Best New Albums This Week: Swapmeet, Nia Archives, Tricky, Syd, Lido Pimienta, Steve Lacy, Hikii & Lawriii Craic, Hot Chip ...

Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.

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New Albums + EPs

Album of the week:

Swapmeet – Mount Zero

A new album from South Australian band Swapmeet, working in a scuzzy guitar-forward alt-rock slowcore register. Mount Zero is a strong pickup for anyone into the melodic fuzz end of the rock.

This is the band’s second album after their 2024 debut EP, released on LA-based label Winspear. In the spirit of their name, each band member traded instruments throughout with common themes throughout: first loves, first heartbreaks, first embarrassments, first disasters.

Playing Dublin in November too.

Lido Pimienta – Caribenya

“What if Enya went to the Caribbean and partied with my Black and brown friends, what would happen? How can I create a record that goes Enya-mode and doesn’t care about trends or fashion, or that doesn’t care about how I look?”

That’s how Colombian-Canadian artist Lido Pimienta pitched her new album Caribenya to The Guardian last week. Intriguing!

Caribenya is follow-up to 2020’s Polaris-nominated Miss Colombia (she won for her album La Papessa in 2017). Pimienta makes vivid, politically charged art-pop rooted in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous musical traditions, and her records are among the most singular in the wider Latin-alternative world.

Steve Lacy – Oh yeah?

The new album from the LA guitarist, producer and songwriter Steve Lacy, his first full-length since 2022’s breakthrough Gemini Rights and its inescapable single ‘Bad Habit’. Lacy built his name as the teenage prodigy of The Internet (hi Syd below) before turning solo stardom into one of the more interesting modern crossovers of guitar-pop, funk and bedroom R&B. Oh yeah? arrives with real weight of expectation after the commercial leap of its predecessor and guest spots from Erykah Badu and SZA.

Syd – Beard

The new album from Syd, the singer, producer and former frontperson of The Internet (hi Steve), her first solo full-length since 2022’s Broken Hearts Club. Syd remains one of the most distinctive voices in modern R&B, her productions built on space, restraint and a genuine ear for slow-burn intimacy. That her former Internet bandmate Steve Lacy releases his own record on the same day makes for a neat piece of scheduling.

Tricky – Different When It’s Silent

The new album from the Bristol trip-hop pioneer Tricky, extending one of the most restless and uncompromising catalogues in British music. More than 30 years on from Maxinquaye, Tricky has never stopped working, building a body of records rooted in murk, menace and a whispered intimacy entirely his own. Different When It’s Silent is a his first record in six years, after his daughter died suddenly in 2019.

Different When It’s Silent is mainly a collaboration with vocalist Mitch Sanders who sings on every song but with Tricky’s ghostly whispers never far away.

Nia Archives – emotional junglist

The second album from the Leeds-born, London-based producer, DJ and singer Nia Archives, the follow-up to 2024’s Mercury-nominated Silence Is Loud. Archives has done more than anyone of her generation to drag jungle back into the pop foreground, folding breakbeats, Britpop-sized hooks and a real songwriter’s heart into something wholly her own. Emotional Junglist extends that project, and confirms her as one of the defining British artists of the current moment. Jorja Smith and Sampha guest.

Yard Act – You’re Gonna Need A Little Music

The new album from the Leeds band Yard Act, the follow-up to 2024’s Where’s My Utopia? Yard Act have grown from post-punk talkers into a genuinely ambitious pop-facing proposition, folding funk, dance and studio experimentation into James Smith’s wry, watchful writing. The new record extends that widescreen turn.

hikii, lawriii craic – Natural Order

A new rap album from Bray rapper lawriii craic with production and beats by hikii known for his work with Curtisy on Beauty In The Beast and a multi-album partnership with Graham, and who starred as a rapper himself on 2025’s The Sad Clown.

Spotify only

Larry June – Who Coppin

The new album from the San Francisco rapper Larry June, one of the most prolific and reliably enjoyable voices in contemporary West Coast rap. June’s whole aesthetic is built on smooth, health-conscious, entrepreneurial cool, his records gliding along on warm soul-sampling production and his own unhurried flow. 

Cinder Well – A Blooming Body

The new album from Cinder Well, the project of Amelia Baker, the California-born, sometime County Clare-based songwriter who trades primarily in American folk. Baker’s records are hushed, haunted and deeply rooted in place, with her 2023 record Cadence drawing from time living and playing in the West of Ireland – that project features Cormac from Lankum on it.

 A Blooming Body expands in a cinematic direction on those Appalachian folk traditions and comes in the wake of her original theme song and score for the hit BBC TV series Small Prophets.

Eartheater – Heavenly Body: If I’m The Bottle You’re The Message

The new album from NYC-based Alexandra Drewchin’s experimental pop project Eartheater, Eartheater’s work moves between fractured electronics, orchestral drama and a genuinely otherworldly vocal presence, and her records reward patience and repeated listening. The new album continues an art-pop project that keeps finding new corners to explore.

Hot Chip – The Warning (20th Anniversary Edition)

A 20th anniversary reissue of Hot Chip’s 2006 breakthrough The Warning, the record that gave the world ‘Over and Over’ and ‘Boy from School’ and confirmed the London group as one of the smartest pop-facing electronic bands of their generation. Reissued alongside expanded editions of Made In The Dark and One Life Stand, it is a chance to revisit a catalogue that has aged beautifully.

Also released this week

• Dry Cleaning – Secret Love (Deluxe version)
• Hot Chip – The Warning (20th Anniversary Edition)
• Juno! – lost album
• Kasabian – Act III
• Lido Pimienta – Caribenya
• New Order – (The Best of & The Rest of) New Order
• The Waterboys – Atlantic Rain: The Lost Fisherman’s Blues Recordings
• Ludwig Göransson – The Odyssey Soundtrack