New Music Friday: The best albums out June 5

NPR Music

NPR

Music

4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Vince Staples. Zoh Amba. Death Cab for Cutie. Host Stephen Thompson chats with Laura Grant from WEXT in New York about their favorite albums out Friday, June 5. Plus, a handful of NPR Music writers and critics offer their personal picks in the lightning round.

The Starting 5

(00:00) Album No.1
Death Cab for Cutie, 'I Built You a Tower' (ANTI-Records)

(08:18) Album No. 2
Vince Staples, 'Cry Baby' (Loma Vista Recordings)

(15:43) Album No. 3
Jalen Ngonda, 'Doctrine of Love' (Daptone Records)

(20:41) Album No. 4
Zoh Amba, 'Eyes Full' (Matador Records)

(27:19) Album No. 5
Laura Misch, 'Lithic' (One Little Independent Records)

(32:39) Lightning Round Recommendations

• Fightmaster, 'Tolerance' (Many Hats)
• Red Clay Strays, 'Grateful' (RCA)
• Slippers, 'Slippers 08' (Perennial)
• Suzanne Ciani, Metropole Orkest, Simon Dobson, 'CIANI/ORKEST' (AKP Recordings)
• Tara Clerkin Trio, 'Somewhere Good' (World of Echo)

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: Laura Grant, WEXT
Audio Producer: Noah Caldwell
Digital Producer: Dora Levite
Editors: Otis Hart, Elle Mannion
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Special thanks to Robin Hilton, Hazel Cills and Lars Gotrich

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Happy Friday, everyone from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Laura Grant from W.E.X.T. in New York. Welcome to the show, Laura.
0:19.1	Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I'm very
0:21.1	excited to be joining. It is a pleasure to have you. I mean, before we start talking about
0:26.4	records in depth, you know, I did want to acknowledge this is a very, very, very busy release date,
0:31.9	June 5th, 26th. A lot of kind of legacy artists, artists who've, you know, built up kind of long and successful careers are back with new records, including Modest Mouse, Lizzo, Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk, of Montreal, Evanescence.
0:48.0	We couldn't get to all of these records, but we wanted to acknowledge that there are just a lot of big names on this
0:54.9	release schedule. Oh, 100%. And I did check out the Modest Mouse album. I know we're not talking
1:00.6	about it later, but I checked it out and I loved it. Harsh words by mother, but it turned out
1:07.2	they were nice. She said if you continue down this path, you're not the only one who dies.
1:15.3	A few weeks later, I was told that you were gone. Well, I still just can't remember if your eyes were green or brown and blonde.
1:25.5	We figured we'd kick off this show
1:28.0	by talking about one of these legacy artists in depth.
1:31.3	There's a new album from Death Cab for Cutie.
1:34.1	Death Cab for Cutie is back with its 11th album.
1:37.4	It's called I Built You a Tower.
1:39.3	I love an incurable mask
1:42.8	because I like to tie me up.
1:47.0	No blames and explain the ways they are born from my cup.
1:55.0	Rebounds always running me down like a lion on the plains.
2:02.6	But this fate is its own escape, so I just stand in place.
2:10.6	And now I find I'm waking up the sunrides and just lying in bed.
2:18.3	Give myself a pep talk to survive the day line ahead.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.