New Music Friday: Essential Albums from Vince Staples, Death Cab for Cutie, and More

Vince Staples: Cry Baby [Loma Vista]

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Vince Staples is embarking on his independent journey with Cry Baby, his debut for Loma Vista, released in partnership with his own Section Eight Arthouse label. The Long Beach rapper delivers an album characterized by its unconventional beats—from the gritty rock riff of “Blackberry Marmalade” to the soulful funk of “White Flag.”

Staples also accompanies these tracks with pointed music videos, in which he confronts societal issues head-on. His delivery remains a compelling tightrope walk between provocative honesty and a signature blasé cool, ensuring Cry Baby grapples with its weighty subjects with profound thought and gravity.

horsegiirL: Nature Is Healing [RCA]

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horsegiirL expands her vibrant sonic palette on Nature Is Healing. Moving beyond the Eurodance and cheeky hyperpop of her earlier Berlin-based releases, the enigmatic half-horse, half-human artist gracefully gallops through IDM, Jersey club, trip-hop, and dusty 808s on her much-anticipated debut album.

With production contributions from hyperpop luminaries Casey MQ and A.G. Cook, this 15-track LP is a kaleidoscopic electronic ode to the natural world, praising rivers, beaches, and fungi over a rich tapestry of sounds.

Death Cab for Cutie: I Built You a Tower [Anti-]

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I Built You a Tower signals Ben Gibbard’s resolute return to the studio, following years dedicated to touring anniversary celebrations of his seminal works with Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service. Collaborating with producer John Congleton, the band crafted this album as a powerful mission statement for a new era.

It conjures synthpop anthems like “Riptides” while simultaneously challenging the lyrical habits that have long endeared Gibbard to indie-emo enthusiasts. As he revealed to The New Yorker, he’s made a “conscious effort to break out of a couple of the jails that I built for myself lyrically,” promising a fresh, yet familiar, introspection.

Modest Mouse: An Eraser and a Maze [Global Pace]

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Fans of Pacific Northwest indie rock, rejoice: Modest Mouse has unveiled their first independent album in nearly three decades. An Eraser and a Maze finds Isaac Brock and his bandmates grappling with their journey and the essence of their identity, leaning into raw instincts to guide their creative process.

The album revisits their signature murky rhythms, Brock’s distinct caterwauling wail, and ragged guitar riffs. Yet, it also offers delightful surprises, including Janet Weiss’s drumming on “Look How Far…” and a burst of early-aughts indie rock on “Speak ‘N Spell (Or Not)” that could easily be mistaken for a We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank-era cut.

Tara Clerkin Trio: Somewhere Good [World of Echo]

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Tara Clerkin Trio crafts a unique, homemade tapestry of jazz, folk, library music, and kosmische, channeling psychedelia through a meticulous attunement to simple sounds. Somewhere Good, their second full-length and first in six years, follows mini-albums In Spring and On the Turning Ground.

At times, it evokes the haunted music-box quality of Broadcast or the expansive universe of Mica Levi, alongside the dubbed-out streetside lullabies characteristic of their Bristol origins. As biographer Ryan Davis aptly describes, the “hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage” of their instrumentation combines for a truly hypnotizing effect.

Six Sex: Ultra [Dale Play]

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True to her Argentinian roots, Six Sex was raised on the rhythms of guaracha. However, her distinct brand of sexed-up, flashy, and brazen music has found a natural, fervent home in Mexico, where perreo rave reigns supreme.

Ultra, released on June 6, masterfully blends these cultural strands into an intoxicating soundtrack for a night of unbridled debauchery—picture Virginia Slims, beachside champagne, and cash-filled wallets. This is an album designed to be blasted in a club teeming with baddies, with a strict no-boyfriends-allowed policy.

Protect: Slimedude2003 [Ball Hogs/Atlantic]

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Fresh off the heels of an apparently accidental leak of 50 songs in April, Protect delivers a mercifully concise statement with Slimedude2003. This 12-track mixtape showcases the Buffalo rapper’s versatile flows and signature slacker humor on an astral scale.

Named after his gaming tag, Protect navigates his beats with a deft touch, weaving through waves of trap cymbals and skirmishing synths as if in a musical bullet-hell. Tracks like “Last of Us” apply his inventive melodies to club-ready laments, trading dazzling neon for a melancholic glow.

Jake Muir: Pareidolia [Enmossed]

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Ambient and heavy metal converge on the latest album from Jake Muir, the Los Angeles-based DJ, sound artist, field recordist, and seasoned explorer of liminal spaces. Inspired by his 2022 collaboration with Evan Caminiti, Pareidolia is a cosmic concoction.

Muir masterfully blends twinkling metallic tones and irradiated drone, primarily sourced from the atmospheric passages of black- and death-metal records, creating an immersive and uniquely unsettling sonic experience.

Beatrice M.: Sinking [Tectonic]

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Dubstep has long been the chosen medium for Beatrice M. On the Paris-based producer’s debut album, Sinking, she stamps her distinctive mark on the genre, artfully weaving uplifting elements from deep house and disco into dubstep’s typically dusky contours.

At times, the album peels away from the solitary, nocturnal feel of traditional dubstep, making it easy to forget its foundational genre. Tracks like “Motion” and “Disco Corner” demonstrate how dubstep here functions less as a singular category and more as a hazy, enveloping aura around other vibrant club genres.

Zoh Amba: Eyes Full [Matador]

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Long immersed in the raw blurts and abrasions of New York’s improv and avant-garde scenes, Zoh Amba emerges as a singer-songwriter of bold, clattering folk with her Matador debut, Eyes Full. Raised in Tennessee before migrating to New York via San Francisco, Amba casts a freewheeling, people-watcher’s gaze on overlooked characters.

On Eyes Full, the propulsive drumming of Jim White (of Dirty Three) races beneath guitars that are as much slashed as strummed, all bathed in a warm, distorted glow. The result is an album of riotous compassion, destined to resonate deeply with admirers of Big Thief and the Microphones.

Widowspeak: Roses [Captured Tracks]

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Over sixteen years as a working band, Widowspeak has journeyed from noirish dream-pop to the more ragged folk rock that defines their latest album, Roses, never losing their characteristic quiet wit or homespun languor. This is a deeply romantic record, at times coated in syrupy yearning.

Other moments, like the torchlit “If You Change,” shimmer with the melancholic faith of a power-pop anthem. Roses showcases the band's enduring ability to craft evocative soundscapes that linger long after the final note.

Of Montreal: Aethermead [Polyvinyl]

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Kevin Barnes reconvened Of Montreal in Brooklyn to craft Aethermead, an album born from the aftermath of a breakup with his fiancée. Barnes describes the songs as confessional “to an embarrassing degree.” This marks business as usual, not just for his diaristic outpourings—(“I just wanna fuck you again!” he groans on lead single “When”)—but also for the dazzling melodies, lysergic hues, and winning quips that consistently elevate his music beyond lyrical doldrums.

Aethermead continues in the quintessential Of Montreal spirit, from the indie-rock chug of “Take the Form” to the baroque-pop ballad “Already Dreaming,” a song Barnes claims possessed a “clairvoyant quality,” foretelling his relationship’s dissolution even before it happened.

Lyra Pramuk: Hymnal (Resung) [7K!]

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This adaptation of Lyra Pramuk’s Hymnal leverages the original record’s orchestral, maximalist construction as a fertile ground for radical reconfigurations by some of contemporary electronic music’s most mystical and forward-thinking peers. Led by a Djrum rework that transforms Pramuk’s “Ending” into a colossal wormhole of hyperspeed, skittering drums, Hymnal (Resung) features remixes from an international roster of beatmakers and time-twisters.

Among them are Colombian TraTraTrax head Verraco, Catalan duo Tarta Relena, and a collaborative effort from left-field techno producers Laurel Halo and John Tejada, each offering a fresh, expansive vision of Pramuk’s groundbreaking work.

Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mouse on Mars: Spatial, No Problem [Domino]

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Given that dub legend Lee “Scratch” Perry was one of the most mercurial and inventive musicians to have ever graced the earth, it comes as little surprise that, five years after his passing, his purported “final” album has emerged in such an unexpected form: a full-length collaboration with Mouse on Mars.

Nonetheless, this shimmering assemblage of sidewinding, monologued jams is undeniably unforeseen—even to the German kosmische duo themselves. As Jan St. Werner noted in a press release, “We hardly spoke about what we were doing. We met and got going… He was laughing a lot and we laughed along. We also cooked and ate fish soup and papayas,” painting a picture of organic, joyful creation.

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