Here’s a curated selection of recommended new releases out today, including new albums and EPs on DSPs and physical releases in record shops this week.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums
Kneecap release their third album- a Dan Carey-produced hour of acid house, dubstep, hip-hop noir and rave-rap that arrives having been through the fire and emerged stronger for it. We reviewed it in full here. Octo Octa marks a decade since coming out as trans with Sigils For Survival, an album conceived as a spell. Modern Woman release their long-awaited debut Johnny’s Dreamworld on One Little Independent – an art-rock record we’ve been tracking single by single. Super Furry Animals reissue the Welsh-language EPs that started it all on Precreation Percolation, timed to their first tour in a decade. Jump Source – Patrick Holland and Priori – deliver a debut LP Fold on NAFF that may be one of the year’s sharpest electronic albums. And from Cobh, Rua Rí releases his quietly essential debut Tell Your Mother I Saved Your Life on Soft Boy Records.
Album of the week:
Kneecap – FENIAN (Heavenly Recordings)
Kneecap’s new album arrives forged in legal battles, cancelled tours and scrapped recordings, and Dan Carey’s production gives it a darker, more spacious sound than anything they’ve made before.
The third album from the Belfast-Derry trio of Mo Chara, Mógláí Bap and DJ Próvaí arrives having been through everything – a terrorism charge against Mo Chara (later dismissed), the loss of their US visa sponsor following pro-Palestine statements at Coachella 2025, a cancelled North American tour, a scrapped first version of the album they were dissatisfied with – and comes out the other side sounding like none of that broke them….
Octo Octa – Sigils For Survival (T4T LUV NRG)
The fourth album from New Hampshire producer Maya Bouldry-Morrison, released yesterday via her own T4T LUV NRG label is grade A dance music. The record marks a decade since Maya publicly came out as transgender in November 2015, and it is explicitly autobiographical – eight tracks conceived as a spell. For each one, Maya drew a personal sigil: a handmade symbol intended to bind magic to the song and seal its intention. These drawings were incorporated into the album’s artwork by her sister, the New York artist Hope Morrison, whose paintings translate each sigil’s energy into vivid form. The physical edition design was laid out by João Ervedosa.
“Sigils For Survival is my attempt to encapsulate the intentions and techniques that I used to move through life into a spell,” Maya says. Created entirely on hardware instruments and later mixed in Logic, the album maintains the feel of MIDI-clock drift and off-grid recording to preserve a human, tactile quality. It builds on the nocturnal acid, house and breakbeat terrain of Resonant Body while pushing deeper into texture and spaciousness. Maya often writes sigils on her vinyl records before playing them in a DJ set; the practice runs all the way through this record as a through-line of intention and ritual.
Jump Source – Fold (NAFF Recordings)
The debut album from Montreal electronic duo Jump Source – Patrick Holland (FKA Project Pablo) and Francis Latreille (Priori) – out yesterday on their NAFF label. Holland and Latreille met in Montreal after Holland relocated from the first wave of the Canadian house boom of the 2010s; they built a studio together and have since become one of the most reliable production teams in the underground, writing and producing for James K., Maara, Car Culture and Tiga’s HOTLIFE. Fold is their most ambitious project: echoing the electronic LP boom of the early 2000s while balancing peak-hour anthems with an anything-goes pop sensibility.
The guest list spans billy woods and Nick León on ‘Empty Bars’; Helena Deland on ‘Shattered’ and the title track (the latter with CFCF); Deaton Chris Anthony on ‘Fade City’; BEA1991 on ‘Endlessly’; Loukeman on ‘Affect’; Japanese trip-hop artist POiSON GiRL FRiEND on closer ‘Close’. Moving fluidly between candy-glossed hooks, folktronic balladry, club techno and unexpected rap turns.
Modern Woman – Johnny’s Dreamworld (One Little Independent Records)
The debut album from the London art-rock outfit fronted by primary songwriter Sophie Harris. Harris met violinist and composer David Denyer, who brought a background in experimental composition; Juan Brint-Gutiérrez joined on bass and saxophone, Adam Blackhurst on drums; producer Joel Burton (Naima Bock, Katy J Pearson, Vanishing Twin) helped realise the live immediacy Harris had always been building toward.
The record explores what Harris calls “the strange poetry buried within the ordinary” – dream logic, fantasy and lived experience filtered through a literary precision shaped by admiration for Björk, Sinéad O’Connor and Cat Power.
Nialler9 has featured three singles from the album – ‘Dashboard Mary’, ‘Neptune Girl’, and the title track – and each one has confirmed Modern Woman as a band with breakout potential in the mould of English Teacher before them, yet there is a more overt pop style in the vein of The Last Dinner Party at play also. On the title track, Harris is more lupine than ever, with a knowledge of post-punk tension coming through the music – it has that early PJ Harvey instant ignition feel.
Rua Rí – Tell Your Mother I Saved Your Life (Soft Boy Records)
The debut album from Rua Rí – Cobh singer-songwriter Seán Damery – produced by Kean Kavanagh and out today on Soft Boy Records. Rooted in specific places – Cobh, Cork, nearby fields and familiar streets – and in the emotions those places hold. We covered his announcement back in March; the singles that have come since, ‘Johnny Workman’ and ‘Makeover’, have confirmed him as one of the most distinctive voices in Irish folk right now.
A track-by-track lands later today.
Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Myles O’Reilly – Mise Tusa (Claddagh Records)
The third collaborative album from Kíla co-founder and poet Rónán Ó Snodaigh and filmmaker and composer Myles O’Reilly. Their work lives at the meeting point of story, song and soundscape – informed by tradition and experimentation equally, and guided by a shared instinct for atmosphere, restraint and emotional honesty.
The album completes an arc across their three records. Tá Go Maith was inward and cocooned – made for isolated listening during COVID. A Beautiful Road turned outward, becoming a communal gathering. Mise Tusa – meaning “Me You” – arrives as ceremony: sound as ritual, rhythm as collective ascent. Much of the material consists of covers – songs Rónán has been carrying around for decades, including Ger Wolfe’s ‘Crackling Radio’ (a regular soundcheck companion), something from the Seán Ó Riada mass, and a poem written by his mother. Available via Claddagh Records; metallic gold vinyl and CD at The Record Hub.
American Football – American Football (LP4) (Polyvinyl Record Co.)
The fourth self-titled album from the Illinois math-rock and emo quartet of Mike Kinsella, Nate Kinsella, Steve Holmes and Steve Lamos – their first in nearly seven years, and by all accounts their most sonically ambitious. Produced by Sonny DiPerri. The band overhauled their writing and recording processes for it. “We’ve gotten nothing but better at writing songs. We worked together way better than we ever had before. This album is a leap of faith, musically, but I’m proud of us for being ambitious enough to try something different,” says Mike Kinsella.
Lead single ‘Bad Moons’ runs over eight minutes – originally written as two separate tracks, the combined version builds through layers of dissonant, emotional intensity in a way that recalls the best of their debut while reaching somewhere new. Second single ‘No Feeling’ features Brendan Yates of Turnstile; ‘Blood on My Blood’ features Caithlin De Marrais of Rainer Maria; ‘Wake Her Up’ features Wisp. LP4 faces grief, compromise and the hard-won perspective of middle age – music that has grown alongside its audience rather than trading on nostalgia for the house on the first album’s cover. World tour from May through August, with European dates to follow.
Super Furry Animals – Precreation Percolation (Strangetown Records)
A compilation of out-of-print rarities from the earliest era of the Cardiff psychedelic icons, timed to coincide with their summer tour dates – their first since late 2016. The vinyl version compiles the tracks from their two earliest EPs, both originally released on the Welsh indie Ankst label in 1995: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space) and Moog Droog. The CD version goes further with 22 tracks including unreleased and unheard bonus material from the same early era. Gatefold CD with booklet.
These recordings predate the record deal that would produce ‘God! Show Me Magic’ and ‘Hangin’ With Howard Marks’, and capture the band mid-chaos – two years of gigging that began with a legendary 1993 debut at Bangor University. Essential archaeology for SFA devotees, and a timely reminder of where one of the great Welsh bands began. Tour dates this summer include Llangollen, Bristol, York, Glasgow, London and Dublin next Wednesday.
Isaiah Rashad – IT’S BEEN AWFUL (Top Dawg Entertainment)
The fourth studio album from the Chattanooga rapper and TDE signee, arriving five years after The House Is Burning – a gap that has become something of a recurring pattern for Rashad, who took a similarly long break before that album too. The title is not exactly subtle about what that time has involved. IT’S BEEN AWFUL is the sound of someone working through recovery and introspection with unflinching honesty – blending Rashad’s signature laid-back flows and elastic jazz-rap sensibility with some of the most vulnerable lyricism of his career. TDE’s long-suffering fanbase will find it worth the wait.
Seefeel – Sol.Hz (Warp)
The first full-length album in 15 years from the London quartet – Mark Clifford, Sarah Peacock, Justin Fletcher and Daren Seymour – who were famously the first guitar band signed to Warp and remain one of the most singular things the label has ever released. Nine tracks, building directly on the ground mapped by their 2024 mini-album Squared Roots. The album title translates literally as sun plus electricity; the exact interpretation is deliberately left open.
This is, in essence, their dub album. At low volume, the arrangements are ambient-adjacent – cloud-like, vaporous, dissolving. At proper volume through a real sound system, the cavernous bass undertow and the depth of the effects processing become fully apparent, messing with your perception of time and audio placement in ways that recall the best of the Warp catalogue.
White Flowers – Dreams For Somebody Else (The state51 Conspiracy)
The second album from Preston duo Joey Cobb and Katie Drew, produced by Hot Chip and LCD’s Al Doyle alongside the band.
Dreams For Somebody Else expands on the dark-hued dream pop of their debut, channelling the structure and catharsis of dance music into repetitive song forms, with Cocteau Twins and early 4AD as the clearest touchstones. Cobb and Drew’s overlapping vocals float above shuffling percussion with the production is deep and bright in equal measure.
Video Blue – Eyes On Sticks
The fourth album from Bray-based musician Jim O’Donoghue Martin, recorded in Bray and Hackney. The title comes from a line on the record: “…all I wanted was art, with my eyes on sticks watching Euro ’96…” Contributions from Gavin Murray of Trick Mist, art historian Evie May Hatch, Dave Phelan (Low Fidelity Section) doing poetry on ‘Hydra’, and Gökhan Demirdöğmez on clarinet. Lead single ‘Exhibition Wine’ is a stream-of-consciousness word association paired with an airy synth backdrop.
Blue Niall – Oisín Tape 2: CÚMHA EP
Released today on Bealtaine, marking the start of summer, the second chapter of Dublin rapper, artist and Irish language activist Blue Niall’s multimedia project OISÍN. CÚMHA means grief, longing, homesickness in Irish; the EP retells the myth of Oisín, who follows Niamh to Tír na nÓg and returns centuries later to find the Ireland he loved utterly transformed. In this version, he leaves on a Ryanair plane.
I featured ‘Every Single Venue Got Bought Out’ yesterday.
Mac Giolla Ghunna – Mac Giolla Ghunna
The eponymous debut album from Pól Mac Giolla Ghunna (Paul Gilgunn), assembled across several years between Dublin and the Ox Mountains in the West of Ireland. Ten tracks moving across electronic, post-minimalist and avant-rock forms – shapeshifting beat-driven pieces with avant-garde tunings, ambient minimalism layered with no wave abrasion and noise, and voices and sounds drawn from Irish folk tradition. Collaborators and fellow travellers over the years include Hans Joachim-Roedelius, Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham and Jennifer Walshe. Named Album of the Week on Bernard Clarke’s Blue of the Night on RTÉ Lyric FM.
The Kilkenny Electroacoustic Research Laboratory – Anthology Vol. 3: The Stray Sod (Miúin)
The third and final volume of the Kilkenny Electroacoustic Research Laboratory Anthology, out today on Miúin – the Kilkenny experimental music label run by composer Neil Quigley. The anthology documents the work of an ongoing fictional research and performance collective exploring electroacoustic and experimental sound; this closing volume arrives as something of a tome, with an accompanying book. The title ‘The Stray Sod’ references the Irish folk concept of the “fóid seachrain” – a patch of enchanted ground that causes a person to lose their way and wander, confused, unable to find familiar paths.
Bucket – Mosaic EP
The second EP from Dublin experimental noise-rock trio Bucket: guitarist/vocalist Cian Dahdouh, bassist Emmet McNamee and drummer Korey Thomas (Bricknasty). Produced by the band alongside James Eager (Lankum, The Scratch), recorded at Transmission Rooms in Longford and Camden Studios in Dublin. Five tracks: ‘56345’, ‘DNB’, ‘Nonsense’, ‘Nails’, ‘Memento’.
The EP unfolds as a series of interior monologues from fictional narrators grappling with paranoia, mania, trauma and obsessive behaviour. “I liked the idea of these different perspectives forming a bigger picture, like a mosaic,” Dahdouh says. “I found it interesting to think anyone around you could be having thoughts like this and you’d never know.” Builds on their 2025 debut EP Muck, adding heavier electronic elements and more ambitious shape-shifting structures. Playing ArcTanGent, FOCUS Wales and Sniester Festival this summer.
$ONA BLU€ – BLU€’s Heartbreak EP
The debut EP from $ONA BLU€, a Sri Lankan-born, Dublin-based independent artist. Eight tracks built around what she calls “the Inevitable Demise of Love” – the story of a relationship told from the other end, falling out rather than falling in. Compiled from new material alongside singles ‘Ice and Blues’ and ‘Adore You’, . Launched with a listening party at The Playground in D12 last night.
Spotify/Apple Music/iTunes/YT only
Delivery Service – five songs EP (Blowtorch Records)
Debut EP from Dublin indie rock quartet Becca Daly, Ashley Abbedeen, Ciara O’Neill and Niall Thornton aka Delivery Service, recorded and mixed by Aaron Corcoran (Skinner) and mastered by Jamie Hyland of M(h)aol. Five tracks of DIY guitar pop written from the female perspective, rooted in 90s grunge and the riot grrrl movement – layered vocal harmonies, playful synths and distorted guitars. FFO Belly, The Breeders, Le Tigre. Available on streaming and on 12” vinyl via Spindizzy Records and Blowtorch Records.
bbft – bbft EP
Debut EP from Dublin duo bbft – five tracks including previously released singles ‘Caravan of Despair’, ‘FLOWEREMOJI’ and ‘DOG’ alongside new tracks ‘GUNEMOJI’ and ‘cherry’. Born out of years of honing their live set: jungle techno, pumping noisy dance tracks with downtuned guitars and euphoric trance packed into a short, sharp debut. Supporting CHALK in Glasgow, Button Factory Dublin and Belfast next month.
Donnacha Costello (as Jayrod) – Life at Groom Lake
Dublin electronic musician Donnacha Costello – one of the most significant figures in Irish electronic music, with releases on Minimise, Minimuse, Truesoul and his own lauded catalogue going back two decades – drops an unreleased album today on Bandcamp Friday under his Jayrod alias. Recorded in the late 1990s and sitting in the archive ever since, Life at Groom Lake captures Costello at the very start of his practice: techno and house from the era when he was first developing the exacting, hypnotic approach that would define his later work. A Bandcamp-only release / Not yet online.
Tori Amos – In Times of Dragons (Universal/Fontana)
The 18th studio album from the North Carolina pianist and songwriter, and one of the most ambitious things she has made since Scarlet’s Walk in 2002. The concept: a woman who imagines marrying a dangerous, power-hungry billionaire and then narrates her escape. Allegorical, pointed, rooted in the present political moment, and entirely committed to the premise throughout.
duendita – existential thottie (10k Projects)
The fifth project from Queens-born, Berlin-based Candace Lee Camacho, out April 29th on 10k Projects. Twelve tracks, 18 minutes – brief, dense, and entirely on its own terms. The first album Camacho produced entirely herself: “these songs started with me, sometimes just me and my Digitakt, alone, late nights and early mornings, pure expression. Maybe this project is for me, more than for anyone else.” Collaborators came later – harpist Samantha Feliciano, drummers Julian Berann and Anton Remy, co-producer Noah Becker. Low-fidelity textures, gospel-influenced vocal layers, jazz, soul and experimental electronic production, moving between breakups, sex, situationships and the state mental health system with equal specificity. The body is always named:
Yassine Nana – Yassine: Modern Pop from Mauritania (1984–1987) (Bongo Joe/Sofa Records)
An archival compilation bringing together eight tracks recorded between 1984 and 1989 by Yassine Nana and his group, now reissued by the Swiss label Bongo Joe alongside Sofa Records. Yassine is a central figure of one of Mauritania’s most respected musical families – the Ahl Nana, who transformed the folk music of the Sahara into a more cosmopolitan, modern form by introducing electric guitars and Western instruments. These recordings capture that transformation at its most exploratory: drum machines, synthesisers and electric guitars integrated into Saharan melodic structures, with reggae, soul and new wave all filtering through. Lyrics in Hassaniya and classical Arabic; themes of love, travel, exile and music itself.
Recorded in Mauritania and during stays in Paris and Rabat, then originally released on cassette and confined to local circulation for 40 years. A rare window into African popular music of the period as seen from Nouakchott.
Also released this week
- Anish Kumar – AK Cuts: Vol. 3
- Calibre – Tricklemore Sea
- Daniel Avery – Tremor (Deluxe Edition)
- Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People
- Jesca Hoop – Long Wave Home
- Josephine Foster – Adormidera
- Lip Critic – Theft World
- Maya Hawke – MAITREYA CORSO
- The Black Keys – Peaches!
- Weird Nightmare – Hoopla
- Various Artists – Corsica Forever
- Various Artists – The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Music From The Motion Picture)
Previous New Albums features:
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
