New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more

Stream every standout album released this Friday with The FADER’s weekly roundup.

January 24, 2025
New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more FKA twigs. Photo by Jordan Hemingway.  

Every Friday, The FADER's writers dive into the most exciting new projects released that week. Today, read our thoughts on FKA twigs' Eusexua, OsamaSon's Jump Out, and more.

ADVERTISEMENT
FKA twigs: Eusexua
New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more

FKA twigs's third album is a "dark but not sad" mixture of industrial techno and streaming-friendly pop, resulting in a sound that adds an accessible sheen to club production and calls to mind Madonna's Ray Of Light. The Madonna influence can be found in the Eusexua credits, too, with producer Stuart Price contributing to both "Perfect Stranger" and the excellent closer "Wanderlust." Those songs form a constellation of songs positioning twigs as refreshed and forward facing. Throughout Eusexua she sounds liberated, be it revelling in pleasure ("Room Of Fools") or making Earth turn on its axis ("Girl Feels Good"). A cameo appearance from North West ("Childlike Things") is a curious diversion but overall Eusexua represents twigs at her most accessible, sounding happier than ever before and jockeying for position in the main pop girl contest. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

ADVERTISEMENT
OsamaSon: Jump Out
New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more

OsamaSon's rap career has been full of the kinds of slings and arrows that would cause most to quit or, at the very least, derail their career. He's suffered from a significant leaking of his music usually reserved for massive artists like Young Thug and been relentlessly accused of ripping off Playboi Carti by Opium stans eager to stymie his momentum. But even as rage rap took more colorful, weirder shapes, OsamaSon stayed ahead of the curve and even diverting entirely, as on 3vil Reflection, last year's collab mixtape with Glokk40Spaz. Perhaps sensing the shifting tides, OsamaSon has thrown everything into making his new project Jump Out a shining example of what makes rage compelling. There's a compositional depth here not heard in mainstream rage since Ken Carson's A Great Chaos: the off-mic adlibs across the album, occasionally swirling between the left and right channels of your headphones, give the impression that this is, in fact, a party, and you're in the center of it. OK, the project's lead producer, makes sure that each of the brief songs has colorful melodies beneath the blistering distortion that covers the project, while OsamaSon raps like the final boss of SoundCloud-era punch-in lyricists. If Jump Out is indeed a siren song for the kind of music he was a key player in, then OsamaSon has thrown an appropriately massive rager for the end of rage rap as we know it. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

horsegiirL : v.i.p - very important pony EP
New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more

The German artist known as horsegiirL dons a hyperrealistic equine mask to all of her gigs. If that doesn’t give you a sense of the irreverent, warped fun she’s bringing to club music then her girlish bops born of the internet from her new EP, vip - very important pony, will. With names like “giirL Math,” “eat, sleep, slay, :repeat:,” and “scene before the kiss xoxo,” her music dials into our collective digital brainrot and makes it cute, adorable, and utterly danceable. Sometimes you just wanna shake ass to a horse singing, “I like pretty things and they like me, Girl math!” — Steffanee Wang

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

Applesauce Tears: Balcony Confidential
New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more

On the 13th album in 10 years from just one of Athens, Georgia-based composer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Craig Bennett’s many projects is an uplifting suite for troubled times. Originally a solo endeavor, Applesauce Tears has blossomed into a collective of similarly inclined creative minds, and that loose, easy companionship is evident on the new record. Balcony Confidential is mainly a string-and-synth record, led by a guitar at first and then by others (everyone seems to get a turn). Splashy horns appear at times, and most tracks are undergirded by sturdy drum lines — analog, synthetic, or both at once. In the vein of Boards of Canada and Black Moth Super Rainbow’s sci-fi psychedelia, Balcony Confidential is deliciously lush, but it’s also slippery: The kitchen-sink Sgt Pepper’s explosions that start the album give way to less decadent fare as the album cruises into its back half, giving it an elegant structure that stimulates but doesn’t overwhelm. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

ADVERTISEMENT
Other projects out today that you should stream

Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko
Anna B Savage: You & I Are Earth
Baba Stiltz & Okay Kaya: Blurb
Benjamin Booker: Lower
Boldy James: Permanent Ink
C Duncan: It's Only a Love Song
Central Cee: Can’t Rush Greatness
Dax Riggs: 7 Songs for Spiders
DITZ: Never Exhale
Ghais Guevara: Goyard Ibn Said
Jeshi: Airbag Woke Me Up
Matt Berry: Heard Noises
Mogwai: The Bad Fire
White Paddy Mountain: Lucid Dreams
Yuragi: In Your Languages

New Music Friday: Stream projects from FKA twigs, OsamaSon, and more