New Music Friday: The best albums out Feb. 13
NPR Music
NPR
4.3 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Starting 5
(00:00) Introduction & Charli xcx, 'Wuthering Heights'
(03:06) August Ponthier, 'Everywhere Isn't Texas'
(09:38) Brent Faiyaz, 'Icon'
(15:29) Jill Scott, 'To Whom This May Concern'
(21:09) STAYC, 'Stay Alive'
(25:57) The Paranoid Style, 'Known Associates'
(32:01) The Lightning Round:
- The Olympians, 'In Search of a Revival'
- Hemlocke Springs, 'the apple tree under the sea'
- Neba Solo & Benego Diakité, 'A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking (The Complete Sessions)'
- Aaron Shaw, 'And So It Is'
- Ásgeir, 'Julia'
Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist on NPR.org/allsongs
Credits:
Host: Stephen Thompson
Guest: Nastia Voynovskaya, KQED
Audio Producer: Noah Caldwell
Digital Producer: Dora Levite
Editors: Otis Hart, Elle Mannion
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language. |
| 0:03.8 | Unbelievable tension, wall of sound, no real reason, and I can't escape it. |
| 0:12.2 | Happy Friday, everyone from NPR Music. |
| 0:14.9 | It's New Music Friday. |
| 0:16.4 | I'm Stephen Thompson here with Nastia Voinovskaia from KQED in San Francisco. Welcome to the show, Nostia. |
| 0:23.2 | Hi, Stephen. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. It is a pleasure. So we should |
| 0:28.4 | note up front that Charlie X-CX has a new album of music from the new movie Weathering Heights. |
| 0:36.8 | One of, I'm just going to pull a number and just go with it, one of 25 movies featuring |
| 0:42.9 | the music of Charlie X-CX in some way or another this calendar year. |
| 0:47.6 | I cannot keep track of everything Charlie X-CX is doing, but this is one of the big projects |
| 0:53.1 | she's got this year. |
| 0:55.9 | Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's super interesting how Charlie has pivoted away from the success of Brat Summer. |
| 1:03.1 | She's spoken out about the pressure to follow up something that major. And I think unlike someone, |
| 1:10.2 | maybe like Beyonce or Taylor, she hasn't put forth |
| 1:13.8 | another giant artistic statement. She's instead kind of pivoted into this film and soundtrack work. |
| 1:19.3 | And I think it's a really cool creative challenge for her. |
| 1:43.3 | You know, as I kind of alluded to, like a new announcement or a new trailer, or a different project that she's in either a case of Wuthering Heights, you know, a soundtrack maker. |
| 1:46.4 | You know, I just saw within the last week or two the movie The Moment, which is kind of like |
| 1:51.0 | a mockumentary about the aftermath of Brat Summer and kind of Charlie's, you know, effort to |
| 1:58.0 | figure out what's next. And we should know that the full soundtrack |
| 2:02.6 | to Wuthering Heights was not made available to us for the purposes of this show before its release. |
| 2:08.6 | So we're only able to talk about the few songs that are out. What do you think? |
... |
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