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 eight new releases we'd like to key you into as you head into the weekend. Check them all out below.

Ba bam!

Elizabeth Cook – Great Television [Thirty Tigers]

It’s not like the seven previous albums by the great Florida-born Americana songwriter Elizabeth Cook were underproduced. But now having conquered a medium or two (hosting Apron Strings on Sirius’ Outlaw Country channel, and starring in the film The Easy Kind alongside Susie Essman and David Letterman), she decides to go for baroque. Strings aplenty, the legendary Wynonna Judd, and the Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown” all make appearances. The leading “Sunset Promenade” makes hash of her life struggles (“turns out hurricanes are great television”). Betwixt dialogue snippets from the movie, highlights like “Thiokol Tripwire” and “Razorwire Wall” aren’t just some of her most detailed narratives ever, they stand comfortably alongside previous career highlights like “Thick Georgia Woman” and — one of the 2010s’ sharpest character sketches — “Rock ‘n’ Roll Man.” — Daniel Aaron

Evil Island - Terraform the Afterlife [Blowed Out Records]

Evil Island, the new project featuring three of the five founding members of The Blood Brothers, has arrived with their debut album Terraform the Afterlife. While the Blood Brothers connection is obvious, Evil Island feels less like a reunion and more like Johnny Whitney stepping fully into his frontman era, bringing a looser, punkier, and more rock ’n’ roll approach to Sasscore. The guest list is stacked too, with Jordan Blilie returning for “I Bought a Spell,” Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells appearing on “Melted Heat,” Michael Gatto of XCOM on “Termantrixx,” and Guy Picciotto of Fugazi making a rare appearance on “T-Hexx.” Terraform the Afterlife feels like a full-on return to new era of Sasscore: punk energy, weird lyrics, big riffs, and a group of former bandmates turned current bandmates clearly having a blast making noise together. – Ricky Adams

L'Rain – fata morgana [Mexican Summer]

Multiple times during my first listen of fata morgana, I thought my speakers were broken. The glitchy static of the record's intro, the out-of-nowhere reggae sample on "july 5th," the wall of sound on interlude "no body / know body" – the unpredictability of L'Rain's artistry is a testament to her singularity as an artist. fata morgana, the Brooklyn experimentalist Taja Cheek's fourth LP, weaves through eclectic soundscapes as Cheek contemplates her self-perception in a world where the lines of real and fake continue to blur further. Despite it sounding like it comes from another planet, the record is grounded in what makes us all truly human. – Leah Bess

Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal - Doomed! [Backwoodz Studioz]

For more than 15 years, Michael Eagle II (aka Open Mike Eagle) has owned his own mumblecore lane in rap by filling it with coherent nonsequiturs like “I get ideas but they explode like land mines / I blame the Masons, they control us with hand signs” (same song boasts “I got a high IQ and low credit score” and in 2011 he awesomely titled it “Rent Party Revolution”). Joining up with ace Billy Woods producer Kenny Segal for this breakup cycle was only a matter of time, and rap’s biggest They Might Be Giants fan goes into hyperreferential overload, swirling both Busta Rhymes and Bad Bunny quotes into “Unfinished Concrete Initials.” Segal’s chewy dream-jazz settings shift appropriately, which means rapidly, so the 45-year-old MC can make clear that “you fuck with the Eagle, you get the claws.” — Daniel Aaron

Nina Winder-Lind – Wild Love [Transgressive]

Every day is foremothers’ day in Nina Winder-Lind’s house of raw sensation, as the gutsy Wild Love makes plain through its attention to both lineage and women’s liberation. As one-fourth of The New Eves, the Stockholm-born, Brighton-based artist already has a stake in music as a means of refusal to be boxed in, and Wild Love is just as unbound by convention and, in some ways, even more intense than last year’s The New Eve is Rising. Winder-Lind’s voice is magnetically unruly and her guitar playing is often genuinely thrilling, giving the album an explosive sense of aliveness that’s hard to resist. – Alan Pedder

Petey USA - oooo [Crow Island]

Petey USA returns with a collection of tracks dubbed oooo. Across the eight-song release, Petey returns to the DIY, totally self-produced studio sessions that defined some of his earlier work, this time leaning heavily into dirty synth-pop. The result is an irresistible combination of his classic TikTok-era ironic comedy and an earnest realism that gives the lyrics more weight, similar to Father John Misty in that regard. Sonically, though, this one is a straight-up bop. You can dance along while he subtly lays down the chorus, “I’ll be your biiiiiiiitch,” and, as always, Petey walks that fine line between making you chuckle and actually making you feel something. So tune in and feel it. – Ricky Adams

Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Weekend [Dead Oceans]

A lot has happened in Phoebe Bridgers' life since her breakout sophomore album Punisher sparked a years-long wave of hushed, confessional indie folk, and she's returned to tell us all about it like we're meeting an old friend at a bar. She won three Grammys with her supergroup, boygenius. She called off her engagement with actor Paul Mescal, which she details the fallout of in the swirling, lilting "The Governer's Waltz," and began a relationship with comedian Bo Burnham, who she professes her love to on the following track "Bobby." But Bridgers' most touching and impactful writing comes from grieving and processing the death of her estranged father, who she dedicates the record to. Her incisiveness is wrapped in the warmth of Lost Weekend's bevy of collaborators, from longtime creative partners Ethan Gruska, Tony Berg, and Christian Lee Hutson, to indie it-boys like Alex G and Cameron Winter (under the pseudonym "Son-John Johnson"). – Leah Bess

Sweeping Promises – You Say I Romanticize [Sub Pop]

Plenty of bad things return to the fore as history gets flattened and compressed, but musically it can be a blessing. In Sweeping Promises, Essential Logic and the Rezillos and Holly and the Italians and We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It all melt down to the same brew of threadbare postdancepunk layered with harmonies that aim higher. From their galvanizing live shows opening for the reunited Bikini Kill, all that the Boston-to-Lawrence, Kansas duo of Lira Mondal and Caulfield Schnug needed was better-than-basement fidelity to encompass everything they had in mind, namely a new new wave along with peers like Body Type and Fake Fruit who share hooks for the taking. Maybe someday they’ll all get blended into an awesome new revival band, too. — Daniel Aaron