Stream skaiwater’s #mia and more albums for New Music Friday

Stream every standout album released this Friday with The FADER’s weekly roundup.

 

Every Friday, The FADER’s writers dive into the most exciting new projects released that week. Today, read our thoughts on skaiwater’s #mia, John Glacier’s Like A Ribbon, and more.

skaiwater: #mia

It’s been a great 24 hours for fans of skaiwater, or just anyone who’s tapped-in and cares about the future of pop music. Just yesterday she shared pinkPrint, a five-track EP billed as the deluxe edition of #mia, eight more songs out today that further demonstrate skaiwater’s wide-ranging talents. But whereas pinkPrint felt like a peek into skai’s hard drive, showcasing scraggly demos with impossible-to-clear samples made just for fun, #mia is more polished in its composition — consider it the deluxe of her masterful 2024 project #gigi. skaiwater is smitten across the project, showing her heart with zero caveats; when the machismo does emerge, it never minimizes the hold this love has on her heart. skaiwater’s skill rests in her knowledge that two kinds of beauty can be true at once: blown-out, rumbling 808s can rest next to classic R&B melodies and ’80s guitar pop convention; pinched, autotuned vocals can sound heavenly next to a single neo-soul piano; rage rap actually hits harder when it’s broken up by glittering synth melodies. Such compositional craft is incredibly difficult to achieve in any art, but it’s business as usual for skaiwater. Catch her if you can. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

John Glacier: Like A Ribbon

Like A Ribbon, the debut album from London’s John Glacier, is a monument to trusting the process. Over the past few years Glacier has slowly established herself via a string of EPs and mixtapes, each one sharpening her voice while rarely erring from her trademark vocal delivery that lands somewhere between rapping and spoken word. An iconoclast in a wave of followers, Glacier arrives fully-formed on Like A Ribbon. With a 30 minute runtime, the album is both brisk and yet densely packed with a hazy electronic production that fill the gaps between Glaciers words, while guests including Sampha and Eartheater wander in and out. She bounces between high and low status; dancing carefree in the rain on “Money Shows” while prone to vulnerability elsewhere, such as on “Nevasure” where she is “on the rocks” and fighting with cupid. It’s “Steady As I Am” where she finds strength in her uniqueness, though, and sums up the appeal of the album as a whole. “I’m sticking to the plan, not the game,” she utters. “Think I’m crazy, ’cause you’re all the same.”

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On

Horsegirl’s debut album, Visions of Modern Performance, was a celebration of distorted post-punk and no-wave guitar music that recalled another decade. All three of the band’s members were also all barely teenagers when the record was released. The Chicago trio’s latest record, Phonetics On and On, brings to mind another form of yesteryear. Trading noisy distortion for charming, melodic and ramshackle jangle-pop, Horsegirl’s sophomore record is another chapter of a band still navigating life, girlhood, and being young. Produced by Welsh experimental pop master Cate Le Bon, minimalist, sparse guitars and delicate strings fill the space previously occupied by the frenetic punk of their debut, though their ethos is never lost; it’s still there, in the sound of the cascading guitars, the ascending melodies that sound like old-school girl groups like Thee Headcoatees, their coming-of-age lo-fi universe the same one that The Moldy Peaches share in. Across album highlights like “2 4 6 8,” “Julie,” and “Switch Over,” melodies, guitar lines, and lyrics are playful and inquisitive, tentative and shy, the way you have to be in life when you’ve barely turned 20. – Cady Siregar

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Mallrat: Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right

Mallrat’s best pop songs always have a warm glowing aura to them. That’s still true on her latest album Light hit my face like a straight right though they’ve been bolstered with the added power of dance pop. This project contains some of Mallrat’s most abstract songs in concept: thematically, the record is about light as a guiding force of evil and good — the street lamp’s glow on a rainy night; the sun from an open window — but its hardly inaccessible. It’s exciting to hear Mallrat’s cozy lyric writing over racing breakbeats and drops like on “Hideaway,” which could set off any festival, or on “Ray of Light,” where a belted chorus gets processed so deeply it sounds nearly orgasmic. And those who crave a bit of Mallrat’s homespun charm can still find it on “Horses,” the only organic-sounding song of the album that’s just as intimate as “Charlie” and dedicated to her late sister. —Steffanee Wang

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music

Bummer Camp: Stuck In A Dream

For Bummer Camp frontman Eli Frank, to be “stuck” somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean being in a state of unwanted purgatory, or feeling helpless by the futility of immobility; it is simply a state you inevitably find yourself in in the quest for self-fulfillment. On the New York City-based band’s debut album, Stuck In a Dream, fuzzy, grunged-out guitars fill out the liminal spaces we find ourselves in, doomy shoegaze that might sound like the end of the world. Frank’s reverb-soaked vocals are downtrodden against the unrelenting backdrop of noise that recall the noisy slacker-pop slash emo of Feeble Little Horse or Wishy, but he doesn’t necessarily view his lyrics as pessimistic: to be stagnant is a choice, in the grand scheme of things. It’s never really permanent, unless you want it to be. “We can choose to be stuck but we also choose to wake up, we aren’t truly stuck,” says Frank. – CS

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Richard Dawson: End of the Middle

Richard Dawson’s bent folk music has never been entirely of this earth. The Newcastle singer-songwriter has always had a flair for the fantastical, painting even the most modern of problems with coats of medieval mysticism. His characters are rich and lived in, but they rarely exist in the here and now. The people and events on his new album, though, are rendered in full, biographical detail. Where a past Dawson might have told the stories on this record obliquely, taking his time to develop all the forces, these songs are concise and direct despite containing arguably unnecessary details that test the limits of effective realism. There’s still metaphor at play, but it’s delivered plainly enough that its cleverness feels completely organic. The instrumentation, too, is Dawson’s most stripped back in years. But this simplicity is a disarming tactic, making deviations from the norm scratch like sandpaper on raw skin. — Raphael Helfand. Read our full review here.

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Mereba: The Breeze Grew A Fire

Earlier this week I wrote about the power of platonic love, the kind that isn’t dramatic or loud but is consistent and present like a well-placed chair. I curated a playlist of songs that evoked that feeling for me but really, I could’ve made it all of Mereba’s The Breeze Grew A Fire, the Los Angeles-based singer’s tender and thoughtful new record that’s about “relationships that are consistent and soft; the people who feel like a breeze.” Her new record — tranquil, soulful alt-R&B — holds a torch to these friends. And like them, these songs are not loud. They swaddle, soothe, and encourage. “You’re the original,” she sings on “Counterfeit,” “don’t let them counterfeit you.” She promises to pick up her drunk friends, begs another to quit the powder, and repeats a powerful motto: “If you ever need me, I’ll be there for you.” None of this sounds cheesy or dramatic. With a gentle demeanor and caring hand on the shoulder, these songs actually feel more necessary than ever. —SW

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Other projects out today that you should listen to

Alessia Cara: Love & Hyperbole
Bartees Strange: Horror
Civilistjävel!: Följd
dj blackpower: Dr. Grabba II
Eyedress: Occasional Stoner
Fish Narc: Frog Song
Frog: 1000 Variations on the Same Song
Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On
John Glacier: Like a Ribbon
Kestrels: Better Wonder
Key!: Eye Feel Free
Lucy Bedroque, Egobreak & prettifun: ROYGBIV
Marshall Allen: New Dawn
Mathias Eick, Kristjan Randalu, Ole Morten Vågan & Hans Hulbækmo: Lullaby
Natalia Beylis: Coy-Koy EP
Neil Young: Oceanside Countryside
Noriko Tujiko: Echoes on the Hem EP
OhGeesy: Paid N Full
Rusty Williams: Grand Man
Venturing: Ghostholding
Westside Gunn: 12
Whait, More Eaze & Wendy Eisenberg: Close Quarters EP
Yuval Cohen Quartet: Winter Poems