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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 drops available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Greg Freeman, Emily A. Sprague, Quavo, and more. 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.)
Greg Freeman: All Set the Bone [Transgressive/Canvasback]
Greg Freeman may have called his last album Burnover, but the John Congleton-produced All Set the Bone is the sound of the Vermont singer aflame. Take album opener “Cahokia”: After 20 seconds of riffage that could’ve been lifted from a Riot!-era Paramore single, the track lurches into rollicking cabaret rock, then hand-me-down power pop, then an almost magisterial dual-guitar outro. As he blazes from one idea to the next Freeman no longer sounds like he’s writing really good Isaac Brock or Jason Molina or MJ Lenderman songs. He’s just writing really good Greg Freeman songs.
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B0YG1RL: B0YG1RL [Surf Gang]
There’s a hot streak, and then there’s the year Miami duo B0YG1RL are having. Angela Rio and June “Tété” Vinette’s new self-titled album actually marks their fourth LP of 2026, and follows the thrilling Novagang collab EXIT 2B. The pair’s blend of kompa, post-rage rap, reggaeton, electro-pop, and baile funk is a testament to their rich roots in the South Florida scene and beyond, delivered primarily in Haitian Creole. They easily blend diasporic traditions with hyperlocal heat by recognizing that the two are, more often that not, one and the same.
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Emily A. Sprague: Cyano [Rvng Intl.]
Emily A. Sprague, the experimental artist who also performs in the band Florist, conceived Cyano on a winter solstice trip to an Icelandic fjord. Inspired by photographer Anna Atkins and her work with cyanotypes, Sprague concocted a science-fiction album concept of a character on a faraway planet, represented by sounds with uncanny resemblance to organic instruments, like guitar and piano, that feel oddly holographic, and thus infused with the magic of discovery. Spiritually ambient but with strokes of dream-pop desire, Cyano weaves texturally incongruous melodies into soundscapes that resemble space-age animations.
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Victoria Monét: Frequency of Love [RCA]
On the genre-expansive Frequency of Love, Victoria Monét wants you to know she’s single, plotting for someone to take her home, and fantasizing about what a prospective lover’s lips will feel like. Slow jams like “Come Back to You” and “I Want You” are laden with unshakable desire, while the Kaytranada-produced single “Reach Out” takes that same yearning and dances it out over retro house. She even manages to embody the classical whimsy of a Disney princess on “Care for Somebody.”
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Wishy: Nature’s Pill [Winspear]
Wishy’s vocalists Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites have known each other since high school. But until working on the follow-up to 2024’s Triple Seven, the pair had never actually sat down in a room to write together. Nature’s Pill, tracked almost entirely live off of a heavy run of touring, manages to translate this newly collaborative spirit into tracks that chart serious upheaval—the type of break-ups and bust ups that make adult life feel as raw as adolescence. Slipping out of Triple Seven’s ’90s-minded dream pop and indietronica into a delectably snotty mix of college rock, pop-punk, and crossover indie, Wishy sound more comfortable than ever.
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Meshell Ndegeocello: Synonym [Blue Note]
Meshell Ndegeocello’s Synonym operates under a simple principle: there’s always a new way to say it. Her latest LP reimagines era-spanning classics as a series of duets with a killer cohort of collaborators including Cat Power, Chaka Khan, Robert Glasper, Cynthia Erivo, ANOHNI, and Bill Callahan. The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” transforms into a smoky reggae groove; Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” simmers into a jazz standard perfectly suited for Blue Note. These left-of-center renditions run the gamut on genre and style, but work together as a testament to Ndegeocello’s distinctive timbre.
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Quavo: Qrömelife [Quality Control/Motown]
If Quavo sounds pretty contented on the low-key twerk anthems that dominate Qrömelife, consider this: he made most of the record on a yacht with Pharrell. Tapping Future, T.I., Justin Timberlake, and A$AP Rocky for features, the rapper returns with an easygoing collection of Neptunes-styled hip-pop populated by beautiful women throwing it back, big money spreads, and speaks-for-itself flexes (a personal favorite: “I’m havin’ what I’m havin.”) It’s a solid enough appetizer for that final Migos album Q’s been promising.
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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Ruin: It’s Not Just Music [Someone Special]
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith‘s latest album is far less interested in club escape than club confrontation. Ruin: It’s Not Just Music builds out the palpable sweat and sex across last year’s ballroom-influenced Gush into full-on, body-to-body combat, illustrated through futuristic garage, old-school drum ‘n’ bass, and her characteristically dextrous synthwork. “I wanted the music to feel physical and direct, something that releases tension as much as it creates it,” she shared in a statement.
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Boundary: Proxima Centauri [Point]
You’re going about your day as a Pitchfork reader when, suddenly, a brilliant star appears on the horizon and beams down a ray of light that reprograms your brain, introducing you to new functionalities and one very important realization: you have the power to change the world. This is essentially the concept driving left-field Santo Domingo producer Boundary’s latest album, named after the star closest to our sun. It gathers nostalgic video-game samples, ever-unfolding synths, and slow-burn IDM melodies under one umbrella concept, which Boundary lays out himself in press materials. “In our current times, evil seems to prevail without end,” he said. “I hope this record can somehow bring some level of hope and faith in ourselves, during these very dark times.”
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Stef Chura: Dancing Alone on the Concrete [Saddle Creek]
The namesake surface in the title of Stef Chura’s new album, Dancing Alone on the Coxncrete, gets a song dedicated to itself: “The Concrete.” In it, the bass line squishes beneath her like wet cement as she recounts an acquaintance who clings to grudges and the past. Much of Chura’s record is spent yearning—to move onward, to grow, to heal—and the Detroit-based singer-songwriter translates that feeling into cloudy, dreamlike vocals that recall Cat Power, Electrelane, and R.E.M. — the latter of which seems inevitable considering Peter Buck and Mike Mills contributed to album cut “Danny.”
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Correction: A previous post misstated Florist being one artist (Emily A. Sprague) rather than a full band.
