beabadoobee: Pylon

Released 18 September 2026 through Dirty Hit and Interscope

On Pylon, beabadoobee turns the distortion up without allowing the famous names in the credits to swallow her. Hayley Williams, Chino Moreno, Brendan Yates, Matty Healy and George Daniel appear across the album, yet Beatrice Laus remains its centre of gravity. The collaborations broaden the walls; they do not become the building.

The album moves decisively into grunge and heavier alternative rock after the more polished pop surrounding her recent ascent. “Switchblade” and “Sun Has Set” carry the exhaustion and disorientation of touring, while “Spark” offers a clearer melodic release from the surrounding abrasion. The guitars are frequently dense, but the writing underneath them remains intimate, concerned with adulthood, authenticity and the peculiar loneliness of becoming internationally visible.

Laus has built an enormous audience without becoming a conventional household name, a reminder that cultural influence no longer travels through the old handful of television programmes, magazines and radio stations. Her listeners do not require permission from the wider public to consider her important.

Pylon understands that audience without pandering to it. This is a record by a British-Filipino artist using the vocabulary of 1990s alternative rock to describe a thoroughly contemporary kind of pressure. It is louder, angrier and considerably more convincing than a calculated attempt at rock credibility.

ROE: LOST DOG!

Independent spotlight | Released 4 September 2026

Grief albums are often treated as though sadness alone makes them profound. On LOST DOG!, Derry artist ROE does the harder thing: she gives grief movement, personality and the occasional sharp elbow. Written across a year marked by the loss of her dog, heartbreak and personal upheaval, the nine-track record is less interested in preserving pain than examining how a life rearranges itself around absence.

For the industry, LOST DOG! is proof that emotionally candid alternative music need not be marketed as fragile. ROE sounds bruised, observant and stubbornly alive. The dog may be lost, but the artist has rarely sounded more certain of where she is going.

Rachel Chinouriri: “One Song Away from Crying”

Rachel Chinouriri’s “One Song Away from Crying” understands a very specific emotional disaster: looking magnificent on a night out while privately calculating how quickly you can reach the nearest toilet and fall apart. It dresses that moment in silver synths, a four-on-the-floor pulse and enough composure to make the sadness feel almost glamorous.

The contrast is the song’s strength. Chinouriri sings from the precipice of a night that has turned against her, but the production refuses the expected balladry. The beat continues, the room keeps moving and the private collapse must negotiate with public performance. It is a familiar demand placed upon women, particularly Black women in visible spaces: remain charming, polished and legible while everything underneath is fraying.

As the first glimpse of her second album, I Think I Spoke Too Soon, the single signals a move from indie-rock framing towards glossy synth-pop influenced by Madonna and Prince. Crucially, the shift does not erase the conversational writing that made her debut so affecting.

Chinouriri has already challenged an industry that repeatedly tried to categorise her music as R&B because she is Black. “One Song Away from Crying” makes that lazy taxonomy look even more ridiculous. She is not changing lanes. She is demonstrating how many lanes were hers to begin with.