Dua Saleh’s Of Earth & Wires gets a major 18 May critical spotlight

Dua Saleh’s Of Earth & Wires received a fresh 18 May critical spotlight, giving the album another strong news hook after its 15 May release via Ghostly International. The record is a genre-fluid alternative work that moves through folk, rock, electronic textures, R&B-adjacent vocals and dystopian storytelling. Saleh frames the album around a world shaped by climate crisis, conflict, AI anxiety and the search for connection when everything feels unstable.

That could have become concept-heavy in the wrong hands, but Saleh’s strength is their ability to make big themes feel bodily and intimate. The opener 5 Days reportedly begins as a fragile folk plea before breaking into distortion and protest, setting up an album where softness and collapse keep interrupting each other. Bon Iver appears on multiple tracks, including Flood and Glow, while Gaidaa and aja monet also contribute to the wider emotional and political world of the project.

For indie and alternative readers, Of Earth & Wires is important because it does not sit neatly in one lane. It belongs to the current wave of artists using pop structure, experimental production and political imagination without letting one cancel out the others. Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dua-saleh-of-earth-and-wires ; Additional source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/15/dua-saleh-of-earth-and-wires-review ; Label: https://ghostly.com