A smaller roundup for you all this week for release highlights, but alas! We have some!!!

With the gothic shadow of Charli's Wuthering Heights whooshing over the weekend, take some time to listen in on that and the other four releases we're drawing your attention to here this week.

Ba bam!

Bic Runga – Red Sunset [The Orchard]

New Zealand music royalty Bic Runga returns from an extended hiatus with her sixth album, Red Sunset, co-produced and partly co-written with her longtime partner Kody Nielson. It’s her first album of all-new material since 2011 and finds the singer/songwriter casting her particularly lovely brand of indie-pop in an even more chic and cinematic light. Peaks include the title track, with its funk-indebted alien sheen, and the bedroom pop longing of “You’re Never Really Here (Are You Baby)”, but Red Sunset’s overall diversity is its greatest strength. Still recognisably a Bic Runga record with that somehow ageless voice, but often a surprising one too. – Alan Pedder

Charli xcx – Wuthering Heights [Atlantic]

This month, Charli xcx is an omnipresence in your local movie theater. In addition to her recently released mockumentary The Moment, Charli was tapped to create the soundtrack for director Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel Wurthering Heights. Will that adaptation be any good? Probably not, but an album's worth of new material from Charli is certainly a silver lining. It's brooding as much as it is romantic – perhaps softening the blow of BRAT's eventual proper follow-up. The record also supplies a rare feature from Sky Ferreira as she once again gears up to not release her sophomore record. – Leah Weinstein

Momoko Gill – Momoko [Strut Records]

Less than a year on from her collaborative album with Matthew Herbert, London-based singer/songwriter Momoko Gill returns with her own self-produced debut, Momoko, a swirling broth of psych pop, neo-soul, and airily disruptive jazz. Gill, who also performs as one half of An Alien Called Harmony, is primarily a percussionist, having taught herself drums while at high school in Japan. But she has found a niche as an in-demand producer and vocalist too, guesting on recent albums by Alabaster DePlume and Japanese duo Ghost in the Tapes, as well as touring as part of Coby Sey’s Continue. 

Momoko crystallizes all this experience into a uniquely adventurous vision that’s sometimes soft and reflective (“Heavy”, “2close2farr”), sometimes fizzing with electric charge (“Shadowboxing”), and peaks on the stirring “When Palestine is Free”, which stars a 50-person choir that includes Herbert, Sey, and DePlume, alongside Shabaka, Soweto Kinch, Rozi Plain, and more. – Alan Pedder

The Paranoid Style – Known Associates [Bar/None]

Journalist/rocker Elizabeth Nelson's outfit The Paranoid Style has been reviving witty ‘70s-style pub rock à la Elvis Costello for over a decade now, with a dense lyrical bent akin to if Craig Finn was a Washington D.C. insider. (They’re named after a famous anti-conspiracy theory essay — timely!) Their fifth full-length is their second with power-pop legend Peter Holsapple (the db’s) on lead guitar and Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats) horns in with sax squawks all over the place. Nelson’s not out of clever bits, either: “Now they can’t find your name on the guest list / It’s a dog’s breakfast.” — Dan Weiss

PONY – Clearly Cursed [Take This to Heart]

Sam Bielanski and Matt Morand have been churning out sleek “grunge-pop from Toronto” as PONY since 2020. So it's no surprise their third album is another packed, concise blast of ‘90s sugar (or Sugar) for anyone who loves Charly Bliss, Beabadoobee, or any other revivalists who’ve memorized the 2002 live-action Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack front-to-back. — Dan Weiss