NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out June 12

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Olivia Rodrigo. Pussy Riot. Hayley Kiyoko. Host Stephen Thompson chats with Nastia Voynovskaya from KQED in San Francisco about their favorite albums out Friday, June 12. Plus, a handful of NPR Music writers and critics offer their personal picks in the lightning round.The Starting 5(00:00) Songs of the Summer(01:59) Album No. 1• Olivia Rodrigo, 'you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love'(10:01) Album No. 2• Pussy Riot, 'CYKA'(17:31) Album No. 3• YHWH Nailgun, 'Magazine'(22:01) Album No. 4• Hayley Kiyoko, 'girls like girls (the album)'(28:31) Album No. 5• Six Sex, 'ULTRA'(34:10) The Lightning Round• Kelsey Lu, 'So Help Me God'• Ambrose Akimusire & Mary Halvorson, 'Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings'• Diles Que No Me Maten, 'Escrito en Agua'• Horse Lords, 'Demand To Be Taken Alive!'• Mon Laferte, 'Femme Fatale Vol. 2'Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist and see our Long List of notable releases on NPR.org.Credits:Host: Stephen ThompsonGuest: Nastia Voynovskaya, KQEDAudio Producer: Noah CaldwellDigital Producer: Dora LeviteEditors: Otis Hart, Elle MannionExecutive Producer: Suraya MohamedSpecial thanks to Robin Hilton, Lars Gotrich and Isabella Gomez SarmientoSee 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

A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language. Happy Friday, everyone, from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Nastia Voinovskia from K-QED in San Francisco. Welcome back to the show, Nostia. Hi, Stephen. Thanks so much for having me back. It is a pleasure. I mean, we are now well into June, which means, Nastia, it is Song of the Summer season. We've got a couple of candidates on this week's show.

What's your song of the summer so far? I think so far a top contender has to be Spend That by Young Miami. I love City Girls, and I think that they've really been getting it into their groove as solo artists. And Spend That has this super catchy hook that just turns into a sing-along every time at the club. What's yours? You know, it's so funny because I'm very much on the Song of the Summer beat at NPR. You know, I cover the Billboard charts. I do these column every week and these pieces.

And like looking over the actual Billboard songs of the summer chart, it's like a lot of Ella Langley, who I do like and respect. But I don't know that that's, I don't know. It's kind of like last year when the Song of the Summer was ordinary by Alex Warren. I'm like, we need bangers. Give me bangers. So I'm going to go. with the song So What by Moona.

That right now has been my song of the summer. It's just a complete jam. It's got this great build. It's got more and more kind of intensity as it goes along. But honestly, song of the summer-wise, I don't think you could go wrong with several songs from the first album that we're going to be talking about this week. And that, my friends, is what we call in the business a segue.

We're going to kick things off with Olivia Rodriguez. Olivia Rodriguez's new album is called You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. I'm just staring at the ceiling. Can't describe this feeling I've got in my head. I'm out of body in my bed. And I'm just searching up my symptom. Desperate to fix them I'll do anything Because lately are

When spiraling up I'm not feeling like myself And she said I was fine It makes me cry It's like somebody put away on my chest I should talk to a friend But I can't get out Talk to it

So Olivia Rodriguez, you know, has been in this business practically since birth. You know, she kind of came up as a child actor. And then when she kind of launched her official debut single, Driver's License, she was an instant A-list pop star and has been ever since. This is her third album following Sour and Guts. And she continues to be kind of a fully formed pop star. She also, one thing that really comes through on this record, Nostia is she is one of the most Gen X-coded Gen Z stars.

My imagination could have conjured. She's toured with the breeders. This record has The Cure written all over it. To me, it is so savvy. I just imagine all these Gen X parents taking their Gen Z kids to her concerts. But it really kind of deepens her sound. Absolutely. I think that throughline to The Cure adds in the same.

incredible layer to this album, I love the collaboration with Robert Smith, What's Wrong with Me, which they actually debuted live at Prima Vera Sound. And their two voices intertwined so beautifully, and there's this kind of aching, yearning that the song really epitomizes. That's the theme of the album of being so obsessed with this person. You're kind of driving yourself insane. And yeah, they're singing, you're what's wrong with me. So it's an album about love on the surface, but I think really more so when you listen to it, it's about this internal struggle. Yeah, she's so good at kind of tackling that that kind of young love from a bunch of different

angles, and sometimes it's extremely angst-ridden, right? Like, her very first single driver's license was as angst-ridden as it gets, and there are a bunch of songs that do that here, but there are also big love songs. You know, the first single from this record, Drop Dead, which seems like it's going to be a kiss-off from the title is actually this big, grand swoony song about, like, just like somebody who has just never wanted anyone more than they do in this moment. It really gets to the heart of that obsessive phase of a crush of a crush, where you're working their Instagram,

analyzing their birth chart. Oh my God. And it has this driving guitar riff that really mirrors that fun, manic energy of a crush and this drum beat that builds up just like your heart beating in your chest. I also felt that this album is really building upon two sounds that Olivia Rodrigo does really well, which is the punchy pop punk and then also

ballads. I feel like since driver's license, we haven't necessarily heard her really, really delve into piano ballads like she does on this album. Yeah. There's a gorgeous song called Honeybee that I think feels like a return to form of driver's license. And I read in an interview with her that on this album, she really kind of shed that pressure to prove that she's sort of like a precocious wonderkind and really allowed herself

to take her time with these songs. And I think just with the swelling strings and the bittersweet vocals on Honeybee, you can really hear that. It's too hard to describe this in the way that feels honest. But even when I'm quiet, I love you, baby. I promise. I hope I'll never see what your face looks like going. A face I swear that I could spend my whole life knowing here's to hope. I wanted to ask you, Nostia, since we began our conversation in this episode talking about songs of the summer, I wanted to ask you what on this record feels most like the song of

the summer, because I definitely have a pick and we haven't mentioned it yet. I would say stupid song is definitely up there. That is the correct answer. That is the correct answer. I hear this song and I think Song of the Summer. To me, it's combining a lot of what Olivia Rodriguez does best. It opens as this kind of tender ballad. The vocal gets showier and showier as it goes along, and it builds to something really, really dramatic where, like, the drama just can't even be contained by any given moment. But it also just has these very, like, very specific Olivia Rodrigo qualities to it, where she'll do that, like, chattery, you know, trying to fit as many syllables as she can into a single line of songwriting. It's so catchy. It sounds very 2026, where it feels like

it could be the song that's blaring out of, you know, boomboxes and car radios, and you'll hear it on beaches and in bars and on radio playlists. That is Olivia Rodriguez. Her new album is called You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Next up, something, you know, pretty different. But honestly, there's some connective tissue there. Pussy Riot, their first ever full-length official album, it is called Sukkah. Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist art collective, led by Nadia Tla Kuanykojokojkova,

and they really burst into international renown in 2012 when they were arrested during a performance protest at a Moscow cathedral. And three of the members spent six months in a... remote Russian penal colony where they were consigned to 17-hour days of hard labor. And it became this international story that really garnered headlines about human rights abuses in Russia. And since her release, Nadia Dela Kwanikova has not slowed down. And she's been at the forefront of some very interesting visual art music, a lot of it really calling out authoritarianism in Russia and abroad as well. Yeah, and musically speaking, this record is truly all over the map.

And that kind of fits the strange and unwieldy trajectory of Pussy Riot as a band. You know, a lot of their performances have been kind of pop-up protests, these kind of two-minute bursts of energy. But that energy can come in the form of punk rock. And it can come in the form of an almost K-pop-adjacent, kind of sugary, dancey pop sound and everything in between, like nailing down the sound of this band, even across this one record kind of distilling what they have to offer, it's very tricky to do. There's not one Pussy Riot sound. It feels like they're just crumpling up this ball

of rage that it includes hyperpop, drum and bass, techno, punk, hip-hop, and just hurling it at authoritarian leaders, cop, suppressors. I really, really enjoyed the opening track God's Left. It's a Russian language track. It opens with this Slavic folk singing type of chorus that's interspersed with rapping and these screamo vocals. But it really conjures this kind of like hellish environment. And, yeah, Nadia Thalakonikoa does a lot of work to draw attention to human rights abuses. in Russia and she's been effectively exiled from her home for various performance protests that

she's done and living abroad. And this track really, really conjures this feeling of everything you once love now being kind of tarnished or corrupted that I think speaks to that. And you know, the guests on this record are as all over the map as all over the map as the sound. You know, avenged sevenfold pops up, you know, to assist on kind of a rock-oriented track called Candy Dopamine. There's a track with Be Real from Cypress Hill, who turns up on gore and, you know, kind of brings like an English language, you know, contribution that can help contextualize, you know, these songs because they're sung in, in different languages, and often that language is Russian.

There's also the title track from this record, Sukha, features Vladimir Putin, kind of gives him a full-on feature credit. And she said, I'm not going to give him royalties, though. They can add it to my list of crimes, which I loved. You can pervise the same word on Russian-is-euvre. Or you're not going to do it to do with poetician. I think that it's notewdom. In English, in English-speaking music, it's not really,

It's a great troll and I also really enjoyed that song. It has this very hard hip-hop beat with church bells and these samples floating in. Most of the samples are in Russian and they tend to be clips of Putin himself or of news clips of various politicians and news commentators calling her obscene and demonic and she's kind of running with that embracing it and basically saying yes I am your villain. We could talk about this record all afternoon. There is so much going on here. Highly recommended new record from Pussy Riot.

It is called Suka. We have more records we're going to talk about in-depth, as well as a lightning round of some of our other favorite albums out today, June 12th. But first, let's take a quick break. From NPR Music, it's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson, here with Nostia Voinovskaa of KQED in San Francisco. Nostia, tell us what's going on at the station. Well, we just had a very busy season covering California's gubernatorial election.

Oh, boy. Yes. And here on the arts team, I'm personally gearing up for some very fun summer music festivals. We have Mosswood meltdown happening in Oakland with bikini kill headlining. Nice. Then, yeah, later in the summer, I'm really looking forward to seeing Charlie XX at Outside Lands. So Bay Area Summer is always just full of great live music. So I'm very excited to delve more into the scene. Wonderful.

All right. Well, let's talk about our next record. It is definitely a pivot from Pussy Riot. Even more of a pivot from Olivia Rodriguez. Yahweh Nailgun's new album is called Magazine. So Yawai Nailgun is a band from New York. They describe their sound as tech rock, kind of no wave adjacent rock music full of wild polyrhythms, kind of dense, clattering, clamorous songs.

We talked about their last record 45 pounds on this show last year, and I remember remarking on, wow, these songs are so concise and so strange. It's 10 songs in 21 minutes. How is that even a thing? This record is 10 songs in 11 minutes. These songs are gnarled and intense and artful and strange. You know, you take a track like,

stillness blues and it's so jagged, but if you listen under the surface, you'll hear this kind of deep, dark, sludgy wad of stoner blues going on. The way that Yawai and Nailga and play their instruments, too, the melodies are just so mangled and intense. Their guitarist, like Yves Rosenstock, he plays his guitar with a finger slide, and then he's also really working the whammy pedal, and it just sounds so otherworldly and weird. It's kind of like the sonic equivalent of chewing foil. The sonic equivalent of chewing foil raves NPR. You know, one thing I love about an 11-minute record is you can go back and listen to it

again and again and again. And I did that with this record, and each time I did, I was discovering more going on in this mix, particularly vocally. You know, you take a track like Innocent sigh and it's, you know, clanging and clattering and it's kind of mysterious. And then you start to pick up on that vocal and it sounds like it's coming from the bottom of a well. There's something so tortured about it. I really liked Ghost of Love as well. The way the lead singer sings, it's like this ancient spirit trapped in a wind tunnel. And I haven't seen Yawai Nailgun live. I did watch their K-E-X-P studio performance, and it was really excellent.

But I have heard from people that their live shows truly a spiritual experience because he really, really gives these intense vocals his absolute awe and just really contorts his body and just squeezes these intense sounds out of himself. I feel like the Venn diagram of Olivia Rodriguez fans and Yawai Nailgun fans is this panel. Definitely. Think about Pussy Riot is the exact center of that gun diagram. I love it. I love it.

That is Yahweh Nailgun. Their new, I put album in scare quotes. It's 11 minutes long. Check it out. It's called Magazine. Next up, Haley Kiyoko. Haley Kiyoko is back with a new record called Girls Like Girls, Paranthases, the album. Hibati from Spin the Bottle.

it out as a Disney star and then became a lesbian pop princess in 2015 with her single Girls Like Girls. She has since taken the concept of that song really about this innocent first love. And first turned it into a best-selling young adult romance novel. And now it is a feature film that's hitting theaters on June 19th. And it's actually premiering here in San Francisco at Frameline. and it has this very millennial, nostalgic, teen, in a sense to it, and it really reflects her experience in the 2000s, and Girls Like Girls, the album has an all-star cast of queer collaborators on it as well.

Yeah, I mean, this is your Pride Month playlist right here, right? Like, this episode is dropping almost halfway into Pride Month, and, man, you know, you mentioned the guests on this record and how much that they're kind of bringing to it. You also get a sense of the arc of a film, right? The early songs on this record are kind of about falling in love and experiencing obsession and desire and doubt, you know, all swirl together. And then things kind of come unglued as the record plays on. These songs are so catchy.

You take a track like Perry Winkle Princess, which features August Pontier, big, bright, brash, pop rock anthem with this perfect line, let's mess it up till we know how, that just captures every new love. I also really enjoyed red bikini featuring Snowwife. Yeah, this is that high energy pounding dance pop track. It's very Gaga-esque, I thought. And it really carries that energy of your head spinning after one too many drinks in a crowded club and the lyrics are really about that disorienting feeling. of being so over the top

infatuated with someone. Young love, it's so universal, right? Whether it's a queer love story or any love story, a young love story, a lot of those beats are the same. But at the same time, there is a real poignancy to a lot of these songs. You take trophy, which features Joya Lada Koon,

and it's kind of this melancholy, mid-tempo folk pop song about like wanting to be seen, wanting to be shown off, wanting to be unhidden. And that's where the kind of the queer angle of this love story comes through and how like being in love with somebody can entail like having to go out into the world and assuming some level of risk. You know, we did talk about. about that theme of obsessive young love on the Olivia Rodrigo album, but I think with this,

reading that theme from a queer lens, it hits differently because I think just young queer people grow up with so much shame about their desires. And then it's like when you enter your first queer relationship, it's almost like, wow, like I can, I, I never thought that I would get this thing that I have so deeply wanted. And so there's kind of that emotional weight to these songs where it's like, yes, finally something I thought would be impossible is coming true. That's Haley Kiyo. Her new record is called Girls Like Girls, The Album.

We've got one more record we're going to talk about in depth as well as a light round of some of our other favorite albums out today, June 12th. But first, let's take one more quick break. From NPR Music, it's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Nastia Voinovskia of KQED in San Francisco. Before we get to our lightning round, we got one more record we wanted to talk about. It is very loud. It is very in your face. It is by an artist called Six Sex, and it's called Ultra. sex is an Argentinian singer and producer. She's being called the Princess of Ferreo Rave, and she's been blowing up all over Latin America and stateside. Charlie XEX is a fan, and she really takes this bimbo aesthetic to the max. It's this very kitschy in-your-face,

campy sexuality, very hyperfeminine, almost to the point of drag. And throughout this album, She's singing over these really fun, really big electronic beats and kind of just playing with this idea of fantasy and fetish and also kind of just teasing and joking with the listener as well. Absolutely. I mean, this is glitchy, intense, chopped up, decadent party music. And if that's the vibe that you're taking into this weekend, this record is an excellent counterpart. part to those feelings. I mean, there's definitely a recurring, you know, kind of mode of hyperpop going on here. You take a track like Boy Free, you know, which is kind of leaning heavily into that like hyper cuteness. You're only picking up kind of random phrases in the mix like Miami and

fashion, you know, and not necessarily like glomming on to like a big, like larger, more overarching narrative. But the energy is. intense and it is plentiful. Yeah, that's a great single girls' trip kind of song. Also, not your mom, kind of insane manic disco song, kind of reminiscent of I Feel Love by Donna Summer. It's very Giorgio Moroder-coated. And she's not necessarily singing. She's kind of yelling with this bratty pout in her inflection.

And it's really audacious. I'm going to not mention any of the lyrics because they're not very NPR appropriate, but I suggest people listen to it. And I mean, if you're looking for accessible entry points on this record, they are there. You take a track like No FOMO, just this kind of breezy, chittering little pop jam. It's one of the more approachable songs here. So you get a sense of her kind of pop chops. Not everything is like breaking into a thousand pieces and like sending the dance floor exploding.

I also really enjoyed love me, hate me. It really reminded me of a sound that I feel like is revitalizing the club scene here in the Bay Area, inspired by Latin American genres like reggaeton, but in a more rave context. So it's really part of this global conversation, and I feel like it's a rebuke to this whole narrative that Gen Z doesn't party. I think, yeah, the rave scene is alive and well. And I think that also just post-pandemic, we're at this point where people are embracing partying

and hedonism again in a way that I haven't really seen in the last few years. That is six sex. Her new album is called Ultra. Now, Nastia, we could not possibly get to every new record out today, June 12th. This was a particularly busy, really. lease date as we're kind of heading into the meat of summer. So we wanted to do a lightning round of some of our other favorite albums out today. I'm going to kick us off with the singer,

songwriter, and cellist Kelsey Liu, who first broke through with an album of kind of strange artful pop called Blood back in 2019. That record put Kelsey Lou on the map alongside other kind of undefinable and like-minded artists like Solange. Now seven years later, Kelsey Liu is back with a follow-up album that expands on that sound while still staying tethered to artie sweeping R&B. If you want pop, their new album is produced by Jack Antonoff. You want genre-smashing oddballs. It features guests like Sampha, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, Kamasi Washington. This is weird music, it's pretty music, it's full of bold and sweeping songs.

Kelsey Loo's new album in seven years is called So Help Me God. So my old damn self, So my lightning, is a bit of a different vibe than what we've heard. It is this enough in the city you run where you're big and tough? I can't fit in enough if I'm feeling... player Ambrose Akinu Sier and New York guitar luminary Mary Halverson. It's called Slow Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings. And this is an organic collaboration that stemmed from their friendship. It's just trumpet and guitar, no drums. And it's this mysterious, intriguing kind of soundtrack to walking through a city at night and contemplating life. And one track that I thought

really, really epitomized that vibe is called Blood and Sand. It has this tension. Both of them, I think, just have such gifts for melody and the way that their two instruments and intertwine, it just kind of keeps you guessing at every turn. So I highly recommend this album. That is Ambrose Akin Masiri and Mary Halverson's Slow Moe-Neon luminant hoverings.

Thank you, Nostia. So we're going to welcome a few other voices from the NPR music team in for the rest of our. our lightning rounds, starting with Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Issa, give us your pick. Okay, so this is an album that I've been so excited about all year. It's called Eskrito in Agua, and it's by the Mexican rock band, Diles, No Me Matin.

You can really hear the sort of moody jazz influences on this record. There's a lot of dark horns, a lot of guitar. The percussion is sometimes sparse and sometimes very, very lush. These guys named their band after a famous short story, and you can tell their literary nerds because the album is full. of poetry at times it feels more like spoken word than singing. I think it really captures how exciting and experimental the avant-garde rock neoclassical scene is in Mexico City right now. So I highly recommend this for fans of Mabefrati or her group Titanic. Once again, the album is called

Escripto in Agua by the band, Diles that no me matten. Lars Gottrich, NPR Music Luminary. Give us your pick. Look, I could spend the next minute talking about how 2026 has unexpectedly become the ear microtonal music broke. Maybe you've seen an anonymous polka-data duo on the internet. I think they're fun to look at, but musically, just okay. Come at me. But here's an album that will alter and expand your brain waves. Demand to be taken to heaven alive by horse lords. This quartet tickles the fringes of rock music and the avant-garde, but always finds a way to invite the audience into its ecstasy. Throughout the album, there is a yearning to seek out a new home, sound by manipulated voices that chirp in

Twitter in and out of the band's polyrhythmic hypnosis. It's challenging, but a playful racket that makes our strange world feel closer than a heartbeat. That's the album Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive by Horse Lords. Thank you, Lars. Let's welcome Robin Hilton, All Songs Considered Host. Robin, give us your lightning round pick.

Okay, the album you really need to hear this week is from the Chilean singer Mon Laferta. It's called Fem Fetal, Volume 2. And as you might imagine, it's a follow-up to an album called Fem Fetal that actually just came out last year. But Mon Laferta is, she's just such a musical,

shape shifter. A lot of our earlier stuff leaned very much into pop and rock, but more like experimental pop and rock music. But Femfital, and now it's sequel volume two, they're rooted more in jazz, in traditional sounds, very classic sounds, they're very theatrical, almost like something you'd hear at a cabaret, you know, like torch ballads. There's still hints of more contemporary pop across the album, but the whole thing is just really beautiful, it's lush, it's transporting, and it's very timeless. Again, Man La Ferta, Fem Fatal, Volume 2. Check it out.

And that is our show for this week. Thank you so much, Nostiavoinovskia, for taking time out of your week at KQED in San Francisco. Thanks so much for having me, Stephen. This was so much fun. 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 Mani. and edited by Otis Hart. Our production assistant is Dora Levitt. The executive producer of NPR music is Saraya Mohamed. We'll be back next week to discuss more new music with Nate Chenen of WRTI in Philadelphia. Until then, take a moment to be well, take that six-sex energy into this weekend, and treat yourself to lots of great music.