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 albums from Ice Spice, Klein, Wand, Porter Robinson, Nathan Bowles Trio, Cults, KMRU, and Robber Robber. 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.)
Ice Spice: Y2K! [10K Projects/Capitol]
It’s been just shy of two years since Ice Spice broke out with “Munch (Feelin’ U),” and the Bronx rapper has been in constant conversation ever since. On her much-anticipated debut album, she leans into her sexuality without taking herself seriously (“Phat Butt” was preceded by lead single “Think U the Shit (Fart)”) and offers her own send-ups like “Gimmie a Light.” Joining Ice Spice on Y2K!—a title that arguably nobody could claim more rightfully than the rapper, who was born on New Year’s Day in 2000—for guest features are Travis Scott, Gunna, and Central Cee.
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Klein: Marked [Parkwuud Entertainment]
Klein continues a string of low-key, boundary-pushing compositions with Marked, an eerie suite that glides between ambient drone, dinner-party jazz, doom metal, and broken hip-hop beats as if through a haunted house of the avant-garde. Its dissociative collage of searing noise and alienated vocal snippets feels at once like commentary and escapism, equally suited to headphones in bed or a dark room in an art museum.
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Wand: Vertigo [Drag City]
Los Angeles rock band Wand are back—this time as a quartet—with their new album Vertigo. Evan Backer, Evan Burrows, Robbie Cody, and Cory Hanson cut the record in their own studio, where they captured and collaged over 50 hours of sessions, many of which were improvised. Wand also produced and mixed the LP, while Backer arranged a string and wind section featuring viola, cello, violin, contrabass, flute, trumpet, french horn, trombone, tuba, saxophone, and more. The band shared lead single “Smile” in May, followed by “JJ” in June. Vertigo is Wand’s first full-length since Laughing Matter in 2019.
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Porter Robinson: Smile! 😀 [Mom+Pop]
Porter Robinson has figured out how to soothe the sensory overload corner of glitchpop, Auto-Tune electronica, and party production. Led by the single “Cheerleader,” Smile! 😀 is an adventurous spin through uptempo electropop that knows when and how to scale back its adventurous sounds. Robinson paces his third studio album and follow-up to 2021’s Nurture like a romantic comedy, from the mellow swooning of “Kitsune Maison Freestyle” to the digitized beats of “Russian Roulette,” and it’s easy to give in to its charm—even if the lyrics are a little self-serious.
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Nathan Bowles Trio: Are Possible [Drag City]
Durham, North Carolina, banjo player Nathan Bowles teamed up with double-bassist Casey Toll and drummer Rex McMurry for the first Nathan Bowles Trio album, Are Possible. In addition to banjo, Bowles laid down percussion, keys, and Mellowtone on the six-track LP, while Toll added guitar to his repertoire.
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Cults: To the Ghosts [Imperial]
Cults—the long-running New York duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion—return with their latest full-length, To the Ghosts. The pair co-produced the project with Shane Stoneback, while notable indie producer John Congleton helmed mixing, and Heba Kadry mastered the record. To the Ghosts arrives four years after the group’s last LP, Host.
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KMRU: Natur [Touch]
Since moving from Kenya to Germany, KMRU has become a household name in ambient music. His latest, Natur, considers the ambient noises of his present and former hometowns—Nairobi’s industrial clamor swallowing up the sounds of nature, versus Berlin’s urban isolation. The album unfurls that sensory dissonance into an aural narrative, a longform meditation on nature, industry, and technology. Revisit Philip Sherburne’s Rising profile “Meet KMRU, the Ambient Musician With His Ear to the World.”
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Robber Robber: Wild Guess [self-released]
Wild Guess is the debut album from Burlington, Vermont, band Robber Robber. Main songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Nina Cates and Zack James began working together in 2017, issuing their first EP—the scrappy Guy Ferrari—in 2019. Wild Guess is a tighter release, but it still channels the rough edges of post-punk with shadowy math rock and downtempo electronica. Featuring singles like “Backup Plan” and “Dial Tone,” Wild Guess rummages through the complex mess of life as a twentysomething.
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