10 albums you need to hear this week

In the age of streaming, it’s never been easier to listen to new music — but with over 60,000 new songs added to Spotify every day, it’s also never been harder to know what to put on. Every week, the team at Rolling Stone UK will run down some of the best new releases that have been added to streaming services.

This week, we’ve highlighted records by Cara Delevingne, Keo, Gilla Band, M83, Adult DVD, Gurriers, Blondshell and more.

Cara Delevingne – Not Normal

Debut albums are bound to attract a lot more eyeballs, for better or worse, when you happen to be a international supermodel. But it’s to Cara Delevingne’s credit that her first LP is experimental and crammed with ideas which keep it largely interesting. The lead single ‘Crazy, Baby’ is a genuine ear worm, while the frank discussion of her own experiences with addiction offer a welcome personal edge. It doesn’t all land with the same punch, but it’s a solid first effort in proving the worth of her musical chops.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Keo – Put a Smile On for Me

The long-awaited debut album from Keo sees the young rock band come out all guns blazing. Throughout Put a Smile On for Me, vocalist Finn Keogh dives headfirst into the painful and challenging emotions that ruminate and fester in all of us, largely in the context of a doomed relationship. You’ll find frustration and bitterness in ‘Fly’, regret and guilt in ‘Pistol’ and a cocktail of confusion, anger and longing in ‘Thorn’. All that heaviness and discomfort exist among superb instrumentation and lo-fi production (courtesy of Finn and guitarist Jimmy Lanwern). You can hear their influences spread out from track to track, from nineties grunge to early Radiohead to the vocal tones of Ben Howard. There’s a notable versatility here, as all those influences coexist alongside barbed guitars, pounding drums, and distortion and feedback which paint as vivid a picture as Finn’s lyricism. The world Keo inhabit has jagged edges; their debut album, recorded all-but live over a 10-day period, does too.

Read our full review of Put a Smile On for Me here.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Gilla Band – Pugnello

The influence of Dublin’s grimy leftfield rockers Gilla Band in the decade since debut album Holding Hands With Jamie can’t be overstated. It’s likely that the entire Windmill scene, Fontaines D.C. and more wouldn’t exist – or at least sound like they do – without this band. On Pugnello, their first album in four years, reasserts their place as masters of this dark and offbeat rock music, all coloured by lyrics from Dara Kiely that see him working through intense life changes. “I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia while writing the lyrics,” he reveals. “I thought I could just walk off the old mental illness but alas!”

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

M83 – I Wrote You a Letter

After 25 years and ten albums, M83 tries to turn back the clock on new album I Wrote You a Letter. Reclaiming the instinctive and small-scale vibe of the project’s earliest work, before ‘Midnight City’ turned him into an almost accidental arena star, I Wrote You a Letter is charmingly self-contained and unbothered by outside influence. Anthony Gonzalez says of the album and how it reflects his general vibe right now: “I’m deeply disillusioned by the world we’re living in. I wanted something less calculated, more spontaneous. More punk, in a way.”

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Adult DVD – Adult DVD

“I’m writing music that’s upbeat and gives people a good feeling,” Harry Hanson, vocalist of Leeds sextet Adult DVD, told Rolling Stone UK last year. “Because dance music has a lot of repetition and is music-driven, the lyrics [are] just a hook. It’s not actually about the lyrics. Because of that, we can be silly with it.” The band’s self-titled debut album holds onto this silliness, but don’t mistake this for an unserious album: the Talking Heads- and LCD Soundsystem-inspired grooves and excellent songwriting here is top notch.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Gurriers – Nobody’s Coming To Save You

Gurriers’ new album, Nobody’s Coming To Save You, feels like their debut album Come and See on steroids. Influenced in no small part by their rapid ascent to larger venues and huge support slots, it’s a bigger, louder and more expansive version of the Irish band. Drummer Pierce Callaghan explains this shift: “You write songs for the environment that you’ll hear them in, so when we were playing small, 250 capacity rooms then [we wrote] a sweaty punk record. But now, playing bigger festival stages and supporting in arenas, it changes how you approach songwriting. You’re thinking about what sort of environment these songs are gonna be heard in, and how they’ll exist in that space.”

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Blondshell – Violins

Across her first two studio albums, Blondshell has become one of US indie rock’s brightest new stars, cultivating a close and dedicated fanbase. It’s through this hard work and subsequent success, that Sabrina Teitelbaum can show fans the real her on excellent new album Violins. “I felt like I didn’t need to overexplain anything, like I can trust the people listening more,” she says. “It feels like every time I make a record, I get closer to making the thing that I really want to make.”

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Protomartyr – Hotel Usona

Detroit’s Protomartyr remain masters of dark and dingy rock music that excavates the most insidious and unattractive parts of the human psyche. New album Hotel Usona – standing for United States of North America – takes place in a hotel that represents all parts of the complicated, divided country. With the magnetic and erratic Joe Casey as narrator, backed up by the best post-punk band in the business, we’re taken into the dark heart of a fractured country.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Kamran Khan – I Came From Nowhere & Nowhere Is Where I Am Going

As the leader of the Fake Laugh project, a collaborator of The Japanese House and Murkage Dave, and singer of rising indie band Pencil, Kamran Khan has his fingers in many excellent pies. New album I Came From Nowhere & Nowhere Is Where I Am Going is his first under his own name, and delves into ideas around identity, familial relationships and substance abuse. It’s a window into one of the best songwriters working in the space right now.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Bullion – Nearly

On his latest record, London producer Nathan Jenkins finds his voice. His vocals are present throughout, a marked difference to his previous work, and offer a welcome new dynamic. ‘Applegene’ distorts his voice and pits it against haunted synths, while a frequent collaborator pops up in the form of north east singer L. Devine. The result is an album which blurs the line between woozy alt-pop and ethereal electronic sounds, with Jenkins’ voice as a welcome constant throughout.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music