With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new drops available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Miley Cyrus, Carly Rae Jepsen, Team Dresch, and AZ Chike .
Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.) Carly Rae Jepsen: Day and Night [School Boy/Interscope] Carly Rae Jepsen is having more fun than everyone. That’s what I took away from Day and Night, her nw 24-track double LP.
Split into two halves like one of those convertible slip dresses, the album spans an array of themes including—though not limited to—marrying her hot husband; traveling Europe with her hot husband; having a baby with her hot husband. Given its extensive scope, listening to Day and Night occasionally feels like junk-diving in her demos drawer, but this is Carly Rae Jepsen, so there’s no shortage of shiny baubles for the keen-eyed collector: the scrapbooked travelogue of “Versailles,” an unexpected Gainsbourg homage on “Blue Skies,” and “Amalfi Coast,” as bubbly as a glass of Grand Cru. The only lingering question: Will we get a double album of b-sides, too?
Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Buy at Rough Trade Empress Of: Dream House [Major Arcana / Giant Music] The title of Empress Of’s new album bears a bittersweet significance. In January 2025, the Los Angeles native was one of many Altadena locals whose family homes burned to the ground during the devastating Eaton Fire. Empress Of spent the two years between the blaze and the release of her new album, Dream Home, both physically and spiritually rebuilding: pouring the concrete for a new foundation while undertaking the emotional work of healing after deep loss.
It’s a connecting theme on the album, which she executive produced with pop maven Cecile Believe, an ideal tether to Empress Of’s fantastical, club-minded alt-pop. With vocal assists from Blood Orange and her mother, Reina, the musician gives us another glimpse into her prismatic world, swinging the door open on the hard stuff. From “Can’t Be Tamed” to the Bangerz era to her 2025 indie rock “concept album” Something Beautiful, Cyrus has indicated she loves nothing more than to try on another facet of her persona.
Her new album, Bass Persuades, is her first as just Miley, and rechristens her as club kid-cum-hopeless romantic spending her nights pining and partying in equal measure. Traditional love songs like “Let’s Get Married” share room on the tracklist with grimier cuts like “Different Religion”—the latter thanks largely to the influence of Model/Actriz. But singer and bassist Jody Bleyle’s verses have a new urgency to them, certainly informed by the suffocating climate of fear and subjugation facing LGBTQ+ people around the world.
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