Belfast-born Ciarán, formerly Bearface of BROCKHAMPTON, is our album of the week with his Ninja Tune debut Róisín. Shygirl returns with her second album, Skepta delivers his first solo record since 2019, La Roux is back after six years and Django Django and Kings of Leon both turn inward. Party Dozen, Chastity Belt, Katie Gregson-MacLeod, Steven Wilson and Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch also have new albums, while Westerman leads the EPs.
It’s a busy week for Irish releases too, with albums from Oisín Mod, Travy, how r u, Ryan Vail, Caitlín Nic Gabhann, NN Minus, Mark Garry, Flynn Johnson, Eoghan Daly and New Jackson, plus EPs from Bricknasty and cosign. See the full list in our 2026 Irish album releases.
This week’s releases
Album of the week
Ciarán – Róisín
Belfast-born, New York-based multi-instrumentalist Ciarán was Bearface in BROCKHAMPTON until the group disbanded in 2022, and Róisín on Ninja Tune is his first full-length since. It runs to 13 tracks, shaped with collaborators including James Ivy, Roy Blair and D Chae.
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The title, the Irish name meaning ‘little rose’, was once destined to be his middle name, and the album marks him reclaiming a first name he was hesitant to use. “People learn how to pronounce difficult names all the time. Irish names are beautiful,” he says.
The vibe of the record is mostly an introspective close-mic nebulous falsetto R&B album in the vein of Dijon and Mk.Gee. Previewed by ‘K-Bar’ and the five-minute ‘Galvarino’, it’s a record where guitars, distorted vocals and dreamy chords collide. A patient, genre-free solo arrival from a member of one of the defining groups of the last decade.
Recommended albums out now
Skepta – The Fork and Knife
Grime figurehead Skepta returns with his first solo album since 2019’s Ignorance Is Bliss, out via his own Big Smoke label with Epic Records. Across 15 tracks he moves between grime, garage, house and jungle, drawing on decades spent in sound systems, clubs and raves, with guests including JME, Novelist, Asake and Aya Nakamura. Identity is the core theme: being British, the son of Nigerian immigrants, and treating the diaspora experience as a source of strength. A long-promised return from one of UK rap’s defining voices.
Travy – B4YFLA
Dublin rapper Travy, of the Gliders collective and the first Irish rapper to land two No.1 albums in Ireland with Elzzz, follows his 2025 solo mixtape SPOOKY with a 10-track project on Tape Records. It caps a year that brought ‘DID IT AGAIN’ with Fred again.. and Elzzz and shows in Beijing and Shanghai. He calls it “a collection of songs I’ve put together while working on my baby YFLA”, and says he has recorded more than 300 songs since January, with singles ‘Keep Up’ and ‘GTA 6’ leading the way. He launches it at the Hoxton Hotel in Dublin on Saturday November 7th. A prolific Irish rapper showing where he’s at right now.
Party Dozen – 21 Bum Salute
Sydney noise-rock-pop duo Party Dozen, saxophonist and vocalist Kirsty Tickle and drummer and producer Jonathan Boulet, return with their fifth album via City Slang with influences from ESG and Bikini Kill. Recorded, mixed and mastered entirely by the pair in their tiny Marrickville room, it condenses years of jams and loops into just over half an hour, from punky opener ‘Special Unit’ to the gurning ‘Euro Stomper’ – a chest-baring squad car chase of a song – and swaggering ‘Full Powers’. “This album is kind of putting a middle finger up and waving at someone with a smile at the same time,” says Tickle.
Ryan Vail – After Hours
Derry-based electronic artist and producer Ryan Vail, who made the Borders album with Elma Orkestra, returns with his fifth full-length studio album. Drawing on more than 20 years in and around dance music, from late-night clubs and live shows to the atmosphere of the dancefloor, its nine tracks fold those influences into his own world of live instrumentation, vintage synths and electronic production. He launches it with a live show at a secret-location Sound of Belfast party.
Vinyl and previews on Elastic Stage.
Sufjan Stevens – Worst Christmas Ever!
Sufjan Stevens has been making Christmas music since 2001, when the songs began as homemade gifts for friends and family, and this holiday compilation on Asthmatic Kitty distils more than 100 recordings from the box sets Songs for Christmas and Silver & Gold into 15 essentials. Fan favourites ‘Sister Winter’, ‘Put The Lights On The Tree’ and ‘That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!’ are all here, alongside ‘On This Christmas (It Only Gets Better)’, his first new Christmas song in nearly 15 years. “I love the idea of a Christmas apology,” he says. An ideal way into his sprawling festive catalogue.
New Jackson – Live Ones
David Kitt, as New Jackson, gathers the music that has powered his live sets in recent years onto vinyl for the first time (some previously released digitally), pairing reworks and remixes of older material with newer tracks and a dance cover of REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’. Rory Sweeney, Rita Lynn and long-term collaborator Richie ‘Jape’ Egan all contribute, and the sleeve uses Rich Gilligan’s photography from a New Jackson show at The Button Factory.
Shygirl – Swallow!
South London’s Shygirl follows her 2022 debut Nymph with a second album on Because Music that she calls “a reintroduction”. Written in the rush of falling in love, it weaves indie songwriting through the club electronica she came from, with longtime collaborator Karma Kid going maximalist and Casey MQ fine-tuning the delicate moments. Singles ‘Alyse’, ‘Lucky (Hymn)’ and ‘Mantra’ arrived with cinematic videos built around recurring characters, while closer ‘Eternal’ takes her voice somewhere ethereal. A bold, romantic swerve that keeps her electronic roots intact.
Katie Gregson-MacLeod – Albatross
The Scottish Highlands songwriter, who broke through in 2022 with ‘complex’ and earned an Ivor Novello nomination, releases her debut album on Matt Maltese’s Last Recordings on Earth, after leaving her major-label deal and moving home to rebuild her relationship with songwriting. Recorded live over two weeks with a close-knit band, its title comes from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: a record about wanting, and the weight of getting what you asked for. “It’s easy to romanticise and inflate something that was never really within your grasp,” she says. Tender, fully realised folk-pop. She plays Dublin in February.
Kings of Leon – O My Beloved
The Followill family band’s 10th studio album is out on their own LoveTap Records through Virgin, and it’s the first they’ve produced themselves. It moves towards more personal, acoustic songwriting built on family and childhood stories that once seemed insignificant. Caleb Followill says the words for lead single ‘My Whole World’ “were just coming out”, and that the band had wanted to make a record like this for years: “We finally got to do it on album 10.” They play 3Arena on June 22nd and 23rd 2027. A stripped-back turn from the Nashville band.
La Roux – Old Flames
Elly Jackson’s fourth album as La Roux, and her first since 2020’s Supervision, arrives on Vertigo, composed, written, produced and arranged entirely by herself. It deals with the end of a 17-year relationship, forbidden love and the pressure of working out sexuality and identity in public, while ‘Lose Myself’ looks back on years of weed dependency. “Old Flames is essentially me processing why I’ve behaved the way that I have and saying goodbye to it,” she says. Candid, sun-kissed synth-pop from a pop original.
Django Django – Doveland
The London-based quartet of Dave Maclean, Jim Dixon, Vincent Neff and Tommy Grace return on Hamburg label Clouds Hill with a record made over long sessions in the German countryside and the Scottish Highlands. The title comes from an online urban myth about a vanished midwest town that appears on no map, and that search for an impossible place drives these songs, which also carry the grief of Maclean losing his sister and Dixon his father during its making. Hak Baker and Max Pope guest. “It’s taken me until the age of 46 for us to make a ‘grown-up’ record,” says Maclean. They play the Button Factory in Dublin on March 6th 2027.
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch – Bocca di Lupo / Mouth of the Wolf
Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem and filmmaker and musician Jim Jarmusch, collaborators for nearly two decades, return on Sacred Bones with a pair of albums recorded in July 2025 at Fonoprint Studios on Bologna’s Via Bocca di Lupo. The first opens with a new take on the title theme from Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and features Courtney Barnett on the fuzzed-out ‘Never Like You Said’, while Mouth of the Wolf holds two long, “darkly ecstatic” instrumentals for two electric guitars. Slow-burning, drone-laced music for the late hours.
Dawuna – Love’s Arp
Dawuna is the project of Baltimore-based, first-generation Ugandan-American artist Ian Mugerwa, and this is his first album for True Panther. Written and produced at home, it draws on traditional East African rhythms, vintage gospel and DIY sound design informed by house and techno, with Heba Kadry mastering. Many of the songs are about a woman named Love, and the arrangements get knottier as the record unfolds. Glitchy, layered neo-soul with cascading falsetto harmonies to sink into.
Bassvictim – PEACE + WAR
London duo Maria Manow and Ike Clateman follow their 2025 debut Forever with a sprawling 19-track second album on VOTB. It swings back towards blown-out bass bombs while keeping the vulnerability of their recent EP, from ‘White Flag’, their heaviest bass track yet, to the Polish-language blast ‘Jagódki (Blueberries)’. They make their Irish debut at Opium in Dublin on Sunday November 15th. Chaotic, bruised club pop.
George Michael – The Faith Tour
Recorded in 1988 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy, during the European leg of his first solo tour when he was 24, The Faith Tour gathers 18 previously unreleased live recordings. Alongside Faith-era hits ‘Father Figure’, ‘One More Try’ and ‘Monkey’ and Wham!’s ‘Everything She Wants’ and ‘I’m Your Man’, it includes covers of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Love’s In Need Of Love Today’, LaBelle’s ‘Lady Marmalade’ and Wild Cherry’s ‘Play That Funky Music’. The tour ran to 109 concerts across 16 countries, and a concert film of the same name is heading to cinemas. A vivid snapshot of a pop star at full stretch.
Flynn Johnson – THE GREEN BOX THEORY: FRIDAY EDITION
Dublin 15 rapper Flynn Johnson completes his 2025 debut concept album with seven new recordings, stretching it to 19 tracks on Golden Éire Records. The original mapped growing up in Whitestown around the green electricity box on his estate, and this edition finally reaches the Friday-night gathering teased in its opening moments, with Nealo, Rebel Phoenix, Mango, Wallfella, Nucentz and Rach among the guests and hikii producing ‘DANCIN’ IN THE DARK’. “This is how the story should end. At the green box, celebrating with my crew,” he says. He launches it at The Playground HQ in Dublin on Saturday November 21st.
Caitlín Nic Gabhann – An Ciúnas
The second solo album from Ashbourne, Co. Meath concertina player and dancer Caitlín Nic Gabhann (also of Caitlín & Ciarán) is her first solo studio record since 2012, when her debut was named Tradconnect’s CD of the Year. The title means “the stillness” or “the quiet”, and the former Riverdance performer and three-time All-Ireland concertina champion built it around a 120-year-old concertina with a lower, mellower tone, recording with Trevor Hutchinson at Marguerite Studios around school runs and family life.
Mark Kelly (Altan), Seán Óg Graham (Beoga), Graham Henderson and Frankie, Rosie and Conal Ó Maonaigh join her on tunes learned from her father Antóin Mac Gabhann and new pieces by Liz Carroll and others. “At its heart, it is an album about finding calm within the beautiful chaos of everyday life,” she says.
Computerwife – Born From A Wish
Computerwife is Atlanta-raised, New York-based musician Addie Warncke, and her second album, out on Danger Collective, follows her 2023 self-titled LP. Produced by Ethan Williams of shower curtain, who with bandmate Victoria Winter helped whittle down some 30 demos, it’s a melodic indie rock record of fuzzy shoegaze and 90s alt-rock textures, with computer beats still poking through. “I sound so much younger, and definitely more lost,” she says of hearing it back. Hazy, hooky guitar pop with plenty of heart.
Eoghan Daly – Rural Gap
Blessington, Co. Wicklow singer-songwriter Eoghan Daly, who has played shows supporting Junior Brother, Rua Rí and David Keenan, releases his debut album on his own Gaelic Park label, all at once and with no singles. Its 12 DIY tracks were recorded in his bedroom at his parents’ house between September 2025 and February 2026, then mastered by Ben Rawlins. Focus track ‘Capuchin Monks of Rathdrum’ turns the 2023 escape of a monkey from a Wicklow sanctuary into a comic fable of monastic lost faith, ‘The Black Hill Boogie’ is a DIY Europop banger, and ‘Angelus on Copper Pipes’ is played on piping salvaged from a broken shower at home. An oddball and very local debut, with a tour to follow in spring 2027.
Eterna – Push
Eterna is the project of Spanish-born, London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Guillem Peeters, and this third album, on section1, follows Wardrove and Debunker. Moving away from the density of those records, its nine tracks lean on restraint, with stripped-back arrangements, longer forms and silence used as part of the structure. “Silence for me means, ‘I am not in a rush,'” he says. ‘Kyrie’ bursts out of distortion into woozy, detuned guitars. A patient, absorbing record best heard in one sitting.
how r u – don’t let your light go out
how r u is the slowcore project of Thom Southern, based on the north coast near Belfast, whose breakout ‘need some rest’ has passed three million streams. Self-produced at Black Bay Studio on the Isle of Lewis, this nine-track album fills out the bedroom sound with warm acoustic guitars, hazy textures and full-band arrangements. Written through a growing interest in mindfulness and meditation, its songs turn simple phrases into mantras and find hope in heartbreak without romanticising sadness. He plays Bello Bar in Dublin on Sunday December 6th.
Ane Brun – I Thought We Were The Same
The Norwegian singer-songwriter returns with her first newly written songs since the twin 2020 albums How Beauty Holds the Hand of Sorrow and After the Great Storm, out on her Balloon Ranger label through BMG. She calls it her most personal work, an album about trust and betrayal that also leans more pop, with guests including ARY on single ‘Hold Me’, Röyksopp and Emilie Nicolas. “It’s extraordinary that we continue to trust each other, knowing it can be broken at any moment,” she says. A welcome, bolder return.
Johnny & Lillie Flynn – Beam Cottage
Folk singer-songwriter and actor Johnny Flynn teams up with his sister Lillie for their first album together, out on Transgressive and produced by Charlie Andrew (alt-J, Marika Hackman). It’s named after the rented cottage in the south of England where they lived as children: “The years at Beam Cottage feel like an idyll of happiness and togetherness.” Johnny wrote ‘The Ghost of O’Donahue’ in Ireland, and it features South African vocal group The Joy. A warm, nostalgic sibling folk record.
Mark Garry – Notes Gifted to Time
Visual artist and musician Mark Garry, whose installations have shown at IMMA, the Serpentine and White Box in New York, makes his second release for Irish label Bluestack Records, and the first made entirely of his own compositions. Its seven pieces adapt a text by philosopher Mick O’Hara, written after both men had lost a parent, on grief, time and mourning, with Donegal singer Carol Anne McGowan’s voice drifting through ambient electronics. Garry describes music as something “invisible and ephemeral but profoundly felt”. One for slow, meditative listening.
NN Minus – Liquid Cowboy
Formed in Donegal and now based between Berlin and Gdynia, NN Minus is the neo-no-wave duo of Berghain Nights author Liam Cagney and sound designer Emmet O’Donnell. Their debut sets electronic beats against roaring guitars to probe late-2020s magical thinking, the rural Irish sublime and alienated masculinity, from the exploited worker of ‘Company Man’ to the MDMA-hazed Dublin after-party of ‘Joyce Error’. Lead track ‘Music Is My Life’ nods to the VHS glow of MTV’s Chillout Zone and 120 Minutes. Weird, colourful and unapologetic about it.
Boys Noize – 7LLVSION
German-Iraqi producer Alex Ridha’s eighth solo album, and his first in five years, is on his own ONES and ZEROS label. It follows a big run: a world tour with Nine Inch Nails, co-producing the TRON: Ares soundtrack, and the Nine Inch Noize album and Coachella debut. Guests include Brutalismus 3000 on ‘Nächstenliebe’, Dutch rave agitator ZEP on the EBM-driven ‘1+1+1’, plus TAICHU, Mayah Alkhateri and ABRA. A raw, analogue rave record.
Chastity Belt – All My Friends
Seattle quartet Chastity Belt mark 15 years together with their sixth album, out on Suicide Squeeze. Recorded across several years and studios, including a centuries-old house on the Greek island of Hydra, the songs kept circling back to friendship, something longtime engineer Samur Khouja pointed out during mixing. With the members now split between LA, Seattle and Chicago, much of it was worked out in the studio, giving a rawer feel closer to their roots. “My top priority has largely been my friends, which I do not regret at all,” says drummer Gretchen Grimm. A warm, wry ode to the ties that last.
Oisín Mod – Canary
Galway-born, Dublin-based songwriter Oisín Mod links with Bill Ryder-Jones for his second album, made in 12 days with drummer Phil Murphy after a month spent writing in a rundown house in West Cork. Where 2022 debut Honeycomb traded in sea-mist melancholy, these ten songs head somewhere murkier and more nocturnal, fed by Twin Peaks, John Healy’s memoir The Grass Arena and Rowland S. Howard. Ryder-Jones urged him to make a record “with a pair of shoulders”, and it shows, from the panicked throb of ‘Stained Glass House’ to the rueful closer ‘When The Heat Dies Down’.
EPs out today
Bricknasty – forever EP
Dublin collective Bricknasty follow 2025’s AIM-nominated BLACKS LAW with a seven-track EP on FAMM, written in a few weeks. After North American tours and slots at All Points East and Forbidden Fruit, the songs were built with the live room in mind, pulling dance, R&B, trad folk, jazz and hip hop into bigger choruses, with Dove Ellis featuring on ‘G unit’. “Before, we made it rocket science, but it’s not rocket science,” says Fatboy. Their most direct release yet, and it suits them.
cosign – This Is What It Feels Like EP
cosign is the project of Belfast artist and producer Martha Greer, and her second EP, out on Our House Online (Freak Slug, shortstraw), is again co-produced with Chris W. Ryan (NewDad, Just Mustard). It pulses with arps, vocoders and rich harmonies across five tracks including ‘Too Far For What’, ‘I Dance With Someone’ and new single ‘2 B U’. “This EP represents a massive leap forward for me technically,” she says. She plays Other Voices in Dingle later this month. Moody, melodic indie-electronica that keeps getting sharper.
Westerman – Reception
Athens-based songwriter Will Westerman returns to Partisan with four new songs conceived as a companion to 2025’s A Jackal’s Wedding, and issued alongside that album as a 15-track set. Produced by Marta Salogni, they were recorded in winter in an unheated building on an island in Lake Iseo with snow falling outside. “These songs can be heard as photo negatives of the songs on that record,” he says.
Also released today
- Alanis Morissette – Good Weather for Immaculate Conception
- circle round a sphere – technology, and other problems
- Dove Cameron – FINAL GIRL
- Florence + The Machine – Everybody Scream Tour Live
- Graceless – Graceless EP
- Johnluke – Comical Romance: Volume Two EP
- Natalie Bergman – I Killed A North American Songbird EP
- Oso Oso – exchange of information
- Royal Blood – Dead Company
- Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 – Na Dem
- Twisted Teens – The Holy Cross Tigers
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.
