New Music Friday: Stream new projects from Nailah Hunter, Marika Hackman, @, and more

The Los Angeles-based Hunter is a professional harpist and a devotee of the instrument since her childhood who, since she began releasing music in 2019, has displayed a deep awareness of the power of sound. On her excellent 2020 EP Spells, Hunter plucked and strummed her instrument with care and intention, and with the understanding that creating sound changes the atmosphere. But her music has never centered the instrument, instead taking cues from its inherently fantastical nature — even the shape of the instrument, with its noble cliffs and slow-forming undulations, seems to inform Hunter's music. Lovegaze gives a new shape to her vaporous sound — if you had to capture the genre of the music in a word, its title Lovegaze would be an apt place to start with its favoring of sweeping sonic amalgamations. What stands out most is the embrace of the sleek trip-hop-inspired electronica of the '90s; songs like "Finding Mirrors," "Garden," and the album's title track move at a languorous pace, with Hunter's entrancing vocals taking on a kind, omniscient presence. Overwhelmingly fresh and achingly human, Lovegaze is the kind of album that begs to be revisited across great stretches of time. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

On her 2019 full-length Any Human Friend, Marika Hackman traded in somber, stripped-down indie-folk for a more synth-pop-oriented, upbeat direction, though the intimate viscerality of her lyricism stayed the same. Her latest album, Big Sigh, is a return to the folk-pop that she began her career with, painting a portrait of her own existential crises related to everyday ennui, fractured relationships, and the more sinister sides of succumbing to desire and infatuation in an attempt at finding human connection. Across Big Sigh, Hackman mourns both the loneliness she feels in trying to get over a break-up as well as the loneliness she feels in a loveless, emotionally turbulent relationship: “And my heart won't grow / With your fingers down my throat / It's a hard brown stone / Like an embryo / It will never be a part of me worth finding,” she laments on “Hanging.” Sometimes, says Hackman, it’s lonelier to be with someone than to be with nobody at all. — Cady Siregar

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Communicating telepathically from Philly and Baltimore, respectively, Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak make disarmingly tender music together as @. The duo’s excellently titled new EP is a drastic departure from the folky lushness of their February 2023 debut album, Mind Palace Music: The songs on the new record are cooler to the touch than those from the previous one, existing as much in the online astral plane to which Rose and Filipczak have clearly uploaded major parts of their combined consciousness as they do in the slightly warped pastoral backdrop of Mind Palace. The slow-building acoustic guitar arrangements of that record are absent here, replaced by a striking array of synths and sound effects. Still, the carefully curated structures and immaculately produced sounds — including the gorgeous vocal harmonies that are still the group’s main draw — remain. Interviewed by Carpark Records last year, Rose spoke proudly of how Mind Palace struck a “balance between the organic writing combined with the more calculated digital recording process.” Listening to Are You There God? It’s Me, @, it seems the scales have tipped toward the latter tenet, but the duo still sound very much on their feet. Standout moments include the cloudy counterpoint of the intro to “Processional,” the hair-metal guitar solo on “Webcrawler,” the title track’s glitched transition from heavenly choral swells into a twee rock groove complete with a “doo-doo-doo” singalong, the jerky starts and stops in the mathy pulse of “Odor in the Court,” and the entirety of “Soul Hole,” a hyperpop-leaning jam that, within a runtime of two minutes and change, casually outpaces gecs’ most recent album in originality. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Detroit is home to some of the most adventurous rap flows, but there’s no one else coming out of the city right now who sounds quite like Bruiser Wolf. On his new album My Story Got Stories, the perceptive prankster flexes his serpentine tongue, demonstrating a sharp sense of wit that’s as discerning as it is humorous. While so many Detroit rappers spit at lightning speed, Bruiser Wolf strolls through his bars, slyly dishing out absurdist imagery. His high-pitched and laissez-faire delivery often recalls the impish unpredictability of West Coast court jesters like E-40 and Suga Free, toying with the beat and tip-toeing around it rather than following it closely. There’s a warmth to the production, full of screwed-up soul samples, but Bruiser Wolf can switch styles as easily as he twists his tongue; he follows up the booty-clapping Bruiser Brigade posse cut “2 Bad” with a heartfelt ode to fatherhood on “Waiting in The Lobby.” But don’t let the stoned non-sequiturs and samples of Stephen A. Smith monologues fool you: Bruiser Wolf is more than just jokes. Beneath the playfulness is a clear-eyed sense of material analysis, approaching Bruiser’s years in the drug game not as something to be either glamorized or condemned, but rather as a form of labor that takes a toll just like any job. — Nadine Smith

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

Jespfur is a Dutch artist signed to 10k, better known as the home of NYC rappers such as MIKE and Niontay, but his music is a world apart. Pedestrians Of Bright Silence is the Amsterdam-based artist's self-produced debut and an introduction to his smeared guitar pop sound. There's a loose, jazz-like atmosphere to the album, with woozy guitars and woodwind instrumentation found in standout tracks "Nil" and "Pointwood Unmuted." The influence of King Krule is felt in every howled vocal and saxophone trill, but songs like "Straim" and "Luuped" lock into a groove that feels unique to Jespfur. It feels like the perfect album to get lost in right now. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music