Margo Price | photo by Yana Yatsuk, courtesy of the artist
PRESS PLAY: New Albums out August 29th
Bid farewell to summer with this week’s new releases…
As the curtain closes on Summer 2025, let this week’s abundance of new album usher in pumpkin spice season.
Honed to a point at Nashville’s RCA Studio A, Margo Price’s Hard Headed Woman glows with barnstorming, never-back-down anthems. Straight Line Was a Lie, the fourth album from New Zealand rockers The Beths, sees bandleader Elizabeth Stokes grappling with family history and mental health maintenance. On his fifth full-length as Blood Orange, Essex Honey, Dev Hynes recruits regular collaborators Lorde and Caroline Polachek, and coaxes elusive Manchester legend The Durutti Column out of retirement for his first recorded performance in over a decade. With songs inspired by crisscrossing the Midwest and his love of early rock and roll, Rodney Crowell’s Airline Highway is an easygoing ramble from the Texas songwriter.
Collecting over a dozen recently dispatched singles into a cohesive package, Hayley Williams’s Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party is the ambitious third solo album from the longtime Paramore singer. Philly icon John Oates looks backward and forward on OATES, reviving classic rock and soul style while sharing the spotlight with the next generation. Irish folk-pop artist CMAT deftly crafts songs that are cheeky and meta and heartbreaking (sometimes all at once) on her third album, EURO-COUNTRY. Go-Go’s singer Belinda Carlisle celebrates her Golden State roots on the covers collection Once Upon a Time in California, her first album with English vocals since 1996.
Listen for spotlights on new records like these (and more) every week on the XPN Morning Show and Indie Rock Hit Parade.
PRESS PLAY on these new releases
Margo Price – Hard Headed Woman
CHECK OUT: “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” “Don’t Wake Me Up”
The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie
CHECK OUT: “Metal”
“No Joy”
Blood Orange – Essex Honey
CHECK OUT: “Mind Loaded”
“Somewhere in Between”
Rodney Crowell – Airline Highway
CHECK OUT: “Taking Flight”
“The Twenty-One Song Salute”
Hayley Williams –
Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
CHECK OUT: “Glum” “Whim”
John Oates – OATES
CHECK OUT: “Mending”
“Real Thing Going On”
CMAT –
Euro-Country
CHECK OUT: “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station” “Take a Sexy Picture of Me”
Belinda Carlisle –
Once Upon a Time in California
CHECK OUT: “If You Could Read My Mind”
“The Air That I Breathe”
The PRESS PLAY-list
FURTHER LISTENING
Bad Bad Hats – Psychic Reader (10th Anniversary Edition) / Psychic Readings, The Beaches – No Hard Feelings, The Berries – The Berries, Big Wild – Wild Child, Bryan Adams – Roll with the Punches, Colbie Callait – This Time Around, Coyle Girelli – Out of This Town, C.R. Gillespie – Island of Women, Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O’Rourke – Pareidolia, Faerie Born – Morally Grey, Ganser – Animal Hospital, Grace Vonderkuhn, Into the Morning, Google Earth – Mac OS X 10.11, herbal tea – Hear as the Mirror Echoes, The Hives – The Hives Forever Forever the Hives, IDLES – Caught Stealing (Soundtrack), Kacy Hill – But Anyway, No Worries! EP, Jehnny Beth – You Heartbreaker, Jens Kuross – Crooked Songs, Johnson & Finnemore – Find a Love That Brings You Home, Lathe of Heaven – Aurora, Marshall Crenshaw – From the Hellhole, Modern Nature – The Heat Warps, myah – don’t know what i’m feeling, Myd – Mydnight, Nate Smith – Live-Action, Nova Twins – Parasites & Butterflies, Pinkshift – Earthkeeper, Pearly Drops – The Voices are Coming Back, Rebecca Sugar – Lonely Magic, Rotem Sivan – Heart Thieves, Runnner – A Welcome Kind of Weakness, Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend, Saul Williams & Carlos Niño – Saul Williams Meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople, Shabson, Krgovich, Tenniscoats – Wao, Slow Crush – Thirst, Stephen Wilson Jr. – Blankets EP, The Technicolors – Heavy Pulp, Tei Shi – I make believe, Tim Carr – Pleasure Drives, ThxSoMch – The Sound of You Laughing, willivms – by the wire here EP, Zion Garcia – The New Film Star EP