New Normal Streams

Forever Howlong Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Black Country, New Road By the time Black Country, New Road released their sprawling second album  Ants from Up There  in 2022, lead vocalist Isaac Wood had departed the London-based indie experimentalists and a magical first phase of the group had come to a close. Rather than tour those records without their original singer, they rejigged their dynamic and wrote a whole new batch of songs—captured on 2023’s  Live at Bush Hall —to initiate a new period of the band where vocals and much of the songwriting were led by Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw. It made for an exhilarating fresh start and their third album  Forever Howlong  directly picks up from the momentum of starting over again. “We’d done a lot of touring of the live album and we really wanted to further develop this new lineup and write new songs so we could get them into the set list,” saxophonist Lewis Evans tells Apple Music. “There’s a whole bun...

The Crux Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Djo The creation—and especially the success—of his 2024 viral hit “End of Beginning” prepared Djo, the musical alter ego of  Stranger Things  star Joe Keery, for the recording of his third album. “It was a boost of confidence and a good shot in the arm,” he tells Apple Music. “Doing a song from beginning to end in a studio and getting bit by that was like, ‘Oh man, this is how I want to do this. I don’t think I really want to try to do this in my bedroom.’” Famed New York City studio Electric Lady provided Keery and his frequent producer Adam Thein with the environment they needed. “We were using all the toys,” Keery notes. “This piece of gear was laying around, so let’s mess with it. And it ends up, it informs the whole track. There’s a lot of that going on on this record.” And so,  The Crux  was born. Unlike his past endeavors, this time he chose to focus on collaboration. “I came up musically in a time where it was Kevin Parker ...

Malcolm Todd Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Malcolm Todd Clever, heart-on-sleeve alt-pop from the LA singer-songwriter.

From Zero (Deluxe Edition) Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 LINKIN PARK

Glory Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Perfume Genius The remarkable thing about Mike Hadreas’ music is how he manages to fit such big feelings into such small, confined spaces. Like 2020’s  Set My Heart on Fire Immediately , 2025’s  Glory  (also produced by the ever-subtle but ever-engaging Blake Mills) channels the kind of gothic Americana that might soundtrack a David Lynch diner or the atmospheric opening credits of a show about hot werewolves: a little campy, a little dark, a lot of passions deeply felt. The bold moments here are easy to grasp (“It’s a Mirror,” “Me & Angel”), but it’s the quieter ones that make you sit up and listen (“Capezio,” “In a Row”). Once he found beauty in letting go, now he finds it in restraint.

SABLE, fABLE Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Bon Iver Pre-add Bon Iver’s first full-length album in over five years.

Still... At Their Very Best (Live From The AO Arena, Manchester, 17.02.24) Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 The 1975 Relive the pulse-raising second leg of the maverick pop band’s hit 2024 tour.

Constellations For The Lonely Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Doves If ever a band could seize victory from the jaws of defeat, it’s Doves. Rising, quite literally, from the flames of house outfit Sub Sub after their studio burned down at the end of the ’90s, the Manchester trio—Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Andy and Jez Williams—alchemized a peculiarly northern strain of melancholy into soaring, atmospheric rock, scoring two Mercury Music Prize nominations in the process.  Constellations for the Lonely  is the group’s sixth album and their second following a decade-long hiatus, which ended with 2020’s  The Universal Want . However, Goodwin’s issues with addiction and mental health meant that he was unavailable for much of the album’s recording. Rather than sounding like the work of a band in crisis, though,  Constellations for the Lonely  is one of Doves’ best efforts yet. From dystopian,  Blade Runner -evoking opener “Renegade” and the cinematic, neo-psychede...

Matter Does Not Define Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 The Lathums

The Panic Years Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Bradley Simpson The Vamps’ singer busts loose for a vulnerable, indie-leaning solo debut.

FESTIVAL SEASON Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 SAINt JHN If anyone knows something about  FESTIVAL SEASON , it’s SAINt JHN, the Brooklyn-hailing singer and MC whose “Roses (Imanbek Remix)” has been tearing down electro festivals since its release back in 2018. JHN, though, is an artist whose creative practice extends way beyond single genre. He shows off his range on  FESTIVAL SEASON , singing and rapping over rage-rap production (“Body on Me,” “4 the Gangsters”), ATL-centric trap music (“Stones!!!,” “Poppin,” “Real Hustler”), pop punk (“Who’s Ex Wife Is This”), pool-party techno (“Glitching”), soca-influenced house (“Loneliness”)—and, because even the greatest parties need a breather, a power ballad (“Never Met Superman”). It’s almost as if it doesn’t matter which festival you choose to attend: SAINt JHN is going to be there.

Reflections (From The Vault Of Smoke + Mirrors) Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Imagine Dragons The Las Vegas pop-rockers had a legit claim to the title of Biggest Band in the World in the stretch between their debut album, 2012’s  Night Visions , and its 2015 follow-up,  Smoke + Mirrors . It seemed that Imagine Dragons had skipped the “humble upstart” phase and proceeded straight to full-blown arena-rock spectacle with their blend of Coldplay-esque schmaltz and Obama-era Americana of the “stomp-clap-hey!” variety, with a pinch of EDM thrown in for maximum festival appeal. Smoke + Mirrors  became the Dragons’ first album to debut atop the Billboard 200, buoyed by a lead single, “I Bet My Life,” that still feels omnipresent on rock radio, and in Truck Month commercials. Ten years later,  Reflections  celebrates their sophomore album’s anniversary with 13 unreleased tracks from the original recording sessions, plus a folksy demo version of “I Bet My Life.” The band wro...

I Feel Different Every Day Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 chlothegod

Critical Thinking Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Manic Street Preachers Fifteen albums in, the Welsh icons retain all their grace and incisive wit.

Oh! The Ocean Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 The Wombats The Wombats—Matthew “Murph” Murphy, Tord Øverland Knudsen, and drummer Dan Haggis—are widely associated with the British indie-rock revival from the early 2000s. As they’ve matured in the ensuing years, though, their sound has evolved beyond the scope of that world. On their sixth studio album, 2025’s  Oh! The Ocean , they update the band’s geographic influence, too. After Murphy moved to LA, the band recorded in the city’s Echo Park neighborhood. Though the album title suggests a cheery, awestruck disposition, Murphy’s writing is as biting as ever. He takes aim at “see and be seen culture” on opener “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come” and wades into the murky anxiety of modern politics on “I Love America and She Hates Me.” The cultural, though, is balanced by plenty of introspective moments, like on “My Head Is Not My Friend,” in which Murphy dives into the ecstatic highs, crippling lows, and run-of-the-mill mundanities that...

Be Lucky Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Louis Dunford Vulnerable, witty and honest tales of lives lived in North London and beyond.

Automatic Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 The Lumineers It’s fitting that The Lumineers would release a new album on Valentine’s Day 2025. The longtime roots-pop favorites have no shortage of heartstring-tugging love and heartbreak songs in their catalog, adding more with this fifth studio album and follow-up to 2022’s  Brightside . As they did with that record, The Lumineers tapped David Baron and Simone Felice to co-produce  Automatic , with the band notching their first co-production credit while recording the album at Woodstock, New York’s Utopia Studios over the course of a month. Where earlier Lumineers records focused more squarely on relationships and heartbreak,  Automatic  zooms out to take stock of the collateral damage wrought by the ills of the day, like persistent anxiety on the deceptively warm and loping “Ativan” and the “black sedan of depression” referenced on the urgent and bracing opening track, “Same Old Song.” “Better Day” feels like a plainly render...

Open Wide Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Inhaler The anthemic rock of Inhaler’s first two albums, 2021 debut  It Won’t Always Be Like This  and 2023 follow-up  Cuts & Bruises , catapulted the group into the world’s arenas and stadia, but in the whirlwind of success, they barely had time to pause for breath. It was only when starting work on what would become third album,  Open Wide , that singer and guitarist Eli Hewson, bassist Robert Keating, guitarist Josh Jenkinson, and drummer Ryan McMahon cleared the schedules and returned to the Dublin rehearsal space they first began playing together in as teenagers, jamming ideas and writing music together with no external pressures or looming deadlines. “It was the first time we’ve been able to do that in years,” Jenkinson tells Apple Music. “As soon as the second album was finished, we were already writing music,” adds Keating. “From the earliest days, we knew that we were going to try and do something a bit different for ...