Welcome to New Music Friday, NPR Music’s podcast dedicated to sharing the best albums out each week. We listen to dozens of new releases in advance, identify the ones we think you need to hear, and highlight our favorite five in a brisk mix of clips, context and commentary.
Alien Metal is arguably the biggest swing in a catalog full of them, as the sextet best known for wild, garage-meets-psych-rock ditched its guitars in favor of a hulking Eurorack, a type of modular synthesizer developed in the ’90s that all of its members could play simultaneously. The band began trotting the rig out for “rave shows” in late 2024, and affectionately named it Nathan; after a quiet touring year, it returns to the road, presumably with Nathan in tow, for its second annual Field of Vision camping festival outside of Denver this weekend, and four New York City shows later this month.
Right now, the ultra-prolific Australian psych-rock crew King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are on their old-school techno shit. After playing a series of “rave” shows last year, the band fell in love with the modular Eurorack synth assemblage that they nicknamed Nathan. Using that contraption, they recorded their beautifully titled Alien Metal, album number 28 for this group. After sharing lead single “Level 5,” the group is now ready to hit us in the head with the title track.
Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more.
The entire vibe around Sunday was fueled by female empowerment thanks to riot grrrl godmothers Bikini Kill. Throngs of young girls in Day-Glo punk garb and face paint mashed against the barricade to see the roots of revolutionary aggression come crashing through the chords of classics like “Carnival,” “Alien She” and, of course, “Rebel Girl.” But frontwoman Kathleen Hanna was just as stoked to see them having a good time in front of her. “I can’t wait to open for you in 10 years,” Hanna said to inspire all the girl bands yet to form in the crowd. Giving a shout-out to female-fronted young bands like Bitchfit that played one of the most impressive ground-level sets of the weekend was a warm and fuzzy torch-passing moment that summed up the reason a festival like this is still so vital to the survival of punk culture.
Regardless of your feelings on Olivia Rodrigo, we can all agree it’s a net positive that more people know what a “Bikini Kill” is because of her. A whole new generation of riot grrrls will be born when Kathleen Hanna takes the stage at Rodrigo’s new charity music festival, Daisy Chain Fields—and Bikini Kill ticket prices will surely go up in turn. But for those whose companies won’t fly them out to Irvine all expenses paid (*cough cough*), you may still be able to hear the revolution in a U.S. city near you this September. —Walden Green
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have put a name and a face to their long-awaited next foray into electronic music, Alien Metal, which will be released at some point this summer on the Australian band’s p(doom) label. The first taste of the project is “Level 5,” which is out now in tandem with a video directed by Hayden Somerville.
“‘Sapience’ is this pulsating techno neo-rave thing,” he continues. “The other tracks go to such weird, interesting places. ‘Level 5’ is early Prodigy and early hardcore jungle, and ‘Superheavy’ is heading towards house, while ‘Kill for the Steel’ feels like weird IDM, with some heavy Miami Bass in there.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announced Wednesday (July 8) that their next album is coming soon, and that it will be a hard electronic project. Called Alien Metal, the project is set for release later this summer on the band’s own p(doom) Records and will be the Australian act’s 28th studio LP. The news comes in tandem with Alien Metal‘s lead single, the spacey, acid-y, jungle-influenced “Level 5.”
Alien Metal goes to darker and more pummeling areas of the genre via techno, hardcore, ravey house and jungle. “Alien Metal goes really hard, but it also goes to really interesting places,” adds the band’s Joey Walker. “And it feels unique – it feels like us, still.”
Le Tigre started with a radical approach: Instead of writing about the “bad stuff,” Johanna Fateman suggested to her new bandmate, Kathleen Hanna, when the two got together in 1998, “We should write about the good stuff.” Instead of singing about staring into the abyss as Hanna had in Bikini Kill, they wrote songs about being in love, dancing all night, debating art, and riding the subway. Instead of the standard rock-band lineup, they used a drum machine. Instead of a Pacific northwest grunge aesthetic, they embraced matching day-glo outfits. The result was a riot-disco revelation — political but positive, upbeat but punk. “We want to write political pop songs and be the dance party after the protest,” Hanna said in 2019. And it worked. —E.G.P.
Los Angeles punk outfit Memo PST is previewing its about-to-be-released album Eternal Actors with a black-and-white video for its song “Blown Away,” which highlights the band’s hard-charging sound.
Eternal Actors is out Friday (May 1) on In the Red and finds vocalist Chris Shaw (Ex-Cult, Vile Nation), guitarist Orville Neeley (Bad Sports, OBN IIIs), bassist Emmanuel Koulouris and drummer Jackson Todd bashing through 12 slabs of classic punk, rock and hardcore. It’s the follow-up to the band’s 2024’s self-titled debut.
Ahead of a packed run of UK shows, the slacker icon talks to NME about End Of The Road, new talent, surviving hype, hosting his first Mac’s Record Label EOTR showcase, keeping things intimate, and his next move
Riot grrrl legends Bikini Kill have announced a 2026 US fall tour.
The trek kicks off on September 6th in Portland, with stops in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and more before wrapping up in Brooklyn on September 25th. See the full schedule below.
Tim Presley is back with his first White Fence album in six years. It’s titled Orange and will be out April 24 via Drag City. He made it with friend and collaborator Ty Segall at his Harmonizer II studio in Los Angeles. Ty plays drums on the album, as does Dylan Hadley (Cate Le Bon’s band), Alice Sandahl (ex-La Luz) plays keyboards, and Tim handled everything else.
“Love/loss, addiction/rehabilitation, and a good long look in the mirror (by way of a shop window reflection in San Francisco),” is what Tim says the themes of the album are. “But also the absurdity of life….. I wanted to sing my little heart out. Sing life.”
Tim Presley has announced the first new White Fence album since 2019’s I Have to Feed Larry’s Hawk. Produced by Ty Segall, Orange arrives April 24 via Drag City. Star of Julia Ducournau’s Titane—and Presley’s wife—Agathe Rousselle helmed the music video for lead single “Your Eyes.” Watch it below.
In press materials, Presley said “Your Eyes” is about “Love/loss, addiction/rehabilitation, and a good long look in the mirror (by way of a shop window reflection in San Francisco). But also the absurdity of life….. I wanted to sing my little heart out. Sing life.”
Dylan Bird is joined by Ty Segall ahead of his upcoming Australian tour to chat about his memories in the country, the evolution of his voice and sound, the process of making his latest album Possession and the role of music during social and political unrest.
After reuniting in 2019, Bikini Kill have continued to tour, but they were quiet for much of 2025. That’ll change this year though, as they’ve announced new shows following their headlining set at Oakland’s Mosswood Meltdown. They’ll be on the road in the US in September, and you can see all dates below.
The NYC shows wrap up the tour, at Music Hall of Williamsburg on September 24 and Brooklyn Steel on September 25. Tickets to those and all dates go on sale Friday, January 30 at 12 PM ET.
Kathleen Hanna has been at Sundance promoting Tamra Davis new documentary The Best Summer, and she’s also been hosting a podcast this year, with guests including Hayley Williams, Olivia Rodrigo, Chaka Khan, Amy Taylor (Amyl and the Sniffers), and more.
Bikini Kill are hitting the road again. Kathleen Hanna and her band, who’ve toured consistently since reuniting in 2017, will play shows across the United States in September. They’re also set to headline Oakland’s Mosswood Meltdown on July 19. Check out all of Bikini Kill’s 2026 dates below.
2019 saw Bikini Kill play their first full shows together since 1997. In 2024, the band made their late-night TV debut, performing “Rebel Girl” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Kathleen Hanna published her memoir Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk.
The unflappable musician discusses returning to his calling of building songs from scratch after becoming preoccupied with other DIY projects in the garage and at home.
Mac DeMarco is a true follower of the DIY path. It’s where he’s always felt at home, making his songs of woozy, deeply felt, gently melodic indie rock, telling personal stories of heartbreak and life changes. He’s a Canadian prairie boy who did it all with a guitar and a reel-to-reel, rising to become a genuine lo-fi superhero, another voice for another generation.
Since he last released a conventional album back in 2019, the songwriter has taken that hands-on ethos even further, veering away from his usual musical obsessions to work with his hands—learning to fix motorcycles and work on houses from Los Angeles to the islands of British Columbia. As it turns out, he’s no slacker. DeMarco has collected a full set of tools, and is practically a general contractor now, schooled in the building trades from an endless supply of YouTube videos.
Written and recorded over the course of a month in November 2024 at his Los Angeles home, Guitar leaves the edges raw. There’s tape hiss lingering in the background, an intentional looseness, and a voice that slides effortlessly into an ethereal falsetto. “I didn’t overthink too much about what I’m doing. It felt like magic, and I just trusted the natural flow,” he shares. It’s a contrast to the sprawling 199-track expanse of One Wayne G or the wandering instrumentals of Five Easy Hot Dogs. Tracks like Terror confront mortality with naked honesty, while Home drifts between affection and distance – all twelve tracks charting the terrain of a man reckoning with his place in the world.
After the “intermission”, King Gizz and the orchestra behind them twinkled into the full ten minutes of fan favourite, ‘The River’, followed by another ten-minute epic ‘Crumbling Castle’, opening up the mosh pits and sending the audience swirling. At least two dozen people under the Hall’s dome were carried over the heads of fellow onlookers and into the arms of security (who were kept busy all evening). Then, ‘Mars For The Rich’ and ‘Dragon’ gave the group a chance to further flex their metal muscles to an animated and locked-in crowd.
Ezra Furman today shares new single titled “One Hand Free”. The track was recorded during the studio sessions for Goodbye Small Head, her LP released earlier this year via Bella Union. “One Hand Free” comes accompanied by a video shot by JJ Gonson featuring Ezra accompanied by an assortment of birds, lizards and myriad other species.
Ezra Furman on “One Hand Free”:
“This is a jaunty back-porch breakup/depression song about feeling so bad you’re not sure what species you even belong to anymore. We left it off Goodbye Small Head because it was too good. It’s better than Jason Aldean. Better than the Barbie movie. Better than Bob Dylan. Better than Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Cue the sound of one hand clapping, a Zen round of applause.”
For how unabashedly bizarre his music can be, Ty Segall is an affable guy.
Settled on an outdoor couch, sipping from a Pacific Coast Highway mug, his measured cadence makes a real case for oceanside life’s tranquilizing effect. At times, that breezy tone is tough to square with his reputation for grinding rock’s cutting edge with a spree of fuzzed out monoliths. But experience has steadied his hand, and by now, he’s got more than enough of it to breathe easy with the throes of his passion.
“I’ve spent so much time on the road in the States, it’s all just turned into one drive, you know?” he reflects. “It’s weird to think about ‘cause you’re just kind of going and going and going, going, going, going.”
In a press release, Ezra Furman described her new album, Goodbye Small Head, as “twelve variations on the experience of completely losing control.” Asked in a late June interview if this was a new idea for her, and if she was traditionally someone who needed to have a firm grasp of the steering wheel, she paused.
“Hmm, let me think about that. I think in some places in my life I’m a bit control obsessed, and that’s often been true in my art life, my music life,” she said, and then reconsidered. “Well, no, let me start that answer over. You can tell I’m grasping for control even in just answering this question, where I’m like, I’ve got to say exactly what I mean. But a lot of the most vivid and beautiful experiences of my life are experiences of losing control and surrendering to a large experience, a big feeling, and I think I needed this music to be for that. I needed this music to be a place to lose control and to really open myself to what I can only have if I let go.”
On stage, DeMarco projected a charismatic, likable and humorous persona that went beyond his simple attire of a baseball cap and a T-shirt. He mostly roamed around holding a microphone as his excellent touring band played around him, although he did put on a guitar for a few numbers. DeMarco was also entetaining with his amusing banter in between songs while encouraging his New York fans to clap and wave their arms.
Monday’s performance for DeMarco was the second of two sold-out dates at Radio City, and it was clear from this particular show that he definitely had his fans eating at the palm of his hand.
While Bandcamp’s default pricing for albums is set at $9 (with tracks at $1.50), the company says artist are still able to set “pricing in a way that reflects your goals, your audience, and the value of your work.” The novel pricing move by King Gizzard, implemented on Sept. 5, opens up their digital catalog with a no minimum payment, making their music more accessible than ever.
In 2024, when they had a day off from their two-day, three show run at Colorado’s Red Rocks, the band took a field trip to Buena Vista to check out the site,
“Michelle [Cable], our manager, who is the best, started looking for sites and this was a place that came recommended from some friends. We came out when we were here last year for Red Rocks.
“We had a day off and we drove out [to Buena Vista] and back on that day. As soon as we got here, we had some lunch and then we’re like, ‘what the fuck? Is this place real? It’s crazy here.’ Then we went out to the site and dipped our feet in the creek and just walked around. It’s honestly stunning.”
Today he’s talking to me down the line from a farmhouse on British Columbia’s Gulf Islands, where he’s decamped with his girlfriend Kiera McNally to grease the wheels for his own next world tour. He recently helped his mother Agnes move to a new home in Victoria, and bought his own tumbledown place a couple of hours away to enjoy the tranquillity of what he calls “a summer cabin kind of vibe”. Soon, his bandmates will join him to start rehearsals. There’s also a new album, Guitar, which he recorded alone at his home studio in Los Angeles in a fortnight and was initially just a pretence to get back touring. “I just wanted to go out and perform,” he says. “We could do that without releasing something, but I think that would make me feel like it was a reunion or greatest hits tour.”
DeMarco has become only more popular in the past decade. “Chamber of Reflection,” a teetering, synth-driven track from “Salad Days,” is ubiquitous on TikTok, and has been streamed nearly a billion times. DeMarco himself has more than twenty million monthly listeners on Spotify, a remarkable number for a dude who plays dazed, quivery guitar songs about whatever’s on his mind. A TikTok account dedicated to his work has more than eight hundred thousand followers and features videos of DeMarco telling jokes that are sometimes scatological and always absurd.
The lead single from Guitar is a soft, twinkly meditation called “Home,” and it’s all about the relationship that DeMarco has to his birthplace in British Columbia. It’s a short song, but it’s long enough to evoke a real bittersweet longing for something that you can’t always have. To make the video, DeMarco brought his camera onto a canoe and filmed himself near his mother’s house. A bunch of Canadian geese make cameos.
In addition to the new album, Mac DeMarco is also announcing some heavy touring plans that’ll take him all over the world in the months ahead. In his journeys, he’ll be joined by a bunch of openers — Mock Media, Tex Crick, Daryl Johns, Vicky Farewell — who are signed to his record label, which is called Mac’s Record Label. Below, check out the “Home” video, the Guitar tracklist, and DeMarco’s touring itinerary
