Don’t Miss New Albums From Matt Berninger, Grace Potter, Ben Kweller, Alan Sparhawk With Trampled By Turtles & More

The National frontman Matt Berninger shared his sophomore solo album, Get Sunk, via Book/Concord Records. For Get Sunk, Berninger collaborated with Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer Sean O’Brien, who also contributed as co-writer on several cuts. An impressive and eclectic array of musicians enriched the 10-track follow-up to 2020’s Serpentine Prison, including Booker T Jones, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Harrison Whitford, Mike Brewer, and The Walkmen’s Walter Martin and Paul Maroon. The majority of the album was recorded in an intimate basement studio setting in Silverlake, California.

The year 2020 brought Berninger face-to-face with “a long period of writer’s block and self-disgust. I just got sick of asking myself ‘Why am I like this?’” He’s never shied away from exposing his own psychological struggles in his work with The National and continues to do so on Get Sunk. “Our hearts are like old wells filled with pennies and worms,” Berninger reflected. “I can’t resist going down to the bottom of mine to see what else is there. But sometimes you can get yourself stuck.”

In 2008, singer-songwriter Grace Potter recorded an album’s worth of material with renowned producer T Bone Burnett that, for various reasons, was not released. Potter revisited those sessions at The Village Studios in Los Angeles, and the long-shelved album has finally been released as Medicine. Originally intended as the follow-up to the sophomore album by Potter’s former band The Nocturnals, 2007’s This Is Somewhere, the sessions with Burnett came soon after its release. An ace group of musicians backed Potter, who recorded with drummer Jim Keltner, bassist Dennis Crouch, guitarist Marc Ribot and keyboardist Keefus Ciancia. Four songs on the 12-track album were not previously released, “Before The Sky Falls,” “Losing You,” “Make You Cry” and “To Shore.” Reflecting on Medicine, Potter stated:

“I remember being in the studio with T Bone and feeling like this was everything I’d been waiting for, and I couldn’t go wrong — it never occurred to me that the album might not get released But even though I felt a great urgency to put the record out back then, I’m at peace with the fact that it’s taken this long. I’m at a point where I have a much stronger understanding of what I have to offer the world, and this offering feels like it’s right on time.

“This record brought me to a new understanding of the diversity of musicality I have within me — it showed me I had so much to share beyond the very male-based, ’70s-throwback, rock-and-roll thing I had been known for up to that point.

“Maybe it was just so far behind its time or so ahead of its time that I needed to step away from it for a while, keep exploring and keep moving away from anything derivative. This is an album that truly belongs in its own space, and I’m so happy to finally give it the platform I know it deserves.”

Ben Kweller released a new album entitled Cover The Mirrors today through The Noise Company. The 12-track LP is Kweller’s first new music since the sudden death of his son Dorian Zev, who unexpectedly died in a car accident at age 16 in 2023. Today’s album release coincides with what would have been Dorian’s 19th birthday. Kweller’s guests on the album include Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman, The Flaming Lips and Coconut Records.

“It’s a full circle type of album,” Kweller said. “There’s a lot of reflecting — not only reflecting on the loss of Dorian. I’m also taking an inventory of everything else. My whole time on Earth. Everything I’ve created as an artist … It wasn’t like I set out to say, ‘OK, I’m gonna make this album about going through grief and loss.’ But there was no way around it,” he adds. “This is just another chapter of me trying to heal and just get through what I’ve been going through. My music is always very autobiographical.”

Low’s Alan Sparhawk released his sophomore solo album, With Trampled By Turtles, through Sub Pop. As the title suggests, Sparhawk is backed by Trampled by Turtles on the collaborative record. Sparhawk and TBT share common roots in Minnesota and recorded their collaborative album in winter 2024 during a single, unrehearsed session at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. The album follows Sparhawk’s debut solo album, White Roses, My God, which he issued last year through Sub Pop Records. The nine-track With Trampled By Turtles was produced by Nat Harvie, who produced White Roses, My God, which was Sparkhawk’s first after the death of Mimi Parker, his wife and Low bandmate who died in 2022 after years of cancer treatment. Sparhawk’s daughter Hollis Sparhawk sings on the song “Not Broken.”

Both Low and Trampled By Turtles originated in Duluth, Minnesota. Sparhawk has joined TBT several times onstage in recent years and frequently discussed recording together.

“When the opportunity seems right, you jump,” Sparhawk said. “I like seeing artists in a situation where they can be quickened. You really see their gifts.”

“Nothing is real until everybody is in the room,” Trampled by Turtles frontman Dave Simonett added. “I can practice the songs myself as much as I want, but it’s almost like starting over when everybody’s there.”

Watchhouse issued a new studio album, Rituals, via Tiptoe Tiger Music/Thirty Tigers. The North Carolina-based duo of Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz recorded the 11-song effort with co-producer Rituals Ryan Gustafson. The follow-up to Watchhouse’s 2021 self-titled album, “explores the boundaries between identity and awareness, and how we often confuse patterns with truths. The 11-song collection muses on the endless nature of evolution, asking questions like: how can we have a positive relationship with change? How can we meet our ends gracefully? Is the world on fire or at home in the sun?”

Ty Segall’s new album, Possession, arrived today via Drag City. Possession, the prolific guitarist’s 16th album, follows his 2024 full-length, Three Bells. Segall worked with longtime collaborator, filmmaker Matt Yoka, to co-write a “literary set of lyrics” that “paint an abiding view of quintessentially American stories.” Yoka previously provided visual elements for Segall’s albums Goodbye Bread, Manipulator and Emotional Mugger and Segall contributed music to Yoka’s documentary, Whirlybird.

Garbage, who celebrate 30 years as a band in 2025, returns with their eighth studio album, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light. The 10-track LP marks the quartet’s first new record since 2021’s No Gods No Masters. Garbage — Shirley Manson, Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig — produced the album with longtime engineer Billy Bush. Let All That We Imagine Be The Light was recorded during sessions held at Los Angeles’ Red Razor Sounds, Vig’s Grunge In Dead facility and Manson’s bedroom. The new album emerged from Garbage’s need to discover a hopeful narrative within the turbulence and unprecedented disruption enveloping the world. Shirley Manson shared more about Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, stating:

“Our last album was extremely forthright. Born out of frustration and outrage – it had a kind of scorched earth, pissed off quality to it. With this new record however, I felt a compulsion to reach for a different kind of energy. A more constructive one. I had this vision of us coming up out of the underground with searchlights as we moved towards the future. Searching for life, searching for love, searching for all the good things in the world that seem so thin on the ground right now. That was the over-riding idea during the making of this record for me – that when things feel dark, its best to try to seek out that which is light, that which feels loving and good. When I was young, I tended towards the destruction of things. Now that I’m older I believe it’s vitally important to build and to create things instead. I still entertain very old romantic ideals about community, society and the world. I don’t want to walk through the world creating havoc, damaging the land and people. I want to do good. I want to do no harm.

“Going into making this record, I was determined to find a more hopeful, uplifting world to immerse myself in. The title of the album, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light is the perfect descriptor for this new record as a whole. When things feel dark it feels imperative to seek out forces that are light, positive and beautiful in the world. It almost feels like a matter of life and death. A strategy for survival”.

Anderson East put out his first album in four years, Worthy, via Rounder Records, his debut on the label. The Dave Cobb co-produced album follows East’s 2021 LP, Maybe We Never Die, also co-produced with Cobb. After recording Maybe We Never Die alone during the pandemic, East returned to his preferred format of musicians together in one room on Worthy. The Athens, Alabama-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist also teamed with some of Music City’s finest songsmiths to craft Worthy’s ten tracks including Lori McKenna, Natalie Hemby, Trent Dabbs and Ashley Monroe among others. Press materials detailed Worthy:

Worthy is a reintroduction to East, showcasing him as a more confident, commanding, and affecting artist. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Cobb, the immediately arresting 10-track collection is inspired by a pure love of song and sound. Dripping with Muscle Shoals radiance and soulful horns, the album is a portrait of the artist and person East has become, soundtracking his journey of personal and creative resilience, redemption, and transformation.

The Budos Band released their first full-length album in five years, VII, through Diamond West Records. VII follows The Budos Band’s 2023 EP Frontier’s Edge and the 2020 LP Long in the Tooth. Guitarist Tom Brenneck, however, likened the new record to their 2014 release. “It’s almost like we’ve refined the sound we were going for on Burnt Offering,” Brenneck said. “It’s not quite as raw.” Brenneck produced the new record alongside engineer Simon Guzmán in the band’s newly minted Diamond West Studios in Los Angeles. Press materials detailed VII:

VII features 11 tightly constructed new tracks that draw on the group’s wide range of influences, sounding like only The Budos Band can. It’s music for getting down, for nighttime drives and for alternate headspaces — a beguiling mix of mystery and rhythm that stands with the formidable work they’ve released in their two decades of recording.

Something Beautiful is Miley Cyrus’ ninth studio album, released today through Columbia Records. Containing 13 new songs, the album was co-executive produced by Cyrus and Shawn Everett. Cyrus will screen a coinciding film accompanying Something Beautiful. The follow-up to 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation features appearances by Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard on the song “Walk of Fame” and Naomi Campbell on the song “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved.”

“I think somewhere inside of me, I needed to hold a trophy and just feel for a moment that I have something that I can hold in my hands that feels like a true achievement,” Cyrus told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “After every album, I’ve been able to say, ‘Well, I made the album I set out to make, and that’s enough.’ Somewhere, I was avoiding the fact that it did matter to me.””

Yeule, the musical project Singaporean artists Nat Ćmiel, released their fourth album, Evangelic Girl Is A Gun, via Ninja Tune. The follow-up to 2023’s Softscars features production by Mura Masa, A. G. Cook, Chris Greatti, Kin Leonn, Clams Casino and others. According to a description of the album provided by Ninja Tune:

With their forthcoming work, yeule paints us a picture with divine poise: fragmented shards of their persona non grata, or “darker side,” pieced together as the painterly fatale who burns through the canvas of post-modernity. With visual artworks captured by artist Vasso Vu, Ćmiel is seen here tethered to their role as a “painter” before performer. yeule, reincarnated again as a haunting facsimile of their past in Evangelic Girl is a Gun. Ćmiel paints an homage to the artist’s role—an artist that illuminates the neon glow of an ego death, and the transformative forms of love, immortalising in our physical reality, their dream within all dreams.

Hope We Have Fun is the fourth Mt. Joy studio album. Released today, the 13-track record follows the band’s 2022 LP, Orange Blood. Mt. Joy recruited Nathaniel Rateliff for the song “Wild and Rotten” and Gigi Perez for the track “In The Middle.” The band posted a message regarding Hope We Have Fun, writing:

So proud of this music and everyone in this band. So many crazy talented and truly great humans poured so much into this thing. It’s been the most insane 3 years of our lives. We tried to capture it all as much as possible in these songs. Hope we have fun forever.

Foxwarren – Andy Shauf, Avery Kissick, Darryl Kissick, Dallas Bryson and Colin Nealis – shared a new album entitled 2. The Canadian-based musicians initially intended to record a quick follow-up to their 2018 self-titled debut album, but ultimately moved on from sessions held in 2019. Instead, the group tried a different approach:

[Foxwarren] eventually [dropped] the familiar band-in-a-room routine to instead plug those songs, and various other sounds into a sampler. The result is mesmerizing and uncanny, an album that traces two sides of a relationship through 37 minutes of collage art that aspires to “sound best blasting out your car window” as put by singer Andy Shauf.

In their own home studios across four provinces, all five members would upload song ideas, melodic phrases, or rhythmic bits to a shared folder. In Toronto, Shauf would then plug these into a sampler and construct songs from the fragments supplied by his bandmates, leaning into classic hip-hop techniques and musique concrète alike as unlikely lodestars. Foxwarren would convene at weekly online meetings, offering long-distance suggestions about which way a song might shift.