After touring heavily for five years, Mitski performed at SummerStage in New York City’s Central Park and crushed her fans by announcing that it would be her "last show indefinitely." Fast forward three years, and the 31-year-old singer-songwriter has been performing on major stages all summer, including England’s Glastonbury, Denmark’s Roskilde and San Francisco’s Outside Lands, where her Sunday night set ushered in the darkness and closed out the festival.

Lyric-knowing fans and curious onlookers taking Mitski in for the first time got an immediate glimpse of her conflicting feelings about herself with the opener, "Love Me More." From Outside Lands' Sutro stage she sang, "Every day I’m trying not to hate myself/But lately, it’s not hurting like it did before/Maybe I am learning how to love me more."

Mitski has spoken out against being unfairly pigeonholed as a fiercely private person and publicly struggled with anxiety and self-loathing as well as the pressures of fame, the music business and having an ardent fan following. Her work, filled with unrequited love, animates a lonely vibe that thrives in isolated listening situations, but it also clearly offers comfort to a festival crowd of thousands with minimal physical space between them, even as the pandemic is still taken seriously in San Francisco. 

Her Outside Lands audience was rapt, eagerly and frequently erupting at each dramatic hand movement and pose. If she found that unnerving at all, she didn’t break character while singing popular songs like "I Bet on Losing Dogs," "Washing Machine Heart" and "Your Best American Girl."

"If you would just make one mistake/What a relief that would be," she sang on "The Only Heartbreaker." "But I think for as long as we’re together/I’ll be the only heartbreaker."

Mitski doesn’t use backup singers, and her music isn’t conducive to having dancers, but she employs choreographed dance movements throughout the performance. Whether she’s daringly patting her crotch in a sardonic Michael Jackson way, striking a powerful pose taken from Japanese Butoh dance theater or throwing herself hatefully on the ground, her body is a conduit for what her words can’t say. And it’s also an impenetrable wall that keeps us from getting too close.

Her 20-song set was free of concert conventions. There was no banter in between songs or fan interactions on or offstage, though either would have been an uncomfortable departure from where this performer seemingly prefers to be situated during a concert. It's hard to tell whether Mitski had a good time or what she thought of the Outside Lands crowd, which most other performers were happy to acknowledge. She left the pyro and the fireworks to Post Malone on the neighboring stage, though a portion of the glittering explosives were visible through the trees as her performance neared its end, adding a little bit of sparkle to the somberness.

Mitski concluded with 2018’s "A Pearl, building her wall even taller with an isolating refrain: "Sorry, I don’t want your touch/It’s not that I don’t want you/Sorry, I can’t take your touch."

Outside Lands 2022: SZA Takes Control & Makes Waves In Nostalgic, Dance-Filled Performance

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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Mitski likely didn't know the Pandora's Box she was opening while producing her debut album. Though the 2012 LP, Lush, was self-released — and reportedly doubled as a project for her junior year at SUNY Purchase — it carries the grand orchestral drama of a seasoned singer/songwriter, her already clarion vocals bolstered by clever songwriting. Just over a decade later, she's now idolized as a celestial being in a pantheon somewhere between indie pop star, poetic genius, and voice of a generation.

But Mitski's level of success has had its pitfalls. Despite her rather coy image and indie background, Mitski has garnered a rabid following with the stan culture of a stadium-filling act (for one, there's a Twitter account called "mitski's archive" that managed to track down rare footage of her college days). In turn, Mitski's career has often rung with a certain tension and internal conflict — yet, remarkably, the music has always remained transcendent.

Resilience has long been part of Mitski's journey, even before she realized she could turn to music as an outlet. Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and American father, Mitsuki Miyawaki spent much of her youth traveling internationally because of her father's job. Having to do that over and over — let alone as a mixed-race, Japanese-American child dropped into the Czech Republic or the Democratic Republic of Congo — was likely bewildering. But music gave some sense of home, of certainty: "Whenever she was lonely in a new house or city or country, she'd walk around and hum invented fragments of melody," Margaret Talbot wrote in a profile of Mitski for The New Yorker.

But still, she didn't fully find what she was looking for until high school, when she joined a choir, and then began writing songs in her teens. "As a teenager, I didn't want to be alive…I just wanted to be dead. I didn't have anything I was good at, because I didn't know I could make music yet," she told Talbot.

Settling into the United States for high school and then college, she dove head first into what music could offer. As Lush proved an incredible first step, another college-era project, 2013's Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, reinforced its predecessor's blend of chamber pop and indie rock flourishes; it was also her first in partnership with producer Patrick Hyland, who has worked on every Mitski album since. Both heady and delivered straight from the heart, poetic yet knifepoint-sharp, the one-two punch of Retired and Lush introduced a well of great potential.

Mitski's third album, 2014's Bury Me At Makeout Creek, served as a tidy turning point as her spotlight warmed up — especially because it was her first release with an independent label, Double Double Whammy. It's as if Mitski realized that people were drawn more to her than to the piano, and began exploring other ways that her intimate songs of pain and love could play out.

Rather than rely on the orchestra to underscore her rich, low-slung vocals, the fuzzier compositions embrace the roiling emotion they convey — ragged edges of distorted guitar and squared synth where once Mitski would have pinned everything together with a string section. What's more, the album's guitar-driven indie rock gave the feeling that she's sonically exploring her newly minted status as a signed indie rock touring act.

Removed from some of the preciousness of her college records, the distortion propelling "Townie" or the electronic percussion on "I Don't Smoke" pushed a rough-hewn color through Mitski's lyrics — underlining the uncertainty, the struggle, the hurt feelings that her storytelling implies. The musical complexities emphasized the lyrical conflict, and the propulsive energy was undeniable.

"The craft here is obvious, as is the accruing confidence of someone who's developed a compelling voice in obscurity," Ian Cohen wrote in a Pitchfork review of Bury Me.

The concept of obscurity is one that would be increasingly important over the following years. While her poetic lyricism is emotionally and visually evocative, Bury Me showed that it never feels diaristic; her internal reality and experiences are lightly obscured, but still essential to the process.

By completely reinventing her sonic palette while simultaneously deepening her lyrical vision, Bury Me hinted at an even brighter future — and set into motion the bind that Mitski has fought against ever since. As her music improved, her fame grew, and she soon found that her success was actually taking away from her ability to explore her musicality.

"When I record, it's this very precious and insular thing," she told Stereogum ahead of releasing 2016's Puberty 2. "With promoting Bury Me, I was so out of touch with music."

In that same interview, Mitski discussed how the songs for Puberty 2 were written without consideration of how they'd be performed live, as if she were attempting to retain some ownership of her experience before giving it over to the growing audiences. (Even so, Mitski toured both Europe and North America that fall.)

Puberty 2 did take a step back from the distorted, brash edge of Bury Me, but doesn't fully return to her orchestral roots either. No genre was safe, no sonic touchstone outside of her palette — everything swirled and caught up in her evocative storytelling, from jumpy electronic touches and burnished horns to surfy guitar. Her vocals ranged from skyscraping pop adventurism to deadpan chop.

The wide-ranging approach worked, as Puberty 2 landed on several "Best Of 2016" album lists and helped Mitski earn opening slots with the Pixies and Lorde in 2017. But as she announced the album's follow-up, 2018's Be the Cowboy, there were hints yet again that Mitski was exhausted by the realities of being a star, not just a creator: "A lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski," she said in a press release.

Ironically, "not having any feelings" would be the last thing that comes to mind upon hearing Be the Cowboy. The record's scope widened even further than its predecessors; in an almost Bjork-like career trajectory, Mitski continued to find new levels of intensity and beauty without ever repeating herself.

Songs like the explosive and grandiose "Geyser," the disco-tinged "Nobody," and the stomp-clamp wonderland "Washing Machine Heart" showcased the maturation of Mitski's approach, each song creating a world of its own — and the album's universe all spinning beautifully together. While she may have struggled during the creation of Be the Cowboy, something clearly worked: the album became her first to land on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart and was her first to be certified Gold in the U.S.

As the attention levels rose like a precipitous tide, Mitski continued to seem wary, if not outright frustrated. "All the sort of aggrandizing, strangely worshipful commentary about me, it doesn't make any sense," she told PBS Newshour.

When touring the record, Mitski opted to work with a choreographer named Jas Lin. The duo developed dance moves inspired by a Japanese form called butoh, resulting in what i-D called "slow, hyper-controlled motions, exaggerated facial expressions, and a fixation on hard emotions and absurdity." In another ironic turn, adding this performative layer between her inner self and her audience resulted in an even more rabid following on social media.

At the end of the tour, Mitski announced an indefinite hiatus from music, leaving social media behind as well — though, meanwhile, her songs were infiltrating thousands and thousands of TikToks. At the time, she told Rolling Stone that she expected to be done for good, to "find another life."

But the music kept calling, and it took less than a year for her return. "What it came down to was, 'I have to do this even though it hurts me, because I love it,'" she told Rolling Stone for a 2021 cover story, six weeks before Laurel Hell arrived in February 2022.

In a press release for that album, Mitski seemed to explain the urge as needing to deal with fame as a side effect of life as a creator: "I don't want to put on a front where I'm a role model, but I'm also not a bad person. I needed to create this space mostly for myself where I sat in that gray area."

For Mitski, that gray area resulted in an '80s synthpop record full of neon blue, splashes erupting from raindrops falling into puddles, and wafts of hazy smoke. Across its 11 tracks, there were love songs with reminders of death and explosively moving songs about feeling stuck — every track a blend of pleasure and pain.

Though various interviews saw her comparing herself to a bathroom stall ready to "take s—" from others, a "black hole" where people dump their feelings, and a "product" to be bought and sold, Mitski seemed to have turned a corner with Laurel Hell. As the album's beatific vibes suggest, she found a sense of acceptance during her hiatus.

"If I truly want the greatest magic in the world, the highest euphoria, the best thing, if I want to do that, I'm going to have to pay an equivalent price," she told Vulture. (She still maintained boundaries, though, declining to answer questions about her personal life.)

Mitski furthers that clarity-achieving experience with The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, an 11-song ode to the one thing that still feels like hers: love. "The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people," Mitski said in a statement.

The first single, "Bug Like an Angel," balances immensities: the ecstatic and the mundane, rock bottom and ecstasy. Mitski embraces the dichotomy sonically as well, with lightly echoed vocals and acoustic guitars interrupted by a sudden choral interjection. "Sometimes a drink feels like family," she sings, the irony of 17 people harmonizing that last word played out in heartbreaking majesty.

The dizzying meteor shower of "Star" and the string-laden "Heaven" reinforce that blend of subtlety and theatrics. At times, The Land is Inhospitable feels like the soundtrack to a tragicomedy epic — a cohesive story of hope, love and hurt colliding.

Mitski has made unique choices in her live performances in support of the record, too — perhaps, in a way, to prevent the burnout and struggle she experienced after releasing albums in the past. A week before the album's release, she put on "Double Features," a limited run of listening parties in which playback of the album was followed by a classic film (like Drugstore Cowboy or Days of Heaven).

In terms of touring, she has opted for intimate, acoustic "Amateur Mistake" performances, with only 10 shows stretched across 39 days. The venues are smaller (New York's 1,500 seat Town Hall subs in for the Laurel Hell tour's 6,000 seat Radio City Music Hall), another sign of Mitski setting another boundary for herself. Judging by a video of her first stop in Mexico City, all of the moves she's made have resulted in something that feels sincere, beautiful and loving.

In a career of unlocking new formulas to convey her stratospheric talent, it seems Mitski may have found one that also supports her heart — a way to square the self that is hers when creating art, and the self that exists in the world for others.

"You have to go to both worlds all the time," she said in a press release. "I don't have a self. I have a million selves, and they're all me, and I inhabit them, and they all live inside me."

With The Land is Inhospitable, those selves populate an expansive, haunting world threaded through with love and care — finally living in harmony with the surrounding darkness.

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With summer almost in the rear view, it’s time to welcome the first must-hear albums of the fall season. With the onset of chillier days comes a genre-spanning array of new music — from R&B sensation Jorja Smith to indie-rock maestro Mitski. 

September's first big release comes from rock royalty the Pretenders, who return at the top of the month with their twelfth studio album, *Relentless*. The following week, pop firebrand [Olivia Rodrigo](https://www.grammy.com/artists/Olivia-Rodrigo/38411) will reveal *GUTS*, the feverishly anticipated follow-up to her 2021 debut, *SOUR*. 

Rodrigo shares a release date with star-studded company, including disco queen Róisín Murphy, dance veterans [the Chemical Brothers](https://www.grammy.com/artists/chemical-brothers/7746), shapeshifting singer/songwriter [James Blake](https://www.grammy.com/artists/james-blake/17760), and soul newcomer Jalen Ngonda. Elsewhere in the month, there’s something for all tastes, from the pop-rock reawakening of [Demi Lovato](https://www.grammy.com/artists/demi-lovato/19851) to the noodly electronics of Animal Collective.

As we gear up for a season packed with musical highs, we’ve put together a handy guide to the 15 must-hear albums dropping in September 2023.

The Pretenders -  *Relentless*

**Release date:** Sept. 1

For a band that released its debut album in 1979, the Pretenders still sounds remarkably vital 44 years on. Led by iconic songwriter and frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, the band is back in full force this September with the appropriately titled Relentless, which follows 2020’s on-form Hate for Sale. 

The Pretenders announced their twelfth LP with a rousing-yet-poetic lead single, "Let the Sun Come In," and the album closes with an intriguing collaboration with [Radiohead](https://www.grammy.com/artists/radiohead/8042)’s [Jonny Greenwood](https://www.grammy.com/artists/jonny-greenwood/11632) on strings. 

"I think anyone in a band is constantly questioning if they should keep going," Hynde said of the album’s title in a statement. "It starts as a youthful pursuit and eventually, it makes you wonder, why am I doing this? It’s the life of the artist. You never retire. You become relentless."

Speedy Ortiz - *Rabbit Rabbit* 

**Release date:** Sept. 1

Philadelphia rock quartet Speedy Ortiz has kept fans waiting five long years for a new LP, having released their pop-inflected Twerp Verse back in 2018. This September, the band returns with Rabbit Rabbit, its first album on mercurial frontwoman Sadie Dupuis’ label, Wax Nine. 

To record *Rabbit Rabbit*, Speedy Ortiz jumped between two locations steeped in rock lore: Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree and Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas. The band has already shared a few songs so far, including the spiky "You S02" and the crunching, cathartic closer "Ghostwriter." The album also opens with a song called "Kim Cattrall."

"I turned 33 while writing this album, a palindrome birthday and a lucky number associated with knowledge," Dupuis said in a statement. "I wanted to mark how I was making better choices as I got older, letting go of heedless anger even when it’s warranted."

**Olivia Rodrigo - *GUTS***

**Release date:** Sept. 8 

As far as breakout albums go, Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR was about as good as it gets. Powered by the stage-setting singles "drivers license" and "deja vu," the album dropped in May 2021 as a balm for dark pandemic days. Coming in at a lean 34 minutes, SOUR was all killer, no filler— and went on to pick up Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2022 GRAMMYs, alongside Rodrigo’s wins for Best Pop Solo Performance ("drivers license") and Best New Artist. 

With Rodrigo now a bona fide pop superstar, she’s readying her second album, *GUTS*, for a buzzy September drop. [Lead single "vampire"](https://www.grammy.com/news/breakup-songs-like-olivia-rodrigo-vampire-taylor-swift-miley-cyrus-kelly-clarkson) arrived back in June with a lush, swelling sound (producer Dan Nigro makes several appearances on *GUTS*) and score-settling lyrics that cut like a knife. Rodrigo followed this strong return with "bad idea right?," a gleefully fun throwback to the pop-punk and grunge that soundtracked her teens.

In [an interview with the ](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/arts/music/olivia-rodrigo-guts.html)*[New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/arts/music/olivia-rodrigo-guts.html)* ahead of *GUTS*, Rodrigo enthused about embracing crunchy guitars and big emotional swings: "\[I\] always loved rock music, and always wanted to find a way that I could make it feel like me, and make it feel feminine and still telling a story and having something to say that’s vulnerable and intimate."

James Blake - *Playing Robots In Heaven* 

**Release date:** Sept. 8 

Following 2021’s acclaimed Friends That Break Your Heart, which featured guest turns from the likes of SZA, JID and Monica Martin, James Blake is stripping it back to basics on his sixth studio album, Playing Robots Into Heaven. 

This time around, the etherally-voiced singer has seemingly gone back to the electronic roots of his earlier works that emerged as part of the UK’s post-dubstep scene. 

With no featured guests, the tracklist includes the already-released singles "Big Hammer," which is all chopped-up samples and low-end frequencies, and "Loading," which recalls the vocal manipulations of the producer’s self-titled debut LP. Blake also shared the ambient title track, which will close the album in perfect contemplation. 

Jalen Ngonda - *Come Around and Love Me* 

**Release date:** Sept. 8

Growing up outside of Washington, D.C., Jalen Ngonda was immersed from an early age in soul music, courtesy of his music-obsessed father. Fast forward to 2023, and Ngonda is himself a talented soul artist signed to the revered Brooklyn indie label Daptone Records. 

The singer's debut album, *Come Around and Love Me*, features lushly arranged singles "If You Don’t Want My Love" and "Just Like You Used To," which showcase his timeless vocal prowess.

In a statement announcing the album, Ngonda revealed, "To a stranger, I’d describe my music as modern soul and R&B, while trying to fit in the [Beach Boys](https://www.grammy.com/artists/beach-boys/609) and [the Beatles](https://www.grammy.com/artists/beatles/16293) somewhere in between."  

The Chemical Brothers - *For That Beautiful Feeling*

**Release date:** Sept. 8

On their ninth album, 2019’s No Geography, UK electronic duo the Chemical Brothers sounded thrillingly energized. Now, after weathering a global pandemic, the veteran producers return with their tenth studio outing, For That Beautiful Feeling. 

The album features a new version of the duo’s cautiously hopeful 2021 release, "The Darkness That You Fear," alongside the propulsive, classically-Chems single, "No Reason," and collaborations with indie darling Beck and French singer/songwriter Halo Maud. 

The duo is set to follow the album in October with a career-spanning retrospective book, *Paused in Cosmic Reflection*, that’ll have fans clamoring. 

Demi Lovato - *REVAMPED* 

**Release date:** Sept. 15

Already an experienced master of reinvention, Demi Lovato is continuing her rock era with REVAMPED 5. On last year’s Holy Fvck, the pop chameleon wholeheartedly embraced hard rock and pop-punk, including collaborations with Yungblud, Royal & the Serpent and Dead Sara. 

While touring *Holy Fvck*, Lovato also played heavier versions of her earlier songs, and discovered her fans loved it. This inspired her to re-record rock versions of ten songs from past albums, including *Demi* and *Confident*, which are now brought together on *REVAMPED*. 

On the evidence of early singles like "Heart Attack (Rock Version)" and "Sorry Not Sorry (Rock Version)", the latter featuring [Guns N Roses](https://www.grammy.com/artists/guns-n-roses/7805) shredder Slash, Lovato is relishing the chance to rock out. 

Mitski - *The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We* 

**Release date:** Sept. 15

Back in July, ever-inventive singer-songwriter Mitski sent a voice memo to fans via her newsletter. "Hi, this is Mitski, and I’m at Bomb Shelter Studios in Nashville, where we recorded my new album that’s coming out," Mitski revealed. "It’s called The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, and its first single is coming out on Wednesday." 

That beautifully elegiac first single "Bug Like An Angel" suggests a heart-rending album to come from one of the boldest voices in indie-rock. The single also features a surprising (and powerfully effective) appearance from a 17-person choir that’s likely to appear elsewhere on *The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We*. As Mitski teased in a statement, "This is my most American album." 

NEEDTOBREATHE - *CAVES *

Release date: Sept. 15 

Following 2021’s Into The Mystery and its country-rock crossover hit, "I Wanna Remember," featuring Carrie Underwood, Christian rock troupe NEEDTOBREATHE returns with their ninth album, CAVES. 

As documented in an intimate making-of video, the GRAMMY-winning band assembled in a house overlooking the majestic mountains of Utah to begin writing the album, which they completed while on the road with OneRepublic. 

"We always believed we could make a record that would feel at home on the world’s biggest stages," the band wrote in a statement announcing CAVES. "It was important to us to prove that we could. This is the most ambitious record we’ve made in a really long time."

Kylie Minogue - *Tension*

**Release date: **Sept. 22

Thanks to the runaway viral success of her dance-pop earworm "Padam Padam," 2023 has already been a triumphant year for Australian pop veteran Kylie Minogue. Released in May, the single went on to vie for song of the summer status, powered by countless dance videos on TikTok and its warm embrace as a Pride anthem. 

Buoyed by her surprise chart hit, Minogue will release her sixteenth studio album, *Tension*. As suggested by the glossy cover art, and the presence of producers such as Oliver Heldens and Biff Stannard, Minogue is ready to reclaim her electro-pop crown. 

"I started this album with an open mind and a blank page," Minogue said in a statement. "Unlike my last two albums, there wasn’t a 'theme.' It was about finding the heart or the fun or the fantasy of that moment and always trying to service the song." 

Bakar - *Halo*

**Release date:** Sept. 22

Acclaimed British artist Bakar will help kick off the month in style with his second album, Halo. The sophomore release is billed as a sonic counterpart to his genre-hopping 2018 mixtape, BADKID. Like that breakout release, Halo is set to blend indie, punk and hip-hop, with Bakar’s beguiling voice at front and center. 

Ahead of a busy summer jumping between festival stages, Bakar dropped a mood-lifting single, "Alive!," accompanied by a music video featuring the artist bringing traffic to a standstill (for real) in Central London. 

Animal Collective - *Isn't It Now?*  

**Release date:** Sept. 29

Following 2022’s Time Skiffs, experimental pop four-piece Animal Collective returns with its most expansive album to date. With a total runtime of 64 minutes, Isn’t It Now? will explore a rich sonic palette, as suggested by the layered and hypnotic single, "Soul Capturer."

Co-produced, mixed and recorded with GRAMMY-winning producer Russell Elevado, Isn’t It Now? reportedly finds each band member digging deep into their current musical whims — such as multi-instrumentalist Panda Bear focusing more on drumming. 

The centerpiece of the album is "Defeat," a 22-minute epic that captures Animal Collective at its most exploratory. 

Jorja Smith -  *Falling or Flying* 

**Release date:** Sept. 29

As one of the brightest stars to emerge from the UK in the past decade, Jorja Smith has already put together an accomplished discography. Following her 2018 debut, Lost & Found, and 2021’s three-track EP, Be Right Back, Smith will release her most complete artistic statement to date. 

Like her previous releases, the singer’s long-awaited second album, *Falling or Flying*, will connect the dots between soul, R&B, UK garage and house, with a song for every mood and situation. 

"This album is like my brain,” Smith said in a statement. “There’s always so much going on but each song is definitely a standstill moment." So far, Smith has given us two standout singles — the garage-tinged "Little Things" and the more contemplative "Try Me" — so anticipation is sky high. 

TINASHE - *BB/ANG3L* 

**Release date:** TBD 

While it’s yet to lock an official release date, the hype is building for Tinashe’s sixth studio album, BB/ANG3L — her first under a new deal with GRAMMY-winning hitmaker Ricky Reed’s record label, Nice Life. 

"I’ve enjoyed stripping back layers of aesthetic fluff, smoke & mirrors, and white noise to get down to the core of myself," the alternative R&B star said of the album in a statement. 

On lead single, "Talk to Me Nice," Tinashe’s indelible smoky vocals are offset by skittering, seductive production from hip-hop beatmaker [Scoop DeVille](https://www.grammy.com/artists/scoop-deville/18109) and electronic artist Nosaj Thing. Follow-up single "Needs" is another undeniable bop, setting the stage for a standout album.

(G)I-DLE - *HEAT*

**Release date:** Oct. 15

Prolific K-pop girl group (G)I-DLE is set to release its first English language project, HEAT. 

*HEAT* follows the group’s 2022 debut album, *I Never Die*, which opens with the pop-punk-influenced single, "TOMBOY." While little has been revealed about *HEAT*, the project comes via the Asian market-focused U.S. music company 88rising and South Korean label Cube Entertainment, and will showcase the songwriting prowess of group leader Jeon So-yeon. 

(G)I-DLE has released one single from *HEAT* so far — the highly polished synth-pop love song, "I DO" — and the anticipation has K-pop fans feeling giddy.

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In Mitski’s new song, "Bug Like an Angel," a hazy, offhand image comes creeping into view: "There’s a bug like an angel/ Stuck to the bottom/ Of my glass, with a little bit left," she sings.

Mitski then zooms out to a suggestion of generational pain: "As I got older/ I learned I’m a drinker/ Sometimes a drink feels like family." Then, a choir heaves the word back to her: "Family!"

So begins the debut single from Mitski’s new album, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, out Sept. 25 via Dead Oceans. It’ll be the revered singer/songwriter’s second album in just over a year; she dropped Laurel Hell in early 2022.

The "Bug Like an Angel" video is quietly harrowing. An elderly woman staggering outside of a watering hole into the damp, unforgiving horizon, as Mitski strums on and said choir underpins the drama.

As the simple, unflinching composition unfurls, Mitski builds to the two-opposing-truths kicker: "The wrath of the devil was also given to him by God."

Check out the video for "Bug Like an Angel" below, and keep watching this space for more news about Mitski and The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We.

Outside Lands 2022: Mitski Brings A Theatrical Loneliness To Thousands