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 Holly Humberstone, Wesley Joseph, WU LYF, Lime Garden, The Itch and My New Band Believe.

Holly Humberstone – Cruel World

As she reveals in our recent interview, the genesis of Holly Humberstone’s new album Cruel World came when she and her siblings had to remove their belongings and say goodbye to their childhood home for good. “At some point, you’ve got to let go of your childhood and take agency and realise that you’re an adult in the world,” she told Rolling Stone UK, with equal parts melancholy and defiance. Cruel World, the singer’s best album yet, grapples with the universal feeling of childhood slipping away, transmitted through brilliantly specific vignettes.

Read our full five-star review of Cruel World here.

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

Wesley Joseph – Forever Ends Someday

Wesley Joseph describes his debut album Forever Ends Someday in our new Play Next interview as “a bombastic record,” adding: “I always try and punch above my weight class when it comes to my creativity.” The album, a culmination of over a decade of exploring and experimenting with sounds, moods and vocal textures, is a brilliantly ambitious mix of soul, pop, R&B, electronica and beyond. It’s an ambition that Joseph makes clear, as he told us: “The conversations in the room were, ‘I want to make a contemporary classic record. I want to make something that stands the test of time and isn’t responsive to what’s happening’.”

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

WU LYF – A Wave That Will Never Break

WU LYF have never done things the conventional way. Mystery surrounded their every move around their 2011 debut album before their 2012 split proved every bit as out of the blue too. And so, it makes sense that their eventual return follows the same path. Released exclusively through their own World Unite platform, it’s a record of complexities and – as seen on ‘Letting Go’ – moments of mad beauty too.

Listen on: World Unite

Lime Garden – Maybe Not Tonight

“Can you turn the music up a teeny bit so I can fuckin’ let loose?” Lime Garden singer Chloe Howard asks to open debut album Maybe Not Tonight on the opening track ‘23’. It’s somewhat of a mission statement for a debut album that doesn’t hold back. The band dip into dance, punk, straight-up indie and beyond, all with charisma and a determination to make things as loose and lively as possible. “The album is about a night out, from start to finish,” explains Howard. “As the night progresses, you’re having a great time, until your ex walks in and is there with someone else. You hate the way you look but rather than going home, you press the big red button and get even more drunk. Eventually, you take yourself home full of melancholy, chaos and anger.” It’s a hell of a journey.

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

The Itch – It’s the Hope That Kills You

The song ‘No More Sprechgesang’ is perfectly emblematic of the world of The Itch. For years, the UK punk scene has been ruled by the sing-speak phenomenon (Squid, Dry Cleaning, Shame, and indeed the former project of Itch members, Regressive Left), but with The Itch, the members – who formed after performing at a Talking Heads tribute night – wanted to focus on fun and instinct rather than tapping into a scene or a sound. This singular approach is laid out on the ambitious, unique and truly fun debut album It’s the Hope That Kills You. Though the phrase ‘No More Sprechgesang’ is now described by singer Simon Tyrie as “a melancholic ode to the scene we once belonged to, which at the time of writing I wanted to burn down,” it remains a signifier of a scene moving on and The Itch leading a new world.

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

My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe

The latest post-black midi solo project comes in the form of My New Band Believe from the band’s bassist and sometimes vocalist Cameron Picton. His new band Believe features Picton alongside Kiran Leonard, Caius Williams, Steve Noble, Andrew Cheetham and more, and tracks the creative process of leaving a band and making a sort-of solo project and sort-of new band. He says: “With this whole record, I was trying to make another case for how the modern singer-songwriter album could sound, both in terms of its production and the writing of the songs themselves.”

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