Leave it to Arctic Monkeys to tease their next album in an interview with a motorcycle magazine. Bassist Nick O’Malley recently told For the Ride that the band started work this past September on their follow-up to 2013’s slicked-back, moodily muscled-up AM. If the new record doesn’t arrive in 2018, O’Malley said, “We’ve got problems.” Frontman Alex Turner hasn’t stayed quiet in the meantime, reviving his Last Shadow Puppets side project for 2016’s Everything You’ve Come to Expect.

If Courtney Barnett is a slacker, it’s in style only. The shrewdly ramshackle Australian singer/songwriter released a double EP in 2013, a lengthily titled debut album in 2015, and Lotta Sea Lice, her collaborative album with Philly kindred spirit Kurt Vile, this past October. She recently revealed that she recorded some new music in fall 2016 with an eye on her sophomore solo record. “But then I don’t know, I just did a lot of second-guessing myself and freaked myself out, I think,” she explained. Unaffected nonchalance is painstaking work.

“The biggest couple in music, maybe entertainment, maybe the world….They’re working on an album together,” said radio host DJ Skee in September 2014, spreading a rumor that JAY-Z and Beyoncé were making a collaborative album. Now, Jay has confirmed that, in the runup to their respective solo albums Lemonade and 4:44, he and Bey were indeed in the studio for a joint LP. “We still have a lot of that music,” he said. If the world gets to hear it, well, that will be big.

Björk

Utopia (live edition)

Spring

Björk has long released live albums to pair with her studio albums, going back to 1993’s Debut. Her flute-adorned 2017 record on new love after heartbreak, Utopia, will be no different: She recently announced that a live version of Utopia will be out this spring.

Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes has been working on a new album—a follow-up to Blood Orange’s devastating 2016 album, Freetown Sound—which he said in October is “78 percent done.” By the end of 2017, he was obliquely teasing new music on Instagram.

Danny Brown’s cutting wordplay, dynamic voice, and open-eared production choices have carried him across a tremendous run of albums, most recently 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition. Lately, the Detroit rapper has been back in the studio. “I’m working on my next album right now,” he disclosed this past fall. “I would just say it’s being produced by one producer who’s legendary in hip-hop. And it’s gonna be a big deal.”

Donald Glover recently let slip that he’s been working on new music, which he releases under his Childish Gambino moniker. “London has been very inspirational,” said Glover, who has been living in the UK for the past year. He has been a bit busy since the rap-to-funk left turn of 2016’s “Awaken, My Love!”—whether playing Lando Calrissian in an upcoming Star Wars film or doing the award-show circuit for his acclaimed TV series “Atlanta.” Too soon to talk EGOT? Maybe, but short of that, Glover has also been teasing a possible collaborative mixtape with Chance the Rapper.

Drake’s very long, often very good “playlist” More Life is less than 10 months old, but he’s already been talking up new music. In August, at his hometown OVO Fest, Drake announced he was crafting a follow-up, telling the crowd, “I’m about to go back to making this new album in Toronto, just for you.” In November, while on tour in New Zealand, he reiterated that promise of “new shit” and previewed a downtempo, unreleased song.

On “Leaving LA,” from last spring’s Pure Comedy, Father John Misty sings, “Another white guy in 2017 who takes himself far too seriously.” Mark him down for 2018, too. The indie troubadour born Joshua Tillman told Uncut that his next record, which he has said will arrive in the coming year, is “a heartache album.” He compared the effort to his second FJM full-length, 2015’s I Love You, Honeybear, albeit “without the cynicism.”

“Here’s one of the several reasons why I can’t wait to put something out: certain people will be forced to come up with their own identity & artistic vision,” Sky Ferreira tweeted cryptically in November. The follow-up to her 2013 debut album, Night Time, My Time, has been long delayed, though her profile has only increased due to film and TV roles (including Baby Driver and “Twin Peaks: The Return”). In other recent tweets, Ferreira opened up about medical concerns behind the postponement and teased that new music will be on the way “very soon.”

Way back in February 2016, FKA twigs shared a slow-burn single, “Good to Love.” But this new music—her first since 2015’s surprise-released EP M3LL155X—didn’t presage a follow-up to the avant-pop artist’s watershed 2014 debut album, LP1. In recent months, however, she has previewed a new collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never, “Trust in Me,” as part of an “Instagram zine.” An album appears imminent.

Last April, Frankie Cosmos signed to Sub Pop. The move followed the Greta Kline–led indie-pop project’s exquisite 2016 album, Next Thing, and an endearing covers cassette dispatched later that same year. Kline has since tested what she can do with a darker new trio, Lexie, and in a duet with the Brooklyn band Cende. But despite her knack for particularly succinct songs, a new full-length will surely be welcome.