In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on October 3, 2025:
Taylor Swift, The Life of a Showgirl
“Hеy, thank you for the lovely bouquet,” a character named Kitty tells a fan on the Sabrina Carpenter-featuring title track of Taylor Swift’s new album, “You’re sweeter than a peach/ But you don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe.” Recorded with Max Martin and Shellback, The Life of a Showgirl is the pop star’s latest attempt to offer a glimpse of it, though in noticeably sweeter and more modest fashion than she has before (diss tracks aside). The Swedish production duo don’t quite lend the maximalist sheen you might have expected from the record, which retains a generally bare-bones and faintly propulsive sound. “If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain…” Swift wrote on social media.
Agriculture, The Spiritual Sound
You can celebrate this New Music Friday the bipolar way, if you will, by switching from The Life of a Showgirl to The Spiritual Sound, the latest effort from ecstatic black metal band Agriculture. The follow-up to the Los Angeles-based group’s Living Is Easy EP vacillates between its own extremes as it combines the styles of principal songwriters Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson. “This is an album about the really fundamental human experiences of suffering, joy, and love,” the band said. “We find a lot of the profound in these basic experiences. To us they are by definition spiritual and worth singing and screaming about. With this record, we wanted to make music that connects the intensity of daily life with the intensity of an encounter with Spirit.” To quote Taylor Swift: “It’s beautiful. It’s rapturous. It is frightening.”
Rocket, R Is for Rocket
Rocket
have come through with their debut album, R Is for Rocket, via Transgressive Records/Canvasback. Named after a song by ‘90s post-hardcore outfit Radio Flyer, the LP was recorded between 64 Sound and the Foo Fighters’ Studio 606, with guitarist Desi Scaglione helming the production. The cover art is a photo of singer/bassist Alithea Tuttle’s father, who passed away this past spring, skydiving. “At least for me, it’s nice to know that even though he never got to hear the record – he did hear one new song – we have that as a way of commemorating him,” she said in our Artist Spotlight interview.
Snooper, Worldwide
Snooper have followed up 2023’s Super Snõõper with Worldwide, their second LP for Third Man Records. It finds the Nashville punks teaming up John Congleton, though the songs preserve the raucous, goofy intensity of their previous work without cleaning it up too much. (They are, however, longer than the ones on Super Snõõper, mostly running past the two-minute mark.) “The whole idea behind this record was experimentation and change,” guitarist Connor Cummins said in press materials. Ahead of the release, the band dropped the singles ‘Relay’, ‘Company Car’, ‘On Line’, the title track, ‘Guard Dog’, and ‘Pom Pom’.
Prewn, System
Izzy Hagerup has unveiled a new Prewn record, System, following up her 2023 debut Through the Window. Riveting and restless, the record was written in long stretches of bedroom sessions that saw Hagerup working through the night. “This new album comes from a much more self-centered place, the stagnant aftermath of intensity and emotion,” she shared. “I think it came from a period of time that was more numb, hollow, and confused. More disassociated from heartfelt pain, more entrenched in a frustrating and aimless discomfort.”
AFI, Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…
AFI’s latest album, Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…, it out now on Run for Cover. Fully steeped in Gothic romanticism, the record homes in on a particular mood, equal parts propulsive and evocative. “The bleakness that is this record, the healing in and of itself is not expressed…you don’t hear the light, but you feel the light,” Davey Havok told Rolling Stone Australia. “It’s in the medium. This is what we’ve got. It’s the clarion, it’s the siren, as it’s always meant to be. But in these times, these Black Sun times… it’s fucked up. We have what we have in the moment, and we’ve got to pay attention to it.”
dodie, Not for Lack of Trying
dodie has returned with her second album, Not For Lack of Trying, via Decca Records. The follow-up to 2021’s Build a Problem was written mostly between London and Los Angeles and produced alongside Joe Rubel (Maisie Peters, Griff, Sigrid). “Not For Lack of Trying is so simple, so sad and it really painted this picture of all these songs, of me trying to figure it out,” dodie explained in a press release. That said, there is a song dedicated to dodie’s beloved cat Mrs, ‘Darling, Angel, Baby’, of which she said: “In an album full of pain and confusion and figuring it out, Mrs is such a big part of my life and she brings me so much joy.”
Other albums out today:
Upchuck, I’m Nice Now; RXKNephew, MVW, & ChaseTheMoney, Whole Lotta RXK; Alex Orange Drink, Future 86; Molly Nilsson, Amateur; Thrice, Horizons/West; Glimmer, Get Weak; Creative Writing, Baby Did This; Deaf Havana, We’re Never Getting Out; Haerts, Laguna Road; Lambwool, Ashes; FearDorian & osquinn, Before You Press Play; Gaetha, Where my home is, or was.
