The buzziest albums this fall feature genre experimentalists, country powerhouses and at least one recent Grammy winner for best new artist, while tributes to a jazz giant, commemorating his 100th birthday, abound. Here are some of the highlights of the fall slate of music.
Dates and lineups are subject to change.
September
HELENA GAO Helena Gao proved with her Grammy-nominated production on Zara Larsson’s “Midnight Sun” how easily she could marry the sounds of full-bodied dance beats with sparkly, effervescent pop. The Danish Chinese artist’s forthcoming EP combines the inventiveness of Copenhagen’s thriving alternative scene with the floor-filling bangers Gao picked up in London and Shanghai nightclubs. Her single “Lao Shi” went viral on Douyin (Chinese TikTok) for mixing Mandarin lyrics with Western sexual directness, while on other tracks, like the lascivious, black-lit beat of “Niu Bi,” you don’t even need words to know that it’s all about being a bad girl. (Sept. 10, Afterall) — HARRY TAFOYA
THIS IS LORELEI When he’s not laying down scorching riffs as the guitarist of the Brooklyn art-rock band Water From Your Eyes, Nate Amos has been earning respect as a singer-songwriter with his indie-pop solo project This Is Lorelei, releasing melodic and emotionally incisive tunes that have been covered by the likes of Hayley Williams, Jeff Tweedy and Waxahatchee. Amos’s upcoming album “The Singer in My Band” retains his signature quirks even as it showcases previously unexplored parts of his stylistic range; tracks like the bouncy “Watching Heaven Fall” and the aching “Hey Sarah Is It Gonna Rain Forever” lean into alt-country, while the rustic title track features a rollicking banjo lead courtesy of the artist’s father, the bluegrass musician Bob Amos. (Sept. 11, Matador) — LINDSAY ZOLADZ
CHARLI XCX “Brat,” the British pop musician Charli XCX’s 2024 breakout album/mass cultural phenomenon, helped her ascend to the status of arena headliner more than a decade into a prolific and provocative career, but the uncompromising spirit of her latest album, the razor-sharp “Music, Fashion, Film,” shows that sudden success has not turned her risk-averse. Charli effectively reintroduces herself as a full-blown — if wryly winking — rock star on this corrosive collection of songs, and if the lyrics of the lead single, “Rock Music,” are any indication, headbanging will certainly be encouraged on her upcoming, 14-date North American tour. Still, even if this show’s dress code calls for less slime green and more black leather, expect to rage to at least a few of Brat Summer’s enduring club classics. (Sept. 14 & 15, Barclays Center) — ZOLADZ
EMPRESS OF Lorely Rodriguez was among the thousands of people who lost their homes in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. Her fifth album as Empress Of, “Dream House,” grew directly out of that heartbreak and the immediate questions it prompted about safety and belonging. The result is something like her “Ray of Light”: a rave record with a massive sound to match the scope of her queries. It’s stacked with world-class dance producers, including Blood Orange, Cecile Believe, Jessy Lanza and Nick León, but Rodriguez’s star collaborator turns out to be her mother, whose comforting presence softens the record’s emotional turbulence to make the listener feel truly at home. (Sept. 18, Major Arcana/Giant) — TAFOYA
RILEY GREEN Rumored paramour of a few of country’s top starlets, noted hell-raiser of 30A, and, coming this fall, judge on NBC’s “The Voice”: Riley Green’s ascent so far has followed the playbook charted by artists like Blake Shelton and Tim McGraw before him. That path shouldn’t obscure Green’s songwriting chops — last year, he became the first solo songwriter to score consecutive No. 1 hits on country radio since Taylor Swift over a decade ago. His fourth studio album, “That’s Just Me,” arrives the same month as his reality competition debut with tracks that burnish his rep (familiar electric guitar riffs on “P.O.S.” establish his villainy) and offer an unexpectedly melodic take on old tropes (the lo-fi shuffle of “Bartender in Destin”). (Sept. 18, Nashville Harbor) — ELENA BERGERON
RHIANNON GIDDENS The Grammy-, Pulitzer- and MacArthur-winning singer, banjoist, fiddler, songwriter, actress, folklorist, podcaster and artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble will release a new album, “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers,” in September. It’s unplugged and bare-bones, largely recorded live in a Louisiana studio, and places Giddens’s own songs alongside standards from Elizabeth Cotten and Ola Belle Reade. Meanwhile, the Silkroad Ensemble, an international collective that makes connections among multiple traditions, is celebrating its 25th season; a concert at Carnegie Hall will reunite Giddens and the current group with its founder, Yo-Yo Ma. (Sept. 18, album on Nonesuch; Nov. 14, Silkroad Ensemble at Carnegie Hall) — JON PARELES
BECK Although he is a master of studio gamesmanship and toying with current trends and effects, Beck sometimes tones things down. Once in each decade, he has worked with a studio band and a recording style that bespeak a transparent melancholy: on his 1998 “Mutations,” his 2002 “Sea Change,” his 2014 “Morning Phase” and now on his album “Ride Lonesome.” The production is grounded in vintage folk-rock and country, spacious and unhurried. (Sept. 18, Capitol) — PARELES
BEABADOOBEE Beatrice Laus, the songwriter who records as beabadoobee, has been making music since she was a teenager. She brings her airy soprano to songs about intense relationships: infatuations, regrets, breakups, aftermaths. With each album she has found more psychological subtleties and fortified her music. On “Pylon,” her fourth studio album, she considers time, growing up and her own success along with romance; she also flaunts distorted guitars. In October she tours arenas, including a Madison Square Garden stop. (Sept. 18, Dirty Hit/Interscope; Oct. 5, Madison Square Garden) — PARELES
DAVID BOWIE Before he renamed himself David Bowie, David Robert Jones started his recording career in 1965 as Davie (sometimes Davy) Jones, soon changed to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees. His early bands were signed and produced by Shel Talmy, who also captured the shouts and crashes of the early Who and the Kinks. “David Bowie: The Shel Talmy Recordings” — a new collection including 10 previously unreleased tracks — presents him as a brash English blues-rocker backed by two bands, the Manish Boys and the Lower Third. Jimmy Page, then a busy session guitarist before founding Led Zeppelin, contributed some manic lead guitar solos. The collection is a mid-1960s snapshot of Swinging London ambition that would, amazingly, lead much further. (Sept. 18, Parlophone) — PARELES
JOHN COLTRANE CENTENNIAL The saxophone icon who turned his jazz improvisation into a fervent spiritual quest was born 100 years ago this month. Coinciding with John Coltrane’s centennial are a number of releases and performances, headlined by the first official release of “The Tiberi Tapes” (Nov. 6; Impulse!), a mythic collection of rough-sounding but often incandescent Coltrane bootlegs made by the saxophonist Frank Tiberi in the early and mid-60s. On the new “Dedicated to You” (Sept. 18; Blue Note), the saxophonist Branford Marsalis and the vocalist Dianne Reeves highlight Coltrane at his most lyrical, revisiting material he recorded on a moody, ballad-heavy 1963 team-up with the singer Johnny Hartman. Marsalis and Reeves will tour the project throughout the fall, including a New York stop (Oct. 27, Carnegie Hall).
Elsewhere on the live front, a multimedia festival in Brooklyn (Sept. 16-17, ShapeShifter Lab) will honor both Coltrane and one of his core collaborators, the bassist Jimmy Garrison, in part through performances featuring Garrison’s son, Matthew, Coltrane’s son Ravi and the drummer Marcus Gilmore. Days later, on the actual centennial, the saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin — who interpreted pieces by both John and Alice Coltrane on the 2020 LP “Pursuance” — will bring a tribute featuring a full orchestra to Los Angeles (Sept. 23, Hollywood Bowl). — HANK SHTEAMER
PHOEBE BRIDGERS Although her star is bigger than ever — sweeping the 2024 Grammys with boygenius, a starring movie role this fall, regularly criticizing music industry figures — Phoebe Bridgers’s music returns to rumination on “Lost Weekend,” a fitting approach to her first solo album since 2020’s “Punisher.” This time she’s teamed up with the co-producer Jack Antonoff to consider what fame and loss and love have brought. The Lost Tour will continue a strict no-phones policy to better appreciate her songwriting’s deadpan humor and oddly affecting emotional arcs. (Sept. 24-26, Barclays Center) — TAFOYA
MASTODON The Atlanta metal band that melded Herman Melville’s vision of obsessive self-destruction in “Moby-Dick” with brutal, serrated guitars on its album “Leviathan” (2004) has returned after the death last year of its former guitarist and frontman, Brent Hinds. On “Marrow Deep,” the band’s ninth studio album, the cloud of grief is never far from the churning beats and propulsive riffs. Mastodon’s tour comes to the Brooklyn Paramount on Sept. 24. — BEN SISARIO
LEON BRIDGES The grainy earnestness of Leon Bridges’s voice harks back to the vintage soul of Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, and that tone has brought him collaborations with Olivia Dean and Shaboozey. Lately he has been exploring internationalist grooves with Khruangbin and now, on his album “Happiness Anytime,” with the producers J Lloyd-Watson and Lydia Kitto from the British group Jungle. Tinges of Afrobeat, bossa nova, reggae, psychedelia and hip-hop mingle with funk and soul in his new songs, without lessening his sincerity one bit. (Sept. 25, Columbia) — PARELES
ALL THINGS GO FESTIVAL On the weekend of Sept. 25, the eclectic outdoor music festival All Things Go, known for booking mostly female artists, will take place simultaneously at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., and Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. Several of the headliners — like the folk-rock phenom Brandi Carlile, and pop’s Y2K revivalist Zara Larsson — will play both venues on different nights, but the emotional highlight of the festival is likely to take place on Friday evening in Queens, when the Grammy-winning British vocal powerhouse Lola Young, who collapsed onstage at last year’s All Things Go, will make a triumphant return. — ZOLADZ
October
METALLICA Metallica has made a career of blazing new trails for heavy metal, so it’s fitting that it will become the genre’s first band to take up residence at Sphere. The drummer Lars Ulrich has said that catching U2’s opening-night gig at the Las Vegas mega-arena in 2023 left him “awe-struck, inspired, energized,” planting the seed for the band’s upcoming Life Burns Faster residency. Arriving in paired dates through the spring, the shows will follow Metallica’s now-customary No Repeat Weekend format, with not even staples such as “Master of Puppets” and “Enter Sandman” duplicated between Thursday and Saturday set lists. (Oct. 1-March 13, Sphere) — SHTEAMER
MIRANDA LAMBERT — In the title song of her next album, “Crisco,” Miranda Lambert name-checks vintage pop-country hits: “Southern Nights” and “Islands in the Stream.” That’s a signal about the album, which leans toward the retro and the countrypolitan, complete with string arrangements, for a knowingly nostalgic sound and attitude. (Oct. 2, MCA) — PARELES
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO On “Synonym,” her third album for Blue Note Records, Meshell Ndegeocello turns familiar songs into intimate conversations about gender identity and collective freedom, pairing with a vast set of collaborators — including Cynthia Erivo, Chaka Khan, Cat Power and Moses Sumney — across a collection of reimagined covers. The lead single, a serene reworking of George Michael and Aretha Franklin’s 1987 hit “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” signals an album uninterested in merely recreating the past. Reunited with David Gamson, the producer of her landmark early records, Ndegeocello reshapes the LP’s tracks into something totally new. (Oct. 2, Blue Note) — MARCUS J. MOORE
VICTORIA MONÉT For Victoria Monét, romance and lust are never far apart. Her voice is equally velvety whether she’s professing lifelong affection or giving carnal suggestions. “Frequency of Love” will be her second official album after 2024’s breakout “Jaguar II,” which netted her three Grammys after more than a decade of EPs, singles, remixes and songwriting collaborations with Ariana Grande and others. Her follow-up demonstrates expertise across eras of pop and R&B, from retro orchestral ballads to Motown and peak Michael Jackson to 21st-century girl groups. (Oct. 2, RCA) — PARELES
GREG FREEMAN The Vermont singer-songwriter Greg Freeman’s 2025 breakout album, “Burnover,” heralded an exciting new voice in indie rock: poetic, off-kilter, devastatingly observant. His sprawling, squalling follow-up, “All Set the Bone,” out on Oct. 2, is at once a fulfillment of the previous album’s promise and a thrilling step up, harnessing Freeman’s righteous anger into songs that better capture the raucous energy of his live show. Freeman updates the sound of the ’90s rock underground to reflect the absurdities and indignities of modern life; “these are the days of one thing after another,” he sings on the anthemic opening track, “Cahokia,” as he leads his band, and the listener, toward hard-won catharsis. (Oct. 2, Transgressive Records). — ZOLADZ
SMASHING PUMPKINS If ’90s alt-rock ever truly needed its own indulgent, maudlin, high-budget — and also irresistibly catchy — Pink Floyd-style double concept album, Billy Corgan was more than ready to supply it with the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” (1995). The Rats in a Cage Tour is a belated 30th-anniversary celebration of a moment when Corgan and his band were at their peak of productivity and popularity with MTV hits like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “1979.” (Oct. 4, Barclays Center) — SISARIO
CHIEF KEEF At just 17, Chief Keef became one of the most influential voices in 2010s rap as an evangelist of Chicago’s drill scene, his infectiously muscular hooks and singular boasts turning into genre standard-bearers. Legal troubles and assorted beefs have pocked the intervening years, but Keef’s development a producer has been on display through subsequent albums and mixtapes. His latest album, “Skeletor,” doesn’t reach the highs of either “Almighty So” project, but tracks including “Real Chief Keef” and “Mark of Buddha” see the 31-year-old rapper’s lyrics threaded with autobiographical nods to relatives and weaning off (some) drugs. A 19-date tour kicks off in his hometown, where Keef has not headlined a performance in 14 years, before pulling up to New York in October. (Oct. 4, Rooftop at Pier 17) — BERGERON
DAWN RICHARD Across the past decade, Dawn Richard has built one of R&B’s most daring conceptual worlds, where Afrofuturism, electronic experimentation and New Orleans traditions coexist equally. “Creole Culture,” out Oct. 9, completes a trilogy that began with the albums “New Breed” and “Second Line,” but this time Richard places herself at the center of the story. Returning to the brass, bounce and funk-inflected pulse of her King Creole mythology, the album reimagines New Orleans as an evolving blueprint of Black creativity, where pop, soul and Caribbean rhythms welcome Big Freedia, Durand Bernarr and Tarriona “Tank” Ball into its richly imagined ecosystem. (Oct. 9, Merge) — MOORE
KELELA Kelela has always been a denizen of the dance floor, one seasoned in riding deconstructed break beats and bruising synths toward the high of a catchy hook. On her latest LP, “New Avatar,” the singer, who dabbled in hardcore punk and rock as a teen, leans on guitars to add a sense of confrontation (as on the resentful “Goin Down”) to genre-bridging experiments bound together by Kelela’s R&B-steeped vocals and direct lyrics. The result will be on display throughout a 30-date tour of North America and Europe. (Oct. 9-10, Brooklyn Paramount) — BERGERON
SYLVAN ESSO Sylvan Esso, the duo of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, took its time making its new album, “Ow ∞,” working on it steadily since 2022; it arrives Sept. 11. Along with the neat, pointillistic electronic productions Sylvan Esso has long been known for, the new album adds collaborators on live instruments, often pushing the music toward rock. Sylvan Esso is touring this fall with an expanded live band, coming to the Brooklyn Paramount Oct. 14. That’s a few days after the duo headlines its own Good Moon Festival in its hometown, Durham, N.C., Oct. 8-10. — PARELES
JOSH JOHNSON Around a decade ago, Kamasi Washington reasserted Los Angeles as a major power center in jazz; more recently, Josh Johnson, another genre-bridging saxophonist, has led the West Coast charge. Working with beloved groups such as SML and the guitarist Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, and in high-profile collaborations with Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello, he has advanced an inviting brand of experimentalism. His upcoming solo effort, “Animative,” offers vibrant electroacoustic music well-suited to dancing or daydreaming. (Oct. 23, International Anthem/Nonesuch) — SHTEAMER
TONY IOMMI Heavy metal as we know it roared into being on the opening track of Black Sabbath’s 1970 debut, in the form of an arrestingly ominous figure played by the guitarist Tony Iommi — later dubbed by his bandmate Ozzy Osbourne as “the king of all demonic riffs.” During Sabbath’s nearly 60-year life span, Iommi released only a handful of solo albums; this fall, following the band’s final show in 2025 and Osbourne’s death just weeks later, he’s unveiling “From the Dark,” his first in more than 20 years. Aided by a crew of lower-profile but well-seasoned pros, including the gritty-voiced Norwegian wailer Jorn Lande, the 78-year-old Iommi stays his dark and chugging course. (Oct. 23, BMG) — SHTEAMER
MINISTRY After four decades of pulverizing, nightmarish industrial metal and sneering protests against police brutality and American warmongering, Al Jourgensen, the leather-and-piercings leader of Ministry, announced in July that the band was calling it quits. “It’s time to herd goats,” Jourgensen said when announcing Ministry’s farewell album, “Hate to Go (Take Out or Delivery),” though its bitter parting shots like “The White Man Lied” and “Burned Out” show that his rage is as timely as ever. (Oct. 30, Cleopatra) — SISARIO
November
YOUNG MIKO Young Miko has the kind of effortless, take-your-girl swag that other artists spend lifetimes trying to cultivate. The Puerto Rican soccer player-turned-tattoo artist-turned-rap sensation has already cemented herself as one of reggaeton’s ultimate lovers, who, when she isn’t talking pure trash, will sidle smoothly onto a trap beat to sweet talk directly into your ear. Her Late Checkout tour, the rapper’s first as a headliner, follows “Do Not Disturb,” the 2025 LP that saw her expand into more intimate themes yet still had room for the lustful come-ons of “Wassup,” a Lil Wayne-sampling fan favorite. (Nov. 5, Barclays Center) — TAFOYA
TYREEK MCDOLE The 26-year-old jazz vocalist Tyreek McDole boasts a luxurious baritone that instantly evokes mid-20th-century cool. But as he established on “Open Up Your Senses,” his eclectic 2025 debut, his aesthetic ranges far beyond nostalgia. His palette keeps expanding on a new follow-up, “Chroma,” which includes subtly futuristic renditions of standards, exploratory originals and imaginative reworkings of songs by André 3000, Kendrick Lamar and the singer-songwriter Annahstasia, with savvy production from the trumpeter Theo Croker and a supporting cast featuring the rising guitar star Emmanuel Michael. (Nov. 6, Artwork) — SHTEAMER
THE BAD PLUS One of the defining groups in 21st-century jazz, the Bad Plus garnered early buzz with offbeat covers of modern standards (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”) and won a die-hard audience with its droll yet poignant originals. Shape-shifting across more than 20 years into a quartet built around two co-founders, the bassist Reid Anderson and the drummer Dave King, the group is winding down this year. Its ongoing farewell tour includes a last-ever gig in New York, where the band played its earliest sets, as well a grand finale in Minneapolis, where Anderson and King met as teenagers. (Nov. 12, Le Poisson Rouge) — SHTEAMER
LISA As one of the two rap-forward members of Blackpink, Lisa amped up the group’s haughty quotient with rapid-fire taunts and attitude to spare. But on her own last year, the Thai performer showed other facets, making her acting debut on Season 3 of “The White Lotus” and releasing her solo LP “Alter Ego,” on which she assumed a few personas. She’ll support the album with a two-weekend Las Vegas residency, a first for a K-pop artist, that sold out within 10 minutes. (Nov. 13-28, Colosseum at Caesars Palace) — BERGERON
JOSHUA REDMAN Joshua Redman once told The New York Times that his first childhood encounter with the music of Sonny Rollins — via a copy of the album “Saxophone Colossus” that his mother checked out from the public library — was “as monumental an experience as I’ve had listening to music.” The influence endured as Redman found his own fame in jazz, and upon Rollins’s death this past spring, he conceived of a new tribute LP, “If Ever You Would Leave Us (We Play for Rollins),” featuring some of his hero’s best-loved repertoire as well as appearances from former Rollins collaborators including the bassist Christian McBride, the pianist Kevin Hays and the guitarist Peter Bernstein. (Nov. 20, Blue Note) — SHTEAMER
SOMBR Shane Michael Boose, a.k.a. Sombr, is Gen Z’s lovesick, self-conscious poet laureate of the dance floor, prancing onstage in open-chested disco looks while crooning about romantic hesitation and body image anxieties. “I want you, but the mirror won’t let me,” he sings in “My Body Isn’t Ready,” one of a handful of singles he has released since being nominated for best new artist at the 2026 Grammys. The fall leg of Sombr’s arena tour concludes at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 23 and 24. — SISARIO
The post 33 Albums and Shows We’re Looking Forward to This Fall appeared first on New York Times.
