New Releases & Staff Picks - 8/22/25

STAFF PICKS
 DARIO - Zoh Amba
ASH - Miles Davis Box Set
 JAKE - Squanderers
KIMBER - Duster reissue 
MARY - Kenny Burrell Reissue
ZACH - Water From Your Eyes and Nourished By Time 
DREW - Smashing Pumpkins reissue

DEFTONES - private music CD/LP/CASS (Reprise)
[Available on indie exclusive colored vinyl with alternative artwork]
Deftones have always defined boundless creativity in the music space. Across nine studio albums, they have carved out an unmistakable sonic identity - ferocious yet dreamlike, while making space for constant refinement and surprise. Now, decades on from the groove-forward sound of their era-defining debut, Adrenaline, and following a long line of masterpieces including 2000's White Pony, 2010's Diamond Eyes and 2020's Ohms- an album that earned them their second and third Grammy nominations - they return with one of the most focused statements of their career: private music. Joining the band's creative core of Chino Moreno, Stephen Carpenter, Abe Cunningham and Frank Delgado (as well as touring bassist Fred Sablan, who appears on the album) is producer Nick Raskulinecz, who previously worked on Diamond Eyes and 2012's riveting Koi No Yokan. The result is a lean, masterfully paced 11-song set that plays like a new Deftones benchmark. Meditating on the beauty and peril of nature, the challenge of cultivating a positive mindset and visions of a journey beyond the physical realm, private music showcases Deftones at their most evolved. At once a psychedelic voyage and a skull-rattling wallop, it's the latest peak in a catalog filled with immersive, emotive triumphs.

MAC DEMARCO - Guitar LP (Mac's Record Label)
Guitar is the first studio album from Mac DeMarco since 2019's Here Comes The Cowboy. Following the two most recent releases - the 199-track One Wayne G and the instrumental, tour-inspired collection Five Easy Hot Dogs, Guitar features 12 new songs written, performed and recorded in it's entirety by Mac between November 16th-28th in 2024 at his home studio in LA. Mac writes, “I think Guitar is as close to a true representation of where I'm at in my life today as I can manage to put to paper.”

LAUFEY - A Matter Of Time CD/LP/CASS (Laufey LLC)
Laufey's third album, A Matter of Time, is a beautiful masterpiece of introspection about the anguish that comes with life and love.

SUPERCHUNK - Songs In The Key Of Yikes CD/LP (Merge Records)
Bruised Lung. No Hope. Care Less. Climb the Walls. Everybody Dies. Scanning the tracklist of Songs in the Key of Yikes, one is given to wonder: Is Superchunk okay? In a world that's arguably darker than the one that greeted Wild Loneliness in 2022 or What a Time to Be Alive in 2018, are any of us okay? In seeking an answer, Songs in the Key of Yikes unleashes a sound that is triumphant and bright in the darkness. Songs in the Key of Yikes is a signature Superchunk album: visceral and timeless and catchy as hell-a cathartic balm for these oppressive times that will feel even better once we've figured our collective shit out.

NOURISHED BY TIME - Passionate Ones LP (Xl Recordings)
This is The Passionate Ones. It’s not an album. It’s a sermon. A twelve-track exorcism howled from the underbelly of late-stage capitalism, written, produced, and conjured entirely by Marcus Brown. This ain’t soul revival. This is soul revenge. Crafted between London, New York City, and Baltimore—each city leaving fingerprints on the sound—The Passionate Ones channels Marcus’s global process with local truth. Born and raised in Baltimore, Brown’s work is profoundly shaped by the city’s rich and eclectic musical heritage, where jazz, punk, indie, hip hop, and R&B collide in raw, genre-fluid harmony. You can hear it in the tension and release, the way the tracks slip between worlds and histories.
 

HOT MULLIGAN - The Sound a Body Makes When It's Still CD/LP (Wax Bodega)
Hot Mulligan is a ride-or-die testament to staying true to yourself. When the emo band formed in 2014 and cut their teeth playing house shows and naming songs by closing their eyes and typing into auto-correct on their phones, no one expected they'd be selling out thousand-cap venues, one of their scene's most respected bands a decade later. But as Hot Mully releases their phenomenal fourth LP, The Sound a Body Makes When It's Still, that's exactly where they're at.

WATER FROM YOUR EYES - It's A Beautiful Place LP (Matador Records)
It's A Beautiful Place opens with zero-gravity instrumental ‘One Small Step’ – a fitting prelude for what is one giant leap for New York duo Water From Your Eyes. The album is a gleaming megalopolis, a satellite view of eras and musical forms, a reframing of the y2k songbook that is at once awe-struck and mindful of its place in the vastness. “It ended up being about time, dinosaurs and space,” says Nate Amos. “We wanted to present a wide range of styles in a way that acknowledges everything’s just a tiny blip.”The duo recorded the bulk of It’s A Beautiful Place last summer, just as they have every other WFYE release: in Amos’s bedroom. But this time, much of the writing and recording were shaped around the dynamics of a full-blooded live group: “When you’re playing with a band you tend to write with one in mind - this was the first time I wrote anything imagining us playing anywhere bigger than a basement”, he observes.

LSD AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD - LSD And The Search For God LP (Don Giovanni Records)
LSD and the Search for God hit the Northern California coast in 2005––seemingly from another place and time––dosing San Francisco with hypnotic shows built upon swirling guitars, otherworldly drones, fuzzed-out pop melodies, and dreamy vocal harmonies. With reviews of early shows and recordings drawing comparisons to My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Yo La Tengo, Spacemen 3, and Sonic Youth, the band quickly developed a must-see reputation within the underground psychedelic music scene. When LSD finally released their self-titled debut EP it earned critical acclaim and continues to frequently appear on lists of essential shoegaze releases - long out of print and now made available again on a limited press.

TYLER THE CREATOR - Cherry Bomb LP [Reissue/2015]  (Sony)
The fourth album from Tyler, The Creator on translucent blue vinyl, featuring both Cherry Bomb mask cover and OG cover.

DUSTER - Contemporary Movement (Y2K 25th Anniversary) LP [Reissue/2000] (Numero)
A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, We were here. This numbered 25th anniversary edition is pressed on 180G vinyl and comes with a lyric sheet and poster.

SMASHING PUMPKINS - Machina CD/LP [Reissue/2000]  (Virgin)
25th Anniversary Edition. Newly remastered reissue of this Pumpkins' classic. Includes ‘The Everlasting Gaze’, ‘Stand Inside Your Love’ and ‘Try, Try, Try.’

WOLF ALICE - Clearing CD/LP (RCA)
Written in Seven Sisters and recorded in LA with Grammy-winning, master producer Greg Kurtsin last year, The Clearing reveals where Wolf Alice stand sonically in 2025, delivering a supremely confident collection of songs bursting with ambition, ideas and emotion.

KENNY BURRELL  - Kenny Burrell (Original Jazz Classics Series) LP [Reissue/1957]  (Craft Recordings)
This eponymous album by Kenny Burrell was originally released on Prestige in 1957. It was his fourth album on the label as leader, his sixth album as leader in total, and features, alongside Burrell (guitar), Cecil Payne (sax), Tommy Flanagan (piano), Doug Watkins (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums). This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series with all-analog mastering from the original tapes at Coherent Audio on 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI in a Stoughton Tip-On Jacket.

MARIAH THE SCIENTIST - Hearts Sold Separately CD/LP (Epic)
Hearts Sold Separately is Mariah the Scientist's exciting and emotional follow up to 2023's To Be Eaten Alive. Thanks to the explosive launch of Burning Blue, Mariah's meteoric rise to becoming one of the top women in R&B is evident and punctuated by this piece. The album is Mariah's contemporary take on what she describes as the war on love and our collective duty to fight for it. She pictures herself, and most women, as toy soldiers who will lay their lives on the line for the sake of love- just to realize that men view them as nothing more than disposable playthings used strictly for entertainment.

BRENDA - Bath Time LP (College Of Knowledge)
Brenda (Hudson Whitlock of Surprise Chef / Karate Boogaloo / The Pro-Teens) presents new album Bath Time, a suite of heartbreaking, cinematic indie-soul ballads from the hotbed of Melbourne, Australia. Brenda encompasses the left-field soul sensibilities for which Whitlock has come to be recognised in cult instrumental groups Surprise Chef, Karate Boogaloo and The Pro-Teens, alongside heartfelt, introspective lyricism delivered in a sincere, delicate falsetto.

CASE OATS - Last Missouri Exit LP (Merge Records)
Last Missouri Exit, the debut album by Case Oats, is a remarkably assured record. The band-Spencer Tweedy (drums), Max Subar (guitar, pedal steel), Jason Ashworth (bass), Scott Daniel (fiddle), and Nolan Chin (piano, organ)-gelling around Casey Gomez Walker's voice and guitar. The throughline from Case Oats' first show to their debut album is trust, in the songs and in their players. Resonating from the messiest chambers of the heart, Last Missouri Exit is a bruised affair, the band swelling around Gomez Walker as she describes coming of age in terms of being loyal to desperately flawed people and eventually, with some distance from home, being true to herself.

PINO PALLADINO / MILLS,BLAKE - That Wasn't A Dream LP (Impulse Records)   Pino Palladino and Blake Mills return with their second collaborative album, That Wasn't a Dream, on New Deal/Impulse! Records. This record follows their 2021 debut, Notes With Attachments, which Pitchfork described as the sound of consummate collaborators imagining a world where there's no such thing as a lead performer.

SQUANDERERS - Skantagio LP (Shimmy Disc)
The 2nd Release from Squanderers on Shimmy-Disc. Furthering the collaboration by three stellar composers/musicians, David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol, The Red Crayola, Squirrel Bait, Bastro), Wendy Eisenberg (Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, Editrix, Whait) and Kramer (Butthole Surfers, John Zorn, Laraaji, Shockabilly, etc…)

TOPS - Bury The Key LP (Ghostly)
TOPS - musicians David Carriere, Jane Penny,Marta Cikojevic, and Riley Fleck - write timeless music that reliably threads immediacy and depth. Bury the Key, their first full-length since 2020 and with new label home Ghostly International, is a captivating reintroduction for the Montréal band: ever refined, undoubtedly masters of their melodic craft yet unafraid of evolving and testing themselves against different, at times darker tones.

WINTER - Adult Romantix LP (Winspear)
Winter's newest record and Winspear debut, Adult Romantix, is a farewell love letter to LA-a tunnel of summers and memories-inspired by Mary Shelley's gothic-romantic literature and '90s rom-coms. Leading up to her emotional coast-to-coast move, Samira Winter spent roughly two years writing songs in a transitory state: often in between tours, in different cities and sublets. Nostalgic and wistful, the album blends swirling guitars, cigarette-glazed vocals, and icy breakbeats floating between strummy bliss and melancholic desire. Influenced by touchstones like Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped, the forlorn acoustic rock of Elliott Smith, the slippery electronic-rock of Dean Blunt, and California shoegaze à la Further and Starflyer 59, Adult Romantix vacillates between dewy, strummy ecstasy and moody, nighttime desire.

ZOH AMBA - Sun LP (Smalltown Supersound)
Sun is the first album by Tennessee native and baritone saxophonist Zoh Amba for the Oslo-based imprint Smalltown Supersound - and her second album following 2022's Oh Sun on Tzadik label. On Sun, Amba introduces a newly assembled group with a set of compositions that blur the line between performance and process - where both the music and the act of capturing it unfold in real time, guided in part by improvisational recording techniques.

MILES DAVIS - Miles '55: The Prestige Recordings LP Box Set (Craft Recordings)   Miles '55 offers a deeper look at 1955, the year in which jazz icon Miles Davis formed his first great quintet (John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) and established his influential sound. This 3-LP set on 180g vinyl collects 16 tracks remastered from the original analog tapes by award-winning engineer Paul Blakemore, with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray. Included are new liner notes by award-winning music historian Ashley Kahn and session notes by Dan Morgenstern.

DEAN JOHNSON - I Hope We Can Still Be Friends LP (Saddle Creek)
With I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, Dean Johnson makes a pact with the listener: He will sing you his truth in the most heartfelt and charming way possible, if you promise to keep an open mind. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is essentially an anthology that bridges Johnson’s earliest days as a songwriter with his present-day outlook and abilities. There are songs that have been in his setlists for years, and others that will be new to fans. Each of its 11 tracks contains jocular social commentary or lovingly rendered affairs of the heart. The album’s songs about love and relationships offer another way to interpret its title: as a parting thought to an ex.

MINUS THE BEAR - Menos El Oso LP [Reissue/2005] (Suicide Squeeze)
Back in 2005, Seattle quintet Minus the Bear were riding the wave of a swift upward trajectory with their blend of '90s math rock fretboard savvy, early '00s electro-indie textural depth, and the wistful melodicism of the more mature strain of Midwest emo. So it was an interesting time for the band to undergo a stylistic sea change. Looking beyond their fellow guitar slingers, Minus the Bear instead found inspiration in the more adventurous pop producers of the era and went full steam ahead with a revamped sound of glitchy guitar loops, modern R&B rhythms, and swirling electronic tapestries on their 2005 sophomore album Menos el Oso.

COMING NEXT WEEK!
FUNKADELIC - S/T LP Reissue
BLOOD ORANGE - Essex Honey CD/LP
WISP - If Not Winter CD/LP
MARGO PRICE - Hard Headed Women CD/LP
SABRINA CARPENTER - Man’s Best Friend CD/LP
THE BETHS - Straight Line Was A Lie CD/LP
BRAD MELHDAU - Ride Into The Sun (Elliott Smith Tribute) CD/LP
THE HIVES - Hives Forever Forever the Hives CD/LP