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.
DOVES – “A DROP IN THE OCEAN”
Doves’ fantastic sixth album, Constellations for the Lonely, is out on Friday and here’s one last early taste. The band’s Andy Williams says “A Drop in the Ocean” is about “us being insignificant, which can be helpful to remember when you’re going through a tough time. A problem can be so big in your head but it can be comforting to remember how small we are in the grand scheme of things.”
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BAMBARA – “FACE OF LOVE”
Bambara’s Reid Bateh says that inspiration for the music of the band’s new single “came from listening to Cocteau Twins songs reversed and slowed down.”
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JULIEN BAKER & TORRES – “TUESDAY”
Julien Baker and Torres have given us another early taste of their new country album, Send a Prayer My Way,” with the haunting “Tuesday,” which Torres takes the lead on.
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DEEP SEA DIVER – “WHAT DO I KNOW?”
“‘What Do I Know’ holds a special place on the record,” Jessica Dobson says of this song from her new Deep Sea Diver album Billboard Heart (out this week). It is the first song that I engineered all of the instruments myself at my home studio. At the time, I thought I was recording a demo and most of the parts are first takes. We kept all of the imperfections, and nothing was overthought. For the music video, we wanted to lean into that same spirit and gave ourselves only a few hours to film in a very small space. The song is equally existential as it is tongue in cheek, and we wanted the video to reflect more of the raw elements of who we are as a band.”
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UWADE – “(I WONDER) WHAT WE’RE MADE OF”
Uwade’s debut album, Florilegium, is out in April, and she’s shared another single, the lush “(I Wonder) What We’re Made Of.” “Romantic love gets a lot of attention so when I was workshopping the project that would turn into ‘I Wonder,’ I wanted it to take on a different shade,” she says. “It was about affection, gratitude, and devotion. Who better to dedicate it to than the people who have carried me through my life: my friends. This past summer I took a Latin class where we translated Cicero’s 2000-year-old treatise on friendship, De Amicitia. In it one of the characters claims that a friend is an alter idem–another of the same kind, a second self. This is what this song is all about; since we’re cut from the same cloth, I wonder what we’re made of.”
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JEFFREY LEWIS – “JUST FUN”
Here’s teh second single from The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis. You might spot Joanna Sternberrg in the video. Says Jeffrey: “Joanna lives in the same building-complex as my cousin Edye (& her bf Keith) who play the parents in the first verse so I figured we could multitask while filming there and go meet Joanna for a quick scene (similar “Easter egg” for fans as the Frankie Cosmos cameo in the “LPs” video from 2019). Also the snowy daytime street where I do the unclothed part is the ‘Freewheelin’ corner of Jones & W 4th St, from the 1963 Dylan album and my album.”
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SMUT – “DEAD AIR”
Chicago band Smut are back with “Dead Air,” the first single off a new release they have coming out later this year, which is alternately sparkling and seething.
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DEERHOOF – “SPARROW SPARROW” & “OVERRATED SPECIES ANYHOW”
Deerhoof call their new lathe-cut 7″ a “double b-side,” They explain: “”In the new world we want to create, we need today’s trans youth to grow into tomorrow’s trans adults. This ‘Double B-Side’ is meant as a life beam to anyone who has been feeling dehumanized by mainstream society lately. Anyone who didn’t find themselves in the rankings of which races, nationalities, genders, or belief systems have equal value. Anyone who sees life on earth as something more than some capitalist death match. Anyone who got thrown under the bus in the past year’s race to the bottom. Anyone who isn’t one of 2781 billionaires who’ve taken control of the world. Anyone refusing to lick the fascist boot.” Deerhoof will donate all proceeds from the lathe cut, and from Bandcamp sales for the Double B-Side, to The Trevor Project, the leading organization focusing on suicide prevention in LGBTQ+ youth.
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GREAT GRANDPA – “LADYBUG”
Great Grandpa have shared a fourth track off their anticipated new album Patience, Moonbeam, “Ladybug.” “Every once in a while you find yourself tripping on a beautiful day with a best friend and stumble into the middle of a stranger’s wedding in a park,” they say. “It’s always these small fickle, fleeting moments we’re seeking that can never be bottled or sustained. What good luck does the ladybug bring? We scream together for those shared seconds of unadulterated joy. We’ll feel ok when it comes back again right? Kid Cudi did it first.”
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JANE REMOVER – “DANCING WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED”
After releasing their new album as Venturing, Jane Remover shares a danceable new single, “Dancing With Your Eyes Closed.”
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HANA VU – “RECORDS”
Hana Vu followed last year’s great Romanticism with an EP of alternate, stripped back versions of a few of its tracks, and another previously unheard track, the bare bones “Records.” “I really wanted to capture the feeling the early demos on Romanticism had,” she says. “No frills, just pure emotion. Really the saddest possible versions of these songs.”
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HUNDREDTH – “WASTE”
Hundredth have followed the dance-punky “Dark Side” with the second single from their still-unannounced new album, “Waste.” This one finds them in emo/art rock territory, and it even brings in some… turntablism?! Cool song.
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DAUGHTER OF SWORDS – “MONEY HITS”
“‘Money Hits’ is a song about financial striving, the fact that capitalism is a joke and everyone at the bottom is living its appalling punchline, but that nature will have the last laugh on all of us,” Daughter of Swords says of the latest single off their new album Alex. “Money is imaginary—a deadly and expensive roadblock at every turn for the poor, but so abundant as to almost become air for the affluent (‘floating, flying, shimmering, diving like a bird on the wing’). It’s also so imaginary that as the consequences of our inability to get off fossil fuels passes tipping points, no one will be able to buy their way back to a livable world (‘running through the woods while the water rises…’).”
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BY STORM – “ZIG ZAG”
By Storm, the new duo version of Injury Reserve (RIP Stepa J. Groggs), have shared a genre-blurring, seven-minute single.
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MIYA FOLICK – “FELICITY”
Miya Folick’s new album Erotica Veronica is out this Friday, and ahead of that she’s shared a final advance single, “Felicity,” which she says references an alternate definition of the word, “finding appropriate expression for one’s thoughts.” That, she says, is “a cornerstone of the album: putting language to how I feel, which I didn’t do for so long because I didn’t know it was a feeling I was allowed to have.”
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BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT – “WANDERING LOST”
Portland, OR doomy psych band Blackwater Holylight announced a new EP, If You Only Knew, due April 18 via Suicide Squeeze. Its nearly-seven-minute lead single is a slow-burner with a pretty towering climax.
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GRAVEDWELLER – “HONEY BABE”
Gravedweller are best known for heavy shoegaze, but new single “Honey Babe” goes into alt-country territory.
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ILL NATURED – “FOUND MY PEACE”
Newcastle metallic hardcore band Ill Natured announced a new Taylor Young-mixed EP, Cryptic Psychosis, due March 21 via Last Ride Records. Here’s the kickass lead single/closing track “Found My Peace.”
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JO SCHORNIKOW – “UPSTREAM”
Australian singer/songwriter (and Phosphorescent member) Jo Schornikow has announced a new EP, Quiet Excerpts, due April 25 via Keeled Scales. Its first single is a six-and-a-half minute ambient folk song called “Upstream.”
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GREER – “FRANKEN”
SoCal band Greer announced their debut full-length album, Big Smile, due March 21 via Epitaph. They made it with Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Saves The Day, Joyce Manor, etc), and new single “Franken” dives into some ’90s Weezer vibes.
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DJRUM – “THREE FOXES CHASING EACH OTHER”
UK electronic musician Djrum has announced his first album in over six years, Under Tangled Silence, due April 25 via Houndstooth. Lead single “Three Foxes Chasing Each Other” is over seven minutes of gorgeous, glistening, and skittering bliss.
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SUZZALLO (ROCKY VOTOLATO) – “TSUNAMI WAVES” (ft. BEN GIBBARD)
Veteran singer/songwriter and former Waxwing singer Rocky Votolato shares another taste of the upcoming debut album by his new band Suzzallo. The album features several contributions from Ben Gibbard, including on this song.
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EMPLOYED TO SERVE – “FALLEN STAR”
UK metalcore band offer up the soaring, melodic title track of their previously announced album Fallen Star.
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RWAKE – “YOU SWORE WE’D ALWAYS BE TOGETHER”
Little Rock, Arkansas sludge metal vets Rwake give us the second taste of their first album in 13 years.
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MARIA USBECK – “MANTARRAYA”
Former Selebrities frontperson Maria Usbek will release new solo album Naturaleza on April 11 and here’s the lovely new single.
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FREE RANGE – “STORM”
“I have a song on my last record that some people mistook for being a song about touring, when in fact I had never been on tour at the time when I wrote the song,” says Sofia Jensen, aka Free Range. “So this song was my intentional ‘song about tour.’ It’s about the whiplash that you start to feel when you’re constantly leaving home, as well as the excitement and emotional extremes that come with it.” They sing: “I keep on lying down / afraid that I’ll be found out I let all my thoughts come with me / when I go / sprinkle them out when I feel like/ coming home.” New album Lost & Found is out March 28.
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SHURA – “RICHARDSON” FT. CASSANDRA JENKINS
British singer-songwriter and producer Shura will release I Got Too Sad For My Friends on May 30 and here’s the new single which features Cassandra Jenkins. “I was drawn to Richardson because it captures a mood that’s hard to place, in part because it’s so much about place, and a kind of limbo we bring with us wherever we go,” Cassandra says. “I love that this collaboration developed into a meta conversation between me and Shu about the ways we communicate with our loved ones when we are apart, whether by circumstance, time, or geography. It makes me think we were cosmic pen pals long before we ever met.”
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LITTLE SIMZ – “FLOOD” FT. OBONGJAYAR & MOONCHILD SANELLY
Little Simz announced a new album, Lotus, and gave us an early taste with “Flood,” which you can read more about here.
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LAIBACH – “FEDAYEEN (THE AXE IS SHARPENED)”
Slovenian post-punk greats Laibach will release a new symphonic work, Alamut, on May 9 and “takes inspiration from Alamut (1938), the telling of a story from eleventh century Persia by Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol about martyrdom and the Cult of Personalities that went on to inspire the video game series Assassin’s Creed.” Here is just a taste.
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DERADOORIAN – “SET ME FREE”
“This album is partly about watching humanity erode,” Deradoorian says of Ready for Heaven. “It’s about mental struggle, and it’s avowedly anti-capitalist. I mean; would we have all these identity labels we have to live by, if we didn’t live in a capitalist world?” Here’s the first single.
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DYING WISH – “I BROUGHT YOU MY SOUL (YOUR WORLD BROUGHT ME DESPAIR)”
Portland, OR metalcore band Dying Wish get more melodic than ever on new single “I Brought You My Soul (Your World Brought Me Despair),” which they say is “the first step in the direction of our third LP,” but melodic doesn’t mean uplifting. “‘I Brought You My Soul…’ is written about being one of many affected by the state of the world we are living in,” vocalist Emma Boster says. “Constantly witnessing the brutality and injustices has taken a toll on our collective mental health. [The lyric] ‘I am miserable yet I am sane’ references that being impacted by these tragedies happening in Gaza and on our own American soil in fact makes us normal. I fear that one day we will become numb to the events as they become more violent because we are so conditioned to living with it every day.” Read more here.
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THANYA IYER – “LOW TIDES”
Montreal art pop artist Thanya Iyer has announced a new album for Topshelf, TIDE/TIED, and lead single “Low Tides” is out now. Read more here.
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PYRAMIDS – “FOOLS GOLD (MI VIDA HA IDO PA ATRAS)”
Pyramids, the experimental band who share members with The Sound of Animals Fighting and RX Bandits, have announced their first album in 10 years, Pythagoras, due 5/2 via The Flenser. Read more about the album and its reggaeton-inspired lead single here.
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Looking for even more new songs? Browse the New Songs archive.