New Music Friday: The best albums out April 3

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4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thundercat. Arlo Parks. Devotional belters from Dermot Kennedy. NPR Music's Stephen Thompson chats with Erin Wolf from Radio Milwaukee about their favorite albums out Friday, April 3. Plus, a handful of NPR Music writers and critics offer personal picks in our lightning round.

The Starting 5

(00:00) Introduction & Bon Iver, 'VOLUMES: ONE"
(01:57) Arlo Parks, 'Ambiguous Desire'
(07:29) Dermot Kennedy, 'The Weight of the Woods'
(14:15) Thundercat, 'Distracted'
(19:53) Joe Pernice, 'Sunny, I Was Wrong'
(26:44) Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE & Surf Gang, 'POMPEII // UTILITY'

(31:30) The Lightning Round

- Maria Taylor, 'Story's End'
- Wendy Eisenberg, 'Wendy Eisenberg'
- Sunn O))), 'Sunn O)))'
- Roomful of Teeth & Gabriel Kahane, 'Elevator Songs'
- Sofia Rei, 'Antónima'

Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist and see our Long List of notable releases on NPR.org

Credits:
Host: Stephen Thompson
Guest: Erin Wolf, Radio Milwaukee
Audio Producers: Noah Caldwell, Alina Edwards
Digital Producer: Dora Levite
Editors: Otis Hart, Elle Mannion
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Special thanks to Felix Contreras, Lars Gotrich and Tom Huizenga

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Transcript

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0:00.0	ever since i heard the howling wind i didn't need to go in no by the way
0:14.2	happy friday everyone from npr music i'm stephen thom Thompson here with Aaron Wolf of Radio Milwaukee. Welcome
0:22.6	back to the show, Aaron. Hey, Stephen. I'm so glad to be back with you again. It is a pleasure.
0:27.6	And you may have noticed the music that we are listening to is from our shared home state of Wisconsin.
0:34.8	Bonne Verre has a new live collection. It is called, and it is a mouthful,
0:40.8	volumes one, selections from music concerts 2019 to 2023 Bonne Verre six piece band. The title of which
0:49.9	sounds kind of like the title of a Borat movie. But the music is gorgeous.
0:55.3	Heavenly father, it's definitely lava, while you don't carry other name.
1:04.6	Absolutely, like the band is so tight-knit, and you can feel like this sense of wholeness as Justin Vernon described it.
1:15.0	Like, it comes across like in this album that's like sequenced really seamlessly.
1:21.4	You can't even tell that the album features tracks that weren't part of the same show because it's just done so tastefully and blended so well back to back.
1:32.2	Yeah.
1:32.7	Highly recommend it.
1:33.9	We've been talking about Bonnyvera on All Songs Considered for almost 20 years now.
1:40.8	And, you know, we used to joke on All Songs Considered with Bob Boylan and Robin Hilton and
1:44.8	Kerry Brownstein that every time somebody mentioned Bonie Verre, they had to put a quarter in the
1:49.2	Iver jar.
1:50.9	So we've been plug in this band for a real long time, but delighted to have this new record.
1:57.2	So to kick off the show for real, we've got a new record, wonderful new record from Arlo Parks.
2:02.3	Arlo Parks's new album is called Ambiguous Desire.
2:08.0	I wish I had the language to tell you the way this feels. This feels This feels
2:19.3	You invited me like the scar
	...

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