In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on November 14, 2025:
FKA twigs, EUSEXUA Afterglow
The title of FKA twigs’ new album suggests a comedown after the euphoric highs of January’s EUSEXUA. But its 11 tracks are often too hard-hitting and varied to register as an afterthought. “I am full and abundant and ready to give birth,” FKA twigs wrote upon announcing the record last month. “Her name is Afterglow, and my labor shall commence next month.” It was previewed by the songs ‘Cheap Hotel’ and ‘Predictable Girl’, and PinkPantheress features on the highlight ‘Wild and Alone’.
Austra, Chin Up Buttercup
Austra draws from Eurodance, Greek mythology, and the five stages of grief on her cathartic new album, Chin Up Buttercup. The follow-up to 2020’s HiRuDin explores a breakup Katie Stelmanis experienced right before the pandemic hit, which destabilized her life as she had to move back to Canada alone from London. “My self-esteem hit an all-time low, and the initial shock eventually shifted into a sustained depression,” she explained. “I stopped playing music for over a year and instead turned to rage-writing every time I felt sad.” She added, “I’ve always been terrible at expressing my feelings. But after the breakup, I had to learn to do it in order to survive. I was surprised to learn that opening up actually made me feel significantly better.”
runo plum, patching
runo plum’s debut album, patching, emerged from a five-month burst of songwriting that produced not one but at least two records’ worth of songs. This collection represents the sadness, according to the Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter, while the follow-up concentrates the rage. It was recorded last winter with longtime friend Lutalo, as well as instrumentalist and plum’s girlfriend Noa Francis. “I’ve known Lutalo for 10 years, and we were just hanging out, having the best time, giggling,” plum recalled in our Artist Spotlight interview. “It just was a big hang as much as it was recording and serious work.”
Sword II, Electric Hour
Sword II – the Atlanta trio of Travis Arnold, Certain Zuko, and Mari González – have unveiled their mesmerizing new album, Electric Hour. They self-produced the LP, which was mastered by Heba Kadry and mixed by Sebastian Kinsler. “The title was inspired by the idea that we are in the era of surveillance technology, but also we imagined ‘electric hour’ as something powerful, a time for creativity, potency and revolution – ‘the time is now’ type situation,” the band explained. “We imagined the ‘hour’ as the time a band gets to be on stage – one hour to make your point to the audience, to make sense of the situation facing humanity. One hour to bring into the physical world the music that resonates with people facing repression, increasing alienation, and violence. Basically, one shot to make the revolution. It’s very daunting because you only get one life, one hour. But our limitation is what shows us what is important, what is worthy of our time in this life.”
Wyldest, The Universe Is Loading
Wyldest has followed up 2022’s Feed the Flowers Nightmares with a new album, The Universe Is Loading, via Hand in Hive. As the title suggests, Zoë Mead’s love songs unfurl on a cosmic, and at times post-apocalyptic, scale, lending her intimate songwriting a sweeping sci-fi bent. She ultimately lands in a grounded place: “Time is moving on/ Like a stone/ Rolling off/ The edge of the earth/ We vanish into the dust,” she sings on ‘Foxglove Will Grow’. In a press release, Mead explained, “It’s ultimately an intense realisation that life and love doesn’t always go as planned and sometimes we need to take time to make sense and peace within the chaos.”
Home Front, Watch It Die
Graeme MacKinnon and Clint Frazier have returned with a new Home Front album, Watch It Die. Building on the ferocious synth-punk of their 2023 debut Games of Power, the record is charged with a newfound sense of immediacy and swagger. “For us, ultimately, this is music that comes out of loss and heartbreak and failure, but I hope people have a good time listening to us,” the group shared in press materials. “You can get rowdy, you can get emotional, you can do whatever you want, but maybe with all of that freedom, we all take a second to reflect on all our fallen brothers and sisters and friends who may have slipped away.”
Ragana & Drowse, Ash Souvenir
Ragana and Drowse’s fusion of black metal and slowcore yields fascinating results on Ash Souvenir, their new collaborative effort released by the Flenser. Drowse (Kyle Bates) and Ragana (Maria and Noel) crafted the record out of a shared sense of grief and collective memory rooted in the Pacific Northwest. “The reality is that, although we may be able to physically move from a place and ‘move on’ from a person or event, those various aspects of ourselves, and our memories of the events that created them, all make up a greater whole,” Bates reflected in a statement about the early single ‘After Image’. “There is no moving away from the self. We may forget a specific event, but it has still permanently adjusted the shape of our life. In gestalt psychology the ‘parts,’ are defined by the whole, not the other way around: the dark plume of an eruption is made of thousands of fragments of ash, yet we view it as a single giant clouded form.”
Other albums out today:
Navy Blue, The Sword & the Soaring; Jake Xerxes Fussell & James Elkington, Rebuilding; Tony Molina, On This Day; Hélène Barbier, Panorama; The Mary Onettes, SWORN; Blondshell, Another Picture; Of Mice & Men, Another Miracle; Boldy James & Nicholas Craven, Criminally Attached; Summer Walker, Finally Over It; Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, Stygian Bough: Vol II; Real Bad Man & TOBi, The Perfect Blue; RZA, Bobby Digital Presents: Juice Crew All Stars; Jim Jarmusch & Anika, Father Mother Sister Brother (Original Music From The Film); Alessandro Rovegno, A Generational Monsoon; Shoko Nagai, Forbidden Flowers; Nightmares On Wax, Echo45 Sound System; Federico Mosconi, Eleven Steps to the Side; Zola Mennenöh, A Labour of Love; Kalia Vandever, Another View; Elayn, Hzzz; Exzald S, Iridesc.
