Now Hear This! - May 2026

Skindred
You Got This
Earache Records

The ragga-metal veterans return as a newly slimmed trio on their ninth album and most fully realized record yet. Finally closing the gap between their legendary live show and their studio output, You Got This crackles with dancehall-meets-metal hooks from the stomping title track through the sun-drenched reggae closer "Give Thanks." Joyous, festival-ready, impossible to stand still to.

The Milk Carton Kids
Lost Cause Lover Fool
Thirty Tigers/Far Cry Records

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Seven albums in, Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan have made their signature minimalism even smaller. Lost Cause Lover Fool opens with a banjo handled like light across grass, zooms in on small domestic moments, and ends with the tender ache of "Young Love." Two voices, two guitars, a world magnified. Essential Milk Carton Kids.

Lolo
god forbid a girl spits out her feelings
Fearless

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Lauren Mandel turns emotional oversharing into an art form on her diaristic second album. More acoustic and intimate than her debut, it balances sharp pop-punk bite with genuine vulnerability. "007" and "dumbest girl in the world" are bracingly self-aware, while "me with no shirt on" cuts deepest. Chaotic, unhinged, but never careless.

Pussycat Dolls
PCD + Doll Domination
IGA/UMe

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Two decades on, The Dolls make the case that PCD remains a defining pop statement of the 2000s. This double reissue pairs the platinum-certified debut with Doll Domination on vinyl for the first time. "Don't Cha," "Buttons," and "When I Grow Up" still hit hard, and new remixes by Devault and Charlotte Plank feel right at home.

Valve
Half-Life: Alyx (Official Game Soundtrack)
Ipecac Recordings

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Mike Morasky's score for the landmark VR game gets its first physical release, extending the long Valve/Ipecac partnership that began with Portal 2. Drawing inspiration from Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy, and Skinny Puppy, the music blends ominous ambient textures with pulsating electronics into a deeply immersive listening experience that holds up well outside the game itself.

Brother Wallace
Electric Love
ATO Records

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K-12 music teacher turned soul revivalist Brother Wallace makes a stunning debut. Produced by Dan Taylor of The Heavy at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, Electric Love is thirteen tracks of Stax-and-Motown soul built around Wallace's extraordinary voice. The same voice that had "Who's That?" charting Top 20 before radio play was even planned.

India Ramey
Villain Era
Blue Elan Records

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Nashville outlaw India Ramey's sixth album does exactly what the title promises. Recorded in Los Angeles with Grammy-nominated producer Eric Corne, Villain Era is ten spaghetti-western-meets-honky-tonk vignettes laced with gallows humor and emotional precision. She wanted it to sound like Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn scoring a Tarantino film. On songs like "Six Feet Under," she gets there.

Lip Critic
Theft World
Partisan Records

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Electro-punks Lip Critic built their sophomore album around an extraordinary true story: frontman Bret Kaser's identity thief turned out to be a fan who believed the catalog contained hidden codes. They scrapped their existing material and built Theft World around the mythology the kid invented. The result is a focused, maximalist transmission of breakbeats, jagged guitars, and hardcore urgency.

Sofiane Pamart
Movie
88 Touches Production

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France's most-streamed classical pianist opens his universe to fourteen collaborators on this cinematic fourth album. From a Wyclef Jean meditation on peace to Sia's powerhouse "Gimme Love Orchestra" and NBA star Jimmy Butler narrating "Midnight in California," the Prague Philharmonic providing orchestral sweep throughout, Movie is conceived as a film Pamart himself directed, the piano always holding the lead role.

Tiga
Hotlife
Secret City

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Ending a decade-long album drought with a career-defining record, Tiga worked with Boys Noize, Matthew Dear, and newer names like Fcukers, HOTLIFE to create something crackling with wit and dancefloor muscle. An INXS cover transmuted into frost-covered electro and a New Order-esque closer with genuine emotional warmth remind you why Tiga has always been one of electronic music's most endearing characters.

Death Lens
What's Left Now?
Epitaph Records

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Four working-class, multicultural SoCal punks make their most urgent record. Produced by Zach Tuch (Knocked Loose, Touche Amore), What's Left Now? examines breakups, fascism, and self-worth with an anger that never loses its melody. From the Spanish-language opener "Monolith" to the anthemic "Pulling Teeth," this is sharp, politically charged punk-rock that crackles from start to finish.

Mavi
The Pilot
Loma Vista

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The Pilot documents the Charlotte rapper's initial year of sobriety and the contradictions that come with it. Boom bap, jazz rap, and lo-fi hip-hop underpin candid reckoning with new wealth and old anxieties. Guest appearances from Earl Sweatshirt, Smino, and MIKE add texture to a brief but weighty 26-minute mixtape.

Liam Kazar
Pilot Light
Congrats Records

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Kazar's sophomore album is warm, comforting, and quietly confident. Folk-pop Americana with a jazzy undertow and a storyteller's instinct, Pilot Light develops his sound without abandoning it. Think Josh Ritter-adjacent songwriting with a more contemplative, melancholy tone. No dramatic reinventions, just a talented songwriter refining what he does best.

Julia Cumming
Julia
Partisan Records

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Sunflower Bean's Julia Cumming steps out alone with a debut that trades guitar fuzz for piano clarity and Carole King-to-Carly Simon songwriter warmth. Described as her "anti-cool" statement, Julia is a joyous celebration of misfits shaped by two years in Los Angeles with producer Brian Robert Jones. Beneath the sunny arrangements, songs like "Ruled By Fear" carry a darker, more anxious underbelly.

Mama's Gun
Dig!
Blue Elan Records

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Recorded live to 16-track analogue tape in Leeds, Dig! has the warmth of musicians playing together for nearly two decades. The title track features a co-lead vocal from Brian Jackson, Gil Scott-Heron's legendary collaborator. Timeless soul built from Motown, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green, delivered without leaning on nostalgia.

Benjamin Tod
Vengeance And Grace
Thirty Tigers/Lost Dog Street Band

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Lost Dog Street Band frontman presents ten songs twice - once with a full band, once alone on acoustic guitar. Following major personal change including the birth of his first child, Vengeance and Grace explores classic country terrain: redemption, regret, and hard-won faith. The stripped acoustic version in particular showcases the quiet power of Tod's songwriting.

Taj Mahal
Time
Thirty Tigers

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Five-time Grammy winner Taj Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band finally release 2010 sessions anchored by a remarkable find: an unrecorded Bill Withers demo, brought to Taj with the family's blessing. Spanning blues, soul, reggae, and Afro-Cuban grooves, with Ziggy Marley guesting on a Bob Marley cover, Time is deep-groove, grown-folks music from a living legend.

Jack Johnson
Surfilmusic
Brushfire/Universal Records

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A companion double album to Johnson's documentary of the same name, Surfilmusic splits across two discs: a new score co-written with Hermanos Gutierrez, and archival four-track home recordings from Johnson's earliest days. Hearing raw pre-production versions of "Flake," "Bubble Toes," and "Taylor" strips away the beach-playlist familiarity and reveals how strong those songs were from the beginning.

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Foo Fighters
Your Favorite Toy
RCA

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The 12th Foo Fighters album is the leanest and most raw since Wasting Light. With new drummer Ilan Rubin (a NIN veteran) providing tightly mechanical energy, Your Favorite Toy is 36 minutes of high-octane catharsis. Grohl exorcises recent personal demons through sheer volume as the band crackles with conviction.

Castle Rat
The Bestiary
Loma Vista

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Your favorite medieval fantasy doom quartet deliver a wicked sophomore record that seals the deal. Metal Hammer called it the perfect response to a metal mainstream gone mad. Steeped in Black Sabbath, Pentagram, and Candlemass, The Bestiary follows Rat Queen Riley Pinkerton through dragons, wolves, and wizards. Crushing riffs, gothic atmosphere, and enough hooks to make even skeptics headbang.

Young the Giant
Victory Garden
Fearless

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Victory Garden is an ode to radical empathy, written largely during retreats in Idyllwild and Joshua Tree and produced by Brendan O'Brien at Henson Studios in Hollywood. Reconnecting with full-band collaboration after 2022's American Bollywood, it ditches the gloss for grit. Warm, anthemic and quietly sure of itself, this is a record that earns its emotional payoff rather than demanding it.

Kacey Musgraves
Live From The Middle of Nowhere

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Kacey Musgraves has always written from somewhere most people are afraid to admit they live. Her new album, Middle of Nowhere, doubles down on that honesty, and now she's bringing it to a city near you. Expect dreamy production, razor-sharp songwriting, and all the cosmic Texan charm that has made her a generation-defining artist. Get lost in The Middle of Nowhere Tour�it's the surest way home you'll find all year.

The Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS) is a national level organization comprised of the best independent record stores in America. CIMS was founded in 1995 with the goal of uniting like minded independent store owners, giving them a more powerful voice in the music industry. The stores that make up CIMS are all very different, but we share the same desires � to be the heart of our communities, to super-serve our customers, to support and develop artists, and to share our love of music.

For more information about CIMS and the stores in our organization, please visit cimsmusic.com or find us through social media with the #cimsmusic hashtag. And please remember to always shop local by supporting your neighborhood record store.

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Now Hear This! - May 2026