New Music Friday: September 4, 2026
Nelly Furtado revisits a pop landmark, Myles Erlick makes his full-length debut, and Canadian artists from Montreal to Saskatchewan deliver an eclectic first Friday of September.
September begins with a particularly varied week for Canadian music.
One of Canada’s biggest international pop successes gets a 20th-anniversary expansion, a Canadian-born country artist delivers his debut album, and independent musicians are moving through R&B, jazz, ambient music, contemporary composition and electronic experimentation.
Here’s what’s new and worth hearing this New Music Friday, September 4, 2026.
Featured Release
Nelly Furtado — Loose: 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Twenty years after Loose transformed Nelly Furtado‘s career, the Canadian singer-songwriter returns to the landmark album with an expanded anniversary edition.
Released September 4 through Universal Music, Loose: 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition arrives digitally and as a limited-edition 2LP release. The expanded collection adds previously unreleased material, rare session recordings and new interpretations of favourites from the original album. A limited run of 300 red-and-white vinyl copies also includes a lithograph signed by Furtado.
Originally released in 2006, Loose represented a dramatic reinvention for Furtado and produced an extraordinary run of hits including “Promiscuous,” “Maneater,” “Say It Right” and “All Good Things (Come to an End).”
Two decades later, the anniversary edition provides an opportunity to hear one of the defining Canadian pop albums of the 2000s from a new perspective.
Listen to: Loose: 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
New Canadian Albums
Myles Erlick — HANDCRAFTED
Canadian-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Myles Erlick steps forward with his debut album HANDCRAFTED.
Produced with Dann Huff and David Huff, the 14-track project follows a string of previews including “Gimme Love,” “2AM Playlist,” “Dyin’ in This Living Room” and “Little Bit More,” featuring Erin Kinsey. The album centres on love, ambition and the pursuit of something larger than yourself.
It’s a significant arrival for Erlick, whose career has already taken him from Canadian stage and screen work to a developing country career in Nashville.
Listen to: HANDCRAFTED
Mind Bath — Aqueous
Montreal-based Mind Bath delivers something considerably more ambitious than a conventional album with Aqueous. The project combines a full-length record with a companion debut novel released through Metatron Press, extending Mind Bath’s blend of intimate vocals, poetry, experimental production and R&B into a larger conceptual work.
Among the album’s most notable collaborations is “Dear Friend, Queer Friend,” featuring fellow Canadian Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Raised in a small town in the B.C. Rockies and now based in Montreal, Mind Bath has created one of this week’s most distinctive Canadian releases.
Listen to: Aqueous
Karen Myatt — Valise
Montreal-based vocalist Karen Myatt releases Valise, an album inspired by journeys both physical and internal. Myatt brings together jazz, soul, rock and global influences while exploring travel, spiritual searching and multicultural experience. The album follows recent singles “Angélique” and “Pockets of Gold.”
Myatt celebrates the release with a September 5 performance at La Sala Rossa in Montreal.
Michael Scott Dawson — Long Slow Distance
Saskatchewan sound artist and producer Michael Scott Dawson returns with Long Slow Distance, a meditative nine-track album built largely around layered guitar performances.
Change, grief, acceptance, forgiveness and love run through a record inspired in part by Dawson’s relationship with long-distance running. Its restrained approach uses three extended guitar takes across each piece with minimal overdubbing, creating a spacious and contemplative sound.
Dawson, originally from Estevan, Saskatchewan, releases the album through Canadian independent label We Are Busy Bodies.
Listen to: Long Slow Distance
Michael Scott Dawson — kitsune no yomeiri
One album apparently wasn’t enough.
Dawson also releases kitsune no yomeiri on September 4, a separate 13-track collection shaped partly by conversations and experiences during performances in Japan.
The album carries a subtle Western character without becoming a country record, allowing Dawson’s Prairie background to meet atmospheric guitar music and the experiences that informed the project.
Two complete albums arriving on the same day make Dawson one of this week’s most interesting independent Canadian stories.
Listen to: kitsune no yomeiri
Blackwood — How Long We Wait
Halifax-based Blackwood brings together JUNO-nominated musicians Jeff Reilly, India Gailey and Peter-Anthony Togni for How Long We Wait.
Bass clarinet, cello and piano form the foundation of an eight-track album examining humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The title takes inspiration from a poem by Thomas Merton, while individual compositions consider everything from disappearing species to the forces that shape the planet.
Blackwood marks release day with an album launch concert in Halifax on September 4.
Listen to: How Long We Wait
🎶 Electronic & Independent Release
apaull — Vang Mich
London, Ontario-based Dutch-Canadian electronic producer apaull releases Vang Mich, featuring the original mix of “Fang Mich” alongside a remix by Signal Deluxe. The release extends the world of apaull’s 2026 album Gunfactor, executive produced by New York producer Abe Duque, with Signal Deluxe bringing a distinctly Berlin-oriented interpretation to the track.
It’s a compact but worthwhile addition for listeners looking beyond this week’s singer-songwriter and album releases.
Listen to: Vang Mich
Editor’s Pick
Mind Bath — Aqueous
Nelly Furtado unquestionably owns the week’s biggest-name release, but for discovery, my Maple Music Lounge pick would be Mind Bath.
An album accompanied by a debut novel is unusual enough. Add Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Mind Bath’s B.C.-to-Montreal story and a project built around music, poetry, spirituality and literature, and Aqueous gives us precisely the kind of Canadian release that New Music Friday should help readers discover.
Listen to: Aqueous
Also Happening in Canadian Music This Friday
September 4 is a particularly busy day beyond new recordings.
Rush brings the Fifty Something Tour to Montreal’s Bell Centre, while the Polaris Music Prize’s expanding 2026 festival presents its Northern Sound Exchange in Sudbury, designed to connect Northern Ontario artists, audiences and music-industry professionals.
Vancouver’s Wassabi Collective also returns to Toronto for a rare performance combining funk, reggae, world music and psychedelic grooves.
Keep Listening to Canadian Music
From Nelly Furtado revisiting an album that travelled around the world to independent musicians creating experimental work in Montreal, Halifax, Saskatchewan and London, September’s first release day shows just how difficult Canadian music is to place inside a single box.
Pop, country, R&B, jazz, contemporary composition, ambient guitar and electronic music all have a place this week.
And that’s exactly the point of New Music Friday: Made in Canada — discovering what Canadian artists are creating now, wherever their music takes them.