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, January 8, 2025.
Destroyer – ‘Bologna’
Destroyer has a new album on the way called Dan’s Boogie, and he previewed it today with the single ‘Bologna’, which is spectral yet groovy. Disco was one of the inspirations Dan Bejar namechecked around the release of 2022’s Labyrinthitis, and the thread seems to continue with ‘Bologna’, which features vocals from Fiver’s Simone Schmidt. “I haven’t written many songs like ‘Bologna,’” Bejar said in a press release. “I struggled singing the first and third verses, the most important parts of the song. They needed gravity and grit. The threat of disappearing needed to be real. So I called Simone.” I’ll get to analyzing the significance of those verses soon, but for now, just listening to him repeat the titular word is a delight.
Youth Lagoon – ‘Speed Run’
Youth Lagoon has been releasing a bunch of great singles lately, and now we know they’re part of a new LP titled Rarely Do I Dream. ‘Speed Run’ accompanies today’s announcement, and it’s got that signature Youth Lagoon dreaminess, but it’s fittingly more kinetic. “This song came from a thought I had of giving the angel of death a hug,” Trevor Powers explained. “We spend our whole lives running from this thing we can’t outrun. This body is temporary, but there is no death. Only transformation. A door opens when you learn to let go of the identity you’ve been building your whole life. Someone told me a couple years ago, ‘I have good news for you and I have bad news. The bad news is Trevor is doomed. There’s no hope for Trevor. The good news is — you’re not Trevor.’ When I heard that, it clicked.”
Darkside – ‘Shovel’
Darkside – the trio of Nicolás Jaar, Dave Harrington, and recently added drummer Tlacael Esparza – announced their new album today with the single ‘S.N.C’. It’s got one hell of a bassline, and the group has a way of anchoring in that groove even as the song grows hazier and more distorted.
Dirty Projectors & s t a r g a z e – ‘Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One’
‘Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One’ is the first preview of Song of the Earth, a new “song cycle” by Dirty Projectors and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e. It’s a word-for-word retelling of paragraph one of the author David Wallace-Wells’ 2019 bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth, and frontman David Longstreth described it as “the Beavis-and-Butthead version of Song of the Earth.” Take from that what you will, but it’s definitely an intriguing introduction.
Throwing Muses – ‘Summer of Love”
Moonlight Concessions, Throwing Muses’ just-announced first album in five years, is billed as a “back to basics” project. Lead single ‘Summer of Love’ “began as a bet with a guy for a dollar that revolved around the idea that the seasons don’t change us,” according to a press release, and it’s eerily enchanting. Kristin Hersh seems to finally concede: “I owe you a buck,” she sings.
Great Grandpa – ‘Junior’
Great Grandpa have announced the follow-up to 2019’s Four of Arrows, which includes the previously unveiled songs ‘Kid’ and ‘Doom’. ‘Junior’ is the latest single from Patience, Moonbeam, which arrives on March 28, and it blossoms wonderfully. According to a press release, it’s “told through the eyes of a character who tromps around in a state of reckless boyhood and brags of pulling off ‘light crimes with my buddies all night.'”
SPELLLING – ‘Portrait of My Heart’
‘Portrait’ is the driving, sinuous title track off SPELLLING’s just-announced album. “When the lyrics for the title track came together, it really started to morph everything in this more energetic direction, instead of this more whimsical landscape that I’ve worked with before,” Chrystia Cabral explained. “It started to become more driven, higher energy, more focused. And I have a big affection for it because of that. I love that it feels like it withstood transformation, which is something I always want to aspire to with things that I make. I want them to have this sense of timelessness. It could exist like this, or like that, or like this, but this is the one for right now.”
clipping. – ‘Change the Channel’
clipping. have detailed their cyberpunk-inspired new LP Dead Channel Sky, which arrives on March 14 and features guest spots from Aesop Rock, Nels Cline, Bitpanic, Tia Nomore, and Sub Pop labelmates Cartel Madras. New single ‘Change the Channel’ finds Bay Area rap trio at their most frenetic.
Bob Mould – ‘Here We Go Crazy’
Bob Mould has announced his 15th solo album and first in over four years, Here We Go Crazy, arriving March 7. The title track, which opens the record, is out today, and it’s pretty anthemic.
Hamilton Leithauser – ‘Knockin’ Heart’
Hamilton Leithauser has announced a new LP, This Side Of The Island, which he co-produced with his wife Anna and Aaron Dessner of the National. “Knockin’ Heart’ is sung by an estranged, stoned lover on their way home, who is dying to get a message through to someone who is probably not listening,” he said of the new single. “It is ‘I will love you for life if you’ll let me.’ I wrote and recorded it one evening and put it away for over a year. I knew I liked it, and I didn’t want to mess anything up by trying to perfect it. It was the last song I played for Aaron when we got together, and the first song he helped me work on. I’d say he raised the ceiling and lowered the floor on the entire thing sonically. He actually used a funny bass technique he said he’d used on a Taylor Swift song, which I got a kick out of. I gotta say his bass sounds fantastic. Now there are three basses on it! One of mine and two of his. That is a first for me.”
Squid – ‘Building 650’
Squid also announced a new album today. (There’s more the further you scroll down.) Cowards is out February 2, and the piercing new single ‘Building 650’ was inspired by the band’s first trip to Japan. “We played the Summersonic festival in 2022,” Ollie Judge recalled. “Luckily, we were booked to play two days after the COVID travel ban had been lifted. Because of this, we felt like some of the only tourists in Tokyo. On the plane, I read In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murikami and watched Lost In Translation out of excitement and later decided to write lyrics about being an outsider visiting Japan, including a very particular type of loneliness one can feel visiting a country that is so different from their own. This loneliness feels exaggerated in Tokyo. On the surface, itʼs hectic and full of people, but when you listen itʼs eerily quiet.”
Young Widows – ‘Call Bullshit’
Louisville’s Young Widows have announced their first LP since 2014’s Easy Pain. Power Sucker, which is out March 21, is led by the fiery and aggressive ‘Call Bullshit’.
Eiko Ishibashi – ‘Coma’
Eiko Ishibashi, the Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist known most recently for her scores for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, has announced a new album, Antigone. She’s back in singer-songwriter mode on the new single ‘Coma’, which is breezy and ethereal.
Ben Seretan – ‘they wanna hear another heater’
Ben Seretan has announced astral projecting into flavortown, which compiles “nice sounding” tracks from the musician’s weekly email project My Big Break. The new five-minute piano piece ‘they wanna hear another heater’ sounds serene, and, indeed, very nice.
New Orthodox – ‘Glory’
New Orthodox, the project of the Coxsackie, New York musician Nicholas Merz, is releasing its debut LP, Bull Market on Corn, next LP. It’s one of the last projects Steve Albini recorded and mixed before he passed away last year. Lead single ‘Glory’ is whirring and magnetic. Merz recalled, “When the voice began to push harder and create depth, Steve was patted on the back. ‘Did you gate the room mics for that effect?’ ‘No. The voice is simply exciting the room.’ Hallelujah.”
Sophie Jamieson – ‘Vista’
The latest single from Sophie Jamieson’s second album I still want to share, ‘Vista’ is unfurls delicately yet warily. “Written in the midst of falling in love, I think I sensed the danger in my own emotions,” Jamieson explained. “It was intense and rapid, and though I didn’t realise it at the time, this song seems to reveal my awareness of losing myself very quickly. I felt like a child, in good and bad ways. Everything felt electrified, but also lonely. I found myself painting this picture of a long car drive along cliffs under empty skies, constantly ruining everything, always asking for too much.”
Cryogeyser – ‘Stargirl’
Los Angeles trio Cryogeyser have announced their self-titled album, which is due February 14 and features a notable guest appearance from recent tourmates Wednesday. The sweeping, explosive lead single ‘Stargirl’ is out now. “I wrote this song 3 weeks after the release of the last Cryogeyser record,” guitarist and vocalist Shawn Marom explained. “It’s my most cherished song, everyone I’ve ever loved has had their hands on it; whether it was jamming in the room, writing the bass parts, recording it, tracking it, inspiring it, changing it, expanding it, or remembering it at shows. For me, ‘Stargirl’ is like time traveling – it has meant so many things to me, and I wonder what it will mean to all of you. At the foot of our next record, of songs from near and far that time traveled to get here, we’re (finally) releasing ‘Stargirl.’”
Clara Mann – ‘Driving Home the Long Way’
“I’ve always been so attached to my independence, so fiercely protective of it,” Clara Mann said of her touching new song, ‘Driving Home the Long Way’, in a statement. “I’d drive thousands of miles alone to prove that I could, that I didn’t need anyone – and then one day I just realised that I wanted to be able to let go of the wheel and not feel like everything was going to fall apart. I wanted to let someone in and not feel like I was losing part of myself, because they loved me as I was: free.” She added: “In the end, when I’m really in love with someone, it’s because they feel both like freedom and like home in equal measure. These days, I know that I want to share the journey, because freedom doesn’t mean anything on its own, on MY own. I want to sit in the passenger seat and watch you drive, I want to feel limitless, alongside you.”
Rose City Band – ‘Radio Song’
Rose City Band have previewed their upcoming LP, Sol y Sombra, with the smooth, ambling ‘Radio Song’. “Some of the songs on the new album have little nods to my past life, my college years, living in California,” Ripley Johnson explained. “The title gives it away, but “Radio Song” really did feel a song I would hear on the radio back in the day, driving around Santa Cruz in my ’64 Plymouth Fury, with its mono AM radio. I appreciate how rock and roll songs can be simultaneously really simple and familiar, but also emotionally affecting at the same time. I guess that’s part of their power.”
The Lumineers – ‘Same Old Song’
Another album announcement? You bet. The Lumineers’ Automatic comes out on Valentine’s Day, and ‘Same Old Song’, which sounds a little cheekily self-aware, is out now.
Doves – ‘Cold Dreaming’
“‘Cold Dreaming’ is a song about forgiveness — trying to forgive and move on,” Doves’ Andy Williams said of ‘Cold Dreaming’, the surprisingly groovy new single off the band’s upcoming LP Constellations for the Lonely. “As a minimum these days, resilience is the thing that you need more than ever, certainly as a musician. Perhaps the lyrics do touch a bit on what we’ve been through.”
L.S. Dunes – ‘Violet’
Emo supergroup L.S. Dunes have dropped ‘Violet’, the title track off their upcoming full-length. “I think ‘Violet’ is the song that fully encapsulates everything we do as a band,” bassist Tim Payne explained. “Frank [Iero] brought the demo to the band as a fully structured song, and it seemed that we all just knew immediately what we had to do. I hear quite a few elements from songs on Past Lives, but it’s filtered through the lens of a more established musical language between us, and we were able to take this already incredible song Frank wrote and elevate it to a place I don’t think any of us imagined it could go.” Anthony Green added, “This song is about someone getting exactly what they deserve. This song helped me get through the feeling of being ghosted.”
