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, February 11, 2025.
Helena Deland – ‘Silver and Red’ and ‘Bigger Pieces’
Helena Deland has released the fifth volume of her Altogether Unaccompanied series. It includes ‘Silver and Red’ and ‘Bigger Pieces’, two songs that are both gorgeous, though ‘Silver and Red’ is a little subtler and ‘Bigger Pieces’ a little more refined. “When I finished recording what I thought would be my first album, in 2017, I was faced with a miscellaneous bunch of songs,” Deland explained. “Instead of wiggling them into the expected format, I released them as a series of short EPs called Altogether Unaccompanied, volumes I-IV. Volume V is out today, and the series becomes an open-ended place for me to share songs which haven’t made it onto albums, or which seem to exist on their own, more or less unaccompanied.”
Moontype – ‘Long Country’
Moontype are back with their first music since 2021’s Bodies of Water, along with the news that they’ve signed to Orindal Records, the label run by Advance Base’s Owen Ashworth. Produced by Katie von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn, the track is a hypnotic swirl that builds to a cathartic conclusion. “I wrote ‘Long Country’ during the early pandemic but it’s a feeling I’ve had many times, feeling trapped in who and where I am,” vocalist Margaret McCarthy. “I want to escape, drive far away, but wherever you go there you are. Sometimes it feels impossible to change the emotional patterns you’ve built for yourself. This is the only song where all four of us sing at the same time, and that’s always a special moment.”
Horsegirl – ‘Frontrunner’
Ahead of the release of their new Cate Le Bon-produced album Phonetics On and On on Friday, Horsegirl have shared one more single, ‘Frontrunner’. Following ‘2468’, ‘Julie’, and ‘Switch Over’, the track is warmly inviting and a little more low-key. “In the morning/ When you’re sleeping/ I can’t wait and I can’t wait to compromise,” the chorus goes.
Iron Lung – ‘Lifeless Life’
The Seattle-based powerviolence duo Iron Lung have announced their first LP since 2013’s White Glove Test. Recorded with longtime collaborator Greg Wilkinson, it’s led by the exhilarating single ‘Lifeless Life’, which clocks in at just 52 seconds.
My Morning Jacket – ‘Squid Ink’
My Morning Jacket have shared a new single called ‘Squid Ink’, which is taken from their upcoming album is. It’s as oddly groovy as a song called ‘Squid Ink’ can be. “The idea behind ‘Squid Ink is that certain people carry a negativity that fills the room like a squid shooting ink into the water,” Jim James explained in a statement. “It’s about trying to get out of those murky waters by believing in yourself, and when Patrick and I were jamming I got the idea to sing part of the chorus really low — almost like putting a beard on the face of the vocal.”
Scowl – ‘B.A.B.E’
Scowl have shared another equal parts ferocious and infectious track from their forthcoming LP Are We All Angels. “‘Burned At Both Ends’ is another explosion of emotions stemming from both overwhelm and excitement,” the band explained. “We felt that the song’s punchy nature and quick switches from melody to scrapping angst resembles a mature version of ‘Shot Down‘ from our Psychic Dance Routine EP. Lyrically ‘B.A.B.E’ dives into our vitriol for the extreme circumstances we as a band subject ourselves too in order to live our dreams.”
Preoccupations – ‘Focus’
Preoccupations have detailed their fifth studio album, Ill at Ease, which is out May 9 on Born Losers Records. Co-produced by the Calgary post-punk outfit’s Matthew Flegel and Scott “Monty” Munro, it marks their first LP since 2022’s Arrangements. Lead single ‘Focus’ is shadowy yet catchier and more polished than you might expect.
Ben Kweller – ‘Dollar Store’ [feat. Waxahatchee]
Ben Kweller has released a new song, ‘Dollar Store’, which features backing vocals from Katie Crutchfield. There’s a beautiful shimmer to their vocal chemistry, and the track builds to a brief yet cathartic finale when you least expect it.
Joni – ‘Things I Left Behind’
Joni has announced that her debut album, Things I Left Behind, will arrive on April 11. The mesmerizing lead single title track is “a reflection on how we’re all made up of the things we’ve lost and left behind,” according to the London-based songwriter. “People. Places. Experiences. While writing the lyrics, I was having all these vivid images from my past rush by, almost like lights when you’re driving in a tunnel. Little things and big things. Scraping my knee as a kid. Falling in love for the first time. Losing love. Taking mushrooms and calling my childhood best friend. Lying on the grass at night. It’s painful to realise you can’t hold onto these things physically, but ultimately comforting to know that they sort of become you and you carry them along in some way.”
Alabaster DePlume – ‘Invincibility’
‘Invincibility’, the latest single from Alabaster DePlume’s A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, is melodically lilting and emotionally stark. “When I feel my feelings (instead of escaping them) I can discover that I survive them, and that I was not destroyed by them,” dePlume explained. “I can experience this as a sense of invincibility. Where I find that I am able independently to live through what I feel, I am empowered and I generate my own agency.”
L.A. Witch – ‘777’
L.A. Witch have delivered a delicious slice of gothy noise-pop with ‘777’, the first preview of their forthcoming album DOGGOD – out April 4 via Suicide Squeeze Records. “A part of the energy in our new album is a result to being able to record in a different city that we all love, which is so different from home,” the band’s Sade Sanchez remarked. “Recorded at Motorbass studios in Paris, 777 is considered to be an ‘angel’ number. It’s a song about the willingness to die for love in the process of serving it or suffering for it. It’s about loyalty to the very end. Filled with chorus and guitar dive, it was one of our favourite songs to record and we can’t wait to play it live.”
Will Stratton – ‘Bardo or Heaven?’
The third single off Will Stratton’s upcoming album Points of Origin is both musically and narratively hypnotic. “I started singing the lyrics to what became ‘Bardo or Heaven?’ as I rode my bike on a summer afternoon several years ago, as a huge amount of wildfire smoke blew over from the west coast, hovering high above us in the Northeast as it dissipated over the Atlantic Ocean, giving the light and the air here in the Hudson Valley an otherworldly quality,” he reflected. “It’s a song that begins by describing the feeling of dissociation in the face of the unreal. This is something I rarely experience, rarely enough that I thought it was worth writing a song about. And then I think the tone of the song transforms into something like acceptance. Ultimately, I decided that this song was enough of a narrative to fit alongside the other songs of this record, most of which can be uncontroversially considered as short stories. I have to say that it feels very strange, obscene, even, describing this song and the other songs on this record in the wake of the recent fires in Southern California. Most of this album was written as an attempt to read into the past as a way of engaging with the future, but as often happens with art informed by climate change, sometimes real life outpaces the boundaries we attempt to set for ourselves.”
Masma Dream World – ‘O, Dark Mother’
“Nothing lasts forever in the shadow world,” Devi Mambouka said of ‘O, Dark Mother’, the eerily disorienting new single from her forthcoming Masma Dream World LP PLEASE COME TO ME. But she lets the listener hang there as she invokes it, or some kind of liminal space between it and reality.
Yves Jarvis – ‘Decision Tree’
Yves Jarvis has dropped one more single ahead of the release of his upcoming record All Cylinders, arriving February 28 via In Real Life. The song is about “forging ahead through the unforeseeable outcomes of each choice,” according to Jarvis, and it’s appropriately propulsive.
bdrmm – ‘Lake Disappointment’
Hull quartet bdrmm have dropped ‘Lake Disappointment’, the pulsating third single off their forthcoming full-length Microtonic. “‘Lake Disappointment’ is probably the most aggressive and exciting song we’ve conjured up,” guitarist and vocalist Ryan Smith commented. “I remember sending it to Alex (our producer) and I’ve never seen him so excited about a track. It was such a dream to work on. I feel like within all the melancholy of the record there is a lot of anger too. This is us getting that out, and saying fuck you to the wrongdoers.”
Wings of Desire – ‘a few more years’
Wings of Desire have shared an uplifting new single, ‘a few more years’, which sways back and forth between James Taylor’s talk-singing and a stirring chorus. “’A few more years’ is a sober reflection on the heady days of youth.” Taylor reflected. “As we live through a world in flux let’s hark back to a time before algorithms and the financialization of social life. Windows down, Benson & Hedges lit. Watching the sun come up with dread as others march to their daily commute. A note on a past period of personal crisis, and a message to my younger self. Hold on for a few more years as things do get better with time. Everything looks beautiful from here.”
Most Things – ‘Shops!’
‘Shops!’ is the debut single from Most Things – the London duo of Tom Phillips and Malachy O’Neill – and it’s strangely alluring. “’Shops!’ is one of the first songs written as Most Things, it’s made of bass guitar and drums with singing on top,” the band said. “It’s less about going to the shops than the absent-minded endurance of modern living (adverts, new things, ideological fingers up our ideological noses). It is a relatively understated tone setter for what is to come within the world and project of Most Things, and something to listen to when going to the shops.”
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