New Music Friday: Stream new projects from Nia Archives, Clarissa Connelly, Kira McSpice, and more

In the past couple of years Nia Archives has spearheaded a jungle revival, taking the frenetic '90s club genre from relative obscurity to Coachella and Beyoncé's Club Renaissance. Silence Is Loud, the debut album from the U.K. producer, would be a great way to keep the party going. However, she has opted to do something arguably more interesting and bind her breakbeats to moments of vulnerability and personal disclosure. So, while the album still hits hard enough to secure Nia's presence at clubs and festivals for years to come, it also gives her the platform to speak about feelings of social anxiety ("Crowded Roomz") and her strained relationship with her parents ("F.A.M.I.L.Y.") These new songs, written alongside FKA twigs collaborator Ethan P. Flynn, give a deeper insight into an artist who has mastered making people move and is now ready to make them listen.

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

Church bells can be heard across World of Work, the beautiful new album from Copenhagen-based composer and songwriter Clarissa Connelly. It rings out on several of the songs, a motif that evokes a singular passion and the kind of solitude that can be both agonizing and rapturous. World of Work aspires to this creative mode and immediately achieves it. The album is influenced by Celtic mythology, French philosophers, and letters written by 12-century authors, but they serve more as veins than structures, acting as the vessels for Connelly's personal, singular music to flow through. It has the bent, avant-pop melodies that flourish in the Danish peatlands — her guitar tones, which range from crisp and folky to sludgy and shreddy, are some of the best I've heard this year — and make their home in the ostensible structures of a neo-classical ensemble. Connelly weaves them into the foundation of her piano, crafting a project that feels like wandering through a living, breathing museum wing, adding its own history to what's reverently displayed. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

When trees are injured or infected, they do not attempt to heal their wounds. Instead, they compartmentalize, letting their damaged parts wither so the rest can thrive. On The Compartmentalization of Decay, Kira McSpice proceeds from this principle, pouring her personal trauma into a discreet, 45-minute album in order to seal wounds that can’t be healed in a traditional sense. Her third full-length, following 2019’s Prodrome and 2022’s Postdrome, TCOD takes us on a fantastically dark journey through the depths of McSpice’s despair in the aftermath of a sexual assault. It’s a tale steeped in dense metaphor, with McSpice and each of her three collaborators on the record embodying specific thematic elements — William Ponturo’s guitar parts alternate as Spile and Fog, whereas Tyler Skoglund plays synth (Red Sky) and bucket (Bucket), and Kalun Leung’s trombone is the Sun. McSpice herself plays electric guitar (Earth), glass harp (Water), corrugaphone (Wind), and musical saw (Spirits), but her main function is as the album’s Narrator, a role that allows her gorgeous, operatic voice to echo with an otherworldly intensity. Whether eerily muffled (as on “Dark and Endless Fog”) or unbridled and ecstatic (as in the climax of “Evaporate”), it radiates an uncanny power, crashing against the boundaries of McSpice’s own creation like a river against a dam. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

The last time I saw METZ was a decade ago, in a small Chicago dive. It was an absolute bruiser of a set, blown-out speakers and everyone giving each other nosebleeds in the pit like the good hardcore kids we were. METZ have since pivoted from pure rage to a more subtle showcase of emotion on their fifth studio album, Up on Gravity Hill. While there are still references to the noise and chaos of their pasts, there’s also a mellow authenticity to their acknowledgment of age. It’s oddly comforting when paired with lullaby-esque melodies on tracks like “Light Your Way Home,” or the psychedelic-shoegaze influences on “No Reserving/Love Comes Crashing,” where the feedback softens the edges of something that used to feel so abrasive. And with its focus on the juxtaposition of dark and light, Up on Gravity Hill will resonate with a once-angry kid that’s now an adult, filled with a newfound understanding of others and a renewed hope. — Sandra Song

Hear It: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp