In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on September 12, 2025:
Algernon Cadwallader, Trying Not to Have a Thought
Emo revival heroes Algernon Cadwallader are back with their first new album in 14 years, Trying Not to Have a Thought. The follow-up to 2011’s Parrot Files is also the band’s first with their original lineup – vocalist-bassist Peter Helmis, guitarists Joe Reinhart and Colin Mahony, and drummer Nick Tazza – since their influential 2008 debut, Some Kind of Cadwallader. It was largely recorded and self-produced at Reinhart’s own Headroom Studios in Philadelphia. “This is just what comes out of us when these four people get in a room,” Helmis said. It’s a graceful, meditative return, though no amount of maturation – or dissociation – can shake the overwhelming stream of thoughts off the group’s music. “We are radiators hissing in unison,” Helmis sings on the title track, making it feel triumphant.
Guerilla Toss, You’re Weird Now
Indie rock weirdos Guerilla Toss have followed up 2022’s Famously Alive with You’re Weird Now, which was produced by Stephen Malkmus. It was recorded at the Barn, the recording studio in Vermont owned by Phish’s Trey Anastasio. “The recording session was quite the hang,” Peter Negroponte said in our inspirations interview. “The way the studio is set up, there’s no isolation, even where the board is, so everyone’s just hanging out in this room. It’s a little nerve-racking, because you’re kind of playing for all your buddies. They’re taking pictures, sort of assist-engineering. That was the vibe.”
Asher White, 8 Tips for Catastrophe Living
8 Tips for Catastrophe Living, the playfully abrasive and uncompromising new album by Asher White, is named after a self-help book subtitled Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. “The idea of tips for catastrophe is really funny to me,” White reflected in press materials. “No matter what’s happening historically, people will forever be self-medicating and coping in small, menial ways.” So the characters on her 16th full-length and first for Joyful Noise span through centuries (White was born on the second month of the 21st one), explored at various stages of personal crisis. “I was writing about women who I’m worried about becoming, or women who I identify with in some abstract way,” White said, “and then trying to run them through as many different historical circumstances as possible.”
King Princess, Girl Violence
King Princess – the project of Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Mikaela Straus – has released her new album, Girl Violence. Earnest, punchy, and messily defiant, the record chronicles a period of disarray for Straus as she stepped back from the limelight and major label system, went through a break, moved away and came back to NYC. “I had to really think about how I was presenting myself emotionally. If I was walking through the world needing the validation of a partner to tell me that I’m good, that’s issue number one,” she told The Guardian. “And I had to sit down with myself and be like: who am I alone, without anybody?”
Jens Lekman, Songs for Other People’s Weddings
After Jens Lekman’s 2004 single ‘If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)’, fans took him at his word. The Swedish singer-songwirter has since performed at 132 weddings, making his new album, Songs for Other People’s Weddings, more than just conceptual. It accompanies the book of the same name by Lekman and bestselling author David Levithan, following J and V’s relationship against the backdrop of various weddings. “If Jens and I have done our jobs, the novel and the album tell both sides of J and V’s story – and the tension comes from how these sides fit together,” Levithan shared.
Liquid Mike, Hell Is an Airport
Liquid Mike have followed up last year’s impressive Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot with a new album packed with hook-laden, punchy, empathetic rock songs. “Airports are these weird, intermediary spaces that have always made me feel like I’m stuck in limbo,” Mike Maple explained. “This album deals a lot with themes surrounding feeling stuck and unable to crawl out. Airports are stressful and congested and bureaucratic and never sleep; I imagine hell operates very much like an airport.” He added, “PBS was a coming-of-age album, and Hell Is An Airport is waking up the next morning and realizing that maybe all the dumb shit you did wasn’t that cute after all. You’ve got hard-to-break bad habits and a lot of things that didn’t pan out the way you thought they might.”
Robin Kester, Dark Sky Reserve
Dutch singer-songwriter Robin Kester has unveiled her stirring, otherworldly new LP, Dark Sky Reserve, via Memphis Industries. Recording abroad for the first time, Kester made the album in Bristol with Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Yard Act), bringing along collaborators including Rozi Plain of This Is The Kit and Adrian Utley of Portishead. “When I wrote the album, that’s why almost all of that was written at night where I felt safer and it was dark outside, I didn’t feel guilty about wasting my time because it was like bonus time – no one expects anything from you when it’s the middle of the night,” she reflected. “I could see myself for who I am.”
mark william lewis, mark william lewis
mark william lewis, A24’s first musical signing, has come through with his self-titled debut LP. Ghostly, poetic, and vividly rendered, the record was previewed by the singles ‘Seventeen’, ‘Still Above’, ‘Tomorrow is Perfect’, and ‘Skeletons Coupling’. It’s strewn with images of London, some more impressionistic than others. ‘Skeletons Coupling’, for instance, “is inspired by social situations around me in London. I wrote it after a party I went to on a Thames Beach. I spent the night skimming stones into the river with my friend. I find that skimming stones clears my head, like each stone is another thought sent spinning into the water.”
Maruja, Pain to Power
It’s exhilarating to hear Maruja bring their wildly discombobulating fusion of styles to a full-length. Their debut LP, Pain to Power, shapeshifts between sneering punk, improvisational jazz, and droning passages, as heard on early singles including ‘Look Down on Us’, ‘Trenches’, ‘Saoirse’, and ‘Break the Tension’. It was recorded with producer Samuel W. Jones, with whom the band worked on their three EPs to date.
Frost Children, SISTER
Frost Children’s new album is steeped in the golden age of EDM and blog house that Angel and Lulu Prost grew up with, combining emo, electro, and unadulterated pop. Born out of what Angel calls “twin telepathy,” SISTER boasts appearances from Kim Petras and Babymorocco, as well as additional production credits from Porter Robinson and MØ. “This is so confidently what we love, and what we breathe,” Lulu said.
Cafuné, Bite Reality
Cafuné take a turn away from the “post-pandemic escapism” of their debut album, Running, with the dynamic, confrontational Bite Reality. “The entire time that the band has existed,” the duo’s Sedona Schat remarked in press materials, “it’s always been about negotiating between digital manipulation and raw realness.” They strike a healthy balance on the record, which was tracked in 2024. “At the end of the day, all we have is one another,” the band added. “You can’t take anything with you when the lights go out. Embrace the future, bite reality.”
WILDES, All We Do Is Feel
WILDES (aka Ella Walker) has put out her second album, All We Do Is Feel. The London-based singer-songwriter co-produced the Other Words Fail Me follow-up with her best friend Elena Garcia (Tonguetied), who would introduce Walker to EDM, which is subtly threaded throughout the album. “Sometimes, electronic music can be more heart-wrenching to me than a guitar,” she remarked. All We Do Is Feel charts a familiar story of heartbreak and renewal. “I had spent months musing on how little I had, how so much had been taken from me emotionally, leaving me feeling bereft – but I realised in writing it, that ‘all’ I had left was in fact abundant and rich,” she said, commenting on the early single ‘All I Get’.
Other albums out today:
Jade, That’s Showbiz Baby!; Ed Sheeran, Play; Twenty One Pilots, Breach; Michael Hurley, Broken Homes and Gardens; Kassa Overall, CREAM; Fruit Bats, Baby Man; Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer, Purity; Will Paquin, Hahaha; Ruston Kelly, Pale, Through he Window; Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie, Body Lapse; Snuggle, Goodbyehouse; El Cousteau, Dirty Harry 2; The Hidden Cameras, Bronto; Verses GT, Verses GT; Mud Grief, Mud Grief; Nyxy Nyx, Cult Classics Vol. 1; Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Perimenopop; The Paper Kites, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It; Mimi Webb, Confessions; Marta Forsberg, Archeology of Intimacy.
