There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Tuesday, October 28, 2025.
Geologist – ‘Tonic’
Earlier this year, Brian “Geologist” Weitz teamed with Doug Shaw, aka D.S., for the collaborative album A Shaw Deal. Today, he’s announced his first solo album: Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights? arrives January 30 on Drag City. Recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Ashville, it features contributions his Animal Collective bandmate Avey Tare and FACS drummer Alianna Kalaba. About the fizzy, psychedelic lead single, ‘Tonic’, Geologist said: “Most of the formative music in my teens was guitar-based, and at that age, you try to play like your favorites. But I was never very good at guitar myself. A couple years ago when trying to come up with a solo hurdy gurdy drone set to take out on tour, I heard a story about Greg Ginn playing guitar solos over a drum machine. I was coming to accept that whatever drone I could make on the hurdy gurdy would never live up to when I first heard Keiji Haino play one at Tonic in 1998. So I went the Ginn route instead and wrote this record. I still can’t play or write like my favorites, but the hurdy gurdy got me closer than guitar ever did.”
Ratboys – ‘Anywhere’
“I can’t help my panic attack,” Julia Steiner sings on ‘Anywhere’, the lead single off Ratboys’ new album Singin’ to an Empty Chair, and I can’t help going back to it: as anxious as it is catchy, like the band’s best tunes. “The experience of making this record definitely gives me hope for whatever happens next,” Steiner said. “There are plenty of good days, days filled with friendship and love, and then there are days when I dwell on things and desperately want to bridge the gap. It’s my whole life, you know? So, for me, this record is a document of all of those days stitched together, like a quilt in a time capsule, just waiting to get dug up when the time is right.”
The Twilight Sad – ‘Waiting for the Phone Call’
The Twilight Sad, a longtime opening act for the Cure, have enlisted Robert Smith for their cathartic new single ‘Waiting for the Phone Call’. “’Waiting For The Phone Call’ is about grief, love, and mental illness,” singer and lyricist James Graham explained. “These things took over my life and I became ill. I lost the person most important to me in one of the cruellest ways. I’ve always used writing as a method of processing and coping with my emotions. My emotions became a problem and I couldn’t control them, writing music with Andy… especially the past seven years had been both the escape and the opportunity to process and try and make sense of life. We’ve all been waiting on a phone call that can change our lives at some point. This unfortunately focuses on a phone call that you never want to have.”
Liz Cooper – IDFK
Every now and then, I still go back to the Tomberlin’s great 2022 ballad ‘idkwntht’. Liz Cooper’s new single ‘IDFK’ has a similar kind of understated candor. Leading her upcoming album New Day, which arrives February 20, the song is “about the connection of the past in the present, the connection between who the main character in the song showed me I am and the person I am becoming, the feeling of a memory and intimacy across time and space,” according to Cooper. “This is a love song to a friend and to myself.”
Mute Swan – ‘Hypnosis Tapes’
Tucson shoegaze outfit Mute Swan, who have played with Wednesday, Horse Jumper of Love, and Peel Dream Magazin, have dropped a new song, ‘Hypnosis Tapes’, which is aptly hypnotic. It’s their first new music since their debut album, 2021’s Only Ever. “We had only approved the final mix of this song weeks before when we lost our best friend and guitarist, Tom Sloane,” vocalist/guitarist Mike Barnett shared. “It is the first of a collection of his last songs we felt especially determined to give a proper release into the world. Displaying some of his best textural guitarwork, this song is about finding some kind of inner peace through the noise of chaotic times and endless mental chatter. There’s a meditation tape sampled at the end, as well as a vacuum cleaner in reverse at the beginning (an inside joke of ours).”
Tim Heidecker – ‘Alone Until I’m Home’
Tim Heidecker has shared ‘Alone Until I’m Home’, a stunning track taken from the upcoming benefit compilation Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers. “I wrote this song on tour with my second favorite family, my band,” he commented.
The Convenience – ‘Angel’
The Convenience’s jangly new single, ‘Angel’, was partly improvised in the studio. The New Orleans band’s Nick Corson describes it as “a doomed road trip lullaby,” which is quite fitting.
Retail Drugs – ‘Demon Town’
“Doomed road trip lullaby” is also not a bad description for ‘Demon Town’, the abrasive new single by Retail Drugs — the NYC recording project of Jake Brooks. “I blacked out when making ‘Demon Town’,” Brooks said of the Factory Reset single. “It started with the drum beat. I started screaming over it, distorting the master bus I had it all going into. It felt so strong I just kept all that distortion. It’s a feral track not really about anything. It’s cathartic making music that sounds like this. I let go of all expectations and let the voice within me make the thing.”
