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Danny Brown's last albums Quaranta and Scaring The Hoes (with JPEGMAFIA) bookended the end of the XXX era. Enter Stardust - Danny's first album since entering sobriety sees him rediscover his love of music, curating the next wave of star talent, who were heavily inspired by his music while exploring their own journey.
The album features collaborations with underscores, Quadeca, Femtanyl, Jane Remover, Frost Children, 8485, JOHNNASCUS, IssBrokie, Nnamdi, Ta Ukarinka and Zheani — a hand-picked lineup curated by Danny Brown, as diverse as they are in the cohesive in the universe of Stardust. Pitchfork writes "Stardust marks Brown’s full transformation into dance diva, his own 2020s version of Pop 2 that folds all his current obsessions into a freak-flag-flying ode to life and love. It’s a fun and unwieldy spectacle—at times shaky but always full of heart."
Danny Brown - Stardust
Snocaps - Snocaps
Sisters Katie (Waxahatchee) and Allison Crutchfield have formed Snocaps and released a self-titled album! An indie-rock record that recalls Allison's band Swearin' and Katie's early records as Waxahatchee, Snocaps was born out of the twin sisters' desire to work on music together as they had in their teens and twenties. Allison and Katie are backed by friends and close collaborators Brad Cook and MJ Lenderman. The album was produced and almost entirely engineered by Cook, and all four musicians play multiple instruments across the record. After a handful of shows at the end of 2025, Snocaps will be put on ice for the foreseeable future, although, as Katie says, "Allison and I have been, in some way, shape or form, doing this together for over 20 years, " so it is practically a given that they will work together on music at some point again in the future.
Bill Frisell - In My Dreams
Bill Frisell wanders the sonic valleys of his creative mind on 2026's In My Dreams. The album, his fifth for Blue Note, finds him working with his longtime trio bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston. Joining them is a string ensemble he also has deep ties with featuring violinist Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang, and cellist Hank Roberts. The album’s American West vibe is one that Frisell, who grew up out west himself in Denver and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado, has woven into his musical identity, blending his jazz improv skills with his love of folk and country. Here, he continues to straddle stylistic worlds, leading his string chamber jazz band as if he has one foot in the ballroom and one by a campfire on a cowboy cattle drive. One minute, he's turning his gaze toward the dark sophistication of Duke Ellington's "Isfahan," before sinking into the rustic, fiddle-strewn melancholy of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" the next. His chimeric vision of the west is perhaps best expressed on "Give Me a Home," where he interpolates the traditional tune "Home on the Range," stretching and elongating each phrase as if repeating a mantra. With In My Dreams, Frisell pulls you into his western reverie, a wagon train journey into his soul. ~Matt Collar, allmusic.com
Rostam — American Stories
Since his days in Vampire Weekend, Rostam has worked through questions of heritage in omnivorous, seemingly easygoing music with a lot going on underneath the surface. As a solo artist, those explorations have become more personal and more potent: Half-Light introduced his feelings of being musically and culturally bilingual, rooted in American and Iranian traditions while standing slightly apart from them. On American Stories, he celebrates these differences and the new harmonies they can create, both figuratively and literally, by marrying the sounds of American folk, pop, and country with microtonal melodies and Persian instrumentation including the saz and yaylı tambur.
This blend never feels academic. If anything, it heightens the emotional impact of American Stories' songs. On first listen, "Back of a Truck" sounds like a country-pop feel-good hit of the summer. However, its down-home twang comes from both guitar and the saz; when banjo, pedal steel, and fiddles join in, it's a gesture of unity as moving and meaningful as when Rostam sings "blow a kiss to the gods above." Similarly, a soaring saz solo courtesy of the Voidz' Amir Yaghmai lifts "Like a Spark"'s wish for freedom to poignant heights.
Occasionally, his search for common ground results in tempos and rhythms that are a bit too similar to each other, but that barely detracts from what he's accomplished here. At the time of American Stories' release, striving for harmony was a rare thing. It's still a noble goal, and on these songs, Rostam achieves it beautifully.
Don’t Be Dumb is the fourth studio album from New York rapper and creative visionary A$AP Rocky. His contributions to rap in the early 2010s helped shift the genre on the whole, bringing cloud rap production touches to club-ready anthems for sounds that were exciting and at times unprecedented. Rocky continues his tendency for searching throughout Don’t Be Dumb, bouncing quickly from heavy trap and rage rap tracks to styles that seem wildly unconventional on a rap record. His lyrical prowess is as strong as ever, with clever wordplay and ample charisma on the slow-moving, bass-heavy thickness of “Helicopter” and the distorted rage production of “Stole Ya Flow.” The album also includes cameos from Gorillaz, Brent Faiyaz, Jessica Pratt, and Tyler, The Creator, with tracks that value exploration and expression and deliver hooks that defy expectations. The weird detours and stylistic wanderlust result in an album that somehow makes a lot of sense as a larger statement, with all the dissimilar sounds contributing to a listening experience that demands attention and doesn’t let go once it takes hold. ~Fred Thomas, allmusic.com
A$AP Rocky - Don't Be Dumb
Aldous Harding — Train on the Island
New Zealand art rock songwriter Aldous Harding grows more puzzling and more fascinating on her fifth album Train on the Island. Much like her last full-length outing, 2022’s Warm Chris, this new set of songs comes on as magnificently lush orchestrated pop, but holds an undercurrent of unsettling weirdness. On the surface, songs like the relaxed and flowing titular track or “One Stop” appear to be straightforward piano-led tunes with light instrumentation and pleasant grooves. The acoustic guitars and upbeat, summery melodies of “Venus in the Zinnea” could easily be mistaken for a slice of light indie pop, with guest vocal harmonies from H. Hawkline and happy tambourine clinks sealing the deal. But closer listening reveals the abundant eccentricities that make Train on the Island such an engaging and enigmatic experience. Little twists of unexpected instrumentation are where it starts. Several songs inject squiggles of atonal synths at the absolute wrong time, and dramatic, almost jarring arrangement shifts come frequently. This glorious weirdness was present in Harding’s earlier work but feels like the main event on Train on the Island. It never intrudes on what can be enjoyed as fantastically crafted songs, but accentuates the beguiling personality that makes them more than that.