Also stream new releases from Swamp Dogg, and Big Freedia and SOPHIE
Tierra Whack; photo by Phobymo
With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Tierra Whack, Evilgiane, Tucker Zimmerman, and Big Freedia and Sophie. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Tierra Whack: (Whack’s Museum) [Interscope]
It’s been over two years since we’ve received any transmissions from the weird, wonderful world of Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack, whose playful, primary-color aesthetic is as instantly recognizable as her flow. This trademark blend of style and substance remains in top form on Whack’s Museum, the follow-up to her 2024 LP World Wide Whack. Instant-canon singles like the opp-thrashing “Totem” (where she laments needing “more rappers to step on” over a chime-laced beat ) and “Wax Paper” (classic boom-bap served up via toy piano), once again prove there’s no one like her in the game.
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Evilgiane: #Heavensgate Vol. 2 [Surf Gang]
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Surf Gang head honcho Evilgiane is a star in his own right, but he’s still at his most inspired in a posse. The second record in his #Heavensgate series recruits both familiar faces (Xaviersobased, RealYungPhil, Slimesito, Harto Falión) and fresh recruits (Jckzebra, Lazer Dim 700, Rico Nasty) to do their worst over 23 pulsating, aqueous beats, which flow so naturally it's easy to mistake them for your own heartbeat. Giane’s signature is easily clockable these days for anyone casually familiar with hip-hop’s post-Carti underground, but #Heavensgate2 indicates he still has plenty of new ground to cover, and opportunities to stretch his sound.
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Tucker Zimmerman: Dream Me a Dream [Big Potato]
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When news broke earlier this year that singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman had died in a house fire with his wife, Marie-Claire Lambert, an immediate outpouring from the public further cemented the importance of his catalog in the American folk canon. But on Dream Me a Dream, Zimmerman’s final record, absolutely no haughty airs infiltrate his singular perspective. Brought to life with support from Big Potato’s own Nick Holton, Dream Me a Dream is Zimmerman at his most centered: exploring shades of love and connection through rich depictions of the natural world. The years have only intensified Zimmerman’s mournful, hushed vocal performance, and Dream Me a Dream often plays out like a bedtime story spun by a beloved elder, accompanied by soft strings, shakers, and even a synth or two. Those who worked closest with Zimmerman on the record couldn't have known it would be his last statement at the time. And yet, as a closing note to a luminous career, Dream Me a Dream succeeds in spades.
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Big Freedia x Sophie: Released At Last [We Are: The Guard]
Five years before pop innovator SOPHIE’s untimely death, she invited New Orleans bounce pioneer Big Freedia to her Los Angeles home studio for a recording session. A decade later, three songs born from that collaboration are Released at Last, an EP that pairs SOPHIE’s signature cybernetic production with Freedia’s electric presence on the mic. On “Let Me See Ya,’ even MUNA pops up with a come-hither pop EDM chorus that references Alex Consani: 2016 and 2026, joined as one. “Recording with SOPHIE is something I hold even closer to my heart now, especially after her passing,” Freedia told press ahead of the release. “She was an artist who showed the world that living boldly is your greatest power.”
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Swamp Dogg: Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife [S-Curve]
Swamp Dogg may be more than two dozen albums into his career, but the Southern-fried cult legend is still thinking through humanity’s greatest questions: birth, life, and whatever the hell comes after that. (“If things work out,” he shared in a press statement, “that’ll be a place with all the comforts of home.”) The 83-year-old singer’s latest LP, Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife, situates him as comfortably as ever at the intersection of soul, country, and traditional worship music. But it also weaves new tones of philosophy and mortality into the waggish performer’s robust catalog. Boasting a Jenny Lewis co-write and samples on a spectrum from Kid Rock to DMX, Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife is a thoroughly original and modern Sunday service, and a reminder that we ought to give our pioneers our flowers while they’re still here with us.
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Warning: Rituals of Shame [Relapse]
Warning has little interest in the last word. “Remember being happy in our silence?” vocalist and lyricist Patrick Walker venomously questioned on the UK doom-metal group’s 2006 breakout Watching From a Distance, a record so considerately crafted it fielded allegations of being folk. Keeping with their own lyrics, Warning waited two whole decades to release another LP. But for anyone who bided their time, Rituals of Shame indicates a natural snap back to form, anchored in tight, often ingeniously spare arrangements cascading beneath Walker’s accented howl.
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DJ Haram and Sha Ray: Critical Thot [Backwoodz]
The fruitful relationship between DJ Haram and her Backwoodz compatriots Billy Woods and Elucid is well-documented these days, especially among New Yorkers with any remote affinity for Bossa Nova Civic Club or Cafe Erzulie. But Haram is a pro at expanding her own horizons, and her new collaborative album with Bay Area rapper Sha Ray—who she met through the elevated big tent of an Armand Hammer show in LA—is exactly the kind of new ground she’s keen on breaking. The duo’s Critical Thot links Haram’s percussive, MENA-indebted rhythms and Ray’s heavy, patient flows under the umbrella of navigating the music industry as a femme. “As a rapper I’m pretty exclusively interested in interrogating misogyny and sexuality in my work” Ray says. “Critical Thot is a deliberation on unapologetic feminine authority, while being very honest about the complicated truth of being a participant in self-objectification, and sexuality as a social currency.”
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Cold Court: \ (^_^) /
When Cold Court—AKA siblings Mini Serrano and Jojo Lavina-Maldonado—set out to craft a debut EP signaling an emergence from the Philadelphia DIY noise scene, they had more than just music in mind. “We didn't want to be another band,” the no wave duo said in a statement, “we wanted to be Basquiat.” What that looks like in practice? A fierce, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink blend of elements from funk, rock, and modern electro-pop, tailored to be as much at once as possible without really sounding like anything else. The gesture that gives the \ (^_^) / EP (pronounced “Hands Up”) its name could be interpreted a few ways: throwing your hands up in frustration, throwing them up when the authorities attempt to foil your great heist, throwing them up because a rock star commands. If Cold Courts approach to production is any indication, it’s probably intended to be all that and more.
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Alex Zhang Hungtai: Orion/Mother [American Dreams]
Alex Zhang Hungtai collages a bewildering array of acoustic, electric, ancient, and modern sounds on this noirish double album, improvised and composed over several years with an ad-hoc coterie that includes string and woodwind players, a noise musician, a Korean gong resonator, and a tap dancer. The Dirty Beaches founder’s own saxophone and trumpet lead the players’ cut-and-pasted recordings down dark alleys of decay and introspection, backdropped by percussive bangs and scrapes that suggest the construction of some great, mysterious superstructure. “The music,” he says in press materials, “sounds like something that was dormant is starting to awaken.”
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