New Releases & Staff Picks - 11/30/26

STAFF PICKS 
DARIO - 
JAKE -  
KIMBER -
MARY - 
ZACH - 
DREW - 
PAT-

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE - Perfecth CD/LP (Matador Records)  
Queens of the Stone Age's ninth album Perfecth arrives at a moment of hard-won clarity for the band. The record's nine songs map different forms of love: of family, friends, and others. The loves that break you and the loves that bring you back. The music is fearless and boundless, moody and menacing, gentle and strange. 'Insignificant Other’ is the album's centerpiece - sprawling, loose, and supernatural. Mono captures the headspinning feeling of heartbreak with a mix that slips seamlessly from mono to stereo and from claustrophobia to widescreen orchestral grandeur. The band remains enduringly, singularly magnetic. It's art that snarls and seduces in equal measure.

SLEEP - Hempispheres CD/LP (Third Man Records)  
As the genre-defying masters of stoner metal, the latest iteration of Sleep finds founding member and lead songwriter Al Cisneros newly partnered with the generational talent of Dale Crover (Melvins, Redd Kross) on drums and the iconoclastic Bubba Dupree (Void) on guitar. While simpler minds may seek out the redundancy of a monotonous iterative exercise, the road map of new album Hempispheres is an exploratory vision, one replacing overload with nuance and subtlety yet maintaining the interplay that made the band so special from the outset. So while the whiners on message boards and comment sections bemoan the amicable absence of long-time guitarist Matt Pike, real heads, visionaries and open-minded truth-seekers alike will be rewarded with not the Sleep album they anticipated or expected, rather with Hempispheres being the album that is needed.

DIIV - Zirp CD/LP (Fantasy)  
ZIRP! Is the new album from DIIV, produced by pop mastermind A.G. Cook. This is not a niche record for music understanders only. This is our POP record. This is our extremely accessible mainstream alternative rock record. What does alternative mean? We are saying, ZIRP! is what it means. Are we joking? Not really. This record is FUN. It was fun to make and it is fun to listen to. Life is hard. ZIRP! Is easy.

THAO - Show Me CD/LP (Kill Rock Stars)  
THAO (Thao Nguyen) is a singer-songwriter best known for her boundary-pushing indie rock work both as a solo artist and as frontwoman of Thao & The Get Down Stay Down. On her sixth studio album Show Me, she turns inward with an unflinching, real-time document of rebuilding, centering a hard-won openness to love and vulnerability. Across 11 emotionally charged tracks, she blends raw storytelling with expansive, collaborative production (including Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, The Linda Linda's, Neko Case, and Adrian Quesada) to explore desire, forgiveness, and self-reinvention. The result is an intimate, shape-shifting record that insists love is not just risk, but practice, embodiment, and transformation.

PISS - You Made Me / Skin On Linen CD/LP (Sub Pop)  
Piss is a noisy, genre-bending four-piece band from Vancouver, B.C. Combining punk, poetry, sound collage, performance art, and visual art, the band creates a multidisciplinary body of work that blurs the line between personal and political. Powered by thoughtful musicianship, energetic live performances, and a crystal-clear artistic mission, Piss writes punk music that aims to transcend the limitations of a well-established genre. Their work draws inspiration from a range of unexpected influences: literary giants, philosophers, filmmakers, painters, psychoanalysts, activists, children, members of a German anarcho-feminist militant group, and conversations with audience members. These voices represent varying ideological beliefs about gender-based violence and enable Piss to create art that depicts challenging and controversial issues such as sexual violence and enculturated gender norms without reduction, romanticization, polemics, or dogmatism. you made me / skin on linen is the band's debut full-length. It depicts a childhood shaped by structural, systemic, and intimate violence. Throughout the record, art-making motifs serve as metaphors for the myriad ways we carry the effects of this violence: each experience leaves an impression, gradually creating or deforming the self, much like a piece of clay moulded by every mark it receives.

VARIOUS - BCR10: Ten Years Of Big Crown Records LP (Big Crown)  
2026 marks the tenth anniversary of Big Crown Records. A lot can happen in 10 years, and a lot did. From very humble origins, Big Crown has become one of the most respected independent imprints in the world with an incredibly talented international roster and an incomparable catalog of timeless music. Leon Michels & Danny Akalepse opened the doors at Big Crown in 2016 with a simple ethos: put out good music they believe in regardless of genre. BCR10 - Ten Years of Big Crown is somewhere between a retrospective and a state of affairs, tried-and-true gems from the back catalog mixed with rock-solid tunes from the newest records. A double LP with choice tracks by Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, Lady Wray, Brainstory, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, El Michels Affair, Thee Lakesiders, Dave Guy, Les Imprimes, Homer, Thee Marloes, Lee Fields & The Expressions, Bobby Oroza, Marco Benevento, The Shacks, Paul & The Tall Trees, Thee Heart Tones, Surprise Chef, 79.5, Liam Bailey, and Holy Hive. A deeper dive into the Big Crown story is told perfectly in the liner notes by the one and only, journalist & DJ, Jeff Mao.

WAX POETICS X BIG CROWN RECORDS - Wax Poetics Editions: The Big Crown Story 7" + Zine (Big Crown)  
Wax Poetics goes deep with a 7”x 7”, 40-page magazine about Big Crown to celebrate our anniversary. They will be writing about the history, diving into the artists, doing their usual sections but on us (record rundown, deep dive, etc). Tucked into the front cover: an exclusive 7” record featuring El Michels Affair “Aheeme” b/w Dave Guy’s “Here Tomorrow, Gone Today” - not available anywhere else.

WHY? - Oh Golly / Yes Lord CD/LP (Waterlines) 
WHY?’s ninth album, Oh Golly / Yes Lord, airs all of Wolf’s baggage while asking how a person resolves their different selves. “The album is not a flattering look at my life, but that’s not the point,” Wolf asserts. “This is warts-and-all stuff. I’m always striving for honesty in WHY?, but Oh Golly / Yes Lord is particularly revealing.”

RADIO FREE ALICE - What's In Between CD/LP (Atlantic)  
What’s In Between is the debut album from Radio Free Alice, one of this year’s most exciting breakout bands. Recorded across three continents with producers Peter Katis (The National, Interpol), Ewan Pearson (The Rapture, M83) and Finn Billingham, the Melbourne-based indie rock band’s debut LP blends infectious melodies, sharp songwriting, clever humor and global ambition.

DINNER PARTY - Whatchu Bringing CD/LP (Sounds Of Crenshaw)  
Since forming in 2020, Dinner Party has continued to erase the lines between jazz, soul, and hip-hop, building a discography celebrated for it's warmth, musicianship, and effortless chemistry. Following their Grammy-nominated 2020 self-titled debut, the Dinner Party: Dessert reimagining, and 2023's Enigmatic Society, Whatchu Bringing? finds the group as locked-in as ever - trading the same easy, in-the-room feel that has made them one of the most beloved collectives in modern music. Whatchu Bringing? arrives on the heels of a pair of 2026 Grammy nominations for Dinner Party co-founder Terrace Martin. Dinner Party continues a run defined by joy, community, and genre-defying collaboration - an invitation, as always, to pull up a chair.

COLD WAR KIDS - Robbers & Cowards LP [Reissue/2007/] (UME) 
The indie rock breakthrough featuring soulful vocals, quirky songwriting, and fan favorites that helped establish the band's signature sound.

GOD OF WAR - Molly Picture CD/LP (Julia's War)  
God of War is Douglas Dulgarian (tagabow), Scott Turner (hooky) and Sam Silbert (hooky, circle of fire). It's 2007. You're watching your older cousin play SSX tricky. How is he such a monster at this game. Dude for real what the fuck. Such style, such finesse. I know he smokes weed. Should I tell Aunt Vicky? No no no- that would ruin this moment. He is racking up points that were formerly unheard of, and with such grace. There's no expression on his face. And considering that he just sat open mouthed at the dinner table staring into nothing for forty minutes, this revelation is more than remarkable. It seems as if he has always existed in this moment. As if his very essence was plucked from the ether. And perhaps he has. He was made for this moment. GOD OF WAR 2028

BLACK HEART PROCESSION - Three LP [Reissue/2000] (Touch & Go Records) 
The Black Heart Procession consists of two main songwriters, Tobias Nathaniel and Pall A. Jenkins, who both were in Three Mile Pilot. At times they play as a simply two piece, and at others they ask friends to join them. Mario Rubalcaba (clikitat ikitowi), Jason Crane (rocket from the crypt), and Kazu Makino (blonde redhead) chipped in on the making of three. originally released in 2000, three is The Black Heart Procession's third full-length release. The sounds of the instruments come together t o support the rhythm of pall's rich vocals. Each song seems to move forward and back perpetually playing with a contrast between light tones and dark, brooding themes. The Black Heart Procession break hearts with the melded sounds of piano, saw, pump organs, guitar, trumpet and vocals as well as the odd percussive instrument. The sounds may cause some of you pain or joy, or both, as their music rings out with sorrow and heartache, yet there is an underlying element of emancipation.

MITSKI - Puberty 2 (10th Anniversary) LP [Reissue/2016] (Dead Oceans)  
Ask Mitski Miyawaki about happiness and she'll warn you: Happiness fucks you. It's a lesson that's been writ large into her gritty, outsider songwriting for years, but never so powerfully as on her 2016 album, Puberty 2. Happiness is up, sadness is down, but one's almost more destructive than the other,  she says. When you realize you can't have one without the other, it's possible to spend periods of happiness just waiting for that other wave. On Puberty 2, that tension is palpable: a beautiful and brutal romantic hinterland, in which one of modern music's defining voices came fully into focus. 2026 marks the ten-year anniversary of that landmark album. To celebrate the occasion, Mitski and Dead Oceans will release a limited-edition reissue of Puberty 2 on Forest Shadow vinyl. Puberty 2 will also be celebrated with a digital deluxe version, featuring bonus tracks from the original Japanese CD - longtime fan favorite covers of ‘Fireproof’ by One Direction and ‘I'm a Fool to Want You’ by Frank Sinatra.

VARIOUS - Jamz Supernova Presents - Dance Around The World CD/LP (Mr Bongo)   BBC 6Music radio presenter, DJ and Future Bounce label head, Jamz Supernova, presents a new compilation Dance Around The World on Mr Bongo. An evolution of her radio show, event series and Bandcamp community under the same name, this compilation plots a globe-spanning day-into-night voyage across 16 tracks, from artists, countries and scenes that have shaped Jamz' musical worldview. Each track, many of which are exclusive to this comp, tells a story of heritage and roots, whilst pushing boundaries and pioneering new sounds in their respective regions. From the Réunion Island to Latin America, East Africa to the Caribbean and Pacific, it's a 24-hour cycle moving from downtempo to dance floor.

VARIOUS - Krismasi: Christmas Songs From Africa 1968-1982 LP (Strut Records)  
It's that time of year again! Are your copies of Now! That's What I Call Christmas and A Motown Christmas finally feeling worn out? Strut has the ideal antidote this year, as we dive into the world of festive records made by African artists spanning the late 1960s to the 1980s with our new Krismasi: Christmas Sounds From Africa compilation. The first ever compilation of rare festive songs from across Africa, featuring Dorothy Masuka, Les Kilimambogo Brothers Band, Houghas Sorowonko, Martha Ulaeto and many more.

MINISTRY - Hate To Go: Take Out Or Delivery CD/LP (Cleopatra)  
The final studio album from industrial metal giants, Ministry! Al Jourgensen settles all scores and takes Ministry back to it's legendary Sire/Wax Trax! Era! Features a special guest appearance by former Ministry & Revolting Cocks partner, Paul Barker!

BLOOD BROTHERS - Young Machetes LP [Reissue/2006] (Epitaph)  
Epitaph Records has re-issued The Blood Brothers' final album Young Machetes to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release. The collectors edition vinyl include rare remixes, never before seen photos, and a new retrospective for the ultimate collectors' edition.

STEVE GUNN - Sundowner LP [Reissue/2010] (Three Lobed Recordings)  
Originally released on LP in 2010 in a small and not-formally-distributed version, Three Lobed Recordings is excited to bring Steve Gunn's Sundowner to a wide audience. Pressed from the same metal mother as the 2010 edition, this album represents one of Gunn's earliest gut punches. It continues to captivate - note the hundreds of wantlist entries for this title on Discogs - with it's timeline and haunted charm. This one features Gunn-specific guitar workouts like ‘No Atlas’ and ‘Concrete Beach.’ This is the album where Jack Rose told Steve he needed to keep putting out material in this vein. Ask anyone who knows it and they will all tell you that this album is both timeless and has earned the legend. Three Lobed is excited to bring this one back into the wider conversation, back into store shelves and onto the turntables of listeners everywhere.

RYAN HEMSWORTH - Numbskull LP (Topshelf Records)  
Having worked with the likes of Alex G, Tinashe, Mitski, and countless others over a 15-year span, Ryan Hemsworth has developed an uncanny ear for talent while simultaneously honing his craft as a shapeshifting producer comfortable in any genre setting. Although known for his prolific output and seemingly endless high-profile collaborations, Numbskull is Hemsworth's first solo album since 2018's Elsewhere, and his first for Topshelf Records. On Numbskull, Hemsworth squares a tangled mix of influences ranging from shoegaze to lo-fi to metal, all squeezed through the lens of his globe-trotting pop background.

CASPIAN - Caspian LP (Wax Bodega)  
For more than 20 years, every Caspian album has been driven by a desire to stretch boundaries - a relentless ambition that's resulted in one of post-rock's most revered catalogs and established the Massachusetts quintet as an enduring, global force in the genre's modern era. On Caspian, the band's first album in six years and debut for Wax Bodega, the more unexpected way forward was to stop searching for what they hadn't yet done and instead trust what had defined them from the beginning.The six-song, 39-minute effort draws freely from the musical vocabulary the band have spent their career writing: evocative melodic themes, dense textures, swelling crescendos and crushing heaviness that rolls in like a slow-moving storm on the horizon. But they still find new possibilities within those familiar contours, allowing patient development and repetition to carry as much weight as surprise. The nine-minute ‘Remain turns a recurring melody into a sweeping study in tension and release, while ‘No One Left to Tell’ layers subtle shifts around a hypnotic tremolo figure and ‘A Great Fire’ sends serpentine guitars crashing into buzzsaw riffs.

RICHARD THOMPSON - Hippies Thugs & Heroes LP  (New West Records)  
Sixty years into a career that began with Fairport Convention and has spanned decades as one of rock's most acclaimed singer-songwriters, Richard Thompson is still chasing surprise. On Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, he let's his subconscious take the wheel, pulling from a cast of old friends, false gurus, former selves, and invented characters who insisted on having their stories told.The result is an album that refuses to sit still. It opens with the bright, Byrds-inspired jangle of ‘The Sorcerer's Apprentice ‘- a song rooted in Thompson's own history with 1970s spiritual movements and the complicated pull of charismatic leaders - before swinging into the rowdy ‘Everybody's Stealing’ and landing on the bluesy closer ‘Stringer.' Along the way, ‘Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking’ delivers some of his most inventive guitar work yet, a raw-nerve build into a splintered, psychedelic solo that captures a hardscrabble cast of London strivers and connivers. Recorded live with his longtime band - Taras Prodaniuk on bass, Michael Jerome on drums, David Mansfield on guitar and fiddle, and wife Zara Phillips on backing vocals - at Hobosound Studio in Weehawken, NJ, the sessions moved fast, often in just two to four takes. But the songwriting itself runs deep: more elaborate home demos gave Thompson's own musical identity a stronger hold on the final record, resulting in an album he describes as less them and more me.

EX:RE - Save As LP (4AD)  
There is no grand, overarching storyline to Save As, the second solo album from Elena Tonra’s Ex:Re project. Rather, the album - produced by Fabian Prynn and also featuring Josephine Stephenson on cello, Hinako Omori on synthesisers, Ben Reed on bass and Jethro Fox on electric guitar - is the latest in the Daughter lead singer's catalogue of expert chronicles of the gnawing minutiae of human consciousness: the over-thinking that consumes us, and the places we travel to escape.

SERENGETI - KennyV LP (Backwoodz Studioz)  
Serengeti, one of hip-hop's most singular and imaginative storytellers, returns to the expansive world of Kenny Dennis with KennyV. For more than a decade, Serengeti has used his mustachioed, Chicago-born alter ego to build one of rap's funniest, strangest, and most unexpectedly poignant character studies. Kenny is a blue-collar hero, family man, sports obsessive, aspiring entertainer, and endlessly unreliable narrator whose everyday victories, anxieties, grudges, and digressions have grown into a richly detailed mythology all their own. Across twelve tracks, KennyV opens another chapter in that saga, balancing absurdist humor, intricate world-building, sharp wordplay, and genuine emotional weight.

SILVANA ESTRADA - Marchita LP [Reissue/2022] (Glassnote Music)
Silvana Estrada's debut album Marchita available for the first time on vinyl & CD. Winner of the Latin GRAMMY for Best New Artist in 2022 and critically acclaimed by NPR, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and many others.  

VARIOUS  - Red Xerox LP (Desert Island Records)  
""A lot could have gone differently. But somehow, against all odds and logic, we became a group of punk rockers in Chicago, Illinois, making what felt like an atomic love bomb, and we knew it.”" - Kai Slater (Lifeguard, Sharp Pins) Beaming out of Chicago, teen-scene veteran Eli Schmitt (New Now, Unresolved Zine, Numero Group) has assembled Red Xerox, a compendium capturing the first years of the city's youth-beat Hallo-gallo scene. Red Xerox features early cuts from Horsegirl and Lifeguard, who are now pillars of the scene signed to Matador Records, alongside soon-to-be classics and previously unreleased tracks from Friko, Post Office Winter, Dwaal Troupe, Sharp Pins, Current Union TM, TV Buddha, P. Noid, Amaya Pena, Free Range, and Uniflora. Each copy includes a handmade 24-page zine chronicling Hallogallo from 2019 to the present, transforming tape machine fantasies and typewriter communism into history. From pop perfectionism, to noise rock wonders, from Ecuadorian inspired folk songs to no-wave psychedelia, the compilation presents the full breadth of Hallogallo's musical diversity.

GABOR SZABO - Dreams LP [Reissue/1968] (Mr Bongo)  
Mr Bongo proudly presents a reissue of Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo's masterpiece Dreams. Blending lush, Eastern European-tinged psychedelic jazz with beautiful arrangements by Gary McFarland, it's unique, delicate, charming sound has entranced record collectors for years. Originally released in 1968 on Skye Records, it's quite rightly become a sought-after LP, and here at Mr Bongo, we wanted to reissue as close a replica edition as possible.

COMING NEXT WEEK
TWISTED TEENS - Holy Cross Tigers CD/LP
SUFJAN STEVENS - Worst Christmas Ever CD/LP
DIRTY THREE - Ulterior Motives CD/LP
CHASTITY BELT - All My Friends CD/LP
KINGS OF LEON - O My Beloved CD/LP
YOUR OLD DROOG - Bread & Butter CD/LP
SHARP PINS - Mod Mayday 23 CD/LP
MIKE LADD - Nonechosen LP
TOM PETTY - No Sleep Till LA LP REISSUE
JOHN COLTRANE - Tiberi Tapes CD/LP
REX ORANGE COUNTY - Dream Fatigue CD/LP
UNTILTED (HALO) - S/T CD/LP
CIARAN - Roisin CD/LP
MARC RIBOT - Hurry Red Telephone CD/LP