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.
CALI BELLOW (AGRICULTURE) – “GOLDIN SCEPTER” / “GET INSIDE”
Leah B. Levinson, lead vocalist/bassist of ecstatic black metal band Agriculture, also has a multi-genre solo project called Cali Bellow, and her new album Ciao Bella comes out October 25 via Fiadh Productions. Two eccentric, shapeshifting songs (and an interlude track) are out now.
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THE LINDA LINDAS – “YO ME ESTRESO” FT “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC
On “Yo Me Estreso,” The Linda Lindas get some accordion assist from Weird Al, who also appear’s in the single’s video.
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HELLO MARY – “DOWN MY LIFE”
Hello Mary’s new album Emita Ox comes out next month, and they shared a third advance single from it, “Down My Life,” which Helena Straight says “is possibly the most lyrically powerful song for me on the record. The lyrics are somewhat vague, so the meaning behind it is not totally obvious to the listener, which is how I’d like it to be considering the state I was in when I wrote it.”
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KATY J PEARSON – “MAYBE”
“I’ve had this song with me for years now — it took a while to get there,” Katy J Pearson says of “Maybe,” the lovely latest single from her upcoming album Someday, Now. “When I was in the rehearsal room with Huw Evans [H. Hawkline], a few lyric tweaks happened. The chorus used to be maybe I need your love / to show me that I’m good enough and he was like why are you being like this to yourself? It should be the other way round! And I was like oh, ok, thank you, feminist ally in the room. When a man’s telling me what to do in a studio I can get my back up pretty quickly, so it was brave of him to suggest it, but he was right.”
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XIU XIU – “ARP OMNI” & “VENEFICIUM”
Xiu Xiu have shared two more tracks off their new album 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. “Arp Omni” is “A little sweetie ballad about falling for a person who takes risks in life,” and “Veneficium” is about “Being lost; literally lost, emotionally lost, lost in a smashed psychological dimension beyond your control, being overwhelmed by the weight of one’s insignificance in the face of time, space and death, and pointlessly railing against what does not notice let alone care about you.”
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IBIBO SOUND MACHINE – “BLACK NOTES”
UK dance outfit Ibibio Sound Machine have announced the Black Notes EP that’s out September 4 via Merge. Here’s the title track.
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PUBLIC OPINION – “HOTHEAD”
Denver punks Public Opinion have shared the second single from their upcoming debut LP Painted On Smile, and it’s fired-up anthem that strikes a balance between the 2000s garage rock revival and the current hardcore/alt-rock scene.
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LIAM BENZVI – “PTLSD” FT. SSION
The latest single off …And His Splash Band, the new album from Liam Benzvi of Strange Names, is, “PTLSD,” featuring SSION. “Cody and I are driving around in his convertible: we’ve had a few ginger shots, our eyes are bloodshot, the sun is coming up,” Liam says. “We had just spent the whole night on a docked luxury liner. There was a party on the basement deck, underwater. My band is still there. Cody and I start singing PTLSD on our way to the nearest airport. We feel the urgent need to leave town…and now we’re going 90mph.”
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DOWNHAUL – “ROOTBOUND”
Downhaul have shared another indie/emo/Americana offering from their upcoming LP How To Begin.
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MIDWIFE – “VANESSA”
The latest single from Midwife’s new album No Depression in Heaven, “Vanessa,” is a dirge that, according to a press release, is also an “ode to her dearly departed minivan.”
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DEFEATED SANITY – “THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY”
Brutal/tech death metal vets Defeated Sanity are releasing a new album, Chronicles of Lunacy, on November 22 via Season of Mist. “The last few DS albums leaned heavily on the proggier side of our sound,” says founding drummer Lille Gruber. “We still like to experiment, but on our new album, we wanted to get back to the raw slamming that our fans love about Psalms of the Moribund or Chapters of Repugnance.” Lead single “The Odour of Sanctity” is indeed raw and slamming.
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CHARLY BLISS – “BACK THERE NOW”
Charly Bliss’ third album, FOREVER, comes out this Friday (8/16) via Lucky Number, and ahead of that they’ve shared a final advance single, “Back There Now.” “One of the craziest things about getting older is growing away from the things you did when you were young(er) and stupid(er),” Eva Hendricks says. “But then I’ll read something or hear a song that takes me right back to the dramatic insanity of my early twenties love life, and I’m forced to acknowledge the freaky glutton for pain and heartache who’s still somewhere inside of me no matter how deeply I’ve buried her.”
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FOUSHEÉ – “WAR”
Ahead of Fousheé’s sophomore album Pointy Heights (due September 13 via RCA), she’s shared a calypso-inspired song called “war.”
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DE MANNEN BROEDERS (AMENRA) – “GRAFSCHRIFT”
De Mannen Broeders is a new collaborative project from Amenra vocalist Colin H. Van Eeckhout and Dutch folk singer Tonnie ‘broeder’ Dielema. Their debut album Sober Maal comes out October 11 via Relapse, and you can hear the brooding, dark-folk lead single “Grafschrif” now.
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W.H. LUNG – “THE PAINTING OF THE BAY”
Manchester band W.H. Lung’s third album, Every Inch of Earth Pulsates, is out in October, and they’ve given us another early taste with the ’80s pop-infused “The Painting of the Bay.” “On the day this song was written I was hurting and had gone to a gallery to try and find some peace,” vocalist Joseph Evans says. “I stood for a while in front of a painting by Cezanne called ‘The Bay of Marseilles.’ I love this painting but I was looking and looking and just feeling nothing, which made me feel worse. I came home and found that Tom had sent me an idea he’d done on the acoustic and straight away the whole song just took shape, I think I wrote it stood up in the kitchen.”
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JOHN DAVIS (SUPERDRAG) – “TAKE MY BRAINS OUT”
Superdrag’s John Davis has shared the second single from his upcoming solo album JINX, and it finds him staying true to the grungy power pop of Superdrag’s ’90s years.
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PSYMON SPINE – “SUGAR”
“It’s interesting watching a song pivot from one idea to another, central ideas in early drafts becoming mere footholds for later versions,” says Psymon Spine’s Noah Prebish of his band’s danceable new single. “When I take a step back it’s like watching a squirrel jumping from branch to branch, or a Simpsons episode where the plot veers completely off course 5 minutes in. ‘Sugar’ started with me looping the drum intro of a Shuggie Otis track and noodling on a Juno 106 over it. I added some nonsense mumble vocals, and the sketches that would later become the synth and guitar leads. The rhythm guitar part I wrote was directly inspired by the guitar in the Men Without Hats hit Safety Dance, which we had recently done a cover of. It all sounded really weird and disjointed, but there was something about that felt really good. I began noodling around on their piano, playing the chords I had composed on the synth. Playing them on a piano made my hands want to move differently, and the rhythm became more angular, with more division between the left and right hands. Eventually the Shuggie Otis sample was muted, as were most (though not all) of the original synth tracks, and my vague lyrical ideas began to emulsify.”
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KNITTING – “HEAVEN”
Montreal band knitting have shared another track from their upcoming album Some Kind of Heaven (out 9/6 via Mint). “A friend of mine once told me that four leaf clovers are pretty easy to find, all you have to do is keep your eyes peeled – apparently they grow in patches because they all come from a mutated set of roots,” says the band’s Mischa Dempsey. “While I was recovering from top surgery I took daily walks around Parc Jeanne Mance with my eyes glued to the ground. I would crouch on the side of the path and look through patches of clovers, but never managed to find a single one. This song is about the idea of perceiving yourself as having “bad luck”, and how ultimately it can limit you from really understanding yourself.”
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NICK LOWE – “TROMBONE”
Here’s another early taste of Nick Lowe;s new album Indoor Safari which has him rerecording old songs. “When it was suggested that we should do an actual full-length album, the songs had evolved, and had some air blown into them,” says Lowe. “After playing them in front of an audience a dozen times, the players know what they’re doing and they start listening to everybody else, and adjusting their thing accordingly. And suddenly, hey, presto, you’ve got the sauce on it all!”
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MIRANDA AND THE BEAT – “CAN’T TAKE IT”
NYC garage rockers Miranda and the Beat will release new album Can’t Take It on October 25 via Ernest Jenning Record Co./Khannibalism. This is the new single and it’s Flashdance-y video. While recording the album at Moon Studios in Germany, King Khan played us some old King Khan and BBQ Show demos, including a skeleton voice memo with the phrase ‘Can’t Take It,’” says Miranda Zipse. “The music came together effortlessly, and by the end of the day, we were all shouting ‘Can’t Take It’ at the top of our lungs. The video was easy for us to shoot because I was genuinely hungover from our NYE party with Black Lips. I definitely felt like I ‘couldn’t take it’ while doing 12 hours of Pilates.”
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ONE TRUE PAIRING – “A LANDLORD’S DEATH”
One True Pairing, the solo project of former Wild Beasts co-leader Tom Fleming, has announced a new album, Endless Rain, which will be out October 25 via Domino. Fleming made the album with John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, black midi, caroline) at Dublin’s Hellfire studios, and it features Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada and Percolator’s Eleanor Mylor.
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THE PRIMITIVES (LOU REED) – “THE OSTRICH”
Before Lou Reed formed The Velvet Underground, he worked as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records. Songs he wrote from that mid-’60s era, recorded by artists including The Primitives (with Reed on vocals), The Hi-Lifes, The Beachnuts, and more, have been compiled on a new double album titled Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65.
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TRAUMA RAY – “BISHOP”
Fort Worth, TX shoegazers Trauma Ray have signed with Dais Records for their first full-length, Chameleon, and lead single “Bishop” is out now. Read more here.
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HARMONY – “GOSSIP”
Harmony announced her debut solo album, and shared another new track from it, which you can read about here.
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Looking for even more new songs? Browse the New Songs archive.