New Music Friday: The best albums out May 29

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🗓️ 29 May 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

Boards of Canada. Kurt Vile. Iceage. Host Stephen Thompson chats with Andrew Brown of KUTX in Austin about their favorite albums out Friday, May 29. Plus, a handful of NPR Music writers and critics offer their personal picks in the lightning round.

The Starting 5

(00:00) Paul McCartney
(02:00) Boards of Canada
(09:22) Kurt Vile
(17:01) Iceage
(22:18) feeble little horse
(27:45) Greg Mendez

(33:46) Lightning Round Recommendations

- The Greenberry Woods
- obli
- RaiNao
- ear
- Brian Jackson

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: Andrew Brown, KUTX
Audio Producer: Noah Caldwell
Digital Producer: Dora Levite
Editors: Otis Hart, Elle Mannion
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Special thanks to Ann Powers, Robin Hilton and Anamaria Sayre

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Happy Friday, everyone from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Andrew P. Brown of KUTX in Austin, Texas. Welcome to the show, Andrew.
0:18.4	Happy to be here. It is a pleasure to have you. So the
0:21.7	music that you are hearing right now is by Paul McCartney. Might have heard of him. He was from a
0:27.8	band called Wings, and to a lesser extent, The Beatles. His new album is called The Boys of Dungeon Lane.
0:34.3	Do not email me. I know that the Beatles are bigger than wings.
0:43.8	The Boys of Dungeon Lane is Paul McCartney's 20th solo album. You might have seen him performing on The Last Ever Late Show with Stephen Colbert. You might have seen him as I did on
0:49.0	the last episode of the season of Saturday Night Live. I did, yeah. And it's great. You know,
0:56.1	I'm of the belief that he can keep going and putting out music as long as he's able. He's earned as many victory laps as he
1:01.8	wants to take. Yeah, and I think, I mean, victory lap at 83 years old, soon to be 84, like,
1:07.4	obviously, Paul McCartney has absolutely nothing left to prove, but I did appreciate with this
1:12.5	record that it's not just, it doesn't feel like a placeholder record. It feels like he still has
1:17.6	stuff to say, stuff that he's still processing. The album title is a reference to a street in
1:24.0	Liverpool. This record is full of nostalgia and childhood memories and, you know,
1:29.1	kind of a deep notes of wistfulness, clearly somebody who's looking back at not only a long career,
1:35.1	but a long life.
1:36.8	The world around us wasn't safe. The place was falling down.
1:42.4	But it was my hometown.
1:46.3	And it was home to us.
1:50.7	That is Paul McCartney.
1:52.4	The Boys of Dungeon Lane is out today.
1:56.2	Let's kick off our more in-depth discussion of albums that are out today, May 29th, starting with Boards of Canada.
2:02.6	Boards of Canada are back with their first album in 13 years. It's called Inferno. The
	...

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