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 Wednesday, November 26, 2025.
The Notwist – ‘X-Ray’
After returning in 2021 with Vertigo Days, The Notwist are back with news of their next album, News From Planet Zombie. Lead single ‘X-Ray’ is nervous yet twinkly. Commenting on our collective state of anxiety, the band’s Markus Acher said: “The river here in Munich I often go to has been there forever and will be there long after us. Always the same but always changing. Very calming, but also always reminding me that like this river time only flows into one direction and you can’t go back. Every moment is very precious.”
Ulrika Spacek – ‘Square Root of None’
Ulrika Spacek have shared ‘Square Root of None’, a twitchy, captivating preview of their forthcoming album EXPO. The track came about while “throwing ideas at a wall” during a biting Stockholm winter, according to the band; still, there’s an almost clinical precision to its execution.
Big Special – ‘DRAGGED UP A HILL (and thrown down the other side)’
Big Special have shared a new single, ‘DRAGGED UP A HILL (and thrown down the other side)’, which is strikingly intimate. There’s a bit of Jeff Buckley to Joe Hickin’s impassioned performance, which isn’t quite what we’ve come to expect from the group. Hickin described it as “a song written a while ago that we picked back out of our dusty drawer, about the old labouring days and the feeling of getting nowhere in love and work, despite all the graft.”
Austel – ‘The Beach in December ‘
Are you the kind of person who thinks of winter as Bon Iver season? You might resonate with the new single by Austel, the artist and producer born Annie Rew Shaw, which reflects “on how our childhood experiences impact how we move through the world. I decided to record the entire journey from Brighton beach to the train station, then the train back to London, on a Zoom recorder. I wanted to create a memory for people to get lost in for a few minutes – travelling with the song along the beach, on the train. It still evokes a lot of memory – it’s a bit of a time capsule, which I think is the work of the field recordings.”
midori jaeger – ‘dark green’
London-based cellist and singer-songwriter midori jaeger has announced a new EP,(Un)planted, that’s out March 9. Along with the news, she’s shared the shadowy, slightly off-kilter new single ‘dark green’, which lies low despite its wide array of instrumentation – cello, bass synth, synth, vibraphone, drums, and guitar.
Leif – ‘Filmed Backwards’
Leif has announced a new album, Collide, arriving via AD 93 on December 12. Most of the record utilizes an old Aria Pro II electric guitar from the artist’s childhood, which has a mesmeric effect on the new single ‘Filmed Backwards’, as if turning back time.
Tenderness – ‘Database Blues’
Tenderness – the solo project of Katy Beth Young (Peggy Sue, Deep Throat Choir) – has shared ‘Database Blues’, a reflective single from her upcoming debut album True – out March 13 via Amorphous Sounds. “‘Database Blues’ is a country song set in the world of streaming algorithms and re-read text messages,” she explained. “When I wrote it, I was thinking a lot about how technology and romance can feed and battle each other at the same time. Sending a song to a crush is obviously one of life’s purest joys but what does it mean when the algorithm plays it back to you later? Can you still call it a sign? I was an MSN Messenger teenager so there have always been screens in my romances – screens as a connector and amplifier as well as a barrier, and ‘Database Blues’ is me owning up to my own complicity in that.”
Laroie – ‘Waterfall’
Canadian electropop artist Laroie has dropped a breathy, cathartic track called ‘Waterfall’. “This song is a love letter to the universe asking it to forgive me as I move through this life and figure my way around it,” Laroie shared. “It’s a song about acknowledging the hardship of walking this earth and the privilege of it. I’m not used to releasing more heartfelt/emotional bangers with a slow tempo (lol) but this one really hit differently and I could not let go of it.”
IST IST – ‘Warning Signs’
IST IST have shared a propulsive new song, ‘Warning Signs’. ”I wanted to write from a place of regret — that gut-wrenching moment when you realise pride and fear have cost you the person you love,” vocalist Adam Houghton commented. “The song is a confession and a plea, filled with what-ifs and too-lates. I wanted the repetition and directness to feel desperate, like someone haunted by what they didn’t say soon enough. It’s about confronting the pain of being without the one who grounded you and understanding too late that love requires vulnerability. The goal was to make the emotion feel raw, honest, and painfully human.”
