Notable Releases of the Week (3/27)

This week we got a couple of legal updates from FKA twigs, Courtney Love doubled down on her Geese fandom, Chappell Roan emphasized that she doesn’t hate kids, and Sea.Hear.Now revealed its 2026 lineup. Hear us talk about all those topics and much more on today’s episode of BV Weekly.

As for this week’s new albums, we highlight eleven below and Bill discusses nine more in Indie Basement, including MEMORIALS, The New Pornographers, José González, Holy Fuck, and Fcukers. In addition to those, this week’s honorable mentions include dälek, Drayton Farley, Sunglaciers, Dog Chocolate, Monster Rally, Stuck, The Twilight Sad, Good Riddance, Flatland Cavalry, King Tuff, Lone, RAYE, ∞ (aka Eight), Nina Hagen, Melissa Etheridge, Charlotte Cornfield, Slayyyter, The Academy Is, Juvenile, Konradsen, Buzzy Lee, Jah Wobble & Jon Klein, Dave Harrington & Tim Mislock, Lauren Auder, Fetty Wap, Shinichi Atobe, Sofia Kourtesis, Kanye West, the Florence Road EP, the expanded 35th anniversary reissue of The Charlatans’ Some Friendly, and the “director’s cut” of SASAMI’s Blood on the Silver Screen.

Read on for our picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly for more of this week’s new music and music news. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Neurosis – An Undying Love for a Burning World (Neurot)
With a new lineup that now includes Isis/Sumac’s Aaron Turner, the post-metal pioneers still do it like no other band in the world.

When Neurosis fired co-founding co-vocalist/guitarist Scott Kelly after Kelly admitted to abusing his family, it seemed like the band was done for good. “Scott had crossed a line and there was no way back,” his former bandamtes wrote, and they added that “with the heartbreak and horror we also grieve for the loss of our life’s work and a legacy that was sacred to us.” So it was a massive surprise when Neurosis actually did find a way to return last week with An Undying Love for a Burning World, their first new album in a decade. Scott Kelly remains out of the band, and in his place is perhaps the most perfect replacement possible: Aaron Turner of Isis, SUMAC, and Old Man Gloom. “NeurIsis” has already long been shorthand for the type of sludgy post-metal that Neurosis pioneered and Isis further perfected. Upon the announcement of this new album, Aaron himself said, “From the moment I first heard Neurosis over 30 years ago, I felt this was the music my heart and mind had been seeking but not yet heard.”

The pairing is so perfect that, even with the lineup change, An Undying Love for a Burning World sounds like no other band in the world. Aaron nails the balance of bringing his own flavor while fitting right in with the distinct approach that Steve Von Till, Dave Edwardson, Jason Roeder, and Noah Landis have honed for decades. Everything you want from Neurosis is there–the towering walls of sludge, the celestial soundscapes, the folky dirges, the adventurous song structures, the metal riffs with the punk ethos. The other change is that Undying Love is the first Neurosis album not recorded by Steve Albini since 1996’s Through Silver in Blood, following Albini’s 2024 death, but they teamed up with Kowloon Walled City vocalist (and SUMAC collaborator) Scott Evans, whose gritty, unfussy approach to engineering has clear echoes of Albini’s work. “We need this, perhaps more than ever, and we suspect we are not alone,” Neurosis said upon the album’s release. They’re right; An Undying Love for a Burning World is what the world of heavy music has been missing.

Courtney Barnett – Creature of Habit (Mom + Pop)
With an assist from Waxahatchee on one song, Courtney Barnett returns to the charming form of her first two EPs.

Courtney Barnett has taken her music in a few different directions since those first two EPs that made the indie rock world fall in love with her–all of it good in different ways–but anyone who wants more of the charm of those early records should turn their attention towards Creature of Habit. It’s more like those EPs than any of her other full-lengths, with that familiar blend of ’60s psychedelia, ’90s grunge, and deadpan wit that nobody pulls off the way Courtney Barnett does. And adding to the early 2010s nostalgia is a collaboration with Waxahatchee (“Site Unseen”), who began winning over that same indie rock world right around the same time as Courtney. So the nostalgia is real, but Creature of Habit also feels refreshing, just like “Avant Gardener” did when it became Courtney’s breakthrough single over a decade earlier.

Robyn – Sexistential (Young)
What happens when our foremost purveyor of dancefloor catharsis becomes a mother?

Robyn’s 2018 album Honey was a more atmospheric and experimental take on her ebullient electro-pop, and over seven years later she’s back with its follow-up. The intervening years held the pandemic, but also her decision to undergo IVF and become a single mother. No longer dancing on her own, Robyn has a young child now, and a reworked version of “Blow My Mind,” originally off 2002’s Don’t Stop the Music, is dedicated to him. “It’s not cute with children,” she says. “They’re cute, but the experience isn’t. It’s very punk.” Just as punk is the title track, which has her rapping about the hormonal rollercoaster of IVF, dating while pregnant, and scrolling Etsy while breastfeeding, all interspersed with the exhortive to push. Elsewhere, she’s delivering dancefloor catharsis of the highest order: “Dopamine” is right up there among her most immediate, irresistible songs, with “Sucker for Love,” “Talk to Me,” and “Light Up” right behind it as standouts. No one else is doing it quite like Robyn, and Sexistential is another bold statement from an artist who so memorably said in the album’s press materials, “I feel like the purpose of my life is to stay horny.” [Amanda Hatfield]

Hit Like A Girl – Burning At Both Ends (Cryptid)
The Philly/NJ band’s fourth album is brief but intense — a cathartic, casually genre-defying dose of queer heartbreak and indie-emo.

Hit Like A Girl’s new album has been called an album of queer heartache, and it’s exactly the kind of cathartic release that you’d hope an album of that description would be. It masterfully toes the line between emo and indie rock, and if it falls a little more on the emo side that’s only because every song hits you right smack in the feels. There’s also a little screamo, a little pop, a little country, and a guest vocal from Sweet Pill’s Zayna Youssef. Its eight songs fly by way too quickly, but the good news is every time you hit play they give you goosebumps all over again.

Tigers Jaw – Lost On You (Hopeless)
20 years removed from their debut album, Tigers Jaw sound as reliably consistent and instantly-satisfying as ever.

The bio for the new Tigers Jaw album was written by someone who’s been closely tied to this band since almost the very beginning, Ned Russin of Title Fight and Glitterer, and Ned calls the album “a continuation of what we’ve always loved about Tigers Jaw.” There are very few people who would be better equipped to give that opinion, and I think that single sentence tells you almost everything you need to know. Lost On You is longtime members Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins’ second Tigers Jaw album with the rhythm section of drummer Teddy Roberts and bassist Colin Gorman (and first with new guitarist Mark Lebiecki, who has been playing live with them for a few years), and this iteration of the band’s chemistry only sounds stronger than it did on 2021’s very good I Won’t Care How You Remember Me. Tigers Jaw is a band that values consistency, that you know you can always rely on, and Lost On You finds Ben and Brianna’s songwriting sounding as instantly-satisfying as it ever has.

Pick up our exclusive blue & green swirl vinyl variant.

Irreversible Entanglements – Future Present Past (Impulse!)
With help from Helado Negro and MOTHERBOARD, the Moor Mother-led free jazz group returns for another lively clash of music and activism.

Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) never gives up the fight. Her music and her activism are inseparable, and everything she’s involved in is fueled by a resistance to the cruelty of the modern world. The new album by Irreversible Entanglements, the jazz quintet that Moor Mother is a member of, is no exception. On Future Present Past, the band is joined by frequent collaborator MOTHERBOARD for five of the album’s 10 songs and Helado Negro for two of them. Mirroring the world itself, the music ranges from overbearing chaos to glistening beauty, setting a kinetic backdrop for Moor Mother’s fiery screeds.

Free Throw – Moments Before the Wind (Wax Bodega)
An emo album with grown up themes.

Free Throw’s sixth album is a great example of how the stereotypically-youthful genre of emo can hit just as hard with adulthood themes. Specifically, it followed vocalist/guitarist Cory Castro becoming a parent. “The record has this theme of liminality – not just as a place, but in your mind,” he says. “It’s like being stuck in a doorframe or a long hallway that never ends.”

“There was a lot to write about this time around, but getting over that threshold definitely took some time,” he continues. “We tend to write albums that have a conceptual arc to them, but you just sort of have to let the songs reveal themselves and figure out what that actually is. When I got the call that I was going to be a dad, I immediately knew what song I was going to write [closing track ‘The Waters of Life’]. It just felt right.”

Pick up our exclusive coke bottle clear vinyl variant.

Flea – Honora (Nonesuch)
The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist explores his first loves — jazz and the trumpet — on this jazzy album featuring an all-star cast of guests including Thom Yorke and Nick Cave

Flea has been an influential musican bassist for more than 40 years as part of Red Hot Chili Peppers, but his first love was jazz and his first instrument was trumpet. He’s finally made a solo album where he explores and celebrates those early obsessions — while still representing his punk era and everything else he’s done in the last 50 years — on Horona. It was produced by saxophonist Josh Johnson, who plays on it along with guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Deantoni Parks. Flea sings on it but there are also a few guest vocalists: Thom Yorke sings and plays on “Traffic Lights,” and Nick Cave is on hand for a cover of the Glenn Campbell classic “Wichita Lineman.” Nick’s Bad Seeds collaborator Warren Ellis is here too, as are Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Atoms for Peace), Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes), and there are covers of Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin’ Bout You,” P-Funk’s “Maggot Brain” and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s “Willow Weep for Me.” [Bill Pearis]

Snail Mail – Ricochet (Matador)
On her first album in five years, Lindsey Jordan says she’s “not bathing in my own agony anymore.”

Lindsey Jordan’s third album as Snail Mail, Ricochet, followed her undergoing vocal surgery, moving from New York to North Carolina, and making her acting debut in Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. Jordan also switched up her method in making it, as well as her lyrical focus. “I’ve never done this before, but I wrote all of the instrumentals and vocal melodies on the piano or guitar, and then I filled in the lyrics all at once over a year,” she says. “It takes me a lot more time and consideration to make great melodies than it does trying to connect things lyrically, so I gave myself more time to do the one.” She adds, “Misery feels safe to write about because I am good at it, but I’m not bathing in my own agony anymore.” [BrooklynVegan Staff]

Dry Socket – Self Defense Techniques (Get Better Records)
Swingin’, powerviolence-y hardcore from the Portland band.

We’ve been hyped on Portland hardcore band Dry Socket’s new LP Self Defense Techniques ever since lead single “Rigged Survival” dropped in January. Here’s what Andrew said about that track at the time: Feeling crushed by the weight of the cost of living is the kind of thing that could make you wanna write a swingin’, powerviolence-y hardcore song, and that’s what Portland’s Dry Socket have done with “Rigged Survival.” It’s the first taste of their upcoming sophomore album Self Defense Techniques, and the band says it’s meant to mirror the panic that sets in as we all try to survive “a system built to constantly extract from us.” Right from Dani Allen’s opening shriek of “IT’S FUCKING WITH MY HEAD!”, that’s exactly what it does. [BrooklynVegan Staff[

Start Today – Nothing to You (Rebirth Records)
Good, fast, no frills youth crew revival done right.

LA band Start Today are named after the 1989 Gorilla Biscuits album and they’ve been taking off thanks to their extremely well-executed revival of the kind of youth crew hardcore that GB helped define on that very album. Their own debut album Nothing To You is just 10 minutes long and it has absolutely no frills — just good, fast youth crew revival done right.

Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Paula Kelley of Drop Nineteens, Butler, Blake & Grant, ADULT., and more.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases and Indie Basement archives.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and the BV interviews podcast.

Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan, and browse the BrooklynVegan shop for more exclusive vinyl.