3 new songs and 3 new albums to listen to this weekend

Bright Eyes just released a new album, Five Dice, All Threes, in September, but Conor Oberst’s solo track with Craig Wedren popped up this week as well. “Justice To A Scream” is a quick and shaggy rock song with more energy than we’re used to hearing from Oberst, and it’s a nice vibe for him. It’s not quite as raw as its title implies, but there’s something magnetic about the laid-back approach Oberst and Wedren take with this track, which comes from the soundtrack of a short documentary about internet personality Alok.

Your reaction to the next half of this sentence is going to vary wildly based on whether or not you’re a very particular kind of early-’00s sicko, but here it is: Australian rapper Briggs’ new track, “Munarra,” has a distinctly nü-metal rap-rock sound to it. Think P.O.D. with less Jesus, or Papa Roach with less cringe. The lyrics are littered with exclamation points, each line delivered with a shout. We weren’t exactly prepared for a nü-metal resurgence but after hearing “Munarra,” we’re more open to it than we would have thought.

“Night Or Day,” the second single from Franz Ferdinand’s upcoming album, The Human Fear, is a tonic for all the feelings of hopelessness we’ve been experiencing the past few weeks. Franz Ferdinand will pretty much always show up ready to lighten the mood of any situation with their fun, groovy songs and Scottish charm, but “Night Or Day” particularly shines in that area. It’s an ode to finding joy in loved ones even when times are tough, and that’s a message we can really relate to right now.

Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett making music together is pretty much always going to be an instant recommendation. You can dig into the fake history of their two characters, Howard and Henry Coward, via the accompanying Audible series (directed by Christopher Guest!) if you’re looking for the full experience, but the music is still plenty of fun on its own. The album is also a generous 20 tracks long, so there’s plenty of sonic goodness to enjoy.

Dust is the first full-length album from dreamy pop duo Say Lou Lou in six years. While it contains 10 tracks, only five of them are new—the first five were released as an EP, Dust, Pt. 1, in April of this year. The album charts a difficult breakup and all the subsequent feelings that arise, and twins Elektra and Miranda Kilbey deliver it with a hazy, indie-nostalgia sound.

For their 14th record, Swedish metalheads Opeth deliver a concept album set sometime after World War I about a wealthy patriarch whose will upends the family with secret revelations. And like, that’s cool and all, but the real highlight here is the return of singer Mikael Åkerfeldt’s death metal growl, which he hasn’t broken out on a record in nearly 20 years. Why now, after such a long absence? “I think overall, it just made the record better, I guess,” Åkerfeldt told Kerrang! Simple, clean, elegant: exactly the opposite of Opeth’s sound, especially on this record, and it’s all the better for it.