Six New Albums Worth Hearing This Week

Tinashe performing in 2023

Six new albums arrived on Friday 25 September that are worth pressing play on, and they could hardly be further apart: an eighth album from Tinashe, a new record from Blondshell, a 21st from Kenny Chesney, a fifth from Nothing But Thieves, a new collection from Joy Oladokun and what Tom Morello calls his first solo rock album.

Here is what each one is, who made it and who it is for. All six appear on this week’s Friday release list.

Tinashe Stretches What a Popstar Can Be

Popstar is out now, and it is Tinashe’s eighth studio album. Clash describes the 16-track collection as moving between high-octane, club-skewed experiments and languid R&B futurism, built with a long list of pop and electronic producers including Arca, Machinedrum, Kingdom, Fred Ball, Ricky Redd, Zach Sekoff and Dave Hamelin.

The singles set out both sides. Lead single “Crash Out” is the straight pop song; “Melatonin”, in The FADER’s description, is a vaguely ballroom-inflected sugar rush that sounds like a longer pop song chopped, screwed and sent into hyperdrive. The FADER singles out “Flashbacks” as the standout, opening with vocal chops that recall Arca before settling into chanted lines over a sombre piano loop, and reads the album’s thesis as simple: Tinashe is a popstar, but under her gaze that label can mean just about anything.

She is marking the release with in-store vinyl signings in New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Southern California, and the Grammy Museum will host an intimate performance and Q&A on 22 October in Los Angeles. Who it is for: anyone who likes their pop with the edges left on.

Blondshell Takes the Slow Road on Violins

Violins is out now on Partisan Records. Blondshell, the project of Sabrina Teitelbaum, made it with producer Yves Rothman, and it was mixed by Beatriz Artola and mastered by Emily Lazar, according to Stereogum. The first taste was “Heart Has To Work So Hard”, followed by the title track and a video directed by Sabra Binder, in which Teitelbaum tries to save a melting ice sculpture of a fawn in a room of one-way mirrors.

Teitelbaum has said the title track sums up the album: it sets images of patience and kindness beside images of violence, and it is about healing slowly and refusing to be rushed. In a social post before the announcement, she said that “each time I get to do this the music ends up closer to what I intended.” Stereogum called the title song the brooding, thoughtful rock that listeners have come to expect from her. Who it is for: fans of guitar-led indie rock with lyrics that cut close.

Kenny Chesney Goes Independent on Silver Sands Marina

Silver Sands Marina is Kenny Chesney’s 21st album and his first full-length release on his own HEY NOW Records, produced by Chesney with longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon. Its lead single, “Carry On”, was the label’s debut, and according to Chesney’s own announcement it became the first independent single, and only the third ever, to lock out the country radio reporting panel in its first week.

The songs come from a deep bench of Nashville writers, among them Tony Lane, Matraca Berg, Shane McAnally and Brett James, alongside Jessie Jo Dillon, Tenille Townes and Adam Wright, with guest turns from Colbie Caillat, Lily Meola and Megan Moroney. “I love everything about music, but especially how it makes you feel,” Chesney says. “It can crack open a tough moment, lift you up, blow you up and make you laugh harder than anything.”

He announced the album just after opening his second residency at Sphere in Las Vegas. Who it is for: anyone who wants the long-drive, sunshine side of country, from a 2025 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee.

Nothing But Thieves Head Back to Where They Started

Stray Dogs is the fifth album from the Southend five-piece and their first since 2023’s Dead Club City. Speaking to NME on release day, the band said they wrote it over five months on the road and recorded it in the same studio where they made their 2015 debut, taking a DIY approach and turning the songs towards gratitude for the friends, family, crew and fans around them.

“I feel like we’re a band that takes left turns,” they told the magazine. This time, the left turn was to make something “smaller and noisy”, designed like a dream-state version of their live show: the songs bleed into each other, and crowd noise from their own gigs is woven into the transitions, including the album’s opening. The singles “Evolution”, “Baby Kool (Evelyn)”, “A Different Kind Of Happiness” and the title track previewed it, with “#5”, which the band call the cornerstone of the album, arriving alongside it. Who it is for: rock fans who like their big choruses with some grit.

Joy Oladokun Confronts the Past on Hope Is a Heavy Thing

Hope Is A Heavy Thing is out now on Concord Records: 12 songs produced by Oladokun with additional contributions from the Nigerian producer Spellz, and a collaboration with the Nigerian artist Adekunle Gold. “‘To understand your future you have to confront your past.’ This is the driving theme behind Hope Is A Heavy Thing,” Oladokun says in the album announcement. She describes it as a collection she wrote “to help myself find my light again after burning out”.

The record was produced in Nashville, New York and, in her words, “the back of a speeding tour bus”, and it nods to the Soulquarians, Bob Dylan, Afrobeats, the sampling of J Dilla and the Ronettes, with some songs drawing on the rock and roll protest music of the 1960s and 70s. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Oladokun has been nominated for Americana Artist of the Year, and her song “i see america” was a finalist for the Recording Academy’s Best Song for Social Change award. Who it is for: listeners who want folk and soul songwriting with a wider world of rhythm underneath it.

Tom Morello Makes His First Solo Rock Album

Everyone Gets Everything They Want is out now on Mom + Pop Music, and Tom Morello calls it his first solo rock album, after decades with Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave and his solo work as The Nightwatchman. According to Blabbermouth, the 12 tracks confront fascism, immigrant rights and global political turmoil, with production from Tyler Smyth, Carl Restivo, Zakk Cervini, Dan Carey and Sam Nelson Harris.

Serj Tankian, Kneecap and Beartooth all appear, and his 15-year-old son Roman shares writing credits on five songs. “Date Night” tells the true story of Truus and Freddie Oversteegen and Hannie Schaft, three young Dutch resistance fighters who worked against the Nazis during the Second World War. “‘Date Night’ is really a ‘which side are you on?’ song,” Morello said. On 3 October he hosts Power To The People, a sold-out one-day festival he curated at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland. Who it is for: anyone who wants riffs with a message attached.

For more from the release calendar, MusicDrops also covered how Sia pitched Chaka Khan a dance album, and Chakzilla is the result. Between them, this week’s six new albums cover pop, indie rock, country, arena rock, folk-soul and protest rock.