Welcome to another installment of Today's Release Highlights, where the TND writers room gathers up some brand new projects they want to draw your eyes and ears to.

This week, we have 12 new releases we'd like to key you into as you head into the weekend. Check them all out below.

Ba bam!

A Country Western – Audition Tape [Crafted Sounds]

Philadelphia's indie scene continues to deliver some of the best rock on this side of the Mississippi. A Country Western's fourth full-length — released on the all-hits no-filler indie label Crafted Sounds — continues that scene's winning streak. The band recorded the album with Dan Angel, who also worked on TAGABOW's 2025 record Lotto. And like TAGABOW, A Country Western delivers on down-the-line indie rock while dabbling in clubby, deconstructed remixes of their grungegaze (see the Solvent OS Remix of "Redemption Inner Circle" that concludes the album). – Andy Steiner

Anderson .Paak and Cordae – Heavy Is The Crown [APESHIT / Mass Appeal / EMPIRE / Hi Level]

Anderson .Paak and Cordae bring a wonderful buddy-cop energy to their new collaborative album, Heavy Is the Crown. Given the success the duo has found on singles like “RNP,” “Two Tens,” and “Summer Drop,” over the years, it’s no surprise that their full-length project is packed with vibrant instrumentals, goofy bars, and a sense of whimsy that’s bound to put a smile on any listener’s face. Over the years, .Paak has proven he has the musical chops to walk into any artist’s world and elevate it. Whether he’s teaming up with Knxwledge for NxWorries or Bruno Mars with Silk Sonic, he has a knack for finding ways to gel and break new ground with his collaborators. A stacked lineup of producers, including J. Cole, 9th Wonder, Conductor Williams, and Swizz Beatz, gives the pair a rich backdrop to play off of, with .Paak’s soulful, elastic hooks and Cordae’s sharp wordplay each getting plenty of room to shine. If this is what they can deliver on their first album together, it could be the start of something special as both artists head into the next chapter of their careers. – Isaiah Gessner

Brakence- marroW [Columbia Records]

Brackence can be best described as Midwest emo meets hyperpop. The glitchy guitar work with vocal crooning gives marroW a unique edge in a crowded alternative space. The album is massive; spanning 18 songs and lasting over an hour, this is Brackence’s most ambitious project. “death rolL“ captures the tone of the album, touching on how Brackence has been mostly quiet for four years and how he has finally returned. This is the first album since 2022’s hypochondriac, and it’s just plain nice to hear fresh, new material. If you want an album that sounds like a collab between Joji and 100 Gecs, marroW is the album for you. – Ian Ward

Fenne Lily – Win Win [Nettwerk]

Win Win is a breakup album that spends its time on the other side of the breakup. Fenne Lily wrote and recorded her fourth and latest album over 18 months after moving from England to New York, and she made it the old-fashioned way: with a band, largely live, and even partly to tape. It opens with “Uh Huh,” a song structured as a conversation with a loved one after a relationship comes apart, and from there the record keeps moving. 

Travel runs through the whole thing too, with long drives, bridges, and pit stops, and songs are comfortable lingering in the inbetween instead of rushing to a clear-cut resolution, from the pedal steel on “Waterslide” to the slow build of the closer, “In Life and on Planes.” Lily’s goal for this record was simple: “I wanted to make music that sounded like the sun was out.” Win Win is out today via Nettwerk, her first release for the label and the follow-up to 2023’s Big Picture. If you’re coming off a rough year, this is one record you won’t want to miss. – Matt Keenan

Fine — Jazz Dreams [Escho]

Jazz like Queen’s Jazz, maybe. But where Queen stuffed every last opening on the mixing console with the baroque — multitracked harmonies, say — Fine Glinvdad Jensen proffers minimal, photonegative bedroom pop à la her schoolmates ML Buch, Smerz, and Erika de Casier, the latter of whom shared writer credits with Jensen on the most undeniable K-Pop record of the 2020s, NewJeans’ Get Up. This has more Lee Hazlewood in it, though, with a torch song like “Any Minute” letting all the sunlight in while “I Could” is dubby nightfall trip-hop starring the bassline. Indeed, “Goodbye Brain” and “Sometimes I Rush” are catchy nuggets (not always a given with Rhythmic Music Conservatory alumni), but the main thing is that maybe your girlfriend too will ask if you scored a leak of new Lana Del Rey. — Daniel Aaron

Frontierer – Ultraviolet Parasite [Independent]

Some bands don't need a record label, and transatlantic mathcore outfit Frontierer continues to operate independently with the release of its fourth studio album, Ultraviolet Parasite, out today. Written, produced, recorded and mixed by the band's guitarist Pedram Valiani, the album's 14 frenzied tracks were mastered by the ever-prolific Brad Boatright. Our very own Melon has already weighed in on the record, calling Ultraviolet Parasite a "barn burner." The song "Ions & Oxygen Rockets" features an appearance by The Armed frontman Tony Wolski. A 46-minute exercise in controlled chaos, the new album follows 2021's Oxidized and 2024's The Skull Burned Wearing Hell Like a Life Vest. Time to get dizzyingly abrasive. — Nic Huber

HMLTD – FANGS [Lucky Number]

FANGS, the third studio album by London collective HMLTD, imagines a world already dead. Haunted by ancient vampires hellbent on relieving their boredom at hedonistic raves, it rages with a violent fire, giving into envy, greed, lust, and apathetic wrath. Unsurprisingly, the art punk musicians commit fully to these personae. Blending their signature New Romantic pop hooks ("Shudder") with choppy bloghouse ("Umami") and either breakcore ("Blitzkrieg") or dark wave beats ("Dancing On Your Grave"), they break into a mad sprint of buzzes and snaps, pattering with nonsensical babblings and bold statements. "A Thousand White Horses" is a dreamy, capital R Romantic song of sacrifice and devotion, yet it shuffles to an idiosyncratic, fresh beat somewhere in between Arthur Russell and Yung Lean. Songs like "Close To You" hold bands like Crystal Castles close to the heart, setting aside its tainted name to siphon its unique, dark magic. Behind lyricist and front man Henry Spychalski's creative occult theatrics ("Château Vamp Freestyle"), is his uncompromising desire to embrace outsider art and the transgressions in pop history. The future is goth! – Victoria Borlando

John Legend – Muse [Republic]

Pharrell Williams takes production fully into his own hands on John Legend’s new album, Muse. Given their more than two decades of friendship and plenty of overlapping collaborators, it’s a bit of a surprise that these two titans of the industry have never made a full project together until now. According to Legend, the timing simply never lined up: “Early in my career, I was signed to GOOD Music. Kanye [West] was very involved in executive producing all my albums, and so it wouldn’t have made sense for me to do a whole album with a whole other producer at the time. I’m more of a free agent now and able to just do whatever I want musically.”

Now that he’s free to do just that, Legend hands the production keys to Pharrell, who brings a completely new vibe to his music. Pharrell’s fingerprints go beyond the beats, too, as he co-wrote the album and features on six of its 16 tracks. His bouncy instrumentals pair beautifully with Legend’s gospel-tinged vocals, and the EGOT winner clearly saw Muse as a chance to take a creative risk and prove he can still find new sounds more than 20 years into his career. – Isaiah Gessner

My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade (20th Anniversary Reissue) [Warner]

My Chemical Romance’s breakthrough record, The Black Parade, turns 20 in 2026 — and the band is celebrating in style. The upcoming expanded reissue dives deep into the vast MCR vault, pairing the remastered original album with fan-favorite B-sides like "Heaven Help Us" and "My Way Home Is Through You." Most notably, it features the first official release of the fan-favorite live track “Someone Out There Loves You." Original album artist James Jean also returned to create three new pieces of art that expand on the album's visual storyline. Fans have watched as the group expands that lore on the road, where equal portions of gore and camp take center stage to flesh out the rock opera. As they conclude a major tour playing The Black Parade in full, the New Jersey band proves, two decades later, that they intend to keep "carrying on." – Kayla Moreno

Nicole Sabouné – ANA (أنا) [RMV Music]

Swedish artist Nicole Sabouné’s fifth album ANA (أنا) is first and foremost a love letter to her ancestral homeland of Lebanon, as told through the sights, sounds, and heightened emotions of her first visit to the country three summers past. It’s also a deeply felt negotiation with her relationship to her father, whose memories of his young years in Beirut had long felt shut away and resistant to her questions. As Sabouné told me in a recent interview, she didn’t even know that she was part Lebanese until her twenties.

ANA (أنا), named after the Arabic word for “me” or “I,” is full of elation, some trepidation, atmospheric touches of oud, and voice notes from her family in Beirut. There’s anger, too, for a land that’s faced so much threat and corruption, both from inside and outside of the country. Sabouné’s powerhouse vocals sound more alive than ever, whether charging through the jubilant lead single “So Far Out” or rallying the people on the anthemic "Light For Us," while the softer moments like "Healing You" feel warm and consoling. Closing track "I Don't Mind" brings things more or less full circle, back to her dad. – Alan Pedder

The Dallas Cowboys – Touching is Punk [Bar None Records]

Inspired by the liminal, freaky corners of early aughts media after dark, The Dallas Cowboys concoct goofy, erratic synth punk that subtly nods to a simpler era of the internet without overreliance. Their EP, Touching is Punk, has been in the works for quite some time, but is now seeing the light of day. Chiptune, karaoke-core, electroclash – whatever you want to call it – pays homage to Web 1.0 but marches towards the neon-tinted future. – Giliann Karon

Tríada – Exuvia [Verve]

For a while, Tríada were the trio who could take a song from anywhere and make it sound Argentine. Exuvia is where they stop borrowing, and come into their own. Their first album built around original material follows the 2025 covers EP De Versiones y Alma and the title is a statement of intent: an exuvia is the skin an animal sheds when it molts, and the band says the name stands for leaving one stage behind to start another. 

Producer Didi Gutman, whose credits include Brazilian Girls and Nathy Peluso, helped them stretch across bossa nova, candombe, tango, and chacarera, with acoustic singer-songwriter and indie leanings in the mix. The percussion-led “Clara” and their version of C. Tangana’s “Un Veneno” tie back to where they came from, while “Voy A Dejar de Venir” is one of the sadder songs on the record, with a minimal arrangement that matches its farewell. Exuvia is out today via Verve Records/Mercury Records, and it plays like a band deciding who they are, and we are watching an artist grow right before our ears.  – Matt Keenan