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September 15, 2026 
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The albums I’m looking forward to this fall
6 songs, 21 min 15 sec
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| Remi Wolf Jeremy Chan/Getty Images |
Dear listeners,
Fall is a time of fresh starts, descending temperatures and, without fail, an absolute cornucopia of new albums I’m excited about.
Today’s playlist features tracks from some of my most anticipated albums of the upcoming season, including the latest by the dynamic pop musician Remi Wolf, an electronic odyssey from Tinashe, and a live document of an unforgettable show I saw Cameron Winter perform last year at Carnegie Hall. Pressing play may or may not accelerate the process of leaves changing colors.
I want that one-way ticket to the rodeo,
Lindsay
1. Remi Wolf: “Bottle”
On her two personality-packed albums, “Juno” and “Big Ideas,” the California singer-songwriter Remi Wolf had the air of a quirky, colorfully drawn cartoon character moving to the beat of her own drum through surreal landscapes. But “Bottle,” the wrenching lead track from her upcoming album, “Mud,” feels grounded and direct in a way that Wolf hasn’t before: “I can’t get the bottle if I don’t get up,” she sings, turning a candid tale of struggling with sobriety into an invitingly catchy tune. Wolf has said that making “Mud,” set for release on Oct. 9, “really felt like a cleansing.” It also features the explosively cathartic first single “Twiggy,” and “Moon So High,” a duet with one of her favorite musicians, John Mayer.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Wishy: “All the Rage”
I was a big fan of “Triple Seven,” the dreamy 2024 debut album by the Indianapolis quartet Wishy, but everything I’ve heard so far from their next album, “Nature’s Pill,” suggests that the band has leveled up. The band’s members are clearly ace students of indie rock past, specifically of the kind of sweetly distorted jangle-pop made by ’90s underground heroes Velocity Girl, but their sound is too exuberantly executed to be dismissed as pastiche. Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites trade lead vocal duties throughout this dizzying, up-tempo single; “Now that you’re gone / can’t turn the TV on / just can’t find motivation,” they sing in sugary harmony, making heartbroken sluggishness sound suspiciously fun. “Nature’s Pill” is out on Oct. 2.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Julia Jacklin: “Get Away from Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)”
“The Gem,” the forthcoming fourth LP from the sharply observant Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin, is named for one of her favorite bars in Melbourne, where she’s lived since 2017. She and her band recorded the album in a rented room above the bar that had been converted into a studio — an atmospheric extension of Jacklin’s desire, on “The Gem,” to get back to her roots. This lead single, about the push and pull of intimacy, showcases Jacklin’s easy way with melody and the plain-spoken charms of her lyrics.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Tinashe: “Melatonin”
In recent years Tinashe, who broke out in 2014 with the aqueous R&B hit “2 On,” has been experimenting with kinetic, club-ready dance music — see: “No Broke Boys,” her 2025 hit collaboration with the DJ Disco Lines. The highly caffeinated “Melatonin,” her latest single, suggests that her upcoming eighth album “Popstar” will continue — and accelerate — in this lane. “You so melatonin,” she taunts a sleepy rival in a pitched-down voice. Just when the hypnotic track has drawn you into its rhythms, Tinashe shifts gears by introducing another infectious hook. “Popstar” is out Sept. 25.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. The Avalanches featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss: “Together”
It took the Avalanches — the beloved, long-running Australian electronic-music group, who also happen to be some of the nicest people I’ve ever interviewed — an astounding 16 years to follow up their landmark 2000 debut album “Since I Left You,” a dense and brilliantly composed musical tapestry of obscure samples. (Remember the oddball hit “Frontier Psychiatrist”?)
Since returning in 2016 with the LP “Wildflower,” the Avalanches have settled into a more regular pattern of releasing a new album about every five years. Right on time, on Oct. 16, they’ll release “No Bad Memories,” a 31-track project centered loosely around a concept of digital nostalgia or, in their words, “the simultaneously magical and insidious ways that advertising and name-brand technology wraps itself around our memories.” Accordingly, on “Together,” they sample an old Nokia sound effect to create a song that is at once neon-bright and slightly melancholy. Fellow electronic artists Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss join them on the track, and “No Bad Memories” itself has an even more eclectic guest list, featuring appearances from Karen O, Rivers Cuomo, Carly Simon, Haruomi Hosono and, amazingly, Haley Joel Osment.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Cameron Winter: “Love Takes Miles”
I have struggled to describe exactly what I experienced last year on the evening of Dec. 11, when I witnessed the singularly droll singer-songwriter Cameron Winter play, alone at a grand piano, an utterly magical solo set at Carnegie Hall. After Oct. 9, though, I will no longer have to try and explain it, since Winter’s aptly titled album “Live at Carnegie Hall” will exist, accompanied later this fall by a limited release performance film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. (Yes, that Paul Thomas Anderson.) Like his work fronting the much argued-about rock band Geese, Winter’s solo music tends to be polarizing, but the Carnegie performance’s sparse piano arrangements of his wonderfully meandering folk songs will illuminate another side of his talent. Winter has not yet released any live tracks ahead of the album, so enjoy this studio version of the aching “Love Takes Miles,” from his 2024 instant-cult-classic LP “Heavy Metal.” The version he played at Carnegie Hall made me cry.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“The Albums I’m Looking Forward to This Fall” track list
Track 1: Remi Wolf, “Bottle”
Track 2: Wishy, “All the Rage”
Track 3: Julia Jacklin, “Get Away from Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)”
Track 4: Tinashe, “Melatonin”
Track 5: The Avalanches featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss, “Together”
Track 6: Cameron Winter, “Love Takes Miles”
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