Now Hear This! - November 2026

Surprise Chef
Frogs In A Pond
Concord

Recorded live over nine days onto an eight-track tape machine, Frogs In A Pond unfolds as a single forty-minute suite. Italian giallo film scores inform the sound, with vibraphone, clavinet, and flute weaving between drums and bass. Cinematic and strange, genuinely original.

Shane MacGowan
20th Century Paddy - The Songs Of Shane MacGowan
Rubyworks

Buy Now

Victoria Mary Clarke produced this tribute to her late husband, and the roster speaks volumes about MacGowan's reach. U2, Tom Waits, Springsteen, the Pogues, Hozier, and the Libertines all turn up to honor a songwriter who captured Irish longing and hard-worn joy like no one else. Genuinely moving.

Dungen
Vidrig Var
Skolhaus

Buy Now

Gustav Ejstes and band dive into psychedelia, folk, and crystalline pop on their twelfth record, weaving through post-relationship terrain with the serene focus that has made them favorites among fans of Tame Impala and Fleet Foxes alike. Vidrig Var is Swedish for Something Awful, which tells you this is not Dungen going soft.

Andy Grammer
Big Stupid Heart
S-Curve Records

Buy Now

Andy Grammer is still making the case for optimism like it's the most radical position available. Big Stupid Heart is sincere in a way that feels increasingly rare, and completely committed to making you feel good. It's not toxic positivity, Grammer says, but rather a call to keep our hearts open amidst it all, even when true sadness finds it's way in.

Diana Krall
The Look Of Love (25th Anniversary Edition)
Verve

Buy Now

One of the defining jazz vocal albums of the early 2000s sounds richer than ever in this anniversary edition. Tommy LiPuma's production and Claus Ogerman's orchestral arrangements frame Diana Krall's languid piano and voice in pure silk. Five bonus tracks sweeten the deal, and the limited One-Step vinyl pressing is a genuine audiophile event.

Don Was And The Pan-Detroit Ensemble
Live Dispatch Vol. 1: Blues For Allah �26
Verve

Buy Now

Don Was and his extraordinary Pan-Detroit Ensemble bring a distinctly Motown-touched rawness to this live celebration of the Grateful Dead's Blues for Allah, marking its 50th anniversary. Dave McMurray's saxophone and Steffanie Christi'an's vocals are the twin emotional centers of a record that grooves hard and honors its source with real feeling.

Midge Ure
Chapters: The Best Of
Chrysalis Records

Buy Now

Midge Ure's career summation spans Ultravox, Visage, and his solo work, drawing together the electronic grandeur and emotional weight that defined his best writing. The synthesis of synths and guitar that made Vienna an immortal record threads through it all. Chapters frames one of British music's most versatile figures with the respect he deserves.

Wyatt Mccubbin
650
MCA

Buy Now

Dave Cobb produced this debut and clearly heard something special in McCubbin's songwriting, because 650 sounds effortless and timeless at once. Earning a stellar 8.1 from Saving Country Music, the record blends nineties alt-country warmth with outlaw grit, and the reflective, nostalgic tone stays with you well after the final track fades.

Various Artists
The Hunger Games Sunrise On The Reaping: The Album
MCA

Buy Now

James Newton Howard's score for Sunrise on the Reaping commands 96 musicians at Abbey Road and delivers orchestral drama on the grandest scale. Choral passages swell against strings in ways that extend the sonic language of the franchise while feeling genuinely epic. One of the most ambitious film soundtracks assembled in recent years.

Willi Carlisle
The Universal Bubba
Signature Sounds

Buy Now

Tyler Childers produced this seventeen-track sprawl and let Willi Carlisle be exactly as big and strange as he wanted to be. Recorded in New Orleans, it collides funk, Americana, Cajun accordion, and old-time fiddle with a rural-absurdist worldview that has no peer in contemporary music. Rowdy, generous, and wildly alive.

My Chemical Romance
The Black Parade (20th Anniversary Edition)
Reprise

Buy Now

Twenty years on, The Black Parade sounds like a band playing for their lives, which is essentially what it was. Six bonus recordings join the original fourteen tracks, and James Jean's new artwork honors the theatrical ambition of the source. This is the album that proved emo could aim for something genuinely monumental.

Radio Free Alice
What's In Between
Atlantic

Buy Now

The Australian indie outfit makes a confident debut, channeling New Order, The Jam, and The Smiths into something that feels fresh rather than derivative. Coming-of-age anxieties get the post-punk treatment they deserve on this trim and tuneful record.

Ashe
The Girl Of Your Dreams
Atlantic

Buy Now

Ashe's fourth record wraps 1950s Hollywood glamour around fiercely self-assured songwriting. Big orchestral arrangements frame the Stop the Wedding! single in CinemaScope, and the album rarely scales back its ambitions. The Girl of Your Dreams is the sound of an artist who has fully arrived, dressed in vintage clothes.

Stella Lefty
Long Way Home
Tenthousand Projects

Buy Now

Fourteen tracks of country-pop sunshine, Long Way Home is a debut that leans into romance and the breezy feeling of a road trip with nowhere specific to be. Boston anchors the album as its emotional centerpiece, and Stella Lefty's voice carries a vulnerable warmth throughout that makes even the lightest songs land.

Rachel Chinouriri
I Think I Spoke Too Soon
Warner Records / Parlophone

Buy Now

Rachel Chinouriri's second album is a glittering contradiction: disco synths and dance-floor energy wrapped around a deeply personal examination of the gap between public image and private unease. This is smart, shimmering pop that asks uncomfortable questions while keeping you moving.

The Pineapple Thief
Far And Wide
Inside Out Music

Buy Now

Extending the ideas of 2024's It Leads To This, Far and Wide sees The Pineapple Thief embrace the band format more fully, limiting themselves to two guitar parts and letting the songs breathe. The result is their most direct and emotionally resonant record in years, grappling with a troubled world without losing the melody.

B�la Fleck
Live Heart: My Bluegrass Heart At The Ryman
Thirty Tigers / B�la Fleck Productions

Buy Now

Recorded at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in January 2022, this twenty-track live document captures Bela Fleck alongside Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and a cast of bluegrass royalty. Chris Thile called it a balletic intergenerational relay race. He wasn't wrong. It is celebratory, technical, and deeply joyful.

The Fretliners
When The Kettle Sings
Soundly Music / Hook Set Records

Buy Now

Fretliners arrive with a debut steeped in old-time sensibility, all sawing fiddles and nimble fingerwork from Tom Knowlton, Sam Parks, Dan Andree, and Taylor Shuck. Hot Rize comparisons are apt and well-earned. Warm and unassuming, this is the work of four musicians who love this music too much to dress it up.

Tommy Lefroy
The Precariat
Thirty Tigers / Some Vague Hope

Buy Now

Tommy Lefroy's debut arrives with something rare: genuine anger wrapped in immaculate craft. Mike Crossey executive produced, and the Springsteen comparisons are earned rather than lazy. The Precariat takes economic precarity as its subject and turns it into the kind of sharp, observational songwriting that sticks well past the last listen.

Ive
(Girl Hero Ver.) Ive Ep Looks Can Kill
Starship Entertainment Co., Ltd

Buy Now

IVE's Girl Hero era arrives fully realized on this EP, with title track Looks Can Kill setting a commanding tone. Mirror Mirror and SNAKESKIN push the concept into harder sonic territory while Girls Girls Girls keeps things anthemic. A tightly constructed collection that expands the group's range without losing the sleek confidence that defines them.

The Oak Ridge Boys
Buried Treasures
Thirty Tigers / Lightning Rod Records

Buy Now

Produced by Anderson East, with Dave Cobb overseeing, the Oak Ridge Boys gather gospel standards and beloved songs into a late-career collection that puts their four-part harmony front and center. The one new track fits seamlessly among the covers. Buried Treasures is devotional music performed by singers who have earned every nuance.

Isaac Stalling
Falling In Place
Soundly Music / Stalling Records

Buy Now

Isaac Stalling's debut is intimate and quietly assured, built around plainspoken storytelling and arrangements that know when to step back. Blending understated indie folk, Americana, and singer-songwriter influences, Falling in Place captures the uncertainty of change, the weight of memory, and the quiet hope of moving forward.

Johnny & Lillie Flynn
Beam Cottage
Cold Bread Ltd

Buy Now

Siblings Johnny and Lillie Flynn recorded fourteen tracks inspired by their shared childhood home, weaving originals alongside Hank Williams, Billy Bragg, and Paul Simon covers with the South African vocal group The Joy adding unexpected color. This is that particular tenderness that only family can produce.

Jack Blocker
Big Jefe
Thirty Tigers / Elbow Grease Records

Buy Now

Jack Blocker's outlaw country concept album follows the Jefe character through vivid, morally complex tableaux. Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt are the patron saints here, and the storytelling earns the comparison.

LISTEN HERE

LISTEN HERE

DIIV
Zirp
Fantasy

Buy Now

With A.G. Cook behind the boards, DIIV's fifth album sounds like shoegaze rewired for the algorithm age. Zirp tackles tech alienation and the zero-interest-rate-policy era through towering guitars and bright, layered arrangements. It's their most sonically adventurous record yet, blurring genre lines while keeping the dream intact.

The Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS) is a national level organization comprised of the best independent record stores in America. CIMS was founded in 1995 with the goal of uniting like minded independent store owners, giving them a more powerful voice in the music industry. The stores that make up CIMS are all very different, but we share the same desires � to be the heart of our communities, to super-serve our customers, to support and develop artists, and to share our love of music.

For more information about CIMS and the stores in our organization, please visit cimsmusic.com or find us through social media with the #cimsmusic hashtag. And please remember to always shop local by supporting your neighborhood record store.

Featured Genres

Now Hear This! - November 2026