Notable Releases of the Week (5/9)

It’s been another busy week in the music world and there are a lot of new albums to talk about this week so let’s get to it. I highlight eight below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Peter Murphy (ft. Trent Reznor & Boy George), Preoccupations, TVOD, Das Koolies (mem Super Furry Animals), King Hüsky (mem Kvelertak), Le Volume Courbe (ft. Noel Gallagher, Terry Hall & Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy), and the Joe Goddard (of Hot Chip) EP.

On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include the André 3000 piano EP, PinkPantheress, Erika de Casier, Arcade Fire, Men I Trust’s second album of 2025, Maren Morris, Kali Uchis, Deradoorian, The Head and The Heart , Counting Crows, I’m With Her, The Kooks, Laibach, Nils Frahm, Skinny Lister, Street Power, Unwed Sailor, Lefty Gunplay & JasonMartin, Starlito & Don Trip, All But 6, Alex Orange Drink (The So So Glos), Boyfriend, The Chain, Antropoceno, Maia Friedman, Cole Pulice, Cuco, Brandon, Brandon Woody, Jack Van Cleaf, Provoker, Shunkan, Grupo Firme, The Amazons, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Spacey Jane, Ringdown, Ghost Bath, Behemoth, Tetrarch, Little Feat, Leftover Salmon, Kaleo, Blake Shelton, Sleep Token, 98°, the Candlemass EP, the L.Mayland (of The Last Dinner Party) EP, the Raue EP, the No Windows EP, the Alien Chicks EP, the Ratbag EP, the Bestfriend EP, The Wonder Years’ acoustic album, the Lamb comp of unreleased 1968-1969 material, Xmal Deutschland’s 4AD years comp, the Rilo Kiley greatest hits album, the Chapterhouse previously-unreleased demos album, the Butthole Surfers live album, M83’s soundtrack album for Dakar Chronicles, and the 10th anniversary edition of John Carpenter’s Lost Themes.

Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?

billy woods – GOLLIWOG (Backwoodz Studioz)
Inspired by a short story that he wrote as a nine-year-old, NYC rapper billy woods’ first multi-producer album in over five years finds the connections between literary horror and real life.

The massively-prolific NYC rapper billy woods releases more music than the average person can probably keep up with, and he’s not really the type to drastically change up his style from one album to the next. And yet, you could never accuse him of redundancy or diminishing returns. He’s one of those artists whose music gets better and better the more you listen to it, and he’s also one of those artists whose newest album is usually my favorite. Every time woods drops–either a solo album or an album by Armand Hammer, his duo with ELUCID–he ropes me in all over again. GOLLIWOG is no exception, and even with all of the above being said, it feels like an especially high point of his vast catalog.

GOLLIWOG has its roots in a short horror story that woods wrote when he was nine years old about an evil golliwog, a type of rag doll that’s widely considered to be a racist caricature. “My mother read it and told me it was overly derivative and needed some work,” he said. “Here we are.” On the album, woods pulls from horror to provide commentary on real life, and as always, his observational wit finds depth in the mundane. Having made his last few solo albums with a sole producer, GOLLIWOG is the first billy woods solo album since 2019’s Terror Management to be made with multiple producers, and as a result, it’s full of musical variety. With production from The Alchemist, Kenny Segal, El-P, Conductor Williams, Preservation, Messiah Musik, Sadhugold, Ant (Atmosphere), Shabaka Hutchings, Steel Tipped Dove, DJ Haram, Willie Green, Jeff Markey, Saint Abdullah, and Human Error Club, GOLLIWOG pulls from lively jazz, experimental electronics, warped boom bap, grainy noise, and more. The beatwork keeps you on your toes as much as the knockout billy woods punchlines, and the guest appearances are just as expertly-curated as the cast of producers, with Cavalier, Despot, Al.Divino, woods’ Armand Hammer partner ELUCID, singer Yolanda Watson, and a show-stealing verse from the outlandish Detroit rapper Bruiser Wolf. As the head of the Backwoodz Studioz label, billy woods is not just a prolific rapper but also an expert curator, and it’s a testament to his overall vision that he can bring together over 20 artists with strong identities in their own right and still come out with something as cohesive as GOLLIWOG is.

GOLLIWOG by billy woods

Adult Mom – Natural Causes (Epitaph)
Stevie Knipe’s honest, direct, indie rock songwriting is at its hardest-hitting and most fleshed-out on the fourth album from Adult Mom.

Even if it’s supposed to instill some kind of feeling of peacefulness, being told that someone died of “natural causes” can feel like a confusing, frustrating non-answer, particularly if the person is well below the age of average life expectancy. And I’d imagine it’s a phrase that you’d put even more thought into if you went through two different cancer diagnoses and recoveries in your twenties, as Adult Mom leader Stevie Knipe did. That phrase now titles Adult Mom’s fourth album, which is their first since Stevie’s cancer diagnosis, and some of the album’s most impactful moments find Stevie reflecting on those experiences. It isn’t just about one thing though; it also finds Stevie exploring their journey with queerness in ways that they hadn’t on previous albums, like “the traumatic side of trying to unravel all this learned straightness,” as Stevie put it in this album’s press materials. It’s some of the most honest, direct songwriting of a decade-plus-long career that’s been full of honest, and it’s got the hardest-hitting and most fleshed-out songs of any Adult Mom album to date. From the raw grunge-folk to the uplifting string and horn arrangements to some twinkling piano, it’s a heavier and prettier album all at once and definitely the sharpest-sounding Adult Mom record. (The whole four-piece band produced it themselves, alongside engineer Chance Milestone.) The way it blurs the line between folkiness and punkiness makes me think of Cerulean Salt-era Waxahatchee, and the outsized DIY ambition makes it a nice double feature with the new Great Grandpa album. Like both of those albums, you can just tell that the people who made it put everything they had into it and then some.

Natural Causes by adult mom

Mclusky – The World Is Still Here and So Are We (Ipecac)
The one-and-only Mclusky are as sneering, sarcastic, and discordant as ever on their first album in 21 years.

It’s been 21 years since Welsh noisy post-hardcore vets Mclusky released an album, but the world is still here and so are they. And if you know anything about this band, it should come as no surprise that two decades of rest did not result in anything being toned down. The band sounds as sneering, sarcastic, and discordant as ever as they apply their trademark mix of humor and ire to the current state of affairs. Mclusky is and has always been a band that thrives on being provocative and antagonizing, and TWISHASAW does that musically as much it does it lyrically/vocally, with a truly thunderous rhythm section and onslaught of nails-on-a-chalkboard guitar work. This is how you make a comeback: by sticking out like a sore thumb just as much as you did when you left us.

Pick the Mclusky album up on blue vinyl.

the world is still here and so are we by mclusky

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke – Tall Tales (Warp)
Thom Yorke links up with electronic music veteran Mark Pritchard for his most heavily electronic album of the current decade thus far.

Thom Yorke has recently been busy embracing his rock side in The Smile, and now he delivers his first album-length offering of electronic music since his 2019 solo album Anima. Tall Tales is a collaborative LP with Mark Pritchard, the veteran electronic musician whose own career (that’s included Link, Reload, Troubleman, Global Communication, Africa Hitech, releases under his own name, and more) is about as long-running and prolific as Thom’s. They crossed paths in 2011 when Pritchard contributed two remixes of “Bloom” to Radiohead’s TKOL RMX 1234567 album (one under his own name, one as Harmonic 313), and then collaborated when Thom sang on “Beautiful People” from Mark’s 2016 album Under The Sun. Now, almost a decade later, they have an entire album together. Thom Yorke’s one-in-a-million voice sounds as perfectly suited for electronic music on Tall Tales as it always does, and, working in collaboration with Pritchard, the long stretches of beat-oriented moments are as dominant as the vocal-oriented ones–a contrast to Thom’s electronic-leaning solo albums. It’s also an album that leans heavily into the creepy, dystopian, paranoid side of Thom Yorke’s songwriting (though nothing is as creepy than unofficial third member/visual artist Jonathan Zawada’s video for “Back in the Game”), a black-mirror reflection of a global downward spiral that hasn’t gotten any better in the 28 years since OK Computer.

Pick up ‘Tall Tales’ on vinyl.

Tall Tales by Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke

MIKE & Tony Seltzer – Pinball II (10k)
The sequel to last year’s ‘Pinball’ is MIKE’s second album of 2025, and it makes for an upbeat, trap-inflected contrast to his first.

The ever-prolific underground NYC rapper MIKE already released the hazy, immersive, 24-song Showbiz! earlier this year, and now he’s already back with Pinball II, a sequel to his collaborative 2024 album with producer Tony Seltzer. Like the first Pinball, this record’s a little more upbeat and trap-inflected than the kind of stuff MIKE’s doing on Showbiz!, and it’s always a treat to hear what happens when he breaks out of his usual hazy shell. Along for the ride: Earl Sweatshirt, Niontay, Sideshow, and Lunchbox.

Pinball II by MIKE & Tony Seltzer

Catbite – Doom Garden EP (Bad Time Records)
The Philly ska band make their biggest leap yet on this new EP, with help from members of Fall Out Boy, Sweet Pill, and illuminati hotties.

From the minute lead single/opening track “Die In Denver” came out, Doom Garden looked like a leveling-up moment for Philly ska band Catbite and the whole six-song EP lives up to that promise. Produced, engineered, and mixed by illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tuzdin, it’s their sharpest-sounding release yet, and it has one very big guest (vocals and trumpet from Fall Out Boy singer and noted ska fan Patrick Stump), as well as another very cool collaboration with Zayna Youssef of rising emo band Sweet Pill. It packs a lot of variety into its six songs, from embracing more of an alt-rock vibe on “Die In Denver” and EP closer “Remediate,” to the chiller, dubbier direction of the Patrick Stump collab (“Tired of Talk”), to doing a ska-punk ripper for really the first time in Catbite’s career on the song with Zayna from Sweet Pill (“Eyes Wide”), to a stripped-back indie rock ballad (“Deteriorate”), to another thing that this ska band actually doesn’t do a lot of: horn-fueled ska, on “Put ‘Em Away.” It feels like the biggest leap between records that Catbite have made yet, and being just an EP, it’s built to leave you wondering what Catbite’s next full-length will be like. All of a sudden, the possibilities seem endless.

Doom Garden by Catbite

Alien Boy – You Wanna Fade? (Get Better Records)
Shoegaze, power pop, and just a little emo meet on this Portland triple-guitar band’s third and biggest-sounding album yet.

Alien Boy recently said in an interview with Stereogum that they’re always trying to make their music “bigger and more grand,” and I think it’s safe to say that their third album You Wanna Fade? is their biggest and most grand-sounding album yet. It’s an appealing combo of wall-of-sound shoegazy guitars (they have three guitarists) and bright, power-poppy hooks, with just a little emo in singer Sonia Weber’s youthful, impassioned delivery. They cited Third Eye Blind’s self-titled and The Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream as core inspirations, and while it’s easy to hear the influence, Alien Boy never come off as just another ’90s-rock revival band. They find ways to wear their familiar influences on their sleeves and stand out from the pack all at once, and it doesn’t hurt that You Wanna Fade? is chock full of gooey, sticky hooks.

You Wanna Fade? by Alien Boy

Knowledge the Pirate & Roc Marciano – The Round Table (Treasure Chest/Pimpire)
A predictably-great offering of eerie, ominous boom bap revival from these two longtime collaborators.

As both a rapper and a producer, Roc Marciano has been at the forefront of eerie, ominous, New York boom bap revival since his 2010 debut album Marcberg (which just got a 15th anniversary edition last week), and Knowledge the Pirate has been by his side almost the whole way. He appeared on 2012’s Reloaded and several other Roc Marciano albums since, and Roc’s been contributing production to Pirate’s own prolific solo album run that he launched in the late 2010s. He’s the sole producer on The Round Table, an album that serves as the upteenth reminder that this particular brand of New York rap never gets old. With references to ’80s Lakers stars Magic Johnson & Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the crack epidemic, The Round Table has almost as many thematic golden age hip hop signifiers as musical ones, and Pirate and Roc still make it all sound as fresh as ever.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Peter Murphy, Preoccupations, TVOD, Das Koolies, King Husky, Le Volume Courbe, and the Joe Goddard (of Hot Chip) EP.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episodes with Turnover and Bayside about the 10th anniversary of Peripheral Vision and the 20th anniversary of Bayside self-titled, respectively.

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.