Notable Releases of the Week (5/29)

This was a big week for festival announcements, including Riot Fest, Levitation, Tom Morello’s Power to the People, and of course Trump’s Great American State Fair, and we talked about all four of those (but mostly Riot Fest) on today’s episode of BV Weekly. We also talked about how all your favorite 2000s indie trends are coming back, partially inspired by two of the albums that I review this week. As for this week’s new albums, we highlight nine below, and Bill discusses six more in Indie Basement, including Iceage, Boards of Canada, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Doublespeak (Vince Clarke, Neil Arthur, Benge), Guided By Voices and The Bug Club.

In addition to those, this week’s honorable mentions include KÁRYYN, Willie Nelson, Godthrymm, Elder, Monolord, Sparta, Static Dress, 38 Spesh, Young M.A, Latto, Violet Grohl, Dogstar, villagerrr, Francis of Delirium, Widemouth, Rare DM, Love Burns (Phil Sutton of Comet Gain & Pale Lights), Kikù Hibino & Merzbow, Danalogue (The Comet is Coming), Devin Townsend, All Them Witches, Kim Petras, Vic Bondi, Doublespeak, VEPS, Don Williams, Hecate Enthroned, Rosie Carney, Lenka, Susto, Renée Fleming & Béla Fleck, David Torn, Labrinth, Funebrarum, Callahan & Witsher, RaiNao, Shinedown, the Where the Willow and the Dogwood Grow compilation, the K-POPS! soundtrack, the deluxe girlpuppy album, the deluxe Young Miko album, the Voka Gentle remix album, the The Who live album, the Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts live album, the Emily A.

Sprague EP, the Hunx and his Punx EP, the corook EP, the thistle. EP, and the Doss EP. Read on for my picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly for more of this week’s new music and music news.

What’s your favorite album of the week? Kurt Vile – Philadelphia’s been good to me (Verve) The Philly resident’s first album in four years is a return to form, even though Kurt’s a true lifer who never really deviated from his form in the first place. Do you still like that old-time, lo-fi, DIY rock ‘n’ roll?

Well then you need to hear the new Kurt Vile album. It’s his first in four years, and in many ways it’s a return to form, even though Kurt’s a true lifer who never really deviated from his form in the first place. True to its title Philadelphia’s been good to me, it’s an ode to Kurt’s hometown and it was largely self-produced there in the studio located in the basement of Kurt’s own home.

“This is my ‘bringing it all back home to Philly’ album,” he said in press materials for the LP. “I’m treating it like my last. I put everything into it.

It’s my best vocal record. It’s my best electric guitar record. It’s my most organic record, made in the comfort of my own zone.

[…] I’ve been waiting for that kinda natural element to show up again in my recordings, like the old home recording days. I think I finally caught that again, but in a higher fidelity.” In true KV fashion, it’s the kind of album that only this man can make.

It’s as funny as it is sentimental, as unpredictable as it is comfortingly familiar. It sounds like the Kurt Vile you’ve known and loved since the late 2000s, and it doesn’t hurt that it comes at a time when slacker-y folk rock and alt-country is having a moment. You can safely call Kurt a forebear of a lot of the current stuff in that realm, and in what’s been a very good year for folky and countryish indie rock, Philadelphia’s been good to me is up there with the best of it.

Pick up ‘Philadelphia’s been good to me’ on vinyl in the BV shop. Greg Mendez – Beauty Land (Dead Oceans)The Philly indie folk singer has echoes of Elliott Smith and Iron & Wine on his first full-length for Dead Oceans. Kurt Vile isn’t the only Philly artist with a home-recorded folky indie album out this week.

That description also applies to Beauty Land, the new album from Greg Mendez. It’s his first full-length for Dead Oceans, which he signed to after the surprise breakthrough success of his 2023 self-titled album, and on which he released the very brief First Time / Alone EP in 2024. Brevity is a very noticeable aspect on Beauty Land too–more than half of its 14 songs are under two minutes–and Greg is a songwriter who knows how to lean into less being more.

It’s a gentle album with echoes of artists like Elliott Smith and Iron & Wine, and it gets heavier and more compelling with each listen. <a href="https://gregmendez.bandcamp.

com/album/beauty-land">Beauty Land by Greg Mendez</a> ear – Rumspringa (A24 Music)The sophomore album from the New York/London duo stirring up buzz for their “indietronica” revival. Aughts-era indie is having its 20-year nostalgia moment, and New York/London duo ear are stirring up buzz for their update on what people used to call “indietronica.” Their 2025 debut album The Most Dear and the Future and its new followup Rumspringa warrant comparisons to The xx, The Notwist, and especially The Postal Service, whose moody, glitchy, sensitive indie pop is the first thing I thought of when I first heard ear.

And what makes ear interesting is that they don’t just sound like they’re rehashing the past. They’re making this stuff feel new and exciting again, and there’s an air of mystery to them that adds to how much the music speaks for itself. <a href="https://earmusic5.

bandcamp.com/album/rumspringa">Rumspringa by ear</a> Balmora – These Graven Halls (DAZE)The rising melodic metalcore revivalists pull out all the stops for their first, guest-filled full-length. Balmora skyrocketed to the forefront of the current metalcore resurgence off the strength of a few EPs and a much-talked-about live show, and now, with a new lead vocalist in tow, they unleash their debut album These Graven Halls.

And they really pulled out all the stops for this. They polished things up; they really leaned into their aughts-era melodic metalcore and melodic death metal influences (they namedrop The Black Dahlia Murder and Avenged Sevenfold in their press quote about the album); and they also said they embraced ’90s black metal influences like Emperor, Godkiller, and Abigor. (I hear ’90s Swedish melodeath stuff like At The Gates and In Flames, which of course was a huge influence on aughts-era US metalcore, in there too.

) They also brought in guest contributors from four other bands reviving various styles of heavy ’90s/’00s music (nu metal revivalists Empty Shell Casing, white-belt post-hardcore revivalists I Promised The World, metalcore/post-hardcore revivalists Holder, and Swedish-style melodeath revivalists Upon Stone), plus LdPckWntr, LORD THOMPXZON, and k420k help Balmora end the album with a dose of murky cloud rap. These Graven Halls covers a lot more ground than any of the EPs did, and more than ever, Balmora sound like they’re reinventing their turn-of-the-millennium influences rather than just rehashing them. Pick up our exclusive clear purple w/ yellow & white splatter vinyl variant of ‘These Graven Halls’ in the BV shop.

<a href="https://dazestyle.bandcamp.com/album/these-graven-halls">These Graven Halls by Balmora</a> Feeble Little Horse – Bitknot (Saddle Creek) The shoegaze/noise rock band deliver a sensory overload of a third album.

Feeble Little Horse’s third album is a 25-minute wall of sound fueled by noise rock, shoegaze, and electronics that’s as abrasive as it is beautiful. Its themes are often fueled by the blurring of our digital and non-digital worlds, and the musical backdrop matches that perfectly. When overstimulation, hopelessness, and brain fog hits all at once, it kinda feels like this album.

<a href="https://feeblelittlehorse.bandcamp.com/album/bitknot">bitknot by feeble little horse</a> Joshua Ray Walker – Ain’t Dead Yet (East Dallas/Thirty Tigers) The trilogy of albums written throughout Joshua Ray Walker’s cancer journey concludes with one that returns to the alt-friendly country of his early records.

After country singer Joshua Ray Walker successfully underwent cancer treatment, he released two 2025 albums that he said were part of a planned trilogy of albums that he wrote throughout his cancer journey. The first was the “beach country” album Tropicana, the second was the indie rock-inspired Stuff, and now the third is actually the one that he started writing before he was even diagnosed, Ain’t Dead Yet. It’s stylistically the most similar to the alt-friendly country of his early records, and the lyrically-heavy record contains songs that were impacted by Joshua’s cancer even before he knew he had it.

“That whole year I just felt awful and like I was dying. I didn’t feel right, and mentally I was off, like there really was something wrong the whole time,” he says. “So I think the reason some of these songs feel the way they do is because I felt that way, even though I didn’t know something was wrong yet.

” Pick up ‘Ain’t Dead Yet’ on vinyl in the BV shop. Oakwood – Blurred Away (Memory Music) The Texas emo/post-hardcore band continue their surprise resurgence with their first-ever full-length album. Texas band Oakwood were initially around for a brief run during the fourth wave emo / emo revival era, during which time they released two EPs of Midwest-style emo and shouty post-hardcore (2013’s Oakwood and 2015’s Summer) that were very solid but never made much of a splash, and their music became even more obscure when the EPs disappeared from streaming services.

But Oakwood re-uploaded the EPs to streaming in 2023-2024, and the band started blowing up in a way they never had. They went on a sizable, sold-out reunion tour that included a set at Best Friends Forever (and will include a set at this year’s Sound & Fury), and their old songs racked up millions of streams. As I’m writing this in May 2026, their biggest song (“I’m Still Cheering for the 1980 US Hockey Team”) has nearly 22 million streams on Spotify.

Now they’re releasing their first-ever full-length album, Blurred Away, which was mastered by Will Yip and comes out on his Memory Music label, and it serves as the grand re-introduction that this band deserves.