Frankie Cosmos – ‘Vanity’
Frankie Cosmos have announced a new LP, Different Talking, arriving June 27 via Sub Pop. It’s led by ‘Vanity’, which is characteristically warm and subtly expansive by the band’s standards.
Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke – ‘Gangsters’
Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard have shared a new single from their upcoming album Tall Tales, the bleeping, otherworldly ‘Gangsters’. It comes paired with a fittingly eerie video video directed by Jonathan Zawada.
HLLLYH – ‘Dead Clade’
The Mae Shi, whose last album was 2008’s HLLLYH, have reformed with HLLLYH as their new moniker. They’ll release a new album, URUBURU, on June 2, and its dizzying lead single ‘Dead Clade’ is out now.
Smut – ‘Syd Sweeney’
‘Syd Sweeney’, the blistering lead single from Smut’s upcoming record Tomorrow Comes Crashing, was, indeed, inspired by the actress. “Women in entertainment are exceptionally talented, smart and beautiful, because they have to be,” vocalist Tay Roebuck explained. “Sometimes they want to explore sexuality and vulnerability in their work. Then the pitchforks come out, how dare they be amazing AND sexual? You can only be one or the other! Why is talent and hard work seemingly erased once you’ve seen a woman naked?”
Sorry – ‘Jetplane’
Sorry have dropped a new single, ‘Jetplane’, which weaves in a vocal sample from Guided By Voices’ ‘Hot Freaks’. The eerily infectious track also comes with a video directed by FLASHA Productions, aka Sorry vocalist Asha Lorenz and Flo Webb.
Florry – ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’
From Sorry to Florry (my sincerest apologies) – anyway, the latest from Francie Medosch’s band is called ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’, which is rambunctious and rootsy in all the right ways. About the song and its accompanying video, Medosch shared: “When the weather was nicer, and when I didn’t really have a job yet last Fall, Jon Cox and I would often go into Waterbury, VT to visit a wild thrift store called Bargain Boutique where everything was either 50 cents or $2. One time I found a random VHS in a blank white case and I threw it into my basket. Later on at a dinner party at Trash Mountain, where we live currently, there were a bunch of friends on our couch in the living room so I busted out the VHS TV and the random tape and it turned out to be bull riding. We instantly knew then we had to use it for the Movie video cos the vibe was right.”
“We shot the rest of the video at our very own Johnny Brendas in Philly, forever our favorite place to play anywhere that has venues. It only felt right to have footage of us playing there captured forever in a music video. Kurt Vile is somewhere in there too, I was reteaching him Passenger Side and Beast of Burden in the green room for our encore. We’ve been playing there since our conception as a band, and since then we’ve played it almost 15 times or so. Shout out to JB’s, their staff is amazing, the green room hummus platter is amazing, the tea is amazing, great sound, great crowds, great lights, great everything.”
Deerhoof – ‘Under Rats’ [feat. Saul Williams]
Deerhoof have collaborated with Saul Williams for ‘Under Rats’, a buzzing, ramshackle cut off their forthcoming album Noble and Godlike in Ruin. “Almost as bad as the crimes of the ruling class are the crimes that enable them: tricking everyone into thinking that no one else cares,” the band’s Greg Saunier wrote on Instagram. “There were so many times when we were making our new record when we became almost overwhelmed with doubt: ‘What’s the point of music when genocide is standard fare and the murderers are the most rewarded people in society?’ Saul Williams was and is someone we look to. Who’s doing it like Saul? He’s been there every day with poetry, with grief, with news that oligarch-owned media doesn’t touch for months. Making us all feel less alone. We express ourselves in order to find our chosen family.”
“I met Saul at a tiny music festival in Switzerland,” he continued. “I was performing a duo with Marc Ribot, and Saul was performing with a string quartet. When it was over Saul, Marc and I talked American politics backstage for hours, and I immediately felt I’d become acquainted with someone I would respect for a lifetime. I’ve been grateful ever since.”
Green Day – ‘Smash It Like Belushi’
‘Smash It Like Belushi’ is one of five new songs on the just-announced deluxe reissue of Saviors, which came in early 2024. The others are called ‘Fuck Off’, ‘Ballyhoo’, and ‘Underdog’, and ‘Stay Young’.
Punchlove – ‘Today You Can Learn the Secret’
Today you can hear a new track by Brooklyn shoegazers Punchlove called ‘Today You Can Learn the Secret’. “This release is a surrealist, portal fantasy-inspired encounter with the unconscious mind,” Jillian Olesen explained. “This latest song started with just the title itself (“Today You Can Learn The Secret”), and then Ian wrote all the instrumental parts. When it came time to write the lyrics, I had started leaving an open notebook next to my bed each night as a creative exercise in automatism I’d read about somewhere and basically started waking up to find all kinds of scribbles and chicken scratch all over the pages each morning. It was like scary psychological Christmas each morning. At times there was really raw stuff in there. It kinda freaked me out, but it was also exciting and really started to shift my perspective on my own humanity, as well as the world around me. It felt like I had a new window into understanding how certain things were really affecting me, and to start grasping the nuances of how I had been unknowingly absorbing and filtering my (excessively digital) daily stimuli on an unconscious level, from which I could begin to make real changes. So outlining my own experience and some of the recurring themes of these bizarre dream entries, O is the journey of moving from an outward facing, always-on, digital world in towards the deepest, darkest, realms of ourselves, where we are found face-to-face with our own humanity and mortality in new and unexpected ways.”
Cloud Nothings – ‘That Prince’
Cloud Nothings have unveiled ‘That Prince’, a groovy B-side from their latest LP Final Summer. “‘That Prince’ was written during the throes of the Covid pandemic, and it deals with that time when no one was sure of anything and telling yourself a few little lies was standard practice to get through the day with your sanity intact,” the band shared. “Lyrics like ‘everything you know / will be here in the morning’ and ‘if i could tell a lie / would you not mind’ formed out of the pervasive and frightening feeling that gripped the world for a few years.”
Juan Wauters – ‘If It’s Not Luv’
Juan Wauters has announced a new album, MVD LUV, arriving June 27 on Captured Tracks. To accompany the announcement, the singer-songwriter has shared the playful and joyous ‘If It’s Not Luv’. “This time around you catch me in Montevideo, the city where I was born and grew up,” Wauters remarked. “Though I’m from here, this is the first time I get to record an album here. I have always longed to do this. Let’s get to it, make it through it, MVD LUV a.k.a. Amor Montevideo.”
The Chain – ‘Useless’
Australian hardcore crew the Chain are back with ‘Useless’, a monstrous single that leads their forthcoming LP Blind the World – set for release on May 9 via Triple B.
Mclusky – ‘chekhov’s guns’
“If I had a bad day every time that I’d said I had a bad day/ Then I wouldn’t be the owner of this snooker hall,” begins ‘chekhov’s guns’, the pummeling new single from Mclusky’s forthcoming record the world is still here and so are we.
Smerz – Roll the dice
“It’s a post-something situation song,” Smerz said of ‘Roll the dice’, which may or may not help you contextualize it. It’s alluring, that’s for sure, and it’s got one hell of a piano riff.
Garbage – ‘There’s No Future in Optimism’
“I love the title,” Shirley Manson said of the new Garbage single, which is taken from their forthcoming LP Let All That We Imagine Be the Light. “The band sent it me and I was like, ‘This is great. I’m keeping that.’ But the lyrics are an action against that title. Because if we allow our fatalism or our negativity to really take over, we will crumble. It’s about a city, in my case, Los Angeles, but it could be anywhere where bad stuff is happening. After the George Floyd murder, which is one of few things in my life that I wish I’d never seen: I was changed entirely by seeing the footage of that cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. In Los Angeles there were huge protests and a lot of upheaval after that. Above our house in Hollywood, there were helicopters all day long, for days on end. It was really precarious, chaotic and terrifying.”
Mary Halvorson – ‘Carved From’
In addition to a new Deerhoof song, today we get the announcement of a new album produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof. ‘Carved From’, the colourful lead single from Cloudward, doesn’t sound quite like the Deerhoof track, but it’s just as adventurous.