Ela Minus’ second album, *DÍA*, takes a massive leap when it comes to the sheer size of the Colombian producer and songwriter’s music. Her 2020 breakout debut, *acts of rebellion*, felt like someone communicating electronic pop to you in secret, with warm analog synth squiggles and a delightfully brittle feel, not unlike coldwave’s minimalist steeliness or the punkish, romantic sound of ’80s synth-pop. On *DÍA*, Minus cranks up her stylistic tics to max volume: The synths crash like monsoons, and her voice soars above the music instead of lying in wait in the shadows. The saucer-eyed wobbles of opener “ABRIR MONTE” immediately recall the lush rave waves of Jamie xx’s “Gosh,” while “ONWARDS” conjures peak-era electroclash, right down to Minus’ excellently disaffected and cool-to-the-touch vocal take. At times, *DÍA* also feels like a modern update of the icy, gothic synth-pop that Swedish duo The Knife first perfected on their 2006 album *Silent Shout*. The swooning tones and static bursts of “IDK” tackle feelings of anxiety head-on, while “I WANT TO BE BETTER” is riddled with self-doubt and regret, a hand reaching across the void toward past acquaintances. The feelings feel real; the imagery is corporeal and thoroughly sanguine—the latter quite literally over the serpentine synths of “IDOLS”: “All it took/Was a little blood/To see what I’m really made of.”
“Play,” the pop-art experimentalist Brian Eno tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “is a way of exploring things.” On *AURUM*, released exclusively on Apple Music in 2025, the ambient pioneer takes that idea to new frontiers, using sonic texture and his meticulous detailing to create hushed realms and grand landscapes. Collecting tracks that Eno debuted on his Apple Music Chill radio show AMBER, Eno’s first solo full-length since 2022 shows the British innovator at the peak of his powers. On “Gorgeous Night,” synthesized, sustained drones rise up and tangle into one another, creating the aural equivalent of a shimmering, imperceptibly shifting aurora borealis. “Material World” pairs harsh tones that recall an alert tone’s implicit warning with an insistent beat and metallic scrapes, evoking the pulse of a city before it melts into its darkest hours. “Friendly Reactor Near Menacing Forest” echoes the standoff-level tension of its title, its rumbling low end and insistent upper register seemingly at odds as oscillations and shooting-star synth-strings veer into the mix. *AURUM* is available in Spatial Audio, and, as Eno tells Lowe, he’s been working with the idea of making music immersive for years. In the past, he would set up boomboxes around a space and make them play at once. “They weren’t synchronized together—that was the whole point,” Eno says. “But not being synchronized allowed new clusters of sound to appear.” Now listeners can replicate that ideal at home, giving new breadth and depth to songs like the fog-shrouded opener “Fragmented Film” and the windswept “Cascade.” With *AURUM*, he continues to explore his sense of play while creating ambient music, a genre that he’s been instrumental in defining and refining.
If ever a band could seize victory from the jaws of defeat, it’s Doves. Rising, quite literally, from the flames of house outfit Sub Sub after their studio burned down at the end of the ’90s, the Manchester trio—Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Andy and Jez Williams—alchemized a peculiarly northern strain of melancholy into soaring, atmospheric rock, scoring two Mercury Music Prize nominations in the process. *Constellations for the Lonely* is the group’s sixth album and their second following a decade-long hiatus, which ended with 2020’s *The Universal Want*. However, Goodwin’s issues with addiction and mental health meant that he was unavailable for much of the album’s recording. Rather than sounding like the work of a band in crisis, though, *Constellations for the Lonely* is one of Doves’ best efforts yet. From dystopian, *Blade Runner*-evoking opener “Renegade” and the cinematic, neo-psychedelic sweep of “Cold Dreaming” through the aching, Smiths-like “Last Year’s Man” and closer “Southern Bell,” with its triumphant blaze of glory, Doves sound stronger than ever here. “All the issues outside of the studio were really worrying and we faced a lot of challenges, but the musicmaking itself was really good. I guess the studio was like our safe space,” Andy Williams tells Apple Music. “We had to grab Jimi when we could but there’s a certain chemistry when the three of us are in a room together. There’s a certain chemistry in the way me and Jez work together and in how Jimi works and how we can work on each other’s ideas and songs without there being any ego. Everything goes through the Doves filter.” Read on as the Williams brothers talk us through the making of *Constellations of the Lonely* track by track… **“Renegade”** Andy Williams: “As a vocalist, Jez always brings an authenticity. This was just the rough guide vocal, there’s loads of imperfections on it, but he just nailed the mood of the song. That emotion is a million times more important than anything else. Musically, it feels quite dystopian. We were going for a bit of a Scott Walker vibe. There was a lyric in there about Piccadilly Circus and someone said, ‘Why don’t you change it to \[Manchester park\] Piccadilly Gardens?’ To me, the song is like Scott Walker walking around Manchester in the year 2025.” **“Cold Dreaming”** AW: “We love David Axelrod and Rotary Connection. That was our attempt at creating a song from that era.” Jez Williams: “But hopefully with a modern twist. We’re not interested in replicating the past, we’ve always taken sonics from all sorts of places. There’s always an undercurrent of abstract atmospheres underneath the music moving it.” **“In the Butterfly House”** AW: “This was one that Jez brought in quite early on. I really thought about the lyrical content of the song. The music was suggesting something, but I couldn’t quite grapple with what it was. I’ve always been interested in the history of murder ballads, so I thought of the image of a butterfly house where something had gone on there. I tried to create a little story about somebody coming back at night to this butterfly house and something had happened in there. It’s our subtle attempt at a murder ballad.” **“Strange Weather”** JW: “This was two separate songs until we realized there was a connection between them. There was about 20 different iterations of it until we nailed it. It was an enjoyable nut to crack but it wasn’t easy. The first bit is very spacious and conjures up lots of visual images, I think, then we completely flip it on its head, and it does a complete U-turn for this mad bit at the end. We played it all the way through live, which is the key. You can’t hear the join because there isn’t one!” **“A Drop in the Ocean”** JW: “I brought in that song. It was written in a completely different style, and we did a 180 on it. It was really fast originally, and we did it in half time. It was really important to bring out the soul of the track. If you listen to the production, it’s got that contemporary soul sound to it, that dark soul vibe that we were going for. We had the chorus, and Jimi came in and absolutely nailed the verses.” **“Last Year’s Man”** JW: “I really like this song. It feels quite old time-y to me, it’s got a bit of a Celtic thing going on. Andy brought in the idea and then we put it through the Doves filter. My kids are 17 and 14 and, lyrically, it touches upon those feelings of not wanting them to grow up, wanting to keep them the same but everything always keeps changing.” **“Stupid Schemes”** AW: “Jimi brought this one to the table. The album really needs it at that point. It was perfect. When me and Jez both heard it, it sounded a bit different for us with that psychedelic lead guitar, we don’t normally do that. It’s got this really bright, optimistic feeling to it which is perfect for the record. It’s a break from the intensity.” **“Saint Teresa”** AW: “Saint Teresa was originally going to go on \[previous Doves album\] *The Universal Want* but we thought it would make it a bit overlong. We’ve never been interested in making an album with 20 songs on it that goes on for an hour and a half. It felt right for this one, though. All three of us are lapsed Catholics, so Saint Teresa figures in that. Jimi wrote the verses and I wrote the choruses. Again, Jimi delivers a great vocal here.” **“Orlando”** AW: “This was one of Jimi’s. He brought it in, and we put it through the filter. I really like his vocal on that. It doesn’t directly reference anything, but I feel it’s got a feel of some of the things that he’s been through himself—there’s metaphors in there. I’ve never asked him about the lyrics on this one but to me it feels like his statement about what he’s been through.” **“Southern Bell”** AW: “We’ve read that it sounded a bit like Queen, who have *never* been a reference for us…” JW: “I told you at the time! It’s those bloody BVs. We actually stripped it down, it was way more Queen before, there was like 60 backing vocals on it! We wanted to do a big spaghetti western thing. I sing the first bit and then Jimi comes in and does the second bit. I really wanted to try that because the story’s about two people running out of time, running out of luck, but they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory. It’s almost like a conversation between the two of them. It worked brilliantly. Immediately, I was like, ‘That’s got to be the last song on the record.’ We knew when we did ‘Renegade,’ that was the first track on the record, and we knew when we finished ‘Southern Bell’ that that’s how we were going to go out.”
In his mid-to late twenties, Chicago rapper Saba earned a gold plaque for fan favorite “Photosynthesis,” performed on late-night TV, and made songs with rap greats like Black Thought and J. Cole. So, after a trio of thematically focused solo albums, his record with hip-hop production wizard No ID (Common, JAY-Z, Kanye West) finds him taking a confident, freewheeling approach. “Who is the GOAT, I wanna go toe to toe with it/’Cause I just know I’m not second to no n\*\*\*\*s,” he proclaims on “Woes of the World.” That doesn’t mean that he can’t still hold a subject though: “head.rap” pays homage to Black hair and his own locs, “Crash” romantically invites a woman to stay the night, and “How to Impress God” ponders spiritual fulfillment in light of his success. The synergy with his fellow Chicagoan is undeniable: No ID’s blend of bright piano keys and expertly chopped samples always hits, giving a warm landing place for Saba’s rhymes to land.
the name of this album refers to the me who is a scared little kid. they're unkillable because, after the hell of this year, i realized i had no choice but to always protect them. they're unkillable because they've got me, and together nothing can stop us. this is the only way forward. i love you. december 7th 2024 vancouver
The Wombats—Matthew “Murph” Murphy, Tord Øverland Knudsen, and drummer Dan Haggis—are widely associated with the British indie-rock revival from the early 2000s. As they’ve matured in the ensuing years, though, their sound has evolved beyond the scope of that world. On their sixth studio album, 2025’s *Oh! The Ocean*, they update the band’s geographic influence, too. After Murphy moved to LA, the band recorded in the city’s Echo Park neighborhood. Though the album title suggests a cheery, awestruck disposition, Murphy’s writing is as biting as ever. He takes aim at “see and be seen culture” on opener “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come” and wades into the murky anxiety of modern politics on “I Love America and She Hates Me.” The cultural, though, is balanced by plenty of introspective moments, like on “My Head Is Not My Friend,” in which Murphy dives into the ecstatic highs, crippling lows, and run-of-the-mill mundanities that animate the band’s best work.
Though Jason Singer has been making music under the Michigander moniker since 2014, the Kalamazoo-bred songwriter’s self-titled effort from 2025 marks his first full-length endeavor. Early releases like 2018’s *Midland* EP and “Misery” from the following year helped establish Singer’s emo-leaning folk compositions. His songs center his passionate, yearning vocal performances against hard-charging drum grooves and shredding guitar melodies. It’s a style he updates on his first full-length, presenting his sound in its most polished state yet. “Breaker Box” is built around a morose piano line that accents Singer’s longing lyrics and drum fills that reverberate against the swelling string runs. Elsewhere, on “Episode,” the band lightens the mood, incorporating playful vibraslaps and hand percussion that neatly juxtapose Singer’s declaration that all might not end well: “I think I know/How this is gonna go,” he sings.
“This has been a healing album to make,” Chris Davids tells Apple Music. “It’s a collection of hopeful music made from a dark place.” For Davids and Liam Ivory, the British production duo better known as Maribou State, the road leading to their third album, *Hallucinating Love*, has indeed been a dark and tricky one. First coming to prominence with the emotive melodies and electronic warmth of 2015’s debut album *Portraits*, the duo went on to make their trademark a distinct blend of soulful vocals and dance-floor-filling songwriting. Yet, in 2021, following a triumphant European tour for second album *Kingdoms in Colour*, Davids’ physical health began to decline, culminating in a serious operation for a rare brain condition in 2023. As he awaited his procedure and during his recovery, *Hallucinating Love* took shape, resulting in 10 tracks of resolute optimism that traverse everything from the swelling strings melody of opener “Blackoak” to the cabin folk stylings of “Peace Talk” and the driving electronic drum groove of “Eko’s.” “The experience of making the record was one of overcoming hopelessness,” Ivory says. “The music projects a brighter future.” Read on for Maribou State’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Blackoak”** Chris Davids: “This is one of the first tracks we finished for the record and it became a benchmark for what we wanted the rest of the album to be. It began when we went on a writing retreat to Somerset and decided to make demos in two hours only, so we wouldn’t overthink the process. One day, we came up with this idea on a little Casio with our bassist Jonjo Williams, we sampled an Andreya Triana vocal that we loved and had the form of the track really quickly.” Liam Ivory: “We wrote it in a day and then it took something like a year and 25 demos to finish! Andreya thankfully tweaked and changed some of the vocals on a later session and then it was perfect.” **“Otherside” (with Holly Walker)** LI: “We came up with this idea on the same day as ‘Blackoak.’ We made a basic loop that we loved and then struggled to find a vocal that would work with it. Initially, it was a pop vocal sample as the hook but when we revisited the idea two years later on another writing trip, we took a vocal that the incredible singer Holly Walker had laid down for a song that didn’t make the cut on *Kingdoms in Colour* and that seemed to fit much better.” CD: “Two weeks before we had to hand the album in, I reworked the take of that vocal with Holly and then it all came together. It’s a beautiful last-minute addition.” **“II Remember”** CD: “When we were coming up with ideas for the album, we recorded lots of drum breaks on to tape with our drummer, and one of them became the basis for this track. A month later, I found a vocal sample that sat perfectly over the beat and that’s also when the middle eight came to me, which is actually just the reversed string part from ‘Peace Talk’—a track that comes later in the album.” LI: “The finishing touches came from some field recordings we made while walking around our local area in Walthamstow. You can hear someone talking from the market there before the middle eight comes in.” **“All I Need”** LI: “Another thing we did at the start of the album is a ‘sound harvest,’ where we went into the studio and recorded as many experimental and unique sounds we could to add texture to future tracks. One of the sounds we recorded was an Omnichord, and it formed the basis for ‘All I Need.’ Initially, we paired the track with the same Andreya Triana vocal sample from ‘Blackoak’ until we recorded with Andreya the following year and she laid down this perfect new part.” **“Dance on the World” (with North Downs)** LI: “This is the ultimate Frankenstein tune on the record! It spans the entire three years that we were working on the album, since it started on our first writing trip to Somerset as a piano-led bluesy track, then we took it to New York and it became a track that ended up feeling really out of place with our sound, so we admitted defeat. Later, though, we discovered another demo Chris had made that was more electronic and along the lines of a track like ‘Turnmills’ from our second record. Ultimately, we mashed them up together, rewrote the vocals and it all came together.” **“Bloom” (with Gaidaa)** CD: “We had a vocal session with the amazing singer Gaidaa in Amsterdam, and I chopped up one of the tracks we came up with to form the vocal melody for ‘Bloom.’ We were unsure if it should go on the record, though, until the end of the writing process when we scrapped quite a few tracks last minute and this idea resurfaced. We went back into the studio, rerecorded the parts and suddenly it was working really well.” **“Peace Talk” (with Holly Walker)** CD: “This first came from an idea that didn’t make it on to *Kingdoms in Colour* but that we always had an affinity for. We sent it to Holly Walker, and she put down the first vocal idea that came up and me and Liam loved it. It’s one of our favorite tracks she’s done with us. The incredible strings arranger Matt Kelly then recorded the strings parts and we fleshed out the end of the song with an experimental Aphex Twin synth part on the Moog Matriarch. We both really love the track because it merges lots of our favorite genres like folk, electronics, and heavy distorted guitar. It feels like the most original or accomplished track on the album.” **“Passing Clouds”** LI: “In the studio, while we waited to get set up in the live room, we played around on a Hammond B3 and piano and really liked what we spontaneously came up with. We then went on to make versions where we built the track up, or we left it as a quiet interlude, but finally we decided to go for something in between. It’s a moment to breathe on the record and the only idea on it that we played fully live and together.” **“Eko’s”** CD: “This was probably the first thing we wrote for the album back in 2020. We had just gotten some new bits of kit like a drum machine and laid down this idea, but then we didn’t work on it for three years until we started finishing the album and our drummer recorded the final drum part. It’s the first track I’ve ever sung on that we have used on a project.” LI: “Before ‘Blackoak’ this was the benchmark for the album, since as a demo it felt so forward-thinking and fresh compared to *Kingdoms in Colour*. It still stands out on the album.” **“Rolling Stone”** CD: “We began ‘Rolling Stone’ at the end of 2021 and it was completely different. It was fast-paced, like a lo-fi IDM, Burial-type track with vocals and when I showed it to Liam he was sure it should be the last track on the album. We hit a brick wall when it came to finishing it, though, until we worked with the producer North Downs and he said it felt much more like a tune for sitting around the campfire. As soon as he said that it made total sense, so we went away and slowed it down, put new drums on and got a choir of 20 of our friends involved to give it that campfire feel. It creates a lovely energy to end the album on.”
Since the early 2010s, the shadowy British collective Snapped Ankles has been raging against 21st-century malaise with harsh electronics and urgent beats. Clad in ghillie suits—outfits designed to resemble moss-covered foliage and other curios of nature—that seem more suited for hiding in a post-apocalyptic landscape than the present day, they create cracked anthems that feel like dispatches from a ruined future. Their fifth album’s title, which is borrowed from a 2010 collection of American author Alice Walker’s poetry, sums up how Snapped Ankles defy what they view as a complacent world. *Hard Times Furious Dancing* is not just their latest manifesto, though; it’s a noisy, up-front invitation to join the group’s pseudonymous members on the dance floor as they bellow big, society-shaping questions like “How we gonna pay the rent?” and “What happened to humanity?” Snapped Ankles combine the fitful rhythms of post-punk with a battery of synths that flutter and strobe, offering a glaring reflection for the confusion and unease outlined in the group’s sloganlike lyrics. At times, they echo their forebears from the ’70s and ’80s, updating the musical tracts of then with added noise and maximized vexation that’s appropriate to the present day. “Personal Responsibilities” tilts a crooked finger toward “very large corporations” amid a clamor that recalls British art-rock legends The Fall, while the grinding arpeggiated synths of the tech-skeptic call “Smart World” bring to mind Tubeway Army’s existentially bothered 1979 single “Are \'Friends\' Electric?” “Hard times require furious dancing,” Walker wrote in the preface to her poetry collection 15 years ago. “Each of us is the proof.” Snapped Ankles bear out that declaration with music that is furious in both intent and execution, fueled by wrath and ready to command an audience to seethe and spit alongside them.
As a college student in the early 2000s, Kelela Mizanekristos used to rent a car and make the four-hour drive from D.C. to see Amel Larrieux sing at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC’s West Village. She’d tape the set on her recorder, then study it on the drive home. Two decades later, in May 2024, she told the story from the iconic venue’s stage, where she and her band performed unplugged selections from her catalog. Since her debut mixtape, 2013’s *Cut 4 Me*, Kelela has stood at the vanguard of the intersection between R&B and forward-thinking electronic music. But on *In the Blue Light*, captured during her Blue Note showcase, she translates futuristic cuts like “Bankhead” and “Take Me Apart” into timeless-sounding jazz and neo-soul numbers. Alongside tracks from *Cut 4 Me*, 2015’s *Hallucinogen* EP, and her two studio albums (2017’s *Take Me Apart* and 2022’s *Raven*), she throws a curveball—an ethereal cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Furry Sings the Blues.”
With a Basia Bulat album, you know exactly what you’re going to get, but you’re never really sure of how you’re going to get it. Once the autoharp-plucking folk phenom of the mid-2000s Montreal indie explosion, Bulat has since applied her heartfelt songcraft to ’60s girl-group gold sounds (2016’s *Good Advice*) and string-quartet reimaginations (2022’s *The Garden*), but her stylistic explorations are always anchored by a radiant voice that projects equal amounts of strength and sensitivity. Her seventh album was largely born from solo songwriting sessions and MIDI experiments conducted in her apartment in the dead of night and embraces the sort of free-spirited approach that results when you’re liberated from the demands of the waking world. With the opening duo of “My Angel” and “Baby,” Bulat takes a shot of “Espresso” and embraces her inner disco diva, while the song that actually references “disco” in its title—”Disco Polo”—is a loving tribute to the namesake dance/folk hybrid popular in her ancestral homeland of Poland. But the exquisite string arrangements—courtesy of Dua Lipa collaborator Drew Jurecka—serve as the connective tissue between the album’s mirror-ball-twirling highs and its calming comedowns, like the elegant piano ballad “Right Now” and dreamy country odyssey “The Moon.”
The cover art for the sixth album from indie-pop dynamo George Lewis Jr.—aka Twin Shadow—features the handwritten signature of his father Georgie, who passed away from cancer in 2024. It’s a poignant visual cue for what is undoubtedly the most nakedly personal and reflective album of Twin Shadow’s career. Where so much of his discography exists in a never-ending summer of ’84 where Prince and Springsteen are jostling for the top of the charts, *Georgie* strips Lewis’ songcraft down to the core. The glistening guitars and neon-tinted synth textures remain, but the tracks are almost entirely devoid of drums or beats and left to freely float in a sea of melancholy and simmering resentment—the bittersweet serenade “Good Times” is really a chronicle of the bad ones and an indictment of fair-weather friends who never seem to be around when you need them the most. But on tracks like “You Already Know” and “Permanent Feeling,” Lewis’ intimately soulful voice displays a Bon Iver-esque ability to transform even the most skeletal songs into full-blooded, heart-pumping hymns.
