Welcome to another installment of Today's Release Highlights, where the TND writers room gathers up some brand new projects they want to draw your eyes and ears to.

This week, we have 9 new releases we'd like to key you into as you head into the weekend. Check them all out below.

Ba bam!

@ – Autosmile [4AD]

The effectiveness of Philly folk duo @'s ambition lies in their humor. The duo's adventurous, enigmatic sophomore album Autosmile owes its title to this tweet:

One may look at @'s hyper-modern and un-Googleable name and roll their eyes, but what lies beyond the play button is the imagination of two artists fully unleashed. The off-kilter woodwind harmonies of opener "Bird," the howling monkeys that greet you at the start and between verses of "Punish My Mind," the sprawling tenderness of the title track; they all provide a much needed portal to a world that rejects the self-seriousness and rigidity of modern life. – Leah Bess

The Avalanches – No Bad Memories [Modular Recordings]

The world is simply better when The Avalanches are releasing new music. On their fourth studio LP, No Bad Memories, Robbie Chater, Tony Di Blasi, and Andy Szekeres dig into “the magical intersection of advertising, memory and nostalgia,” building songs out of the jingles and ads that got lodged in our heads as kids. That theme plays out through playful skits and samples that build a wonderful little world for listeners to live in. The project is jam-packed with 31 tracks across a 52-minute runtime, giving the group and their collaborators plenty of genres to sink their teeth into. The feature list is stacked too, with Jamie xx, Karen O, Portraits of Tracy, Panda Bear, and many more all lending their talents. There is something so sweet about this record, and it’s hard not to smile while listening. It’s an incredible wave of nostalgia, like being a kid at your grandparents’ house, dozing off in the living room with the TV still playing infomercials in the background. Well over two decades into their career, The Avalanches still have the creative juice to keep listeners coming back. — Isaiah Gessner

Fontaines D.C. – Dopamine Chamber [XL Recordings]

When Fontaines D.C.'s vocalist Grain Chatten rings out, "You and I living for a million years / Always, always" in Dopamine Chamber opening track, "Six Shot Morning," his melancholic sighs plop over the misty synths like an anvil. There's a tangy, palpable exhaustion in the air, like it’s a curse to be immortalized in this timeline. In his lyrics, life is flattened like a painting, desaturated like a black and white photo, polished like a plastic chair, distorted like bad cosmetic operations on a once-beautiful face. The new record by the Dublin band only gets drearier, planting their hopeless outlook on existence deeper into the ground. All this is rooted in a stark pivot to a gothic-flavored synth rock, trading the starry-eyed indie pop charm of Romance for jerking chimes (“Marianne”), sludge-leaning instrumental breakdowns and almost demonically autotuned backing vocals (“Tongue”), and blurry guitar sections that melt into synth feedback loops (“Mimesis”). By the end of the final track “Intimate,” when Chatten drills, “Dying and dying and dead!” one can’t help but replay the album, spiraling further into the band’s inescapable misery. – Victoria Borlando

heavens to betsy - baby's gone [Kill Rock Stars]

Any Corin Tucker is good Corin Tucker, be it Cadallaca or her solo band or this crude-fi juvenilia, and don’t pretend you don’t need at least ten Sleater-Kinneys (fine, maybe you don’t need Path of Wellness). So while these unearthed heavens to betsy demos with Tracy Sawyer never came to fruition like 1994’s Calculated, you can’t get “My Secret” or “Ain’t Never Goin’ Back” or “Get Out of My Head” or "Stay Dead" anywhere else unless perhaps you ran a zine in 1993. Just because Tucker quickly figured out that minimalism (and bass) weren’t her style doesn’t mean there were no revelations on the way to realizing she was one of rock’s greatest-ever voices. — Daniel Aaron

Pseud - S/T [Formal Ritual]

No-nonsense, homespun guitar rock from Alex Bass (Snail Mail) and his multidisciplinary creative partner, Jimmy Figliola. Pseud comes from the same creative amoeba as Aunt Katrina, Prude, and other DMV-based projects that coalesce around soaring hooks, cavernous reverb, and a recurring cast of collaborators. – Giliann Karon

screenager - Pixel Perfect [Rose Garden]

screenager have just released their second EP, Pixel Perfect, which is a vivid realization of Adri Maiella’s bright pink childhood diary entries she kept while growing up in early-2000’s New Jersey. The diary, which opened only with a voice-activated password, and screenager, a COVID-era songwriting project turned full band, is the grown up version of that. She’s joined by drummer Immanuell Pennington (Lowertown), guitarist Ian Eylanbekov (Snail Mail), and bassist Cameron Bash, and the band has become a fixture at Brooklyn and New Jersey rooms like Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right and Montclair’s the Meatlocker. They pair Y2K nostalgia with electric midwest emo energy, setting Maiella’s delicate vocals against cavernous guitars, with echoes of Mazzy Star, The 1975, and Soccer Mommy, and even early Avril Lavigne. The lyricism throughout this EP spans the chasm of dealing with insecurity, heartbreak, and social pressure, with some of our favorite moments being “Rockstar” and “Three of Me.” As Maiella puts it best, she wanted the songs to tell other young women “there is beauty and courage in falling apart.” – Matt Keenan

Vegtable - Hit By A Car [Field Work Recordings]

To slow things down a bit, the Singaporean trio Vegtable offer Hit By A Car, a dreamy haze of an album that places a soft, synth-y halo around a wobbly, sunny guitar tone. Their debut — which came to them as a sharp vision of a friend sluggishly ramming their bike into a car like a slow-motion film — is a strange one, capturing the magic buzz of the genre without getting too caught up in its melancholy. Songs like "Repetitions" breeze on by with lyricist Jeriel Lim's crisp and honeyed vocals gliding over chirping guitars and Shenen Khoo's sparse yet airy drum embellishments, while "Phone Calls" brightens the atmosphere with a gradually building wall of noise, accented by the members' chilling sighs. "Pastor" breaks into a brisk walk as Daniel Borces' emo-tinged guitar riffs cuts through with a loud, psychedelic melody. While the trio whisper in the listener's ear, they stay playful and cheery, thrumming confidently with a relaxed smile. – Victoria Borlando

Worldpeace DMT – Stick Around for Tea [self-released]

If you can’t believe Worldpeace DMT is their “serious” band, well, they blow off steam in the Femcels. The music is consistently layered, often aiming for pretty, twee as all get out. Tonally, they swerve from earnest to arch on a dime, i.e. the song that insists “the world is a better place with you in it” is followed directly by the one that scowls “she’s barely pretty in the face / I think it’s a disgrace.” Some 30 years after If You’re Feeling Sinister, Belle & Sebastian hovers over the more elegant tracks here like the opening “School’s Out,” while the climactic stomp “Ivy” pits fuzz bass against glockenspiel. Those seeking a less serious version should try this summer’s Flowers Powers mixtape, which tore “Big Yellow Taxi” a new one. — Daniel Aaron

Zach Bryan – Young Manhood And Other Donatable Organs [Belting Bronco/Warner]

Country superstar Zach Bryan has released his new eight-track EP, Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs, the follow-up to January’s 25-track LP With Heaven on Top. The project features “Lies,” a somber duet with Lana Del Rey that’s all but guaranteed to be a smash hit on the charts for months to come, carrying the same gorgeous symmetry he found with Kacey Musgraves on 2023’s “I Remember Everything.” Bryan also links up with fellow Oklahomans Turnpike Troubadours, whose sleek, country-leaning rock sound pairs well with his crooning vocals. Alongside the EP, he’s releasing a hardcover book of the same name that looks back on the last 10 years of his life, and he’ll hit the road in 2027 for a 23-date stadium tour across North America and Australia. – Isaiah Gessner