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 Jack White, Navy Blue, Jpegmafia, Moses Sumney, Loidis, Chrystabell & David Lynch, Kampire, Messiah!, and X. 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.)
Jack White: No Name [Third Man]
After surprising Third Man customers by smuggling No Name into their shopping bags, Jack White has now made his Entering Heaven Alive follow-up available on demand. It is a typically in-house affair from the stubbornly DIY musician, self-recorded, -produced, and -mixed at his Third Man Studio, which shipped the tapes to Third Man Pressing, before copies traveled via Third Man Records (the label) to Third Man Records (the stores) a day before its wide release, today, to all good retailers and streaming services.
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Navy Blue: Memoirs in Armour [Freedom Sounds]
After spending some time as a part of the legacy hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings, Navy Blue returns to the independent rap circuit with Memoirs in Armour. This comes a little more than a year after Ways of Knowing, the smooth, family-centric project that continued to build out the frame of his intimate rap music. On Memoirs in Armour, he continues down that path, with hushed beats and lyrics that feel like he’s talking directly to you, letting you in on intensely personal secrets.
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Jpegmafia: I Lay Down My Life for You [AWAL]
At one point on I Lay Down My Life for You, Jpegmafia big ups himself by saying “Jpeg-motherfuckin’-mafia, making grown men emotional since 2008, at least.” Pretty funny and exactly what you would expect from the professional noisemaker, provocateur, and satirist. Also expected is that the album, his follow-up to last year’s joint project with Danny Brown, Scaring the Hoes, is a collision of genres, as the internet native is constantly rewiring and retooling his own sound.
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Moses Sumney: Sophcore EP [Tuntum]
After years bristling at the R&B tag attributed to his sprawling, otherworldly music, Moses Sumney makes some concession to the tradition on Sophcore, his first studio record since 2020’s Græ. As he put it in press materials, “Sophcore explores the meeting points between sensuality and intuition… esotericism and populism… deep feeling and fun. It’s diving into subterranean rhythm, bass and drums, and making music for the hips as well as the heart.” Recent singles “Vintage” and “Gold Coast” feature.
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Loidis: One Day [Incienso]
Huerco S. revives the Loidis alter ego on One Day, eight tracks applying his trademark gauze and marbling to dubbed-out deep house and techno earworms. The record’s muffled air and melodic patience give it an air of austerity, but don’t be fooled—it is as sweet and infectious as the Kansas producer’s warmest ambient confections.
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Chrystabell & David Lynch: Cellophane Memories [Sacred Bones]
Chrystabell is a Texan singer and Twin Peaks: The Return actor who has frequently worked with David Lynch since contributing to the Inland Empire soundtrack. New album Cellophane Memories—an expanse of churchly synth organs and heavenly vocals—came to Lynch in a vision, before the pair, said Chrystabell, embarked on a journey where many doors “are left open to wonder, wander and get turned around in…. It’s like mood music, not that it creates mood, but more that it reflects your own.”
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V/A: Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola [Strut]
Kampire, the East African DJ and Nyege Nyege Festival stalwart, presents a pan-African, multi-genre, era-spanning extravaganza on A Dancefloor in Ndola. The compilation ranges from the 1970s to the present day, taking in Congolese rumba and soukous, township bubblegum, Zambian kalindula, and more. “It is important for me to continually reference Africa’s own musical history,” said Kampire, who was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, but came of age in the Zambian city of Ndola. “I love that feeling of shared nostalgia where people recognise a song they haven’t heard in a long time.”
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Messiah!: The Villain Wins [Noble Music]
One of the great posse cuts of the year belongs to Charlotte MC Messiah!, who was joined by Mavi and Ovrkast. on the rap clinic “Silent Heel.” That song does not appear on Messiah!’s new album, The Villain Wins, but you can expect similar no-holds-barred, passionate lyrics and touches of melodicism. The guests here include underground favorites like Vayda, Niontay, Harrison of Surf Gang, and, of course, fellow Charlotte spitter Mavi.
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X: Smoke & Fiction [Fat Possum]
X are back with their first album in four years and, according to the Los Angeles punk greats themselves, their last ever. Smoke & Fiction reflects on their journey from the early days of punk, picking up like-minded oddballs around the country, to their present-day incarnation as an experimental rock institution, rebooted when they reformed in 2020 for Alphabetland. That record’s producer, Rob Schnapf, returns for this farewell record. Said the band’s Exene in press materials, “I want to create something that’s such a perfect expression of what I felt that whoever comes across it will feel the same emotion, get it completely, and say ‘yeah, me too.’”
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