Stream new projects from Nia Archives, Clarissa Connelly, Kira McSpice and more

Over the past few years, Nia Archives has spearheaded the jungle revival, bringing the frenetic ’90s club genre from relative obscurity to Coachella and Beyoncé’s Club Renaissance. Silence Is Loud, the British producer’s debut album, would be a great way to keep the party going. However, she has chosen to do something perhaps more interesting and tie her breakbeats to moments of vulnerability and personal revelation. So while the album still hits hard enough to ensure Nia’s club and festival presence for years to come, it also gives her a platform to talk about feelings of social anxiety (“Crowded Roomz”) and her strained relationship with her parents co-written with FKA twigs collaborator Ethan P. Flynn, these new songs provide a deeper look at an artist who has mastered making people move and is now ready to make them listen.

Listen to it: Spotify | Apple Music

Church bells can be heard on the other side The world of work, the beautiful new album from Copenhagen-based composer and lyricist Clarissa Connolly. It features in several of the songs, a motif that evokes a unique passion and a kind of loneliness that can be both agonizing and ecstatic. The world of work strives for this creative mode and immediately achieves it. The album is influenced by Celtic mythology, French philosophers and letters written by 12th-century authors, but these serve more as veins than structures, acting as vessels through which Connolly’s personal, unique music flows. There are curvy, avant-garde pop melodies that thrive on Danish peatlands – her guitar tones, which range from fresh and folky to sludge and shredded, are some of the best I’ve heard this year – and make their home in the imaginary structures of neoclassical ensemble. Connolly weaves them into the base of his piano, crafting a project that feels like wandering through a living, breathing museum wing, adding his own story to what is reverently on display. — Jordan Darvill

Listen to it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

When trees are injured or infected, they do not attempt to heal their wounds. Instead, they separate, letting their damaged parts dry out so the rest can thrive. On The compartmentalization of decay, Kira McSpice draws from this principle, pouring out her personal trauma in a discreet, 45-minute album to seal wounds that cannot be healed in the traditional sense of the word. Her third feature film since 2019 Prodrome and 2022 Postdrome, TCOD takes us on a fantastically dark journey through the depths of Maxspice’s post-sexual-assault despair. It’s a story steeped in metaphor, with Maxspice and each of her three collaborators on the record embodying specific thematic elements—William Ponturo’s guitar parts alternate as Spile and Fog, while Tyler Skoglund plays synth (Red Sky) and bucket (Bucket ), and Kalun Leung’s Trombone is the Sun. Maxspice herself plays electric guitar (Earth), glass harp (Water), korugaphone (Wind) and musical saw (Spirits), but her primary function is as narrator on the album, a role that allows her beautiful operatic voice to reverberate with an unearthly intensity. Whether it’s eerily subdued (as in “Dark and Endless Fog”) or unbridled and ecstatic (as in the climax of “Evaporate”), it exudes incredible power, crashing through the confines of Maxspice’s own creation like a river in a dam. — Raphael Helfand

Listen to it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

The last time I saw METZ was a decade ago, at a small dive in Chicago. It was an absolute smashing set, blown speakers and everyone getting nosebleeds in the pit like the good hardcore kids we were. METZ have since moved from pure anger to a more subtle display of emotion on their fifth studio album, Up on Gravity Hill. While there are still references to the noise and mayhem of their past, there’s also a soft authenticity to their acknowledgment of age. It’s oddly comforting when paired with lullaby-esque melodies on songs like “Light Your Way Home” or the psychedelic shoegaze influences of “No Reserving/Love Comes Crashing,” where feedback softens the edges of something that previously felt so abrasive. And with its focus on the juxtaposition of dark and light, Up on Gravity Hill will resonate with a once-angry child who is now an adult, filled with a newfound understanding of others and renewed hope. — Sandra Song

Listen to it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp