5 Albums Out Today to Listen To: Phoebe Bridgers, L’Rain, ‘Hovvdy, and More – Our Culture
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on August 14, 2026.
Phoebe Bridgers, Lost Weekend
“Let’s go missing,” Phoebe Bridgers sings on ‘Kill Me’, but today she’s reemerged with her first album in six years. With Ethan Gruska, Jack Antonoff, Tony Berg, and Alex G splitting production duties alongside her, Lost Weekend is by far her dreamiest album, a miracle of sound design and imaginative world-building. In a way, these are songs she wrote while hiding off from the world, sleeping in, with “too much money and nothing to lose.” But they are also the mark of a great songwriter who, in grief and in love, wakes to the double-edged sword of existing unalone, and can’t help but brave through the thought of oblivion: forthrightly, ambitiously, and right before our eyes. Read the full review.
L’Rain, fata morgana
Taja Cheek is back with a new L’Rain album, fata morgana. Working once again with longtime collaborators Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Andrew Lappin, her new album feels like an extension of the shapeshifting musical world the singer-songwriter has built over the past decade while also prodding at its extremes. Between songs that dissolve in or rise from the ether, that assault or delight the senses, Cheek achieves a strange kind of equilibrium, thriving in an environment that should be hostile to any kind of creative endeavour, let alone such brilliance. Read the full review.
Hovvdy, Big World
Hovvdy return with a treasure trove of hooks and a few musical surprises on Big World, the follow-up to their sprawling self-titled album. “The last record felt like such a generous offering: a double-album, deeply personal, you can literally hear me crying on some songs,” the duo’s Charlie Martin said in a press release. “With this one, we wanted to take on the challenge of making something more concise and to the point, and give the fans something that feels like a shorter but more exciting ride.” Over a series of recording sessions between Nashville and Asheville in fall 2025, the pair came in with instrumental rather than fully-drafted demos, writing together in real time. “When it comes to the music, there’s literally never questions between Charlie and me, only answers,” Will Taylor added. “We can always show up and not have to worry about the music, and that continues to amaze me.”
Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal, DOOMED!
Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal first full-length together is a woozy, fragmented sort of break-up album. Arriving via billy woods’ Backwoodz label, DOOMED! features the early singles ‘Unfinished Concrete Initials’ (featuring Hemlock Ernst) and the woods-assisted ‘She Swear I’m Colorblind’, one of the best songs of July. “In recent years, Kenny made it very clear that he wasn’t trying to keep having one or two beats on my projects; he wanted to build something,” Eagle said in a statement, adding, “Every one of Kenny’s beats is a chunk of ore from a different comet. I used each one as a canvas to paint my impression of a dead world.”
James Ellis Ford, Lost in Another World
Deeply poignant and otherworldly in equal measure, Lost in Another World is James Ellis Ford’s first album since signing to Domino Records. The producer behind records by Arctic Monkeys, Florence + the Machine, Fontaines D.C., and more made the record over two weeks in early 2025, while he was in the hospital between rounds of chemotherapy following a diagnosis of myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive cancer of the white blood cells. Sereen, his wife, bought him a fold-away IKEA bedside table to put some synths on; staff at the hospital got used to taking his blood pressure while he was laying down tracks. “There was no filter,” Ford recalled. “I just sang the first thing that came into my head into the laptop.”
Other albums out today:
Sweeping Promises, You Say I Romanticize; Duffy x Uhlmann, Hot Creek; King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Alien Metal; Melaina Kol, Okay that’s a great idea because if I do that then; Maggie Rose, Half Moon; Jungle, Sunshine; Kiwi Jr., Blowin’ Up; Benny Blanco, Hermosa; Radiator Hospital, Distorting Time.