10 new albums to listen to in December

In 2021, Angel Olsen released a five-track EP of ’80s cover songs. With Cosmic Waves Volume 1, she’s returning to cover songs, but with a twist. Cosmic Waves includes songs from five under-the-radar modern musicians; the other five tracks are Olsen’s take on different songs from those same artists. It’s a unique way to hype new artists, one of the responsibilities of being a music industry vet. And even though it feels like just yesterday that Olsen was stunning us with her sophomore album Burn Your Fire For No Witness, that was actually 12 years ago, and we’re all depressingly old now. At least Olsen is making it a little easier for us to shake off the complacency of listening to the same music over and over again and try out something new.

CHVRCHES has been on hiatus since early 2023, with singer Lauren Mayberry explaining at the time that she wanted to focus on her solo career. Vicious Creature is her first full album, and she’s been building up to it for more than a year; the debut single, “Are You Awake?,” was released in September 2023. Mayberry’s most recent song, “Crocodile Tears,” is a gleeful excoriation of the fragile male psyche. It’s a theme throughout the whole record, too: “If I didn’t have to be seen as ‘nice,’ I would feel comfortable telling certain people to fuck off when they treat me like shit—on this record, and in these songs, I get to do that,” Mayberry said in a press statement.

Fresh off a feature on Kendrick Lamar’s “Dodger Blue,” Roddy Ricch will release his third full-length album on December 6. The Navy Album follows 2019’s Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial and 2021’s Live Life Fast. Ricch shot to fame in 2018 with the single “Die Young” from his second mixtape, Feed Tha Streets II. And while three years might not seem like a long time between albums, it can be an eternity in hip-hop, something Ricch addresses in the lyrics of The Navy Album‘s first single, “Survivor’s Remorse”: “Imagine if I had a dollar for every time you say I fell off, I’d be a billionaire / I was blinded by survivor’s remorse, I was supposed to build, yeah / Still solid, still here,” he raps. It’s a little wild to consider this a comeback narrative since it feels like he never really left, but Ricch has the potential to reassert himself with The Navy Album.

Last year, the members of Blackpink broke free from the K-pop machine—at least a little bit. While they all signed new contracts with YG Entertainment for their group output, the individual members declined to sign with YG for their solo work. ROSÉ signed with Atlantic instead, leading to her first album, rosie. It’s a deeply personal record that she wouldn’t have been able to make before; as she told The New York Times, “We were trained [by our K-pop agency] to always present ourselves in the most perfect, perfect way. And so even when we were interacting with fans online, it was when I was ready to give perfect answers and give them what they wanted. And making sure that I’m a perfect girl for everyone. That was the culture. And that’s why leading into this album, it was more of a personal want and need to be able to write an album like an album that I grew up with, music that I could relate to. In order for that, I’m sure artists had to be vulnerable, but we hadn’t trained to talk about our emotions and feelings and experiences.”

In 2008, White Denim was selling CDs of their first album, labeled 11 Songs then but known as Exposion (not a typo) now, at their merch tables. Fifteen years and 1o albums later, they’re preparing to release their 12th record, appropriately titled 12. With their blend of psych rock, prog, blues, and just about any other genre that they’re into at the moment, White Denim has always been a little too weird to be mainstream cool, but that’s what makes them special. Case in point: the lead single from 12, “Light On,” can probably best be described as “weird, just weird,” but has that stopped us from listening to it over and over? No, no it has not.

This one is strictly for National completionists, but it’s a joy all the same: It’s a live album recorded, you guessed it, in Rome. The tracklist is enticing, with a good mix of deep cuts and hits, and the production quality is top-notch. Plus, it’s a hefty 21 tracks long, and it gives you a decent sense of how special National shows are if you’ve never been able to attend one.

It’s actually pretty unclear what Pink Friday 2 – The Hiatus will include. Nicki Minaj has teased it as the “final deluxe installment” of Pink Friday 2, but there’ve been no hints about whether it’ll be remixes, new tracks, or some combination of the two. Further complicating the narrative, Minaj teased some new songs a few months back that she said were initially going to be part of a deluxe version of PF2 but she ultimately decided to save them for Pink Friday 3 instead, but that was before she announced The Hiatus. So maybe they’ll pop up here instead? Either way, The Hiatus is worth keeping an eye on.

Saint Etienne’s 2021 album I’ve Been Trying To Tell You was a surprisingly mellow outing for the English indie-dance trio, but they’re sticking with that sound for their upcoming The Night. Keyboardist Pete Wiggs said in a statement, “We wanted to continue the mellow and spacey mood of the last album, perhaps even double down on it, but it’s a very different album, not based on samples; Songs, moods and spoken pieces drift in and out whilst rain pours down outside. It’s the kind of record I like to listen to in the dark or with my eyes closed.” The first single, “Half Light,” is aptly named; it feels ethereal and a little fuzzy, like your eyes adjusting to the sunrise while your brain is still stuck in the darkness. According to the band, the whole album has a similar vibe.

We didn’t think Snoop Dogg could do anything better than meeting a French bulldog at the Olympics this year, but here he is just a few months later with Missionary, a direct follow-up to his 1993 classic Doggystyle. Missionary is Snoop’s first full album produced by Dr. Dre since that classic record. Snoop’s been teasing this project for at least two years, but it feels a little surreal that it finally has a release date. In truth, it’s unlikely that Snoop and Dre will be able to recapture Doggystyle‘s magic, but we’re excited to see whatever they do anyway.

K-pop superstars Stray Kids are releasing their first mixtape, Hop. They’ve been playing coy with the album tracks, only releasing short teasers for a few songs. This is probably because they’re selling Hop as the debut of “Stray Kids’ own ‘new genre’ that can’t be officially defined.” It seems like they’re preparing to lean into a more hip-hop sound, and it’ll be interesting to see how this affects the group’s output going forward.