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.
TALIB KWELI & MADLIB – “AFTER THESE MESSAGES” (ft. AMANI)
Following Black Star’s Madlib-produced comeback album No Fear of Time, and now Talib Kweli is releasing his own Madlib-produced album, Liberation 2, the sequel to the duo’s 2007 album Liberation. Like the Black Star album, it’ll be exclusively released on podcasting platform Luminary (on March 6), but you can hear the publicly-released lead single now.
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DOUGIE POOLE – “BETH DAVID CEMETERY”
“Beth David is the cemetery in Queens where my Mom’s side of the family is buried,” Dougie Pool says of this new song. “I’ve lost a lot of people in the past 10 years or so – not just family, friends too. Maybe that’s just what getting older feels like. Adding names to a list that only gets longer. So I wanted to write a joyful, messy, kinda boozy, kinda hungover song about going to a funeral. I wanted to capture the way a homecoming brings into focus the passage of time, and draws us close to the idea of our own death, but not in an exclusively sorrowful way. Of course there can be a lot of joy in a funeral – in recollection of loved ones who are gone, in being close loved ones who are still around – but also scattered around in the rubble of grief you can occasionally catch a glimmer of how sweet it is to be alive, or how it might feel like to fully evaporate. Doesn’t seem so bad. Everybody’s doin it.” Dougie’s new album, The Rainbow Wheel of Death, is out later this month.
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PURR – “CAVE”
New York City duo Purr have released this new single that owes more than a little to ’70s guitar pop. “This is a song about caving in,” says the group’s Eliza Callahan.
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MARK PETERS (ENGINEERS) – “ALPENGLOW”
Mark Peters of Engineers has announced The Magic Hour EP that will be out March 24 via Sonic Cathedral. The EP features former One Dove singer Dot Allison and pedal steel legend B.J. Cole, with two brand new tracks alongside two remixes of songs from last year’s Red Sunset Dreams. Check out one of the new ones:
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JONATHAN BREE (EX BRUNETTES) – “PRE CODE HOLLYWOOD” FT NILE RODGERS
Jonathan Bree, who you may remember from Brunettes, will release new solo album Pre Code Hollywood that will be out April 14 via Lil’ Chief Records. The title track is just like new film Babylon but with less bodily fluids and more disco, courtesy CHIC’s Nile Rodgers.
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LIZZO – “SPECIAL” (FT. SZA)
After her Grammy Win for Record Of The Year for “About Damn Time,” Lizzo shared a new version of her 2022 album’s title track featuring a guest appearance from SZA.
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GODCASTER – “VIVIAN HECK”
NYC band Godcaster have shared another single from their upcoming self-titled album. The band’s Judson Kolk says “Vivian Heck ” is about “romance and that pounding blooming heartthrob. It’s about too much ecstatic passion, so much that it could make you sob or scream. It’s about orgasmic phantasm while looking into the sun. It’s about blending into your lover and dissolving. All of this comes a-knockin’ in the crescendo of the song.”
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DEPECHE MODE – “GHOSTS AGAIN”
“To me, ‘Ghosts Again’ just captures this perfect balance of melancholy and joy,” says frontman Dave Gahan while songwriter Martin Gore adds, “It’s not often that we record a song that I just don’t get sick of listening to – I’m excited to be able to share it.” It’s the first single from Depeche Mode’s new album Memento Mori.
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DAWN RAY’D – “THE BATTLE OF SUDDEN FLAME”
UK black metal trio Dawn Ray’d have shared the second single off their upcoming album To Know The Light (due 3/24 via Prosthetic). It starts out in furious black metal territory before moving into violin-fueled post-rock, and it’s a protest song, as the band explains:
The lyrics to this song feel very relevant to what we have seen the police do in 2023, but has there ever been a year when that wouldn’t be the case?
One of the ways working people have been able to tell the stories of their lives is through folk music; documenting labour struggles, the lives of revolutionaries, and all the abuses those in power commit against us. There is no break between the past and the present, this is a true story told in the best way we know how. Folk music isn’t a synonym for ‘accoustic’ or ‘twee’, it is the music of our real lives, we the folk down here struggling.
It isn’t controversial to hate an institution that brutalises women, torments the poor, murders people of colour with impunity, covers for the abusive rich and crushes dissent.
We don’t have to justify our opposition to the police, that is the burden of those who choose to support them.
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LISEL – “STALACTITE”
“Conceptually, the arc of ‘Stalactite’ begins with a simple, bright vocal gesture that is repeated and manipulated,” Lisel says of her new single. “Then, there’s a major tonal shift halfway through when the Moog synths come in — and all the vocal material that happened in the first half is recontextualized, re-understood, within the bass-y synth world. This is a recurring theme on the album (and happens in other songs, ‘Immature,’ ‘Blades of Grass’ for example): material built only out of vocals gets reinterpreted, often placed into an entirely different harmonic or rhythmic world, when electronic instruments enter – just as the album recontextualizes the tradition of layered choral singing within a contemporary aural sensibility and with 21st century tools and sounds.” It’s from her new album, Patterns for Auto-Tuned Voices and Delay, out later this month.
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PILE – “LOWERED RAINBOW”
Boston indie rockers Pile have shared a new track off their upcoming LP All Fiction, and finds them exploring atmospheric, psychedelic territory.
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BABY ROSE – “I WON’T TELL” (ft. SMINO)
Baby Rose is gearing up to release new album Through and Through on April 28 via Secretly Canadian. Its new single “I Won’t Tell” is a retro-funk jam featuring St. Louis rapper/singer Smino.
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WANDERER – “SLOW DEATH OF THE CROWNED HEAD”
Wanderer have shared another track off their upcoming EP Indulgence of the Unreal. The band tells New Noise that the song “is a perfect mash-up of our genre descriptors ‘remedial mathcore’ and ‘brutal hardcore,'” and that’s a good way of putting this heavy, shapeshifting track.
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BOKANI DYER – “RESONANCE OF TRUTH”
South African artist Bokani Dyer has announced a new album, Radio Sechaba, due May 12 via Brownswood Recordings. Here’s the jazz/Afrobeat lead single “Resonance of Truth.”
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DEATHTRIPPA – “TAMAGOTCHI TORTURE”
New Zealand cybergrinders Deathtrippa are releasing Deathtrippa SZN on February 26, and here’s the awesomely batshit new single.
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ENFORCER – “COMING ALIVE”
Swedish retro-heavy metallers Enforcer will release new album Nostalgia on May 5 via Nuclear Blast, and lead single “Coming Alive” is definitely full of “nostalgia” for the glory days of classic metal.
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FURY OF FIVE – “FEEL THE REIGN”
Asbury Park heavy hardcore heroes Fury of Five have shared a new track off their first EP in 23 years, and you can read about it here.
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NINA NASTASIA – “YOU WERE SO MAD” (ft. MARISSA PATERNOSTER)
Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females has joined Nina Nastasia on a new version of “You Were So Mad” ahead of Nina’s performance at Screaming Females’ Garden Party mini-fest. Read about it here.
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JESSIE WARE – “PEARLS”
Jessie Ware has announced new album That! Feels Good! alongside the release of new single “Pearls.” Read about it here.
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ESTHER ROSE – “CHET BAKER”
“Someone sent me a DM, asking ‘do you remember me.’ I was transported into a decade-old memory; a weird weekend with a crew of dangerous college preps, a car crash,” Esther Rose explains of her new song “Chet Baker.” “As I was writing this song, it occurred to me how lucky I was to have survived that time of willful recklessness. I wanted to empathize with my younger self, like, ‘it’s alright, you were 23. You were out of control. I got you now. You’re okay.'” Read more about it here.
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M83 – FANTASY CHAPTER 1
M83 surprise-released five more songs from his upcoming LP Fantasy today, comprising the first chapter of the album. Read more about it here.
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DAS KOOLIES (4/5THS OF SUPER FURRY ANIMALS – “THE CONDEMNED”
Das Koolies are a “parallel band” of Super Furry Animals that includes guitarist Huw Bunford, keyboardist Cian Ciarán, drummer Dafydd Ieuan and bassist Guto Pryce — that’s everyone except frontman Gruff Rhys. They released their debut single back in 2020, and now they’ve announced The Condemned EP which will be out March 10. Check out the title track.
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IMMATERIAL POSSESSION – “TO THE FETE”
Athens, GA psych-folk group Immaterial Possession, who are led by Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites and include Kiran Fernandes (son of Olivia Tremor Control’s John Kiran Fernandes), will release their second album, Mercy of the Crane Folk, on May 5 via Fire. This is the first single.
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Looking for even more new songs? Browse the New Songs archive.