NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Feb. 20

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

WILLOW. Altin Gün. Fugazi alumni smashing punk into jazz. NPR Music's Stephen Thompson is joined by Evan Miller from WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio to chat about their favorite albums out Friday, Feb. 20.The Starting 5(00:00) Introduction & WILLOW, 'petal rock black'(03:29) Pekka Kuusisto, 'Willows'(08:59) Manu Delago & Max ZT, 'Deuce'(16:21) The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis, 'Deface The Currency'(21:29) Hen Ogledd, 'DISCOMBOBULATED'(27:19) Altin Gün, 'Garip'(32:41) The Lightning Round- Megan Moroney, 'Cloud 9'- Chris Forsyth's WHAT IS NOW, 'Both / And'- Choker, 'Heaven Ain't Sold'- MX LONELY, 'ALL MONSTERS'- Mumford & Sons, 'Prizefighter'Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist on NPR.org/allsongsCredits: Host: Stephen ThompsonGuest: Evan Miller, WYSOAudio Producer: Noah CaldwellDigital Producer: Dora LeviteEditors: Otis Hart, Elle MannionExecutive Producer: Suraya MohamedSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Happy Friday, everyone from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Evan Miller of WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Welcome to the show, Evan. Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. It is a pleasure to have you. We have a very unusual week of new music, including an album that dropped on Tuesday morning.

We, you know, are kind of still just getting used to it ourselves. It's by Willow Smith, who records under the name Willow. Check out our Tiny Desk concert from 2024 if you haven't seen it. Willow's new album is called Petal Rock Black, and the guests alone suggest how facile she is at fusing accessible pop with more left field sounds. Yeah, the Tune Yards guest spot later in the record makes a lot of sense to me. It really does. Vegetation, one of the earlier tracks, as soon as I heard it, I'm like, this sounds like Tune Yards. I can tell she's been jamming on maybe the new tune here its record.

I admittedly haven't checked back into the Willow catalog since she was making rock music the last time I dropped in. So this one was quite a pleasant surprise addition to this week. The arrangements are fantastic, a lot of really funky rhythms and grooves. Yeah, Willow is extraordinarily inventive. and never makes the same record twice. And that really comes through here. And you can kind of even just tell, looking at the track listing

and seeing who the guests are on this record. In addition to tune yards, George Clinton from P-Funk kind of pops up in the intro. Kamasi Washington shows up and lends, you know, obviously jazz to the mix. There's a cover of Princes I Would Die for You. And at the same time, all of these ideas are kind of swirling around

in an album that is 12 songs in 12 songs in 26 minutes. You know, you have songs that play out almost as fragments, and, you know, where ideas are just ping-ponging around, and you get through so many different sounds in those 26 minutes. It's funny to hear music from somebody like Prince that's so propulsive kind of turned into this sort of wonky, alternative version.

It's very cool. That is Willow. Her new album is called Petal Rock Black, kind of including it as, a bonus entry on this week's show because it just dropped Tuesday morning, totally off schedule with the way music is really coming out these days. I also wanted to note that the rapper Baby Keem, who's known for his musical and familial association with Kendrick Lamar, Baby Keem has a new album out today called Casino with a dollar sign in place of an S. The label didn't make

advances available, but it is one of this week's biggest releases and we didn't want it to go by without a mention. So we've mentioned Willow, we've mentioned Baby Keem, we'll mention a couple more big stars in the Lightning Round, but for this show, Evan, you and I are going to mostly focus on some left field music, classical punk jazz, Turkish jam rock, you name it. We're going to kick off with Peca Cusisto, and his new album is called Willows. So this is a fascinating hour of music, basically split between these kind of gorgeous,

string-based classical pieces and folk classical hybrids that are headlined by the folk singer Sam Amadon. If you're not familiar with Pekakusisto, he's a Finnish violinist, conductor, composer, comes from a long line of composers and musicians in Finland. And he uses traditional music of Finland as a backdrop, but is willing to expand really well beyond it. He's also the artistic director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. He works with all sorts of orchestras. And so what you get, on this record is this collection of collaborations that reach from classical to folk music and beyond. Yeah, I am a contemporary classical music person myself in my other life. That's what I went to school for. So especially seeing the Caroline Shaw and Ellen Reed pieces appear on this record,

those were fantastic. A little bit more in the boundary pushing aside soundwise on this record. The Ellen Reed piece has a lot of great extended technique stuff. and is actually written for Cusisto, dedicated to his late brother, Yako. Yeah, and that song is called a decedarium. You mentioned the piece written by Caroline Shaw, and, you know, who's really one of the great living composers, frankly. Absolutely.

She has a piece called Plan and Elevation, you know, which other artists have performed. It's from about a decade ago. And here, he revisits that piece, and it really, it's such a nice pairing, because if you love her compositions, you know how good she is at kind of maximizing the drama while letting the piece kind of constantly change shape

and allow new sounds to kind of scream through the mix. She is such a great composer and just hearing the two kind of collaborating across time was just wonderful for me to hear. And she has this great knack of drawing inspiration from the greats of classical music and pushing things forward into, modern sounds. A highlight of this album, this Caroline Shaw String Quartet, absolutely.

Part of what is so fascinating about this record, you know, I listened to this album before I really knew any of the context surrounding it. I just was like, Pecacacusisto, hit play. And, you know, you get these gorgeous sweeping classical pieces. And then around halfway through, it takes this sharp left turn where it brings in Sam Amadon, the folk singer, for a series. of pieces, they're from Sam Amadon's catalog, you know, recorded, originally recorded by

Amazon, you know, between 2008 and 2013. You know, generally traditional pieces, but pieces Amazon has recorded before. And here, Peca Cosisto works with Sam Amadon and the arranger Nico Mule for these pieces that are melding

folk music and classical. I wish I was a poet could rise. Yeah, the blending of this release. I'd write my love a letter once she'd long understand. Yeah, the blending of folk music and classical is so strong all over this release. Picking Sam, Amadon, and Nico Muley for the arrangements for these folk songs is, I mean,

it's a very clear choice on success for these. Both folks with lots of experience in not only, you know, crystal clear arrangements, but taking such care and time with this folk music. It's beautiful, beautiful work. That is Peca Cusisto. His new album is called Willows. Next up, gorgeous record from Manu Delago and Max Z.T. It's called Deuce.

So if you're not familiar with these artists, Manu DeLago is an Austrian musician and composer. He's been playing the hand pan, which is kind of like a steel drum you play with your hands. It produces this kind of soft ringing form of percussion. He's been playing around with that kind of percussion for decades now. Max Z.T. plays the hammered dulcimer. It was funny when I was reading up on them. I saw the phrase, hailed by NPR as the Jimmy Hendricks of the Hammered Dolsomer. Oh, I saw that too.

Which I was like, man, NPR, you know, we are what we are. Big shoes to fill. Big shoes. Exactly. But honestly, like listening to this record, I get it. That's not wrong.

Both, you know, these kind of virtuoso musicians, you know, they've worked with a bunch of other people. Manu Del Lago is toured and performed with people like Bjork and the cinematic orchestra. Working together,

they recorded this album in a 13th century monastery in the Austrian Alps. And throughout this record, you get a pairing of this ancient instrument, the hammered dulcimer, with a pretty new instrument, the hand pan,

And what you get is just this timeless, beautiful, radiant set of songs. I am actually a percussionist, so thanks for tossing me a percussion record to listen to. Break, especially. I hear buzzing in the dulcimer. It almost sounds like water might be being used with the hand pan. There's this sort of like bending to the pitch of it. I'm trying to root through my own experiences. I'm like, how do they do that?

I feel like I might know. I could imagine water being incorporated because, like, hearing this instrument, and, you know, people have heard a sample of this sound. You can almost feel that he's hitting a pan with the heel of his hand. Like, you can feel like that is the soft pad of a hand making this percussion sound. It's some of the softest percussion you'll hear.

Yeah, the handpans are really fascinating instruments. I first heard these with Portico Quartet years ago. So if you like the sound of this instrument, maybe go check them out too. The fundamental pitch it can hold, especially in bass, is so strong but so delicate. It's a really, really neat instrument, which is not to say that the hammered dulcimer is not also a very fascinating, interesting instrument. Well, and they pair so beautifully. There's kind of a softness to the combination of sounds. There's a track here called Love All, and it's just a stunner.

You know, it's this kind of softly chiming, meandering piece. And the music pairs beautifully with that title. It feels, listening to it, the world feels like a more welcoming place. I'm always welcome and amenable to presentations of percussion that show their more lyrical side. Their capabilities beyond just rhythms that they're so open the possibilities with these instruments, especially when they're melodic and harmonic like these. I really loved this record, especially I had to listen to it while I was doing dishes. Oh, yeah, this is a perfect dish's record.

Oh, I just got to zen out while doing dishes. It was fantastic. Like, why am I enjoying this? There's another one I wanted to call out on this record, 4040. And it's a busier, more technical piece. There's almost a dizzying quality to it where you're really getting a sense of the technique and the precision that these artists are able to bring to the song, but it still has a certain softness to it.

That, again, not only does it pair well with dishes, it pairs with staring into the middle distance on a Sunday morning, which is how I'm going to enjoy this record going forward. That is Manu DeLago and Max Z.T. Their new album together is called Deuce. We've got some more records. We're going to discuss in depth as well as a lightning round of some of our other favorite records out today, February 20th. But first, let's take a quick break. From NPR Music, it's New Music Friday.

I'm Stephen Thompson here with Evan Miller from WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Evan, before we get to our next record, tell us what's going on to the station. Well, actually, in a few weeks from now, we will be moved into our brand new studios here in Yellow Springs. We are just wrapping up getting new gear installed and putting the finishing touches on the building. It'll be our first location not on the campus of Antioch College since our founding in the 50s. So a big moment coming up for us this spring. Meanwhile, we're a mixed format station, so we have news from NPR, of course, in our great local newsroom. We have music.

We have storytelling with our community voices program and our Center for Preservation and Archives. Nice. Musically, for our purposes now, we're about a year and a quarter into our all-music channel, novophonic.fm, that will be moving with us over to the new station. And I host two programs at WISO. I host our midday music show from Monday to Friday. I have an experimental music program called The Outside I do on Sundays, which comes in handy for some of the stuff we're talking about on this episode. I was going to say, I'm glad we picked you this week, because you're perfectly suited for this set of records.

Thank you. Nice. And people can listen at WYSO.org? Yes, WYSO.org and Novofonic.fonic.fm. Excellent. All right. Next up, a new record from The Mesthetics and James Brandon Lewis. It's called DeFace the Currency.

So the aesthetics are one of the several post-Fugazi offshoot bands. Joe Wally and Brandon Canty, a bassist and drummer of Fugazi, respectively, joined by Anthony Parogue on guitar. And this is their quartet with the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. It's their second album together and also their second on the Mighty Impulse Records. You know, taking the kind of punk rock, free jazz thing, that the aesthetics we're already doing and just adding James Brandon Lewis

into the mix, who is a fine jazz saxophonist and all sorts of contexts on his own. So just sort of amping up the intensity with an additional member in the group. Yeah, I mean, it's wild how much this record feels like jazz and how much it feels like punk. It's really one of the truest genre fusions that I've heard in a while

because it absolutely is both. You know, the aesthetics records, you know, the aesthetics are an instrumental band. So they've certainly gone down jazz paths before. But here, it's really wild how much it sounds exactly like both. Yeah, they're bona fides in all of this shine so clearly. And they're able to bounce back and forth effortlessly between just like blistering free jazz improvisations. And then just kind of get into these more straight ahead punk modes together. I somehow have missed, I think, two different opportunities to see this group where I'm at right now.

And now with this new record coming out, I will fix this now. I will go see them because I really want to after listening to this record. It's remarkable hearing it how many directions they're able to go with this. And you have a track like the title track to face the currency, which is just a blast of like twisty, hard-driving jazz punk. And it just keeps building up in. intensity. But then it kind of gives way to a track called gestations, which is much heavier on the jazz side of the punk jazz equation. But then even that song is then able to kind of ramp up over the course of its runtime to give way to these like kind of just big, blazing, skronky guitar

solos. Yeah, there's always fire kind of lurking underneath some of this or just just, you know, right out in front of you. Like, universal security was one that I, that I distinctly remember. And having this more kind of lyrical head to it almost, it reminds me of like a Mingus kind of line. But then it just explodes after that comes out. I'm like, okay, great. We're back to the, we're back into the flames here.

Yeah, I mean, that track is just a wall of noise and static and just this free jazz storm, you know, that plays out over the course of that song. And then, you know, you get the closing track, Serpent Tongue, parentheses, slight return, you know, which is kind of, gives you this like atmosphere before the storm at first, before building to a kind of perfect mesthetics, James Brandon Lewis frenzy. That is The Mesthetics and James Brandon Lewis. Their new album together is called DeFace the Currency. Next up, Evan's we're going to get even, we're going to get weird. Next up, Hen Ogled, their new album is called Discombobulated.

So if you're unfamiliar with Hen Ogled, their name comes from the Welsh phrase for Old North, which is the Celtic region that contains southern Scotland and northern England in the early Middle Ages. You know, each of the band's four members is from kind of a different tribal region of the Old North. And the band's songs are all about mixing, you know, as you can imagine, the ancient and the modern, kind of a recurring theme in this week's episode. The traditional and the avant-garde, how it comes out is as this wild, weird mix of art pop and folk music and psychedelia and spoken word. Children's voices pop up. It is a very, very strange sound.

One of the most appropriate album titles I've come across in recent memory, discombobulated, is 100% right on it. I feel like I'm like stepping into another universe when I hear music like this. I'm trying to wrap my head around how you make this. And I'm bewildered in the best way. I think bewildered in the best way is a really good way of putting it. But at the same time, it's weird. And in some ways it can feel weird for the sake.

weird, but at the same time, there's real force behind it and there's real lyrical energy where the messaging that comes through is pretty powerful and pretty profound. You take a track like scales will fall, you know, which is this eight and a half minute, truly eccentric journey full of these weird bouncy synths and half-wrapped vocals. But then you listen to those words and they're about human rights. They're about systems. and collapse. And you get a sense of like, these aren't just weirdos. They're weirdos with a lot to say about the state of the world.

You know, this ongoing theme of folk music especially popping up on this round of albums. English folk music, like what they're pulling from sonically in some ways, definitely has a lot to do with that kind of lyrical material often. So they're sonically pushing in a million. wild directions, but still playing into this tradition of work. How you fold those things together successfully, the way they're doing is amazing. Well, and in some ways, it kind of keeps getting weirder, right? There's a, there's a track called Clara, which may be the weirdest song here, which is really saying a lot. It's got this mix of strange distorted voices and effects and these

sing-song verses and these minimal kind of drum patterns and it's it's dark and childlike at once and honestly Evan I don't even know how we excerpt this song in a way that conveys how strange it is oh producers good luck take you pick no Caldwell just gave thumbs up from the booth the low voice that pops up periodically in this is the thing I remember the most like what is that And that kind of gives way to this spoken word track called Land of the Dead. And eventually, you know, you're just listening to this record. I don't know how, you know, your process of prepping to talk about these things, I'd just kind of take a lot of notes.

And my notes say, Land of the Dead is, get this, weird. Correct. We're damesio on the frieg, kai, glutthin, perthi, don't know of eireen, glenog, the leaad of hocked, quimbo. That is Hen Ogled. Their new album is called Discombobulated. We've got one more record we're going to talk about in-depth,

as well as a lightning round of some of the other terrific albums out today, February 20th. First, we're going to take one last break. From NPR Music, it's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Evan Miller of W.YSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Last up, before we get to our lightning round, album from Altine Gunn. It's called Garip. So Altin Gunn are a Dutch Turkish psychedelic band, which is always really fun to explain to people when I tell people about this band. A lot of their music is steeped in Turkish folk traditions,

but taken in this psychedelic or electronic way. And this one, in particular, is all music from a Turkish folk artist Nashet Artaj. Yeah, and it was really interesting. Like, that gives it kind of this thematic, you know, through line and a certain, you know, consistency that allows them to explore beyond it. But you really do get a sense of, like, I need to check out Nishat Artas's sound. You know, he died in 2012. and this is kind of a tribute to him.

But these songs really kind of take the bones of his songs and use them as kind of a frame for some really sonically expansive and beautiful and just really interesting arrangements. Yeah, it feels like the band is moving towards a more organic place after getting a lot into the electronics zone over their past couple of records. or so. And that feels really appropriate for this record taking on exclusively Turkish folk tunes.

The album opens with a track called Neradesen Sen, and it's just this kind of wild, barreling rock jam. You know, they've got this really great kind of psych rock sound. And when you listen to that track, you can practically see smoke wafting from the speakers as it plays. And it's It was so interesting to me listening to this record again last night, you know, under headphones, kind of late at night. And how many of the songs for me somehow managed to evoke smoke? You know, this sense of like there's something in these arrangements, there's something about the way these songs kind of undulate. And it's like the pattern that smoke can make as it drifts into the sky. and that's a really heady feeling to have when you're listening to a record.

Psychedelic music has such a long history of taking on folk music or music of this kind. Like I immediately think of the 13th floor elevators doing like Dylan tunes back in the 60s. The qualities you can pull out of these simple arrangements when you kind of open them up in these other. context is so cool. So many highlights here. There's a song Oldermbeni, which is this kind of trippy psych jam. The synth line that runs through this song is so noodily and irresistible, but it's kind of this framework for the song to get wilder and freakier as it goes along, but in a way that feels thoroughly inviting as a listener, even though this is not necessarily music that I'm familiar with. I'm not, you know, deeply entrenched in Turkish music. No, neither am I.

But I, you know, I never want to assume. But it really, but it really lets you in and it feels like a gateway. When I was reading about this record, the front man for this band, Erdanch Uchevite Yildes, he was inspired to become a musician in childhood, listening to these cassettes that his family had of Artaj's music. It feels like a very personal album to finally be able to put some of this music that he grew up with to tape this way. That is Altine Gunn. Their new album is called Gereep.

Evan, as you know, we could not possibly get to every big record out today, February 20th. And obviously, we went, you know, we went a little left field, you know, for this show. But we did want to include a lightning round of some of the other albums out today. I'm going to kick us off with Megan Maroney. She's one of the decades' biggest breakout. stars in country music. She mixes kind of classic country vibes with a conversational heartache forward sense that pairs really well with contemporary pop. Her last record, M IOK, was a major breakthrough and now she's followed it with a sparkly kind of pop-flect set of country jams that

sound like future hits to me. Megan Maroney's new album, which features guest appearances by Ed Shearren and Casey Musgraves, is called Cloud 9. So my first lightning round pick is new music from guitarist Chris Forsyth. He has a new trio called Chris Forsyce What is Now, joined by John Moran on bass and Joey Sullivan on drums, both from a great Philly jazz trio called Bark Culture. It's like a three-piece record of these about 20-minute kind of shaggy jams that move around between jazz or like freer rock and improvisatory contexts. All three of these musicians have one foot in one world and one foot in the other as far as the sounds covered on this album go. And they're really playing at some of their best on this one.

Chris Forsyth's What Is Now with their new album, Both and. In the late 2010s, the Michigan R&B singer-songwriter Choker looked like he was kind of a major rising star. His vibe, stylish, psychedelic sound drew comparisons to Frank Ocean. He was, you know, following a successful album called Honeybloom with a string of EPs. Then he took

a nearly seven-year hiatus. Now he's back with a new full-length record that picks up kind of where he left off and promises to reignite all that next big thing talk. Choker's new record is called Heaven Ain't Sold. The New York band

MX Lonely has a new one out now. called All Monsters. As I'm sure some of your listeners might be aware of, shoe gaze and adjacent music has really had quite a roaring back in the past few years. MX Lonely kind of occupies a little bit more grunge-influenced corner of this with their new album All Monsters. Finally, the Grammy-winning folk rock powerhouse Mumford & Sons released a comeback record called Rushmere last year. It was their first album in almost seven.

years. Now we've already got a follow-up less than a year later, and it sounds like the stuff of a big roots pop resurgence, complete with guest appearances by Chris Stapleton, Hozier, G.G. Perez, Gracie Abrams, and more. Mumford & Sons's new album is called Prize Fighter. And that is our show for this week. Thank you so much, Evan Miller, for taking time out of your week at WYSO in Ohio. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It has been a pleasure. If you enjoyed this week's show, we always appreciate a positive review on Apple or Spotify or whatever app you're listening to right now. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and El Manion and edited by Otis Hart.

Our production assistant is Dora Levitt. The executive producer of NPR Music is Soraya Mohamed. We'll be back next week to discuss new music with Raina Duras, host of World Cafe at WXPN in Philadelphia. Until then, take a moment to be well. step outside and take a big gulp of fresh air and treat yourself to lots of great music.