CICADA


CICADA

Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2024

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For Cryin' Out Loud!

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For Cryin' Out Loud! Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 FINNEAS “I think I am a songwriter first, which is always how I’ve felt about myself,” FINNEAS tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. The 27-year-old has already made his name as a producer through his chart-dominating, award-accruing work with his sister Billie Eilish. But when he was finished with his workload for 2023, which included working on Eilish’s blockbuster album  HIT ME HARD AND SOFT  and scoring the Apple TV+ show  Disclaimer , he wanted to, as he put it, “dive back into my stuff.” So he went to work in a new space—a studio outside his home laboratory—surrounded by musicians with whom he felt comfortable feeling out new material, flexing his muscles as a producer while also testing out his songwriting chops. That collaborative ease is audible on  For Cryin’ Out Loud! , an inviting album that combines soft rock’s slickness and indie’s choppy guitars with unexpected twists like the jittery epilogue to the chilled-out sophisti-pop f
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What Do You Believe In? (Deluxe)

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What Do You Believe In? (Deluxe) Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 Rag'n'Bone Man Rag’n’Bone Man wanted his third album to bring the joy. The Sussex-born singer-songwriter, aka Rory Charles Graham, came into the writing process in a good place and wanted to share that sense of jubilation. “I thought, ‘I need to make something that makes people smile,’” he tells Apple Music. “Even if I’ve got some deep and strong things to say on this record, I still want the backdrop to be something that’s uplifting.” It’s an approach that has resulted in Graham’s most euphoric collection of songs yet, blending soulful pop, stirring R&B, and stark ballads—with his rich, aching croon lifting these tracks to exhilarating heights. The sense of celebration, he says, is a reflection of how he’s feeling. “I’m not a very introspective writer,” he says. “I give it to you on a plate, it’s always very representative of where I’m at in life at the time.” Let Rag’n’Bone Man take you deeper into   What Do You Believe
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Leon

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Leon Album ∙ R&B/Soul ∙ 2024 Leon Bridges When Leon Bridges made his debut in 2015 with   Coming Home , critics and peers alike were amazed by his velvety retro-soul stylings reminiscent of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. Widening his horizons, his third album   Gold-Diggers Sound   showcased a different side of the Texas crooner, leaving behind the ’50s and ’60s vibe that helped propel him to stardom for a mix of ’80s and ’90s R&B mixed with lush, jazz-inspired live instrumentation. “I kind of always felt like a lone wolf in the industry, and yes, my music is under the umbrella of R&B, but I’ve always felt like I was never fully embraced in that community,” Bridges tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And so it was kind of a thought that ‘Leon’ is the genre, and as far as the whole album is kind of like a window into who I am.” Now, with his self-titled album, Leon Bridges is ready to reintroduce himself and invite his fans into his world. Leon   is an intimate and revealing love l
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Honey

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  Honey Album ∙ Electronic ∙ 2024 Caribou More than 20 years into his career, Dan Snaith continues to shape-shift as an artist. His sixth proper album as Caribou finds the 46-year-old electronic pop polymath diving headlong into big-room dance sounds, more so than ever before: French-touch-indebted synths, city-flattening wub-wub basslines, and the type of clipped-vocal UK garage melodies that pop artists like PinkPantheress have favored as of late. Snaith is taking clear inspiration from his acclaimed full-length under his dance-floor-focused Daphni moniker, 2022’s   Cherry , as well as the recent stadium-pleasing gestures from left-of-center contemporaries Jamie xx and Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden. The result is the sound of an artist newly invigorated and truly having fun with the music they’re making. Honey   isn’t the first time that Snaith has turned his attention towards body-moving music. 2010’s   Swim   fused techno’s intensity with his career-long penchant for all things psychede
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3AM (LA LA LA)

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3AM (LA LA LA) Album ∙ Dance ∙ 2024 Confidence Man “We’re very lucky to move here and we’ve been loving it,” Confidence Man’s Sugar Bones—Aidan Moore—tells Apple Music, reflecting on the act’s relocation to London. “[We’re] figuring it out and just having lots of fun in a new place. And it really rubbed off on this album.” Energetically co-fronted by Moore and fellow vocalist Janet Planet (Grace Stephenson) over dynamic, nostalgic backing from producers Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie, Confidence Man taps into that fresh thrill of exploring a new place on its third album. From the nocturnal headiness of the title track to the bratty festival fun of “BREAKBEAT”—on which Planet announces that she’s not dropping the pill in her pocket until she hears the titular rhythmic flourish—the record celebrates partying at any hour in any setting. Read on as Moore takes us behind the scenes on five extra-playful tracks in particular. “WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU’LL FIND?” “This song took a while to p
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TYLA +

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TYLA + Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 Tyla “I've always wanted to be a pop star, but beyond that, I wanted to be an African pop star,” Tyla tells Apple Music. “The roots of my sound are in amapiano music, in South African and African music.” Though the megaviral 2023 single “Water” may have put the South African singer-songwriter on the proverbial map—first as a social media sensation, then as the highest-charting African female soloist ever on Billboard’s Hot 100, earning her the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance—she’s been carefully plotting her path to the top for years. “Since I started experimenting with amapiano, I just feel like it's really helped me get to this point where I created something that is fresh and new, but still familiar and comes from home,” she says. “It's a sound of Africa, and it's something that I couldn't be more proud about.” She weaves through a blend of pop, R&B, amapiano, and Afrobeats (“pop-piano sounds cute,” she admi
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GLORIOUS

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GLORIOUS Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 GloRilla The scrappy Memphis rapper has been on a two-year victory lap since her 2022 breakthrough hit “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” established her as one of rap’s most promising new voices. Since then, GloRilla’s dropped an EP (2022’s   Anyways, Life’s Great... ) and her first studio mixtape (2024’s   Ehhthang Ehhthang ), scored a Grammy nomination, and sold out arenas alongside Megan Thee Stallion for the Hot Girl Summer Tour. The glow-up is real on   GLORIOUS , her official debut album, but let it be known that the reigning queen of crunk is still hanging out the window with her ratchet-ass friends when the opportunity arises. “It’s 7 pm Friday/It’s 95 degrees/I ain’t got no n***a and no n***a ain’t got me,” she declares in the opening bars of “TGIF,” a worthy “F.N.F.” follow-up made for blasting at max volume. There’s plenty of the rowdy girl-power anthems fans have come to expect from Big Glo, among them the bad-bitch motivational “PROCEDURE” with Latto
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