So many artists, so many songs, so little time. Each week we review a handful of new albums (of all genres), round up even more new music that we’d call “indie,” and talk about what metal is coming out. We post music news, track premieres, and more all day. We update a playlist weekly of some of our current favorite tracks. Here’s a daily roundup with a bunch of interesting, newly released songs in one place.
MOTHER OF GRAVES – “UPON BURDENED HANDS”
Indianapolis death-doomers Mother of Graves have announced a new album, The Periapt Of Absence, due October 18 via Profound Lore. Here’s the towering new single, “Upon Burdened Hands.”
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AMEOKAMA (DREAMWELL) – “I AM DRIVING A CAR WITH A CUTE GIRL AND PRETENDING THAT THE WORLD ISN’T ENDING”
ameokama is the solo project of Aki McCullough (of heavy bands like Dreamwell, Necroplant, and more), and her new single “i am driving a car with a cute girl and pretending that the world isn’t ending” finds her going in more of a dreamy indie rock direction… but still with some screamy stuff too. It’s great stuff.
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TRACE MOUNTAINS – “FRIEND”
LVL UP’s Dave Benton releases his new album as Trace Mountains, Into The Burning Blue, next month, and he’s shared another advance single from it, the folky, tender “Friend.” “I like to joke that I’m a ‘loner in recovery,’” Benton says. “When I wrote ‘Friend,’ I was facing a pretty big transition in my life. I needed to address my own loneliness, and writing the song was like my first step on that path. It was my way of saying, ‘Yep, I feel lonely sometimes,’ and dealing with that good old millennial malaise. I’m just really grateful for the people in my life and trying to tackle the meaning of a word like ‘Friend’ feels impossible, but it’s fun to try.”
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LATTER – “I DON’T OWE YOU”
Latter are a noisy, screamy band from Chicago whose new album My Body Is My Sickness comes out on September 13 via Damien Records. New single “I Don’t Owe You” is an intense, heavy/beautiful song that vocalist Meredith Haines tells Decibel “deals with being hopelessly in love with the wrong person, and the agony that comes with the acceptance, moving on and standing in your worth. It’s an obituary of a failed relationship and a testament to being haunted by someone.”
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DESIRE – “I KNOW”
Italians Do It Better artist Desire has shared a new single from upcoming album Games People Play. “I Know” is a slow burn sizzle, as is its beach-themed video.
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MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND – “SAFE HOUSE”
My Brightest Diamond’s new album Fight the Real Terror comes out in September, and she’s shared another single from it, “Safe House.” She writes, “To create a community, a different political system, a different partnership, radical imagination is needed in order to build new rules of social engagement, new contracts for intimate relationship and to make a space in which everyone can feel safe. What does a safe house feel like and where do we start? What are our agreements? Maybe we need to start from scratch, assuming nothing.”
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WENDY EISENBERG – “HM”
Guitarist Wendy Eisenberg will release Viewfinder in a few weeks and here’s another early taste. “‘HM’ is a resurrected tune for small ensemble I wrote in 2016,” Wendy says. “I wrote it about the feeling of paralysis that occurs when everything you see feels invented or arbitrary. The written material is a line of unbroken and breathless melody, but the rest of the piece is a game—how do you improvise around the fixity of a phenomenon when that phenomenon is the totality of your project?”
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CLOSEBY – “LUCKY NUMBER”
New York indie rock five-piece Closeby will release new album Hammer of My Own on Friday and here’s a sneak peak via the stomping yet ethereal “Lucky Number.” Says the band’s Margaux Bouchegnies, “The first inspiration for “Lucky Number” came from some article I read about lottery winners who had destroyed their own lives after winning the prize. The idea of a lucky number ultimately leading to someone’s downfall was sad and funny to me. I was thinking about luck and destruction, and at the time, I was mourning the loss of a friendship. The song became about all of those things. One day you feel resentful and betrayed, and another day you feel ashamed of your own stake in the mess. The song follows that shift of blame, as the chorus lyric turns from “take a look at what you destroyed” to “take a look at what I destroyed” later in the song. A lot of this album is about rebuilding, and this song, the opener of the album, places me sort of looking around at the wreckage and trying to figure out what happened.”
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KA – “SUCH DEVOTION”
Brownsville rapper Ka has surprise-released a new album, The Thief Next to Jesus. It’s his first in two years. “I really wanted to come back with something meaningful,” Ka says. “This one holds a special place for me. Hope it moves you in the same way.”
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SQUINT – “PACK RAT” & “SUNSHINE”
Hardcore/alt-rock band Squint have announced their first full-length album, Big Hand, and two great songs are out now. Read more here.
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JOANNA STERNBERG – “A COUNTRY DANCE”
Joanna Sternberg has shared “A Country Dance,” their third new single since I’ve Got Me, following “Without You” and “Neighbors.” The song is featured prominently in the new film Between the Temples, starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, and directed by Nathan Silver, and it’s another great example of the whimsical bare-bones freak folk that made I’ve Got Me so appealing. Read more here.
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Looking for even more new songs? Browse the New Songs archive.