The Case Oats guitarist steps out front — and brings Spencer Tweedy behind the kit for two of the songs. 芝加哥的同一週：一張在冰湖邊獨處寫成，兩張在地下室對著死亡尖叫

Max Subar — Anything Could Be（Pick）

Hill Collective — Fire in Orbit

Hill Collective are a Brighton ensemble led by the alto saxophonist Pete Piskov, formerly of the Ancient Infinity Orchestra, and they cut this in three days flat. It is spiritual jazz in the direct line of Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders: four long pieces, a mixed-voice chorus threaded through the horns, the whole thing tilting toward communal rite rather than solo showcase. The title track opens at the piano before a double bass drops the floor out beneath it; the closer, "Song for a Blossom Baby," slides into a modal, faintly Eastern light. Recorded fast, it keeps the looseness of a room full of people deciding together where to go next.

harupii（ハルピー／平松遙） — Eureka Moment

The Kamakura pianist harupii makes no secret of her ambition: she wants to play Blue Note Tokyo, and this third album is built to get her there. The tunes are immediate, almost pop in their pull, but the meters keep shifting underneath, so that a melody you think you have memorized has quietly moved a beat by the time it comes back around. She cites the fiction of Dazai Osamu as a starting point, which suits a record that keeps circling the gap between accomplishment and worth. The closing "Eureka" is a plain, clear ballad whose message is about as unguarded as jazz gets: you are worth loving even if you have made nothing of yourself.

Maya de Vitry — All My Faith

For her fifth solo album Maya de Vitry set a single rule: whatever you hear was played in the room, in real time. Over three days last November at a Tennessee barn studio called The Tractor Shed, she and a small band tracked the whole thing live, no overdubs papering over the seams. The gamble pays off in the give of it—Kaitlyn Raitz's cello and Ethan Jodziewicz's upright bass breathing with the songs rather than propping them up. "Confidence of the Sun" is the obvious way in, but the record rewards sitting with the quieter middle.

Philharmonia Orchestra / David Trippett — Andrew Downes: The Marshes of Glynn & Song of the Prairies

Bleached Cross — Wrath

The second of the week's three Chicago records, and by some distance the darkest. Bleached Cross stage grief as psychological horror—ten tracks running from "Thorn Crown" to "Requiem" to the title closer, recorded with Andy Nelson at Bricktop. A guest voice, Harlee Young, surfaces on "Tomb." The label's own note frames the thing plainly: death will speak if you listen. It is loud and oppressive by design, but there is a shape to the oppression, a movement from downfall toward something like repair, that keeps it from becoming mere endurance.

Cel Ray — Cel Rayzer

The third Chicago band, and the one having the most fun. Cel Rayzer is Cel Ray's debut for Exploding In Sound, mastered by Mikey Young of Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and it takes the smallest daily irritations—the price of gas, phone stuff, gossip, trash—and screams them into big, dexterous art-punk. Maddie Daviss sings like she is enjoying the annoyance. The titles alone tell you the temperature: one track is called "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," another "Teen (Cult) Song." Nasty, funny, over before it wears out.

Sam Blasucci — Black Rose

Sam Blasucci is one of the two voices in Mapache, and on his own he trades the band's twinned harmonies for a soft, single-track glow, closer to dream pop than to the folk-rock he usually keeps. Ten songs, gentle and evening-shaped. Nothing here strains for your attention, which is rather the point.