Paste is the place to kick off every New Music Friday. We follow our regular roundups of the best new songs by highlighting the most compelling new records you need to hear. Find the best new albums of the week below.
Diles que no me maten: Escrito en Agua
One of the best acts right now is an experimental, post-post-rock, pre-psych-jazz band in Mexico City. Diles que no me maten just shared their best album yet, the rapturous, affirmative Escrito en Agua. It’s a striking achievement, powered by “Viene el viento” and “La rata modesta,” songs souped up in sax/clarinet duets and bleary reverb. The music never drags, and “Tunuwame”’s droning then eruptive conclusion is a perfect end-cap to Escrito en Agua’s loose song-cycle arrangements.
Fruit Bats: The Landfill
The idea behind morning pages is to write without inhibition to unburden the subconscious and unlock creativity. Lyrics in the ten songs on The Landfill are polished enough to suggest that the singer has spent at least a little time shaping them. The Landfill is a multi-layered, often melancholy affair as Eric D. Johnson sorts through the comings and goings of life on the threshold of a milestone.
Horse Lords: Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive!
In the kingdom of Horse Lords, “instrumental egalitarianism” is the rule of law. What’s new on Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! is the first-time inclusion of the human voice: Nina Guo and Evelyn Saylor, vocals chopped and smeared until singing becomes just another tuned instrument in the collective. This isn’t patient, wait-your-turn utopianism but heaven as a demand, immediate and non-negotiable.
Kelsey Lu: So Help Me God
Still, for all the self-serious stylings of So Help Me God’s experimental chamber folk, there’s an undeniable element of play beneath these songs, which reflects in Lu’s long list of collaborators: producers Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, former Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon, jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, and British singer-songwriter Sampha.
Olivia Rodrigo: you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
As has become Olivia Rodrigo’s signature, her third album offers a series of remarkably intimate revelations, cloaked in orchestral arrangements and confronting, conversational lyrics. She leans into the cinematic on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, highlighting a weepy violin on “honeybee” and a spectral organ on “purple.”
Ruth Garbus: Profound
Ruth Garbus’ Profound is haunting, nearly violent in its truth. The guitars and pianos are braided until, in the song’s final corridor, their fanned-out, impish-jazz textures brighten toward a baroque changeover from Nick Bisceglia and Elie McAfee-Hahn, and Garbus’ voice thins out into a soothing falsetto.
Telescreens: Why the Lights Flicker
Easy though it would be to boil Telescreens down to their influences, Why the Lights Flicker is the band’s most convincing argument yet in favor of being viewed as artists in their own right. It might have been recorded in a studio, but Why the Lights Flicker gives us the things that all the best live music does: a release, a journey, and a chance to escape ourselves.
Wiki: Ancient History
Ancient History, the latest release from super-collaborator and Upper West Side wunderkind rapper Wiki, is the perfect soundtrack to New York City right now. Rolling with each punch from producers like Lord Unknown and dj blackpower, Wiki narrates vignettes about gentrification, loneliness, and heartbreak.
YHWH Nailgun: Magazine
If you’ve heard anything about YHWH Nailgun’s sophomore record, you’ve probably heard that it’s eleven minutes long. But that’s not a provocation or schtick; it’s a deliberate attempt to both strip back and hone in on what made their 2025 debut, 45 Pounds, so compelling. Everything on Magazine feels intentional—there is, quite literally, not a second wasted.
