New Music Friday: Listen To Releases By Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Latto & Ice Spice, And More

We've made it to September, and though summer may be dwindling to a close, the flood of exciting new music shows no sign of slowing.

It's been a particularly huge week for K-pop fans, with a litany of new releases including MONSTA X's THE X, NCT WISH'S COLOR - The Third Mini Album, TREASURE's 3rd Mini Album [LOVE PULSE], ZEROBASEONE's NEVER SAY NEVER, JUN. K's Dear my muse and ILLIT's Toki Yo Tomare. Plus, PURPLE KISS unveil their final EP, OUR NOW, before their upcoming disbanding in November and DAY6 drop THE DECADE. And in addition to all of the new projects, a slew of K-pop tours kicked off this week as well.

Other albums include SG Lewis' Anemoia, Rob Thomas' All Night Days, Joni Mitchell's 61-track box set Joni's Jazz, Tchotchke's Playin' Dumb and Big Thief's Double Infinity. Meanwhile, Jessica Simpson continues charting her long-awaited comeback with Nashville Canyon, Pt. 2, The Last Dinner Party unsheath "The Schythe" in preparation for their sophomore album From The Pyre, grandson proves he's done his physics homework with INERTIA, Grupo Firme joins forces with Grupo Frontera on "Modo Difícil" and El Michels Affair drops 24 Hour Sports.

Below, press play on 10 more can't-miss releases of the week, including a spooky Wednesday-themed single from Lady Gaga, a surprise sequel to SWAG from Justin Bieber, a Fortnite anthem courtesy of d4vd and more.

Lady Gaga — "The Dead Dance"

The category may have been dance or die when "Abracadabra" dropped in February, but now it's time to do "The Dead Dance," Little Monsters! Lady Gaga's irresistible new single appears on the Season 2 soundtrack of "Wednesday" following Mother Monster's long-hyped appearance as (spoiler alert!) Rosaline Rotwood, but it's also been added to the reissue of MAYHEM alongside bonus tracks "Can't Stop the High" and "Kill For Love."

Complete with a spooky, ooky music video directed by the one and only Tim Burton, Gaga turns "The Dead Dance" into a sure-to-be-viral sensation as she announces, "You've created a creature of the night/ Now I'm haunting your air, your soul, your eyes…Yeah, I'll keep on dancin' until I'm dead."

Not only does the new song manage to boogie down the path paved by "Bloody Mary," it's bound to be an inescapable hit on par with "The Monster Mash" come All Hallow's Eve.

Justin Bieber — SWAG II

Just when his loyal Beliebers thought he couldn't possibly have more swag, Justin Bieber surprised the world by announcing SWAG II would be arriving Friday at midnight with digital billboards projected on landmarks around the globe. And while the sequel may have taken a few extra hours to hit streaming services, the pop star added 23 new tracks to his SWAG era.

The two-time GRAMMY winner continues the laid-back, lo-fi sound that defined the sound of SWAG earlier this summer, though there's a marked pop-centric immediacy to standouts like "SPEED DEMON," "LOVE SONG" and the Tems-assisted "I THINK YOU'RE SPECIAL." The second chapter of SWAG also features additional collaborations with Bakar ("DON'T WANNA"), Hurricane Chris ("POPPIN' MY S***"), Lil B ("SAFE SPACE") and Eddie Benjamin ("OPEN UP YOUR HEART").

Latto & Ice Spice — "GYATT"

Latto and Ice Spice entered the chat on Thursday (Sept. 3) with their braggadocious new collab, "GYATT." Rumors of a feud between the pair have been perpetuated for years, and in the track's video, the two rappers playfully put those rumors to bed once and for all by facing off in a heavyweight wrestling match straight out of the WWE.

"A bitch like me walk in, they turnin' heads, they be like, 'Gyatt!'" Latto declares before tossing the mic to Ice Spice for the second verse. Naturally, plenty of twerking, performative wrestling moves and even some lap-dancing ensues in the ring before, eventually, both GRAMMY nominees are declared winners by the referee.

aespa — Rich Man - The Sixth Mini-Album

On their sixth mini-album, Rich Man, aespa display an unwavering confidence as they suffuse their futuristic K-pop through genre after genre — from the whistling hip-hop of "Drift" and the R&B flow of "Count on Me" to the airy, delicate pop of the English-language "Angel #48" and the message of heartfelt empowerment the quartet share on closer "To The Girls."

Meanwhile, the mini-album's title track — which takes its sentiment from the famous quote by Cher — arrives with a high-octane accompanying music video. In the Lee Ok-seop-helmed visual, members KARINA, WINTER, GISELLE and NINGNING find themselves getting down and dirty, whether they're dominating on the football field, working on the farm or performing in front of an arena full of cheering fans.

d4vd — "Locked & Loaded (Official Fortnite anthem)"

"You should have noticed I've been focused/ You should have known I'm locked and loaded," d4vd warns on "Locked & Loaded," the soundtrack to this year's 2025 Fortnite Global Championship — which is set to begin Sept. 16 in Lyon, France. The Battle Bus-ready track serves as triumphant proof of just how far the "Feel It" singer (and longtime Fortnite gamer) has come from his roots on YouTube, where he started penning original music to avoid copyright disputes on the Fortnite montages he would upload back in 2021.**

"Fortnite has been such a big part of my life and it's what led me to make music in the first place," d4vd said in a press release. "Being able to create the official anthem for Fortnite feels like a true full-circle moment. Fortnite gave me a space to be creative and connect with people all over the world, and that same energy is what I wanted to put into this track. It's more than a song — it's me giving back to something that's shaped my story as an artist. And even now, playing Fortnite is still my true passion."

Watch: d4vd Commits "Romantic Homicide" In This Raw Performance Of His Breakthrough Single | Press Play

Queen Naija — "rain…"

Queen Naija channels the tried-and-true sounds of classic R&B on "rain…," the lead-off for her upcoming EP. The track is her first new release since the 2024 trio of singles "Straight Outta Heaven," "Missing You" and "Good Girls Finish Last."

"I had to remind y'all that no matter how versatile I can get, R&B will continue to run through my veins," the singer said in a statement about the track, on which she seductively croons, "Baby, I got it on a plate/ Ooh, tell me you haven't ate/ Say that you're on the way/ Don't know if I can stand the wait."

Ivy — Traces of You

In 2020, Ivy suffered a devastating loss when multi-instrumentalist and co-founder Adam Schlesinger tragically passed away from COVID-19. Five years later, the pop band's two surviving members, Dominique Durand and Andy Chase, have returned with Traces of You, Ivy's first album of new material since 2011's All Hours.

The LP is quite literally filled with traces of Schlesinger, who contributes posthumously across all 12 tracks thanks to fragments and demos the band had recorded from 1995 to 2012. "It's been a gift to have discovered old unfinished ideas we did with [Adam]," the duo shared in a press release. "It's been even more of a gift to have had the chance to finish them recently and now be able to present them for you. We hope you'll enjoy hearing pieces of our past and glimpses of our future as we continue our musical journey."

Fujii Kaze — Prema

It's been three-and-a-half years since LOVE ALL SERVE ALL, Fujii Kaze's sophomore album, and the Japanese singer is still all about the love when it comes to his third studio effort, Prema. Not only does the new record contain prerelease singles "Hachikō" and "Love Like This," it's also filled with earnest highlights like morbidly flirtatious opener "Casket Girl," '80s-influenced banger "I Need U Back" and the funky, rapturous title track, which allows the pianist to show off his talents on the keys.

While making Prema, Kaze's motivations in the studio were to craft something, "pure, simple, uplifting," as he explained in a press release accompanying the album (whose Sanskrit title translates to "Supreme Love" in English). "It's more than just music for me, it's a lifestyle," the singer continued in his statement. "With this record, I wanted to be love itself — selfless, spiritual, and supreme love — Prema."

Tom Odell — A Wonderful Life

Tom Odell fearlessly and eloquently gives voice to the anxieties, frustrations and seemingly never-ending unprecedented times of the current moment on his sardonically titled seventh studio set, A Wonderful Life.

Written over the course of nine months on the road, the English singer/songwriter's new album was meticulously crafted lyric upon lyric. "I labored over every line," he said in a statement upon the unveiling of pre-release single "Don't Cry, Put Your Head on My Shoulder." "I went in on those words every day, just refining and refining and refining. I can be a bit obsessive, and the obsessive part of me is…the bit that does not give up on songs."

AJR — What No One's Thinking

Fresh off their first-ever arena tour last summer, the brothers of AJR are grappling with a cavalcade of uncomfortable emotions and hard truths on What No One's Thinking, the five-track follow-up to their 2023 album The Maybe Man. In a teaser released on social media ahead of its release, middle brother and lead vocalist Jack Met revealed that the band was hit with a serious case of writer's block when they first sat down to write the new EP, before coming to the realization, "We were suppressing a lot of s—."

He further described the project as "a collection of songs we did not want to have to write," and the EP touches on everything from putting off confronting a floundering romance on opener "The Plane That Never Lands" or filtering an all-too-human crisis through the eyes of an unfailingly loyal companion on "A Dog Song."