In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on February 14, 2025:
Horsegirl, Phonetics On and On
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Horsegirl have followed up 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance with their sophomore LP, Phonetics On and On, via Matador. The New York-via-Chicago trio of Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece recorded the new album at the Loft in Chicago with producer and acclaimed experimentalist Cate Le Bon, expanding their sound while keeping their songs dreamily understated and hooky. Ahead of the release, they shared the singles ‘2468’, ‘Julie’, ‘Switch Over’, and ‘Frontrunner’.
Bartees Strange, Horror
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Bartees Strange is back with his third LP, Horror, via 4AD. The follow-up to 2022’s Farm to Table was previewed by the singles ‘Wants Needs’, ‘Sober’, ‘Lie 95’, and ‘Backseat Banton’. While those songs, along with the album’s cover artwork and title, prime the listener for a darker experience than Strange’s previous records, Horror doesn’t shrink in the face of fear – it exudes vulnerability through powerful performances and sharply vivid songwriting. Strange produced it with Jack Antonoff, Yves Rothman, and Lawrence Rothman. “In a way, I think I made this record to reach out to people who may feel afraid of things in their lives, too,” Strange said. “For me it’s love, locations, cosmic bad luck, or that feeling of doom that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I think that it’s easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feels the same. This album is just me trying to connect. I’m trying to shrink the size of the world. I’m trying to feel close—so I’m less afraid.”
Cryogeyser, Cryogeyser
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Los Angeles trio Cryogeyser have put out their self-titled album, which was produced and engineered by drummer Zach CapittiFenton. Building on the radiant and cathartic alt-rock of 2021’s timetetheredtogether, the group previewed the LP with the singles ‘Fortress’, ‘Blue Light’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Stargirl’, and the recent Wednesday collab ‘Mountain’. “This album is about heat,” guitarist and vocalist Shawn Marom shared. “Capturing ice and holding it forever—even as it melts—knowing you’re burning but staying in orbit.” They added, “Before music, I often felt like I took up too much space. This album is about transforming that shame into something shimmery and hopeful—playing like myself and no one else.”
Frog, 1000 Variations on the Same Song
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The folk duo Frog have followed up 2023’s GROG with a new LP called 1000 Variations on the Same Song. The album title isn’t quite so literal – the record spans just 11 songs – but it does hint at the band’s approach, which Daniel Bateman explains as such: “1000 Variations on the Same Song is a theme and variations — there are times in your life as a songwriter where you’ll start a bunch of stuff that all sounds alike, which can be a problem, something that you want to excise from yourself. This time I decided to embrace it and take it as far as it could go.” Swaying between vulnerability and playfulness, Frog’s exercise surely makes for an inviting listen.
Richard Dawson, End of the Middle
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Richard Dawson collects some of his most direct and skeletal songs on End of the Middle, the follow-up to 2022’s The Ruby Cord. “I wanted this album to be small-scale and very domestic,” the singer-songwriter explained in a statement. “To be stripped back, reconnect with the basics and let everything speak for itself – to be really stark and naked by just putting the words and melodies out there.” He added: “It zooms in quite close-up to try and explore a typical middle class English family home. We’re listening to the stories of people from three or four generations of perhaps the same family. But really, it’s about how we break certain cycles. I think the family is a useful metaphor to examine how things are passed on generationally.”
venturing, Ghostholding
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Jane Remover leans into their rockier tendencies on Ghostholding, the first LP of their side project venturing. It’s charged with emo riffs, soaring melodies, and some of their most explosive vocals to date, as heard on the previously released singles ‘Sister’, ‘Halloween’, and ‘Famous Girl’. The full-length follows the venturing EP Arizona, which arrived in May 2023 after Remover started posting tracks under the moniker the previous year.
Mallrat, Light hit my face like a straight right out
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Mallrat‘s sophomore LP, Light hit my face like a straight right out, has arrived. Recorded largely between Melbourne and Los Angeles, the Butterfly Blue follow-up is vibrant yet minimally produced, drawing inspiration from Mallrat’s upbringing in Brisbane. “I love the idea you can let your fate be decided by rays of light,” she said in press materials. “There’s something holy about those moments, you know, like the angelic choir in cartoons or whatever. It’s the unexpectedness of it, the suddenness.”
Other albums out today:
Drake & PARTYNEXTDOOR, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U; Doves, Constellations for the Lonely; Denison Witmer, Anything at All; The Lumineers, Automatic; Alessia Cara, Love & Hyperbole; Eyedress, Occasional Stoner; fish narc, Frog Song; Marshall Allen, New Dawn; John Glacier, Like a Ribbon; Manic Street Preachers, Critical Thinking; The Lumineers’ Automatic Vulture Feather, It Will Be Like Now; Joshua Radin, One Day Home; Black Birdie, 12 : 22; Art d’Ecco, Serene Demon; Oracle Sisters, Divinations; Hour, Subminiature; Park Jiha, All Living Things.
