As anyone still wearing their Cowboy Carter or Brat hat knows, the ultimate goal of pop music is to define an entire year. For some artists, that means getting started early—and so it is that, at the dawn of 2025, we can inspect the last few months’ sprinklings of clues, teasers, and (frankly) press releases to map out a prospectus for the coming year in music. There are the festival-season floor-fillers, the bombshell comebacks, the boom-or-busts, the will-they-even-release-its (looking at you, Lana, Lorde, and LCD Soundsystem), and, of course, the most long-awaited, long-debated, and long-delayed of long players. We’ll start you off with one of the latter; read on for updates on Rosalía, Clipse, DJ Koze, the Weeknd, and many more.
A$AP Rocky: Don’t Be Dumb
A$AP Rocky had planned to release Don’t Be Dumb on August 30, but his Testing follow-up has been indefinitely delayed. As we wait for the Harlem rapper’s first project since 2018, he has released the songs “Highjack” (featuring Jessica Pratt!) and “Ruby Rosary.”
–Matthew Strauss
Baths: Gut
Will Wiesenfeld hasn’t put out a proper album as Baths since 2017’s Romaplasm, but that’s not to say he hasn’t been keeping busy. Far from it: In the last eight years, Wisenfeld released the Baths compilation Pop Music / False B-Sides II, worked on the soundtrack for the Netflix cartoon Bee and PuppyCat, and put out several records under the Geotic moniker. Gut, though, will be Romaplasm’s follow-up, and features the single “Sea of Men,” which came out last month.
–Walden Green
Bonnie “Prince” Billy: The Purple Bird
Bonnie “Prince” Billy gave fans a taste of his follow-up to Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You with “Our Home,” a rustic waltz pairing Will Oldham with mandolinist Tim O’Brien. Oldham cut The Purple Bird in Nashville with producer David “Ferg” Ferguson, who also co-wrote seven of its songs. In a press release, Oldham referred to Ferugson as “a giant of a man, an epic musical force, a dear friend.” He added: “Our work together on this record was the result of years of sharing hard times and great joys, songs and stories, of making music together and apart.”
–Madison Bloom
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Clipse: Let God Sort Em Out
In 2020, 11 years after fourth album Til the Casket Drops and their subsequent hiatus, Pusha T and No Malice reformed as Clipse at their longtime co-producer Pharrell Williams’ Something in the Water festival. Now, after a smattering of shows and murmurs of new music, the influential rap duo is set to return with a full album. Reportedly titled Let God Sort Em Out—per a since-deleted Pusha T Instagram post—that album is finished, entirely Williams-produced, and set for release on Def Jam.
–Jazz Monroe
Cole Pulice
Cole Pulice will return this year with a new album of electroacoustic saxophone compositions. Though the record has not formally been announced, Pulice described it in an email as “a collection of extended compositions I have been slowly working on over the past three years.” They added, “There is something of the Bay Area infused in the music of this record, which somehow rests at a waypoint along the overlapping landscapes of electroacoustic composition, prismatic chamber jazz, and contemplative improvisation.”
–Jazz Monroe
Darkside: Nothing
Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington have welcomed the drummer Tlacael Esparza into the fold as Darkside, expanding the duo into a three-piece just in time for their third album, Nothing. Billed as the results of hours spent improvising inside a rented storefront in northeast Los Angeles, the follow-up to 2021’s Spiral is stuffed with thick grooves and seamless transitions, each elliptical jam more expansive than the last. The album title is a play on how to achieve mindfulness—by doing nothing, or at least what’s perceived as nothing—and how a shrugged response is less about how little is going on and more about how little has changed.
–Nina Corcoran
David Longstreth, Dirty Projectors, and Stargaze: Song of the Earth
David Longstreth and his Dirty Projectors bandmates teamed up with Stargaze and a host of other musicians—including Phil Elverum, Steve Lacy, and Tim Bernandes—for this ambitious new album, which shares not only a name with the Mahler symphony, but also its “themes, feelings, and spirit of dissolved contradiction,” according to Longstreth. The song cycle is the result of a work-in-progress that Longstreth premiered at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, in 2022, with an intro—now the album’s lead single—that relocates the opening of David Wallace-Wells’ book The Uninhabitable Earth. That song, Longstreth elaborated, “is like the Beavis-and-Butthead version of Song of the Earth. It’s stupider and funnier and more insane. It’s got kind of a Gen-X fatalism, and fatalism is one side of the coin.”
–Jazz Monroe
Destroyer: Dan’s Boogie
Indie-rock’s most reliably impish tunesmith collects another catalog of novelistic monologues and surrealist gags on Dan’s Boogie, the follow-up to Labyrinthitis. He led the new Destroyer record with “Bologna,” a Balearic funk odyssey in which he mutters a meta-commentary on the track’s unspooling plot, with the lead part going to Fiver’s Simone Schmidt. “I struggled singing the first and third verses, the most important parts of the song,” Bejar said in a press release. “They needed gravity and grit. The threat of disappearing needed to be real. So I called Simone.” Watch the David Galloway–directed music video before disappearing into the album this spring.
–Jazz Monroe
DJ Koze: Music Can Hear Us
Seven years after his revelatory Knock Knock, maverick producer DJ Koze returns with Music Can Hear Us, another guidebook of psychedelic journeys into the beating heart of the dancefloor. Out on his own label Pampa—whose beloved 2016 compilation is overdue of follow-up of its own—Music Can Hear Us pairs Koze with a green-room of TBA guests and, on lead single “Pure Love,” the inescapable Damon Albarn.
–Jazz Monroe
Everything Is Recorded: Temporary
The project of XL Recordings founder Richard Russell is known for bringing together laundry lists of interesting musicians, then pairing them in combinations so unexpected you reconsider everything you knew about those artists. Think Noah Cyrus and Bill Callahan, or Sampha and Florence Welch. Temporary, his newest album under the moniker, is out next month, and will also feature contributions from Kamasi Washington, Alabaster dePlume, and Nourished by Time, albeit not on the same track.
–Walden Green
FKA twigs: Eusexua
FKA Twigs conceived of her new album amid filming the ill-fated The Crow remake in Prague. In the hours between shoots, she’d venture to underground raves at the fringes of the city, submerging herself in the techno-driven subculture. Eusexua follows Twigs’ stunning 2019 LP Magdalene, and while the artist insists it’s not 100% a dance album, it was inspired by those late nights in Czechia. So far, twigs has shared three singles from the record: the title track, “Drums of Death,” and “Perfect Stranger.” The first two were made with ambient/dance honcho Koreless. FKA Twigs has also been previewing music at Eusexua raves in New York, London, and Los Angeles.
–Madison Bloom
Florist: Jellywish
Jellywish follows the New York minimalist folk quartet Florist’s self-titled 2022 LP. Emily Sprague and her bandmates shared first single “This Was a Gift” last year, and officially announced the record with “Have Heaven.” “It’s a gentle delivery of something that is really chaotic, confusing, and multifaceted,” Sprague said of the album upon its announcement. “It has this technicolor that’s inspired by our world and also fantasy elements that we can use to escape our world.”
–Madison Bloom
Great Grandpa: Patience, Moonbeam
When Great Grandpa made their full-length debut with Plastic Cough, in 2017, they introduced themselves as a grungy alt-pop band tapping into their Seattle roots. But 2019’s Four of Arrows shifted into a moving blend of indie-rock and emo that showcased the quintet’s softer heart-on-sleeve tendencies. After five long years, Great Grandpa return this March in a similar vein with Patience, Moonbeam. A bit softer, twangier, and more at peace, the new album finds its strength in the comfort of these longtime friends. From the jazzy drums steering the winding single “Doom” to the braggadocious story of prolonged adolescence in “Junior,” Patience, Moonbeam is intuitive, present, and worth the wait.
–Nina Corcoran
The Horrors: Night Life
Nearly a decade later, the Horrors are back. Since the British goth-rock band’s last LP, V, co-founders Faris Badwan, Rhys Webb, and Joshua Hayward replaced their drummer and keyboardist, though, if the singles from Night Life are any indication, their signature sound is very much intact.
–Walden Green
Japanese Breakfast: For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)
In between adapting her first book, Crying in H Mart, into a screenplay and decamping to South Korea to write more, Michelle Zauner found the time to hole up in a studio and record her latest studio full-length as Japanese Breakfast. For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) was recorded with Blake Mills—known for his work on albums by Perfume Genius and Alabama Shakes—and is led by the single “Orlando in Love.”
–Walden Green
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga has been teasing her seventh album—working title, LG7—since promoting her role as Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux. So what do we know? Well, it’s a pop album. It will possibly include her Bruno Mars collaboration “Die With a Smile” and the single “Disease,” the latter of which landed with a freaky, vintage-Gaga video right around Halloween. Gaga is also poised to leave her Harley Quinn alter ego behind, having released the concept album Harlequin to accompany the Joker sequel. She, er, jokingly referred to that release as LG6.5, but the true contents of the Chromatica follow-up remain a mystery.
–Madison Bloom
Lana Del Rey: The Right Person Will Stay
Not every Lana Del Rey album announcement is a serious proposition—here’s looking at you, Rock Candy Sweet and White Hot Forever—but, if The Right Person Will Stay, then so too will the right album. Here’s hoping for at least one song inspired by Del Rey’s new alligator tour guide beau.
–Walden Green
LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem returned last October with a song called “X-Ray Eyes,” prompting speculation about an American Dream follow-up that was compounded when Primavera festival said, in an email announcing its 2025 lineup, that the band would be coming with “a new album” in tow. Though that statement was retracted, James Murphy conceded shortly afterward that “X-Ray Eyes” was “the first single of what’s shaping up to be a new album.” But, he warned, “don’t ask me when that is, because we’re still working on it.”
–Jazz Monroe
Lorde
Details are sparse, but Lorde has been teasing new music since… well, long before she parachuted into Brat Summer. Since a December 2023 post captioned, “Listening to myself,” she has shared this symbol-laden message: “Use the existing tools wherever possible ©𝑳ĿŁု⑷♶ If the tools do not exist you are spiritually obliged to create them © 𝑳ĿŁု⑷♶⚤✬✹❁✰㉗✬✹❁🀥⚭ 𓆝𓃹𓁙.” Make of that what you can!
–Matthew Strauss
Mereba: The Breeze Grew a Fire
Spillage Village alumna Mereba is readying her second solo album, the follow-up to her 2019 LP, The Jungle Is the Only Way Out, and 2021’s Azeb EP. The singer and songwriter recorded The Breeze Grew a Fire, her debut for indie label Secretly Canadian, with producer Sam Hoffman. “I was trying to find my way back to myself,” Mereba said of the writing process in a press release. “What do I like? What do I want to hear? What do I want to say to people now?” Stay tuned to find out.
–Madison Bloom
MIKE: Showbiz!
New York rapper and producer MIKE will release his next album, Showbiz!, this month via his own 10k label. Lead single “You’re the Only One Watching” and the October track “Pieces of a Dream” both feature on MIKE’s follow-up to last year’s Tony Seltzer collaboration Pinball. He’ll also set out on a massive 2025 tour behind the new record in February.
–Madison Bloom
Panda Bear: Sinister Grift
Panda Bear is gearing up to release Sinister Grift, his first solo LP since 2019’s Buoys. Noah Lennox, who led the record with the Cindy Lee collaboration “Defense” in October, recorded Sinister Grift at his very own Estudio Campo in his adopted city of Lisbon, Portugal. He co-produced the follow-up to his various Sonic Boom collaborations with his Animal Collective bandmate Deakin, also enlisting Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede to contribute.
–Madison Bloom
Richard Dawson: End of the Middle
On End of the Middle, British avant bard and master tunesmith Richard Dawson delves into domestic tableaux with his usual authorly color and allegorical flair. “It zooms in quite close-up to try and explore a typical middle class English family home,” Dawson said of the record, which draws inspiration from the films of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu. “We’re listening to the stories of people from three or four generations of perhaps the same family.” Also shading the LP are elements of folk, metal, and a cinema more aligned with the Ken Loach school, in songs that turn tales of P.E. lessons and company meetings into disarming assessments of the human condition.
–Jazz Monroe
Roddy Ricch: The Navy Album
The Navy Album—Roddy Ricch’s follow-up to 2022’s Feed tha Streets III—was supposed to land last summer, then early last month. Well, now it’s slated for late February. Little is known about the album, though it will feature Ricch’s recent single “Survivor’s Remorse,” which includes a prominent sample of Kelly Clarkson’s 2023 song “Me,” of all things. Guests include Terrace Martin, on “Lonely Road,” according to an Apple Music listing.
–Madison Bloom
Rosalía
Rosalía began teasing her Motomami follow-up last Halloween, posting a carousel of gory photos featuring a bloodied CD, lodged in her forehead, marked “R4.” She made it semi-official on New Year’s Day, sharing a list of 2024 achievements and 2025 hopes that ended with the Spanish phrase “sacar nuevo disco”—that is, “release new album.” ¡Estamos listos!
–Jazz Monroe
Saya Gray: Saya
There’s no telling what Rising alumna Saya Gray’s debut album will sound like. Earlier projects like 19 Masters and Qwerty EPs established Gray as a chameleonic virtuoso, and now she’s throwing finger-picked country guitar riffs and dubby sub-bass washes into Saya singles “Shell (Of a Man)” and “H.B.W.” “I move fast. Transition quick, hit change!” she said in a press release. “My documentations have barely kept up.… My mind & body caught up for this album.” Seems like there’s still no pinning her down.
–Walden Green
Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory: Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
Sharon Van Etten took a very different approach to writing and recording her new album, Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory. “For the first time in my life I asked the band if we could just jam,” Van Etten said in press materials. The new project, also called Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, comprises three of Van Etten’s longtime bandmates: percussionist Jorge Balbi, bassist Devra Hoff, and multi-instrumentalist Teeny Lieberson. The quartet shared lead single “Afterlife” along with a moody visual last year. The new LP follows Van Etten’s 2022 release, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong.
–Madison Bloom
Squid: Cowards
Squid continue their evolution from arch post-punks to art-rock explorers on Cowards, an album of psych flair and kosmische expansion that sacrifices none of their jitterbug urgency. With orchestral largesse, mid-song pivots, and spindly guitar filigree to spare, the album builds upward and outwards from Bright Green Field and O Monolith, the albums that built them a raucous cult in their native United Kingdom.
–Jazz Monroe
Tunde Adebimpe
Tunde Adebimpe, lead singer of venerated Brooklynites TV on the Radio, is set to release his proper solo debut this year, having signed to Sub Pop last October for a song called “Magnetic”—somehow his first formal solo single in the two decades he’s been putting out music. It has everything a TV on the Radio fan could want: doo-wop melodies, buzzing synthesizers, and, of course, that urgently mesmerizing voice.
–Walden Green
The Waterboys: Life, Death and Dennis Hopper
Back in 2020, the Waterboys released a psych-frazzled, highway-cruising rock song named after the great Dennis Hopper. Now, they’ve made an album of it. Life, Death and Dennis Hopper is the British rock veterans’ tribute to the late actor, a record that frontperson Mike Scott described as a song cycle about “a five-movies-a-year character actor” who never lost “the sparkle in his eye or the sense of danger or unpredictability that always gathered around him.” He has assembled an illustrious guest list to tell the story: Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Earle all feature.
–Jazz Monroe
The Weeknd: Hurry Up Tomorrow
The Weeknd is filing his final entry in a trilogy that began in 2020 with After Hours. Hurry Up Tomorrow follows Abel Tesfaye’s 2022 sequel Dawn FM, which featured simulated radio broadcasts from a mysterious DJ—voiced by Jim Carrey. A trailer for Hurry Up Tomorrow enthused that the album was “crafted with existential and self-referential themes, as seen with the latest visionary teasers that have set fans ablaze with anticipation.” It is not yet clear if the new LP will include the Weeknd’s recent singles—“Dancing in the Flames,” the Playboi Carti collaboration “Timeless,” and the Anitta-featuring “São Paulo”—but we do know Tesfaye will star in a companion film, also titled Hurry Up Tomorrow. In the meantime, prepare to be set ablaze with anticipation by his next visionary teaser.
–Madison Bloom
Youth Lagoon: Rarely Do I Dream
Trevor Powers, a darling of the early 2010s bedroom pop boom, made his graceful and assured comeback as Youth Lagoon with 2023’s Heaven Is a Junkyard. Inspired by a shoebox of home movies in his childhood home around the time of that album’s release, its sample-dense follow-up Rarely Do I Dream is out next month from Fat Possum. “When I took the tapes home and popped in the first one, it was my brother Bobby and I at the state fair. I was 4 years old choking on a corn dog,” Powers said in a press statement announcing the LP. “If anything’s a summary of life, that is.”
–Walden Green
