6 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 fakemink, Ed O’Brien, Maisie Peters, Bleachers, Future Islands and Crash of Rhinos.

fakemink – Terrified

In a statement shared alongside the release of his debut album Terrified, fakemink comes out swinging. “Watching people with the musical imagination of drywall explain performance to me, world building to me, tension to me, when every single thing I do is intentional. Every moment is intentional,” he writes. “Some of you are confusing discomfort with bad art, and history has made a lot of people look unbelievably stupid for making that mistake too early.” On a 19-track album loosely inspired and sequenced as a nod to Dante’s Inferno, the record is world-building in the strongest sense, travelling from dark tones and low frequencies – the part that represents hell – to something heavenly. As he says, in the strongest possible terms, “being hated this loudly while refusing to become more normal is one of the strongest indicators I’ve ever seen that I’m doing something correct”.

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

Ed O’Brien – Blue Morpho

Ed O’Brien’s new album Blue Morpho helped him, in part, escape from the “deep depression” that he fell into during lockdown. “It was the first time in my life that I had to stop,” he told Rolling Stone. “And what I realised was that I’d been keeping busy, like a lot of people do, running from these ghosts of my past, particularly from my childhood.” Inspired by the pastoral rolling hills of Wales, the album served as a reconnection with nature and his true self, and presents these findings on a record that tracks the journey beautifully. “It’s been a really beautiful journey,” O’Brien says. “This record has taken a long time, but I wouldn’t change it, because there’s been so much life in the record, and that has added to the richness.”

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

Maisie Peters – Florescence

“I want this album to feel like the album of a woman,” Maisie Peters recently told Rolling Stone Australia. “I wanted to make music that really embraced aging and embraced changing and growing and becoming who you’re meant to be.” She’s still a whippersnapper at 25, but certainly here is a record where joyous pop songs offer a chance for her to show the realities of navigating your twenties and forging a path for yourself.

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

Bleachers – Everyone for Ten Minutes

Alongside his work as one of the most prominent producers around, Jack Antonoff has been building a consistent and joy-filled body of work with his band Bleachers over the last decade. The newest entry to their discography, Everyone for Ten Minutes, is an optimistic record made in pessimistic times. It’s also the clearest picture yet of Antonoff as a man and a songwriter, as he tells Rolling Stone: “I felt like my origin story was blurring even to myself in a weird way. You start questioning things that happened because of narratives around you. I think the success I’ve had, where the band’s gotten to, my work in pop music, it’s made it hard for people to attach the truth of where I came from. And that has had an effect on me. I felt the need to double down on the truth of that.” 

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

Future Islands – From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth

To mark their 20th anniversary, Future Islands have delighted longtime fans with this collection of deep cuts and rarities which may have previously eluded traditional routes of release. As bassist William Cashion explains: “The hole in the floor is the everyday, but the fountain is the magic that happens when the life you dreamed about actually becomes the one you’re living. It’s the dream and the reality existing in the same room.

“This is for everyone who has carried these songs with them, from the first house parties to the rooms we’re playing today.”

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

Crash of Rhinos – Logbook

13 years after their last record and subsequent breakup, Crash of Rhinos return with surprise new album Logbook. It began taking shape when the band quietly reformed with little fanfare four years ago. Setting up shop in an empty library and a remote barn in Cumbria, the record from the Derby band is one made with as little outside expectation as any album can be. As such, it presents a record that the band described the recording of to Stereogum as “not arduous at all” and “very patient and fun”. That energy flies out of every note.

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