The Norwegian art-pop duo (Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg) met in high school in their hometown of Oslo, then moved to Copenhagen for school—in Motzfeldt’s case, the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, the incubator for some of the most forward-thinking pop music of the 2020s, from Erika de Casier to ML Buch. Since their 2016 debut EP *Okey*, the pair have entered into something of a creative mind-meld, occasionally writing songs from one another’s perspectives. On *Big city life*, their second studio album (following 2021’s *Believer*), Motzfeldt and Stoltenberg swagger through the cityscape of their own cheeky fantasies, a flirty neon pleasure dome where anything can happen. On “Roll the dice” and “Feisty,” they spit cool, campy bars about making friends in crowded bathroom lines and drunk taxi rides: “’Cause you’re a girl in the city/You just know how it is/You’re a professional, logistics, you just know this business,” they hype themselves up over a minimal drum-synth-piano riff. “You got time and I got money,” with its playfully swooning lyrics and sweeping string arrangements, plays out like the last karaoke number of the night.
“Ultimately—and I only discovered this after the whole album was written—this album is about opening yourself up to a lover, or a person, or the entire world, giving them every single part of yourself,” Laufey tells Apple Music about her third album, *A Matter of Time*. “It’s about acknowledging that it’s just a matter of time until you find out every single part of me.” She began working on the project while touring behind her breakthrough album *Bewitched* in 2024, inspired by a host of factors—particularly balancing her hectic schedule as an in-demand pop star with falling in love for the first time. Laufey worked on *A Matter of Time* with her longtime collaborator Spencer Stewart and new creative partner Aaron Dessner (of The National and Big Red Machine, and a regular collaborator of Taylor Swift’s). “It was that new experience that I was craving for an album,” she says. “I wanted to be so careful for this album about staying true to myself, and staying true to my roots, and staying true to my philosophy, which is ultimately keeping jazz music and classical music alive through my own music. But I was craving a level of speed and shine and newness for this album, and I knew I had to find one partner to work with who would bring that out in me.”
“I found myself in a new world of touring and chaos so quickly that I built a separation between myself as Josh and Barry on stage to deal with it,” Josh Mainnie tells Apple Music. “But when it came to writing this album, I knew it had to be for me as Josh. I wanted to bring those two parts back together.” As DJ and producer Barry Can’t Swim, Mainnie has had a meteoric rise since the release of his 2021 debut EP *Amor Fati* and 2023 album *When Will We Land?*. Blending emotive melody with thumping electronic percussion and expertly chopped vocal samples, Mainnie’s signature has become a feel-good dance-floor communion. For his second album, *Loner*, Mainnie turns inwards to explore his rise to fame, moving from the spoken-word soul-searching of “The Person You’d Like to Be” to the trance synths of “About to Begin” and soulful horn fanfares of “Childhood,” all while keeping his introspection anchored in the joy that has become his calling card. “Once I started, it all came together quickly,” he says. “It’s an authentic side of me that needed to come out for everyone to hear.” Read on for Mainnie’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“The Person You’d Like to Be”** “This is a collaboration with a good friend of mine, the poet Séamus. I’ve known him since university and always wanted to work together. We finally managed to make it happen and he came up with these lyrics that set the tone for the themes of the album really well. It’s about having two voices of conflict and duality—myself and Barry. I then put his vocal through an AI voice generator, so that it starts AI and becomes more and more Séamus as the track continues.” **“Different”** “I loved the lyric of ‘everybody different’ in this vocal sample I found and ended up building the entire track around it. I was also really inspired by the track ‘Church of Nonsense’ by Daniele Papini, which I’ve played in DJ sets for years, since it has this incredible rising bassline that I wanted to emulate here. It’s minimalistic and the synth that comes in two thirds of the way through wasn’t originally in there but when I brought it to rehearsals for the live show my keys player Jakes \[UK producer/artist Hannah Jacobs\] added it in and so it stayed!” **“Kimpton” (with O’Flynn)** “‘Kimpton’ is one of the earliest songs I wrote for the album. I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I went round to \[London DJ/producer\] O’Flynn’s house, since he lives around the corner from me, and we just began mucking about. He started this tune himself when he was on tour with Bonobo and I liked the vocal a lot but wanted to simplify it and build a different chord progression and texture around it. It developed as a jigsaw from there and I’m really happy with how it turned out.” **“All My Friends”** “This is another early one, probably written in November or December 2023. I found the vocal sample first and loved it so much I decided to keep it as it was and not overdo it with too much extra instrumentation. I’m generally quite quick in the studio, playing most of the instrumentation live myself and working on ideas until they’re finished rather than multiple things at once.” **“About to Begin”** “I wrote this while I was staying at my parents’ house on the day I delivered the finished album. I didn’t have anything to do, so I decided to quickly make something fresh to keep busy. I picked this vocal from a sample pack and it sounded pretty cheesy and American but I liked the energy of it. I put it through an AI voice generator, which added another persona to the themes of the record, and it’s since become a huge tune in the live show, so it had to go on the record.” **“Still Riding”** “This is one of my favorite tunes I’ve made and it was written a few years ago when I got back from touring in America for the first time. It’s been finished for a while but I couldn’t get the Kali Uchis vocal sample cleared until I think my own profile got bigger and they finally agreed. I’m so pleased because I love the track.” **“Cars Pass by Like Childhood Sweethearts”** “I was listening to a lot of \[French DJ/producer\] Pepe Bradock and his tune ‘Deep Burnt’ when I made this because I love the warmth and texture of the strings loop he uses. I started writing strings inspired by that and built all the other parts around it. It was originally just an instrumental but I spent a couple of weeks digging through samples and eventually found this vocal that works really well with the vibe of the tune.” **“Machine Noise for a Quiet Daydream” (feat. Séamus)** “This is a good place to have a bit of breathing space in the record. Séamus just sent me a poem he was working on one day, and I thought I’d see how it sounded on an instrumental I’d already finished and I loved the energy of it. I didn’t do much else, and none of it is really in time but I fell in love with his delivery on the phone voice note he sent through, so that’s what we kept.” **“Like It’s Part of the Dance”** “I don’t often write tracks for my live show but this is one that found its way into the show very quickly. I’ve been playing it for six or seven months and it always goes off—even when I sent the album to friends and the people I trust, a lot of people picked it out as their favorite. It’s all about the build and drop and energy.” **“Childhood”** “I was in Lisbon on holiday with my partner and I smuggled a keyboard along with me, which is what I ended up writing this one on. I started with the horns and vocal sample and then it was a case of finding a chord progression that led nicely into a sense of release. I felt like the track had a feeling of innocence to it, which comes with childhood, hence the title.” **“Marriage”** “‘Marriage’ ended up having a strange Russian doll process to it, since I wrote the vocal and had someone sing it live over an existing instrumental. Then I realized I didn’t like that instrumental, so I changed it before realizing I didn’t like the vocal anymore either so had to change that too! We got there in the end, and I love that it’s built around the lyric ‘My heart is closed for the season.’” **“Wandering Mt. Moon”** “I was in the toilet of an Indian restaurant in Brick Lane and suddenly heard the strings part of an amazing Bollywood track play through the speakers. I immediately Shazamed it and once I got home, wrote my own part inspired by it. It’s definitely become one of my favorites on the album since it’s such a lush and textured ending to have. The title also comes from a Game Boy *Pokémon* level, where you’re exploring a dark cave with only a ray of light, which is what this felt like to me.”
The Oxford-based musician was a virtuoso DJ before he became a producer, pulling off risky transitions of genre and tempo in vinyl-only sets known to flit from hip-hop to drum ’n’ bass to free jazz. Before that, though, the artist born Felix Manuel was something of a child prodigy as a pianist and harpist. On *Under Tangled Silence*, the first Djrum full-length since 2018’s *Portrait with Firewood*, Manuel’s talents as an instrumentalist (piano, harp, and percussion) are foregrounded as much as his electronic production. On “A Tune for Us,” cascading piano gradually gives way to jungle breaks; elsewhere, heady acid house and futuristic dancehall wash up against a blissful, piano-guided ambient meditation. Manuel began the record during the pandemic lockdowns, then rebuilt it from scratch after a catastrophic hard-drive meltdown; the result is a striking, holistic portrait of an artist fully inhabiting himself.
Whether it’s Merrill Garbus’ megaphone vocals, her righteously indignant messaging, or the percussive rhythms thundering beneath them, Tune-Yards have never trafficked in subtlety. But with their sixth album, the creative partnership of Garbus and bass-playing hubby Nate Brenner delivers its most clearly articulated statement to date. *Better Dreaming* is the duo’s fiercely funky response to spending several years cooped up (first with the pandemic, then with a newborn), and a defiantly optimistic affront to a world descending into chaos and rage. Featuring guest giggles from their offspring, “Limelight” is a joyous jam with a pronounced P-Funk vibe, while the clattering disco-house workout “How Big Is the Rainbow” is an instant LGBTQ+ anthem that you can imagine being blasted at Pride parties around the world for years to come. But *Better Dreaming* acknowledges that staying positive in a world mired in negativity requires constant diligence and self-care, and with “Get Through,” Garbus delivers an inspirational soul serenade to keep us racing toward the light: “We don’t know how we get through,” she sings, “but we do.”
For more than a decade, the musician born Nat Ćmiel has been exploring what it means to be a 21st-century human (or post-human): On 2022’s *Glitch Princess*, yeule probed the limits of the flesh by way of modulated vocals and decaying Danny L Harle beats; on 2023’s *softscars*, the artist who once identified as a cyborg tiptoed into the corporeal world, inspired by the fuzzy rock music of the late ’90s. Their fourth album, *Evangelic Girl Is a Gun*, takes their glitchy avant-pop even further out of the matrix, eschewing Auto-Tune entirely to showcase their vocals at their rawest and most visceral. Enchantingly abject vignettes about doomed love and ego death play out over sexy-sad soundscapes that draw from ’90s trip-hop and alt-rock, with production from Mura Masa, A. G. Cook, and Clams Casino. Imagine the most morose possible version of a Charli xcx song and you’ve got the title track, on which yeule purrs dispassionately: “Nosebleed on the Sunset Strip/He picks me up in a fast whip/He laces up my leather boots/He wears a blood-stained velvet suit.”
“Heartbreak, gold mine,” Jordan Miller sings at the start of “Touch Myself,” a paean to irrepressible desire that appears partway through The Beaches’ third full-length album. And with those three words, she provides a perfectly succinct snapshot of The Beaches’ trajectory since 2023, when the viral post-breakup anthem “Blame Brett” thrust the Toronto band into the Top 40 pop charts on both sides of the border. With *No Hard Feelings*, The Beaches continue to navigate the emotional minefield of young-adult love with their sense of humor and candor intact. But if their early releases saw them rocking out with ’70s glam swagger, *No Hard Feelings* casts their fine-tuned pop sensibilities in an ’80s goth romanticism, with the shimmering guitars and yearning hooks of tracks like “Touch Myself” and “I Wore You Better” hitting the heretofore untapped sweet spot between Robert Smith and Taylor Swift. And where The Beaches’ breakout single was about trying to move on from a relationship, *No Hard Feelings*’ emotional centerpiece—the synthy soft-rock stunner “Lesbian of the Year”—is a bittersweet account of leaving your past behind completely, with Miller giving voice to keyboardist/guitarist Leandra Earl’s experience of coming out.
The Ghanaian singer-songwriter’s third full-length is almost overwhelming at first approach, even when taking into account the big melodic strokes of her instant-classic 2023 record *Fountain Baby*. Unlike that record’s New Wave streaks and effervescent pop cadences, *BLACK STAR* is wall-to-wall dance music that treats the last 40 years of pop like an endless palette. There are sly interpolations of Gucci Mane’s “I Might Be” and, in the case of the slinky “She Is My Drug,” Cher’s deathless anthem “Believe.” Fellow modern pop vanguard PinkPantheress throws in for the satisfying techno pulser “Kiss Me Thru the Phone Pt. 2,” a seeming reference to Soulja Boy’s ringtone-ready 2008 hit, while Naomi Campbell (yes, *the* Naomi Campbell) closes out “ms60” with a solid-gold monologue extoling the virtues of embodying the album’s title.
Don’t let her sweetness fool you: Frankie Cosmos’ Greta Kline has more insights about the inner struggles of sensitive young people than most of her indie-pop peers. Or, hey, do let it fool you—getting fooled is part of what being young is about. “I think it’s funny not to learn my lesson/And keep on acting like I’m 27,” she sings from her perch of infinite wisdom at age 31 (“Porcelain”), having confessed two minutes earlier, “I can’t go a day without touching my fucking telephone” (“Bitch Heart”). The music is more sophisticated than her 2010s K Records-style scrawls (listen to the ’70s soft-pop of “Vanity”) but never so sophisticated it gets in the way of her lyrics, which hit like little pinpricks. If it’s true, why make it more complicated?
Lifeguard’s *Ripped and Torn* is an impressive and indelible debut in a long legacy of rock bands making noise sound like an energizing good time—from British post-punk greats Wire and American legends Sonic Youth to 2010s lo-fi heroes like Women and Male Bonding. The Chicago trio of Asher Case, Isaac Lowenstein, and Kai Slater (who also makes music as the buzzy indie-pop project Sharp Pins) have been making music together since junior high, and *Ripped and Torn* sounds suitably locked-in even as its creators channel brash, challenging avant-rock sounds that equally recall the 1980s NYC no-wave scene and post-rock forebears This Heat. If that sounds intimidating, rest assured: Lifeguard is as tuneful as they are tormented-sounding, as evidenced by the peppy and caffeinated punk rock of “It Will Get Worse”—a song title that’s droll, cheeky, and the exact opposite of what to expect from these upstarts as they continue their ascent.
“I try to focus on the present,” Ela Minus tells Apple Music as she explores the songs of *DÍA*. “I’m never thinking about the past or the future. I try not to compare past experiences with anything that followed them. I simply spend my days making new music.” On her previous releases, the singer and multi-instrumentalist born in Bogotá and based in Brooklyn attempted to manifest a safe and comfortable space where people could listen to her songs. 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 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. “I’m not a simple person,” she admits. “I decided to be honest on this album and paint a more accurate picture of myself. This is why the opening track is titled ‘ABRIR MONTE’ \[‘TO CROSS THE HILL’\]. Recording it felt like opening up a new pathway into my inner world.” Here, she walks us through the album, track by track. **“ABRIR MONTE”** “It’s the first track that I recorded for the album. The first chord progression that seemed interesting enough to define the sound of *DÍA*. It’s like a mantra that envelops you. I’d like it to sound like I’m jumping off the speakers and embracing you, literally. I’m inviting you to step in and follow the road that’s outlined on the rest of the record.” **“BROKEN”** “This song is like a complement to ‘ABRIR MONTE,’ and it appeared in the same order. It’s an anthem that celebrates every person’s current emotional state, because we should accept that every single moment is valid.” **“IDOLS”** “This is my favorite song on the album. The definition of what I’m feeling like these days, and how I would characterize the music industry. I’d love for artists from all disciplines to listen and internalize the lyrics. I hope it inspires people to do whatever they please instead of chasing blindly after the pop idols of the moment.” **“IDK”** “Perhaps I should have left this one out. It’s a little too honest, and it makes me uncomfortable. I attempted to drop it in every possible manner, but the album never felt complete without it. If there’s a song that defines my emotional state at the time—and how thoroughly lost I felt—it’s this one. It’s the heart of the entire record. Something that I cherish in music is the relationship between tension and resolution. ‘IDK’ is the crux of all the tension that percolates in this project.” **“QQQQ”** “A moment of euphoria. I had developed bits of this song for the longest time: pieces of lyrics, beats, and melodies. But I couldn’t quite bring it all together into a cohesive song. I envisioned it as a bonus track, but just as I was wrapping up the album, I felt that it was missing a moment of pure euphoria for the concerts, the clubs, or wherever you experience this project in a live setting. The night before mixing, I revisited this one from scratch. I told myself, ‘I have to make the most joyful song of my career, so that it becomes a symbol of complete liberation.’ That’s what this is, or at least I hope it is.” **“I WANT TO BE BETTER”** “This may well be the only love song I’ve ever written. The lyrics are very literal. I feel relationships force you to question who you really are, and how you interact with the world. I had never examined that, until I fell in love. This song speaks of love as surrender—that moment, like a mirror, when there’s someone else in your life. You can almost see yourself through their eyes, and evidently you strive to become a better person.” **“ONWARDS”** “I don’t know what else to add here—the lyrics say it all. I wrote it when I felt frustrated with my life. The perception that we’re always meant to be wanting more, pursuing our ambitions. As time goes by, the pressure is on to prove your worth, and that feeling makes me desperate. This song is a response to those questions, so that I can get rid of my fears and insecurities. I want to follow my own path, calm and focused. I just need to continue being myself.” **“AND”** “It’s the track that connects ‘ONWARDS’ with ‘UPWARDS,’ but also a very intimate moment on the album. One of my parents had passed away, I was experiencing a massive amount of pain, and I recorded a voice memo where you can hear things falling around the house—a negative ambiance. I thought that brief moment of pain was meant to become something else, and I developed this piece.” **“UPWARDS”** “It marks the resolution of ‘AND.’ It’s the one piece of advice that I’m always expecting from my friends, no matter what the situation. Life has taught me that even though we wish we could change things for other people, the truth of the matter is that we can only be responsible for our own lives, our own wellbeing and goals. I’d like this song to become an anthem about this uncomfortable truth.” **“COMBAT”** “This is a very moving song for me, because it’s the first time that I recorded with instruments other than synths. I wrote an arrangement for a wind quartet, and ‘COMBAT’ signals the resolution of the entire album. It feels like we’re standing on terrain that has burned to the ground, and now the rebuilding begins. It has the spirit of a new life—an invitation to be born again.”
