, and Cold Gawd refined them until hitting the studio at Anaheim’s Paradise Recorders this March. Object of Affection’s Colin Knight produced the album, which veers between dream-pop, emo, and 1990s alternative—particularly on lead single “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name.”
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Why Bonnie: Wish on the Bone [Fire Talk]
Brooklyn-via-Austin band Why Bonnie’s second album, Wish on the Bone, shares some country DNA with their 2022 debut, 90 in November, but bandleader Blair Howerton was also inspired by bands like Broken Social Scene and Haim. Why Bonnie—also featuring multi-instrumentalist Chance Williams and percussionist Josh Malett—cut the record with Jonathan Schenke, who co-produced with Howerton. “We were trying on musical hats,” Howerton said of the new album in press materials. “Personal experience of learning to be bolder and more assertive and trusting myself has carried over into my music. I’m not afraid to take risks.”
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