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b'On our survey of the week\'s most exciting new albums, WRTI\'s Nate Chinen and NPR Music\'s Sheldon Pearce get all wrapped up in the amniotic embrace of a new album by a guru of the L.A. ambient-jazz scene.

The new album by Carlos Ni\\xf1o & Friends is called Placenta. If you know anything about Ni\\xf1o, you\'ll probably be able to guess that the subject that title suggests \\u2014 pregancy and childbirth \\u2014 are taken very seriously. Those "Friends" are crucial too: Ni\\xf1o has become a central figure in a scene whose reverberations are starting to be felt well beyond the community itself, and are drawing more artists in. You can hear Ni\\xf1o on Andr\\xe9 3000\'s flute album New Blue Sun, and Andr\\xe9 returns the favor here.

Also this week: The fourth album by DIIV sees the indie rock group leaning into shoegaze-inspired sounds, and Andrew Bird creates an album in tribute to the "Golden Era" jazz tunes of the 1930s and \'40s he heard on Sunday morning radio shows as a young adult in Chicago.

Featured Albums:
\\u2022 Carlos Ni\\xf1o & Friends, Placenta
\\u2022 DIIV, Frog in Boiling Water
\\u2022 Andrew Bird Trio, Sunday Morning Put-On

Other notable albums out May 24:
\\u2022 Tiny Habits, All For Something
\\u2022 Vince Staples, Dark Times
\\u2022 Alex Sipiagin, Horizons
\\u2022 Machinedrum, 3FOR82
\\u2022 Joshua Moshier, semipermanence
\\u2022 Nathy Peluso, Grasa

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