New Canadian Music · September 19, 2026
6 New Canadian Releases to Hear This Weekend
Carly Rae Jepsen goes double, Orville Peck gets personal, Blonde Diamond push into a new chapter and three very different independent records make a strong case for staying curious.
Northern Dial artwork
September 18 landed with enough Canadian music to make genre labels feel almost useless. There is widescreen pop, bruised country, Vancouver alternative rock, Toronto folk, shoegaze and PEI blues in the same release pile. That is exactly the point. Northern Dial is built to put those records beside each other and let the listening do the sorting.
Here are six releases worth starting with this weekend. Every artist below has a Northern Dial profile, and several already have songs in the station library.
01 Carly Rae Jepsen · Day and Night
Carly Rae Jepsen did not make the tidy version of a pop record. Day and Night runs 24 tracks and splits its personality in two, with the brighter, more organic “day” material set against the bigger dance-pop pull of “night.” The contrast gives Jepsen room to move without pretending every song belongs in the same hour.
“After All” and “On Wires” introduced the daytime side, while “Motivation” and “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” pushed the other half toward house, disco and maximalist pop. Northern Dial now has “After All,” “Motivation” and “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” in the library.
02 Blonde Diamond · Love Is A Shadow
Blonde Diamond's new EP is less about settling into a sound than testing how many directions that sound can survive. The Vancouver quartet move from the nervous euphoria of “I'm So F*cking Happy” to the title track's shared vocals with Dear Rouge's Danielle McTaggart, then into songs about grief, sobriety and trying to feel good again without pretending the hard parts disappeared.
The band's own framing is useful here: Love Is A Shadow is about keeping going. That gives the six-song set a shape without turning it into a neat redemption story. It is messy because the material is.
03 Orville Peck · Mule
Orville Peck's fourth album is built around a year he would probably have preferred not to live twice. Mule traces addiction, sobriety and rebuilding in chronological order, moving from classic country storytelling into bluegrass and broader Americana while keeping the drama that has always followed Peck's voice.
The difference is where that drama points. Earlier records often let the mask create distance. Here, the songs keep turning back toward Peck himself. Even the opening “Prologue (Eulogy of a Man Turned Mule),” featuring Emmylou Harris, Noah Cyrus and Allison Russell, tells you immediately that this record is interested in what survives after collapse.
04 Emma Worley · Forever Beginner
Emma Worley's second album understands that “starting over” is not a one-time event. Forever Beginner was built over two years with producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Whiteley, with a large circle of Toronto musicians filling out the arrangements without crowding Worley's songwriting.
The songs move between folk, country and Americana, but the stronger connection is tone. “Weekend Baby” can shrug at the absurdity of being alive, “Comedy Club” looks backward at a relationship and “Hardware Store in Heaven” imagines the afterlife as a place where things can still be fixed. The writing is plainspoken enough to land before you notice how much it is carrying.
05 Weatherell · Lonely Soul
Weatherell is Sean Hackl's way of making a record big enough to hold shoegaze, grunge, post-punk and electronica without filing down the seams. The Toronto multi-instrumentalist started assembling the project in 2023, and the singles “Something Beautiful,” “Candy Eyes” and “Shelf Life” mapped out a sound that is dense, melodic and deliberately oversized.
Lonely Soul is the debut album, but it does not sound like a tentative introduction. Hackl has spent years in Toronto's indie scene, and the record feels more like a decision to put all of those accumulated instincts in one place. “Candy Eyes” and “Something Beautiful” are already in the Northern Dial library.
06 Joce Reyome · Smoke Break
Joce Reyome's six-song Smoke Break sits where blues, soul and R&B stop worrying about staying in separate rooms. Reyome won the Solo/Duo category at the 2025 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, but the EP is more useful as a snapshot of why: a voice that can carry grit without flattening the songs into grit alone.
“I Don't Miss You,” “MR. RAIN” and “Party Line” move through heartbreak, swagger and live-wire blues energy. Reyome is already working toward a full-length album for 2027, which makes Smoke Break feel less like a final statement than a very convincing middle chapter. “MR. RAIN,” “Grateful” and “Cross My Heart” are in the Northern Dial library.