In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on May 23, 2025:
Stereolab, Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Stereolab are back with their first album in 15 years, Instant Holograms on Metal Film. “The idea to record a new LP came into focus around spring/summer 2023 and we started recording in January 2024,” Tim Gane said of the album’s creation. “There were no rehearsals, as usual. We started again from scratch. ‘Always a beginner’ is my attitude to things, just feeling my way through. Music is just an exciting adventure and I don’t have any trepidation about doing it or presenting it to others. What comes out comes out.” The result is one of their most open-hearted, forward-looking, and essential collections to date. Read the full review.
Florry, Sounds Like…
Florry return looser, more playful, and electrifying than ever with Sounds Like…, their new album out now via Dear Life. Recorded in Asheville’s Drop of Sun studios with Colin Miller, the follow-up to 2023’s The Holey Bible was preceded by the tracks ‘Pretty Eyes Lorraine’, ‘Hey Baby’, and ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’. To bring it to life, bandleader Francie Medosch, who cites the Jackass theme song as “a really big influence on the new album,” enlisted collaborators including Jon Cox (Sadurn, Son of Barb) on pedal steel, John Murray on electric guitar, Collin Dennen on bass, Will Henrikson on fiddle, Katya Malison (Doll Spirit Vessel) on vocals, and Joey Sullivan (Bark Culture) on drums.
Smerz, Big city life
Elusive, bleary, and liminal as it may feel, it takes little time for Smerz’s new album to wrap its arms around you. The Copenhagen/Oslo-based duo of Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt led Big city life with the exquisite intimacy of ‘You got time and I got money’, which was followed by ‘Roll the dice’ and ‘Feisty’; yet it’s worth sticking around for even more low-key deep cuts like ‘A thousand lies’ and ‘Big dreams’. “Some of the songs are pieces of advice to ourselves,” the duo remarked. “Some are doorways into dreams. Some songs are secret wishes. Some are written for someone who is not here. And some are predictions.”
These New Puritans, Crooked Wing
These New Puritans have dropped a striking new album, Crooked Wing, via Domino. Haunting yet radiant, the group’s first LP in six years was produced by Jack Barnett and Bark Psychosis pioneer Graham Sutton and executive produced by George Barnett. “This album is both more surreal & somehow more direct than anything we’ve ever done,” George commented. “A crooked wing is an ear, you have one on each side of your body, and they have a rippled shape. Maybe if you’re lucky they can help you fly.” Caroline Polachek is there to aid in the effort on the standout single ‘Industrial Love Song’.
Moontype, I Let the Wind Push Down on Me
Moontype have followed up their impressive 2021 debut Bodies of Water with a new LP, I Let the Wind Push Down On Me, via Orindal. The 11-track effort was produced by Katie Von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn, who keep things minimal even as the group’s arrangements feel more expansive. “I have gotten better at being alone, and found ways to feel strong and powerful in myself,” singer/bassist Margaret McCarthy. “I’m better at having the relationships I want to have and setting the boundaries I want to set. For this record, I didn’t shy away from dark or hard things, like loneliness, sadness, anger, and disconnection.” It sounds airy, sure, but in the way the vaguest sensations can take over your whole body.
Home Is Where, Hunting Season
Home Is Where have gone country on their latest album, Hunting Season, which follows 2023’s The Whaler. You could hear them opting for louder, more familiarly emo renditions of some of the songs – not least when Bea MacDonald is singing “I’ve been exploding my whole life” on ‘Stand – Up Special’ – but the band’s embrace of the genre is so whole-hearted it’s just as cathartic. And then there’s ‘Roll Tide’, the penultimate 10-minute epic whose magnitude speaks for itself. “I was homesick and Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers’ first record specifically sounded like home,” MacDonald explained. “When we traveled as a band, the music that opened us up the most was country music like Parsons or Hank Williams. Listening to The Gilded Palace of Sin during the winter of ’21 opened a new tour tradition: when the weather is nice, the sun is shining, hopes are high, I put on that record and without fail every time something memorable happens.”
Sparks, MAD!
Brothers Ron and Russell Mael have returned with MAD!, their 28th Sparks record and first since 2023’s The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte. Marking a move from Island to Transgressive, the unsurprisingly witty yet unpredictable record was self-produced by the LA duo and features the advance singles ‘Do Things My Own Way’ and ‘JanSport Backpack’. “I think there is a certain respect for wit, too, that is lacking even in some great bands,” Ron Mael told Mojo. “But as far as a philosophy, we’re kind of too deeply involved in the thing to even know what that is.”
Lou Tides, Autostatic!
Teeny Lieberson – who is currently a member of Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory but has also played in in Luke Temple’s Here We Go Magic and led TEEN – has come through with an arresting new album under the moniker Lou Tides. Marking her debut full-length, Autostatic! was made co-producer Bartees Strange – who explored a similarly campy horror aesthetic on his latest album – and features collaborators including Lieberson’s longtime drummer Sarah Galdes, her sister, musician Lizzie Loveless, drummer Vishal Nayak, producer Miles Francis, and mixer Chris Connors. “Transformation is an important and consistent process in my songs,” she explained. “I believe this record captures periods of stasis, but also the birth of new ideas, new selves. I wanted to run away from the ghost of myself, but I had to let her be shown. How else do we grow?”
Other albums out today:
Sophia Kennedy, Squeeze Me; Lindstrøm, Sirius Syntoms; Dirty Nice, Planet Weekend; Ganavya, Nilam; Kuru, Stay True Forever; Year of No Light, Les Maîtres Fous; SEDONA, Getting Into Heaven; Cola Boyy, Quit to Play Chess; Louise, Confessions; Angel Snake / Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Snakinist Sand Form; CDSM, Convertible Hearse; emptyset, Dissever; TajMo, Room on the Porch; Pachyman, Another Place; Skunk Anansie, The Painful Truth; Pan Amsterdam, Confines; SENNA, Stranger to Love; Casanora, The Year of the Jellyfish; Death in Vegas, Death Mask; Joe Jonas, Music For People Who Believe in Love; The Northern Territories, A Star In Orbit Still.
