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 Baby Keem, Hen Ogledd, the Messthetics, and Hilary Duff. 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.)
Baby Keem: Ca$ino [pgLang/Columbia Records]
Baby Keem may be only 25 but he’s in a reflective mode on Ca$ino. His second studio album traces his life from his origins in Carson, California to Las Vegas, where he spent the bulk of his childhood and wrote his first music. Naturally, it’s a family affair; Keem’s older cousin and frequent collaborator Kendrick Lamar appears on the track “Good Flirts.” But as Lamar points out in a series of documentary shorts shared ahead of the release, their family ties bound them to a shared struggle. “This is a story of a warfare environment,” Lamar noted. “A warfare, psychologically, to try and change our generational curses.”
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Hen Ogledd: Discombobulated [Weird World/Domino]
Richard Dawson and friends are abuzz with puckish energy on their latest as Hen Ogledd, scavenging curios from far-flung genres to produce some of the most galactically mind-bending synthpop around. The follow-up to 2020’s Free Humans spans from post-punk odysseys to epic folk song and ambient lullabies, with spoken-word performances from contributors including Matana Roberts. Beneath the psychedelic thrills are undercurrents of political commentary, composed in opposition to a time of widespread “mastery and misuse of language for evil means,” as Dawson puts it. The album, he says, is “not fighting fire with fire, but fighting fire with slime, or maybe a fine mist. It’s like using a camera lens that sometimes makes things way too crisp, but then shifts way out of focus again.”
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The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis: Deface the Currency [Impulse!]
After playing 150 shows together in one year, post-punk trio the Messthetics and jazz saxophonist James Brandon Lewis have achieved a hard-earned, dazzlingly realized chemistry. Deface the Currency, their second album together, was recorded fresh off a European tour, bottling the energy and propulsion of their improvisational work. The album draws its title from a famous quote by Greek philosopher Diogenes, often interpreted as a call to buck convention, and that spirit runs strong through these seven kinetic tracks. Across Deface the Currency, Lewis, guitarist Anthony Pirog, drummer Brendan Canty, and bassist Joe Lally rev up free-jazz pandemonium and cool down into soft, rounded solos with equal dexterity.
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Hilary Duff: Luck…or Something [Atlantic]
Despite the decade that’s passed since Hilary Duff released her last album, she’s remained a cultural tentpole for late millennials raised on Radio Disney. Her latest record, Luck…or Something, holds fast to these pop-star-next-door roots while exploring material not safe for the Lizzie McGuire set. Co-written and -produced with her husband, Zedd collaborator Matthew Koma, it finds slinkier, grown-up textures in the strummy, sunny pop-rock of her youth. Lead single “Mature” addresses a former lover’s naive new girl, who looks “a little like me, just younger”; on the Swiftian “Roommates,” half the fun of a giddy overnight is the fact that she’s no college ingénue anymore.
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Nathan Fake: Evaporator [InFiné]
Nathan Fake describes his new record as a “daytime album”—or, more specifically, “not an afterparty album.” Depending on your raving preferences, this could invoke a harsh wake-up call or warm embrace. Evaporator sits firmly in the latter category, employing bright but restrained synth work, pop-minded production, and breezy melodics for a sound that might as well be doused in sunlight. The British producer’s taste for pairing old-school software like Cubase VST5 with newer techniques also fits neatly into his narrative. Throughout Evaporator, you consistently hear the old meet the new, with both leaving for the better.
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Larry June x Curren$y x The Alchemist: Spiral Staircases [EMPIRE]
Larry June, Curren$y, and the Alchemist have run in the same circles (and united in pairs) for years, but Spiral Staircases marks the first time they’ve made things official. June brings the jazz and psych-rock textures of Bay Area hip-hop; Curren$y lays down sharp bars in distinctly Southern cadences; and the Alchemist ties it all together with a characteristically smooth, rich finish. The trio exemplify the kind of swagger that only comes with time, confidence, a healthy sex life, and a hint of therapy—clout chasers need not apply.
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Skaiwater: Wonderful [GoodTalk]
In the MCU of modern rage rap, UK-born Skaiwater is a dead ringer for Doctor Strange—a master of the mystic art of imploding 808s and howling in a whisper. Their latest record, Wonderful, is their first as an independent artist, and splits the difference between frenzied, blown-fuse cuts and quieter, romantic R&B fare. Exploring new territory like misty post-punk, emo rock, and heartfelt chipmunk soul, the polymath expands their pallet and flexes their Letterboxd list with track titles “One Battle After Another” and “The Substance.” ØWay flagbearer Tezzus, Los Angeles musician Ti Steele, and Crime Mob affiliate Diamond all feature; Bankroll Got It and North West (yes, that one) have production credits.
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Peaches: No Lube So Rude [Kill Rock Stars]
If you’ve placed your bets on a 2026 electroclash revival, it’s hard to imagine a better sign than Peaches’ first new album in over a decade. No Lube So Rude, the iconoclast’s debut on Kill Rock Stars, picks up the teaches of Peaches right where she left off, straight-talking about technocrats, venereal disease, and water-based lube over spare, serrated basslines and industrial drums. Recorded with Berlin producer the Squirt Deluxe, it’s the seminal queer artist’s reminder to the world that unabashed horniness can—and, frankly, should—be political. She says it best on “Fuck Your Face:” “I’m a horny lil fucker and I’ll bring you to your knees.”
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Moby: Future Quiet [BMG]
“I love bombast,” Moby shares in a press statement on Future Quiet. “I love excess and volume. But as the world gets louder and crazier I find myself needing the refuge of quiet, both as a listener and as a musician.” Although his latest album doesn’t dive full-step into silence, it has a meditative quality, rooted in resplendent string work and largely drumless arrangements. Setting the tone is an orchestral rework of his 1995 track “When It’s Cold, I’d Like To Die,” which blooms around the heavenly falsetto of gospel singer Jacob Lusk (and recently found a new audience thanks to a feature in Stranger Things’ final season).
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