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While the holiday season is usually a time to reflect on all of the best media consumed in the last calendar year, we’re busy looking ahead at the marquee music releases coming in Q1 of 2026. From heartland troubadours to club-dwellers trading strobe lights for Emily Brontë’s prose, the next few months promise a masterclass in artistic reinvention. So here are the records we’ll be spinning in the new year.
Warner Records
Zach Bryan – With Heaven on Top
January 9
Since he began uploading music to YouTube as an active member of the Navy in 2017, prolific alt-country troubadour Zach Bryan has been on a tear, releasing five LPs, two live albums, and four EPs of twangy, emo-influenced torch songs. He’s collaborated with heavy hitters like Bruce Springsteen, Kacey Musgraves, and John Mayer, and in September he broke the record for largest attendance at a ticketed concert by a single headlining act in the U.S.. It stands to reason that a lot of folks are eager for his next EP, With Heaven on Top, out in January. However, the new release does not come without controversy; in October, Bryan released a plaintive, reverb-soaked song snippet titled “Bad News,” which featured lyrics seemingly critical of tactics used by ICE agents in the U.S. No word on whether “Bad News” will appear on With Heaven on Top, but expect the new batch of songs to make waves regardless.
Interscope
Lana Del Rey – Stove
January 2026
Lana Del Rey is preparing to release her 10th studio album in January but the enigmatic singer-songwriter is aiming for a departure with the upcoming Stove… or is she? Previously announced under the titles Lasso and The Right Person Will Stay, with release dates set for September 2024 and May 2025, respectively, Stove has been sold as Del Rey’s first foray into traditional country music.
Working once again with collaborator Jack Antonoff, Del Rey told Pitchfork that she was inspired by her singles “Ride” and “Video Games,” saying, “I went back and listened to ‘Ride’ and ‘Video Games’ and thought, you know, they’re kind of country. Maybe the way ‘Video Games’ got remastered, they’re pop—but there’s something Americana about it for sure.” But as always, Del Rey may be obscuring things a bit; she told Vogue that the album will not be a “heavy departure” from her previous work but would still be a “classic country, American, or Southern Gothic production.” Whether she’s wearing a 10-gallon hat or staying in her widescreen lane, we’ll be seated.
Piccadilly Records
Daphni – Butterfly
February 6
Canadian polymath Dan Snaith is better known as Caribou, the introspective folktronica act, but when Snaith wants to increase the BPMs and get people on the dancefloor, he releases music under the moniker Daphni. After a string of kinetic singles throughout 2025, he’s ready to release Butterfly, a 16-track record set to drop in February. In press materials, Snaith says, “Daphni music is still music that I’m making primarily for the purpose of playing in my DJ sets.”
Still, there are new wrinkles in this collection of Daphni tunes, chief among them Snaith’s voice, which has never appeared on a Daphni track but features for the first time on “Waiting So Long,” with “feat. Caribou” cheekily credited. “I don’t agonize about what track ends up under what alias—in fact, the opposite. I worry about it less than ever and just go with my gut instinct. On a practical level, I just felt like this was a track that both Daphni and Caribou fans might want to hear.” Count us in that batch.
New West Records
Ratboys – Singin’ to an Empty Chair
February 6
Chicago indie rock band Ratboys received rave reviews for 2023’s The Window and are ready to level up once again with February’s Singin’ to an Empty Chair. The quartet, featuring Julia Steiner (vocals/guitar), Sean Neumann (bass), Dave Sagan (guitar), and Marcus Nuccio (drums), blends infectious pop hooks with increasingly ambitious, jammy guitar lines and a hint of heartland country.
Working with acclaimed journeyman producer and former Death Cab for Cutie member Chris Walla, Steiner said in a press release: “A big, overarching theme of this record is my attempt to document my experience being estranged from a close loved one. The goal is to update this person on what’s been going on in my life and to try to bridge that impasse and reach out a hand into the void.” We’ll be reaching a hand back out when the record launches this winter.
Atlantic Records
Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights
February 13
After the colossal success of her last record Brat, which spawned countless remixes, “Brat Summer,” and even a thinly veiled Taylor Swift diss track, Charli XCX will be back relatively quickly with her soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel of the same name. In a Substack article announcing the record, the hard-partying chanteuse described feeling overwhelmed with creativity yet unable to create new music in Brat’s wake.
That all changed when Fennell sent her a script for Wuthering Heights, allowing Charli the chance to be inspired by a pre-existing, non-personal story. She says the album will have a nostalgic, Gothic, cyclical sound reminiscent of her first album, True Romance, and cited John Cale’s description of The Velvet Underground’s sound, “elegant and brutal,” as a sonic rule of the land. She’s even teased a collaboration with the iconoclast. Time to trade that neon green for gloomy black.
The post The Most Anticipated Albums of Early 2026 appeared first on Den of Geek.
