Notable Music Releases of the Week (June 5)

It’s officially June, and that means major music publications have begun rolling out their “best albums of the year so far” lists, which inspired most of the conversation that Dave and I had on this week’s episode of BV Weekly . Our own midyear list will come in early July, but meanwhile there are a lot of great new albums out today, some of which might end up appearing on it.

I highlight eight new albums below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement , including Slippers, of Montreal, Widowspeak, Lee Scratch Perry x Mouse on Mars, Les Big Byrd, The Creem (members of Islands/The Unicorns and Ratatat), and the Mekons dub album. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Deer Tick, Dwarves, Hammok, Laura Misch, A.A. Williams, Slift, Human Issue, Midrift, Futurebirds, Bad Stuff (True Widow), Seahaven, horsegiirL, Bella White, John R. Miller, 100 Demons, Old Crow Medicine Show, Beatrice M, DJ Seinfeld, Jake Muir, Lizzo, Pleasure Systems, Six Sex, Tara Clerkin Trio, Thomas Bangalter, Vybz Kartel, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, Malcolm Todd, Booker Stardrum & Evan Shornstein, Liz Lawrence, Jalen Ngonda, Caleb Caudle, Guilt Trip, Jo Dee Messina, Siiickbrain, Barry Manilow, The Red Clay Strays, August Burns Red, Evanescence, Niall Horan, Fucked Up’s latest Zodiac Series installment, the Lyra Pramuk album of reworks, the Blood Incantation documentary soundtrack, Sierra Ferrell’s Live at Third Man Records , the Protect mixtape, the live Voivod album, the Clock DVA 45th anniversary reissue, the Machinedrum mini album, and the Big Special 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?

Converge – Hum of Hurt (Epitaph/Deathwish)

The second Converge album of 2026 might be even fiercer and more punk than the first.

Converge clearly have a lot of pent up energy from the 9 years they went without releasing a proper album. They released their fastest, punkiest album since the early 2000s in February with Love Is Not Enough , and now they’re back with a second album of 2026 that might be even faster. In fact, vocalist J Bannon actually refers to Love Is Not Enough as “more metal leaning” while he says Hum of Hurt “leans more into being an emotional hardcore album.” I’d say both albums reinforce that Converge are one of the best hardcore bands ever, and also just one of the best and most enduring bands ever. It’s incredibly rare to hear a band sounding this fresh and this fierce 35+ years into their career, and even rarer to see a band make it look this easy.

Rosa Walton – Tell Me It’s A Dream (Transgressive)

The Let’s Eat Grandma member embraces feathery, dreamy pop on her solo debut.

Let’s Eat Grandma are (almost) pulling a Speakerboxxx/The Love Below this year, with each member putting out their own debut solo album. Jenny Hollingworth put out Quicksand Heart under the name Jenny On Holiday in January (and a really good cover of The Replacements’ “Androgynous”), and now Rosa Walton gives us Tell Me It’s A Dream . The albums are distinctly different but one thing they have in common is that both tone down the chaotic side of the art pop that Jenny and Rosa make together in favor of feathery, dreamy pop that’s just a bit more straightforward than what we’re used to from LEG. And in both cases, what they’ve come up with is undeniable. Tell Me It’s A Dream ‘s lead single “Sorry Anyway” is one of the most magnetic indie pop songs I’ve heard all year, and the rest of the album has more where that came from. It’s got echoes of Y2K-era radio pop but filtered through the distinctly leftfield approach to songwriting that Rosa has always had. It’s comfortingly familiar, and yet not quite like any one thing in particular.

Vince Staples – Cry Baby (Loma Vista)

The Long Beach rapper employs a live band for his latest unpredictable pivot.

After giving us everything from classicist West Coast rap to EDM-rap to speaker-busting sound-collage rap , and then doing something a little more subdued in recent years, Vince Staples had made yet another unpredictable pivot. Cry Baby was made with a live band, and it’s a hip hop/rock/funk/post-punk hybrid that’s not like anything else in Vince’s catalog. It’s at least a little bit similar to Little Simz and Genesis Owusu, but once Vince opens his mouth, even those comparisons start to go out the window. No matter what type of instrumentals he’s working with, his approach to rapping remains in a world of its own.

Zoh Amba – Eyes Full (Matador)

The prolific free jazz saxophonist expertly pivots to rugged, folky indie rock on their Matador debut.

After establishing themselves as a saxophonist within NYC’s free jazz/avant-garde community, Tennessee native Zoh Amba returned to their hometown and their first instrument, guitar, and came out with the folky indie rock bliss of Eyes Full , their Matador debut. The album was made with Dirty Three’s Jim White on drums and Kevin Hyland on guitar, and it was tracked live about an hour from their Kingsport, TN hometown at Asheville, NC’s Drop of Sun Studios, where Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, and a bunch of other musicians in that orbit record. The result is an album that’s much closer to that world than to the one Zoh was in while living in NYC, and despite the drastic genre change, Zoh is a natural. The guitars are both tender and ragged, the vocals both snarling and pristine. And after years of leaning into the mystique of instrumental music, Eyes Full is an honest, unfiltered snapshot of the person behind this already-rich catalog.

Navy Blue – Sir Render

The New York rapper completes a trilogy with this LP, which features Armand Hammer, Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist, the late Ka, and others.

New York rapper Navy Blue (aka Sage Elsesser) is presenting his new album Sir Render as the prequel to his last two albums, Memoirs In Armour and 2025’s The Sword & The Soaring , completing a planned trilogy. He unravels personal tales over a moody, atmospheric selection of beats that come from The Alchemist, Shungu, Mike Shabb, Navy Blue himself, and others, and one of the big appeals of this album is the guest verses. Armand Hammer and Earl Sweatshirt deliver standout guest verses, and the late Brooklyn rap veteran Ka, who Sage considers a mentor, appears on “Circa” and serves as a guiding light throughout the LP. (The late actor James Earl Jones, who is Sage’s cousin, also provides narration on the album and serves as a wise mentor as well.) You can really feel the influence of an artist like Ka on Sir Render , and I think if Ka were still here, he’d proudly agree that this album helps carry his torch.

Death Cab For Cutie – I Built You a Tower (ANTI-)

Ben Gibbard & co. reconnect with their early 2000s-era selves on their first album for an independent label in two decades.

I Built You a Tower is Death Cab For Cutie’s first album for an independent label in 23 years, and it’s also their first album since Ben Gibbard & co. revisited both Transatlanticism and The Postal Service’s Give Up for a joint 20th anniversary tour . “The anniversary tours exorcised any nostalgia in our systems,” says guitarist/keyboardist Dave Depper. “We felt part of this powerful force greater than all of us and went into the studio with a sense of, how can we capture that feeling and put it into something new?” The answer to that question reveals itself all over the John Congleton-produced I Built You a Tower , which has pretty much everything you want from Death Cab. It has the pretty acoustic guitar- and piano-led songs, the mid-tempo indie rock songs, and some of the hardest, riffiest, most fidgety Death Cab songs this side of The Photo Album (“Punching the Flowers,” “Envy the Birds,” “How Heavenly A State”). It’s the Death Cab you know and love, and yet, over 25 years into their career, this band still finds ways to surprise us.

Modest Mouse – An Eraser and a Maze (Glacial Pace/Virgin)

Isaac Brock & co. remain one of indie rock’s most consistent and unique bands, with a little help from Janet Weiss.

The same week we get a new Death Cab album, we also get a new album from Modest Mouse, a band whose career has a lot of parallels to Death Cab. They both came up in the era when indie rock still felt like an offshoot of punk, they both signed to majors and had actual mainstream hits, and they both have remained consistent and kept it real in the decades since. And across these 15 songs, the Isaac Brock-led band do what they do best, with a collection of indie rock songs that are as catchy as they are deeply weird. This record also gets bonus points for having Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater-Kinney, Quasi) on drums for part of it.

Bedouine – Neon Summer Skin (Thirty Tigers)

With help from members of The Lemon Twigs and Foxygen, Azniv Korkejian explores childlike wonder and baroque folk arrangements on this new LP.

The allure of late ’60s / early ’70s folk rock never really goes out of style, but it feels like it’s having a bigger moment this year than it has in a bit, with records like Wendy Eisenberg and My New Band Believe’s self-titled LPs showing up on multiple major “best albums of 2026 so far” lists. If you like those albums, there’s a good chance you’ll like Neon Summer Skin , the latest album from Bedouine. Bedouine (aka Azniv Korkejian) and longtime collaborator/co-producer Gus Seyffert made the album with help from Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado and The Lemon Twigs’ D’Addario siblings, all of whom are known for tapping into the psychedelic and baroque tendencies of the aforementioned era, and those vibes are all over Neon Summer Skin . And like so many great albums in this realm, wide-eyed, childlike nostalgia was a driving force. The album was written after Azniv took a trip to visit her parents in Saudi Arabia, and it’s filled with imagery and instrumentation from her childhood, including the piano and horns that she learned to play as an elementary school student. It’s music that’s as ornate as it is wondrous.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Slippers, of Montreal, Widowspeak, Lee Scratch Perry x Mouse on Mars, Les Big Byrd, The Creem (members of Islands/The Unicorns and Ratatat), and the Mekons dub album.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases and Indie Basement archives.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and the BV interviews podcast .

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_Originally reported by [Brooklyn Vegan](https://www.brooklynvegan.com/converge-rosa-walton-vince-staples-zoh-amba-navy-blue-death-cab-modest-mouse-bedouine-reviews/)._