New Music Friday: The best albums out Feb. 20

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🗓️ 20 February 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

WILLOW. Altin Gün. Fugazi alumni smashing punk into jazz. NPR Music's Stephen Thompson is joined by Evan Miller from WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio to chat about their favorite albums out Friday, Feb. 20.

The Starting 5

(00:00) Introduction & WILLOW, 'petal rock black'
(03:29) Pekka Kuusisto, 'Willows'
(08:59) Manu Delago & Max ZT, 'Deuce'
(16:21) The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis, 'Deface The Currency'
(21:29) Hen Ogledd, 'DISCOMBOBULATED'
(27:19) Altin Gün, 'Garip'

(32:41) The Lightning Round

- Megan Moroney, 'Cloud 9'
- Chris Forsyth's WHAT IS NOW, 'Both / And'
- Choker, 'Heaven Ain't Sold'
- MX LONELY, 'ALL MONSTERS'
- Mumford & Sons, 'Prizefighter'

Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist on NPR.org/allsongs

Credits:
Host: Stephen Thompson
Guest: Evan Miller, WYSO
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	M-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-B-D-D-B-D-D-B-D-B-D-H-D-B-H-B-H-B-H-B-H-B-H-B-H-B-H-B-H-B-B-H-B-T. Happy. It's New Music Friday. I'm Steven Thompson here with Evan Miller of WY-Y-S-O in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Welcome to the show, Evan.
0:21.5	Thank you so much for having me.
0:22.6	Happy to be here.
0:23.4	It is a pleasure to have you. with Evan Miller of WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Welcome to the show, Evan.
0:21.5	Thank you so much for having me.
0:22.6	Happy to be here.
0:23.4	It is a pleasure to have you.
0:24.9	We have a very unusual week of new music, including an album that dropped on Tuesday morning.
0:33.4	We are kind of still just getting used to it ourselves.
0:36.5	It's by Willow Smith, who records under the name Willow.
0:39.5	Check out our Tiny Desk concert from 2024 if you haven't seen it.
0:43.6	Willow's new album is called Petal Rock Black, and the guests alone suggest how facile she is at fusing accessible pop with more left field sounds.
0:53.4	Yeah, the Tune Yards guest spot later in the record makes a lot of sense to me.
0:57.7	It really does.
0:59.2	Vegetation, one of the earlier tracks, as soon as I heard it, I'm like, this sounds like tune yards.
1:02.8	Yep.
1:03.2	I can tell she's been jamming on maybe the new tune yards record.
1:06.2	I admittedly... I don't want to say you're wrong Just let me finish the soul
1:13.6	I admittedly haven't checked back into the Willow catalog
1:17.5	Since she was making rock music the last time I dropped in
1:23.3	So this one was quite a pleasant surprise addition to this week. The arrangements are fantastic,
1:31.9	a lot of like really funky rhythms and grooves. Yeah, Willow is extraordinarily inventive and
	...

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