In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on February 6, 2026:
Ratboys, Singin’ to an Empty Chair
Ratboys’ new album, Singin’ to an Empty Chair, is as expansive and nuanced as it is purely resonant. The follow-up to 2023’s The Window finds the beloved Chicago band reuniting with producer Chris Walla, who helps them ease into some of their most simultaneously catchy and complex songs yet. “A big, overarching theme of this record is my attempt to document my experience being estranged from a close loved one,” vocalist/guitarist Julia Steiner explained. “The goal is to update this person on what’s been going on in my life and to try to bridge that impasse and reach out a hand into the void.”
Mandy, Indiana, URGH
Mandy, Indiana’s viscerally ambiguous music turns away from escapism and towards the body on their sophomore LP, URGH. Vocalist Valentine Caulfield, guitarist and producer Scott Fair, synth player Simon Catling, and drummer Alex Macdougall wrote much of the i’ve seen a way follow-up during a residency at an “eerie” studio house in the outskirts of Leeds, laying it down across Berlin and Greater Manchester. The album artwork, by the artist Carnovsky, features an anatomical illustration of Andreas Vesalius.
Daphni, Butterfly
The blurring of Dan Snaith’s alter egos is becoming more and more overt. On his new Daphni LP, the producer acknowledges this by “featuring” Caribou on highlight ‘Waiting So Long’, but more crucially seeks to stretch the perceived boundaries – and functional pulse – of the dance-focused project, all with the live show in mind. “I guess the point of these Daphni records is to keep in mind a more expansive idea of dance music where the parameters are broad and the church is broad,” Snaith said in press materials. With Butterfly‘s dazzling, unfettered flow, he keeps the listener guessing, too. Read the full review.
J. Cole, The Fall-Off
J. Cole’s long-anticipated seventh album, The Fall-Off, has arrived. “For the past 10 years, this album has been hand crafted with one intention: a personal challenge to myself to create my best work,” the rapper said of the two-disc project upon releasing the single ‘Disc 2 Track 2’. “To do on my last what I was unable to do on my first. I had no way of knowing how much time, focus and energy it would eventually take to achieve this, but despite countless challenges along the way, I knew in my heart I would one day get to the finish line. I owed it first and foremost to myself. And secondly, I owed it to hip hop.”
Ulrika Spacek, EXPO
London art-rockers Ulrika Spacek’s fourth album, EXPO, is hypnotically jazzy and adventurous. The band produced the record themselves, recording in London and Stockholm. “In an age of hyperindividualism we are proud to say it is our most collective effort yet,” they commented, adding, “Our music has always been a collage – a bit patchwork, sonically – but what makes this album a landmark for us is that we went one step further and made our own sound bank and essentially sampled ourselves.”
Other albums out today:
Ella Mai, Do You Still Love Me?; Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Laughter in Summer; Nick Jonas, Sunday Best; Dirt Buyer, Dirt Buyer III; Puma Blue, Croak Dream; Nick Schofield, Blue Hour; vegas water taxi, long time caller, first time listener; Brad Rose, The Sound Leaves.
