Every Friday, Relix surveys the wealth of new music released over the past seven days and selects standouts for the Relix Staff Picks playlist. Read on for the highlights from this week’s batch, presented by Qobuz: experience the difference with high-quality music streaming and human-curated selections from the platform that puts artists first.
Since they first connected for a workshop at the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the members of I’m With Her have honed their harmony on and off the stage. Beyond writing and performing together, Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Watkins and Sarah Jarosz have grown closer through shared personal experiences and open communication, fostering an intimate mutual understanding. The brilliance of their collaboration isn’t that they become something greater than the sum of their parts, but that the congruity and contrast that they hear in each other allows them to hear their own creative voices more clearly.
“The three of us really respect each other’s individual careers and individual points of view,” Watkins said in a 2025 Relix feature. “It’s neat to have these three different speeds on the bike that can work together. When we find our rhythm, which doesn’t take long at the beginning of a project, it can do some exciting things. I just love being in this band. But it’s very important that you love each other off the stage too, especially at this stage in life. Life’s too short to be with people that you don’t love. And we love living life together.”
Today, I’m With Her released Sing Me Alive, a new live collection confirming that the trio’s intricate chemistry is still best experienced in concert. Across 20 highlights drawn from 2025’s Grammy-winning Wild, Clear and Blue and 2018’s See You Around, plus a cover of Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child,” the independently esteemed singer-songwriters trade the lead and meet in lush, studied harmonies.
New Sounds and Experimental Collaborations
Elsewhere, there’s Frog For Sale, Frog’s odd, offbeat, sweet and infectious eighth album. The latest project from New York singer-songwriter Daniel Bateman and his brother Steve is candid enough to be funny, disarming, uncomfortable and heartfelt all at once. This is just the sort of record that couldn’t exist in a world without They Might Be Giants, who have returned with The World Is To Dig; John Flansburgh and John Linnell strike a balance of humor and severity that harnesses absurdity without ever feeling put-on.
For something heavier, hear Nine Inch Noize, the self-titled collaboration from industrial titans Nine Inch Nails and German electronic producer Boys Noize reimagining the former’s catalog, or Bitches Blues, a cathartic, disconcerting outburst of metal-tinged jazz from Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns.
Singles and Emerging Voices
This week also brought a great many great singles. Yesterday, Tom Waits and Massive Attack joined forces for “Boots on the Ground,” the artists’ first original offering in years. Today, S.G. Goodman followed her triumphant 2025 2025 Music release with a smoldering-then-raucous country-ish spin on Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper.” MALIA has released “Getaway Driver,” the latest advance offering from her forthcoming EP, If I’m Being Honest. The alternative r&b singer-songwriter basks in glowy, sleek immediacy, and her effortlessly captivating vocals imbue the narrative of racing away from a relationship with a layered emotional resonance.
The latest batch of Relix Staff Picks also includes new music from Evolfo, Penny Arcade, Accessory, Tanya Donnelly and Chris Brokaw, Eaves Wilder and many more gems.