Saul Williams Experiment

28 New Songs Out Today

So many artists, so little time. Each week we review a handful of new albums (of all genres), round up even more new music that we’d call “indie,” and talk about what metal is coming out. We post music news, show recaps, track premieres, and more all day. That includes a lot of tour announcements, a list of tonight’s NYC shows, and NY shows that just went on sale. We publish a monthly playlist of some of our favorite tracks. Here’s a daily roundup with a bunch of interesting, newly released songs in one place…

SAUL WILLIAMS – “EXPERIMENT”

Spoken word/hip hop artist Saul Williams will release his new album Encrypted & Vulnerable on July 18 via Pirates Blend. It was mixed by Gonjasufi and it features contributions from Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (whose new album features Saul), Dave Sitek, My Brightest Diamond, and more. The album also doubles as the score to Saul’s directorial debut musical, Neptune Frost, which was executive produced by Lin Manuel and based on a graphic novel that Saul will release in 2020. He says the new album “is simultaneously a personal and intimately optimistic takedown on struggle, defiance, awareness, aloneness, and a takedown of heteronormative capitalistic patriarchal authoritarian politics in topics ranging from love, technology, religion, war, to migration.” You can hear the head trip of a lead single and watch its 360° music video now.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND – “THIS LIFE” & “I’M GOIN’ DOWN” (BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN COVER) (SPOTIFY SINGLES)

Vampire Weekend did a Spotify singles session, for which they played a stripped-down, piano-based version of “This Life” from their great new album Father of the Bride, and a new version of the Springsteen cover “I’m Goin’ Down” that’s been in their repertoire for years.

REDD KROSS – “WHAT’S A BOY TO DO?”

Redd Kross have always had a way with turning bubblegum pop into crunchy punk and rock, as you can hear on the band’s latest single from their upcoming Beyond the Door. It’s got a soaring chorus with sweet harmonies but it still packs a punch.

LOW FLYING HAWKS (mem MELVINS, MR. BUNGLE) – ANXIOUS GHOSTS (EP STREAM)

Low Flying Hawks is the collaborative project of Melvins/Redd Kross drummer Dale Crover and Mr. Bungle/Tomahawk bassist Trevor Dunn (who’s also worked with Melvins), and their new EP Anxious Ghosts comes out this week. Across its five songs, they explore dark, quiet folk music as well as atmospheric post-metal, and the whole thing is pretty great. Stream the full EP at Revolver and hear one song below.

THE SOFT CAVALRY – “NEVER BE WITHOUT YOU”

The Soft Cavalry, the duo of Rachel Goswell (Slowdive) and her husband Steven Clarke, have shared another track from their upcoming debut. “Never Be Without You” is breezy, sunshine pop — shades of The Free Design — with gorgeous layers of harmony.

SHAKEY GRAVES – “A WORLD SO FULL OF LOVE” (ROGER MILLER COVER)

Shakey Graves has contributed to website “The Next Waltz” which features unique content from a variety of artists. Shakey (aka Alejandro Rose-Garcia) chose a lesser-known song by one of his heroes, Roger Miller. “It was a glorious day full of unpredictable technical limitations and the reimagining of a dark Roger Miller tune and I had an absolute ball,” he said of the process recording live to 2-inch tape. “Here’s to making it up as you go along, and blazing new trails in friendship through music.”

ROSENAU & SANBORN – “SHARON”

Chris Rosenau of Volcano Choir and Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso (and his own project, Made of Oak) did an improv set together at the 2015 edition of Eaux Claires, which led to the pair creating a joint album. Bluebird is due out July 23 via Psychic Hotline, and they’ve shared the first single, the ambient “Sharon,” which samples and distorts Sharon Van Etten’s voice. “‘Sharon’ showed up at about the halfway point in making this record and it was the first moment I felt like I understood what we were actually making,” Nick told Stereogum. “I had been subtly using my own voice on most of what we had recorded, but it wasn’t until I used someone else’s voice that I started to really understand the width of space a human voice could inhabit in this context; how Sharon’s voice could ground the piece in a certain humanity, how the act of sampling itself can elicit a sense of comfort, knowing, or nostalgia. This idea would end up affecting the entirety of the album, changing the way we worked and the music we made for the better.”

WHY? – “III. PLEASE TAKE ME HOME, I DON’T BELONG HERE.”

WHY? have shared the third movement from their forthcoming visual album, AOKOHIO which includes appearances from Sylvan Esso’a Amelia Meath and Lala Lala’s Lillie West. Yoni Wolf co-produced the album, saying “I wanted a wide variety of sounds. I didn’t want this album to sit in one sonic zone. I’ve always felt like too jagged of a person to be smooth in that way.” The visual accompaniment, meanwhile, stars Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black.

THE DRUMS – “TRY”

The Drums just released very good new album Brutalism but are already back with a new single, the rather downcast “Try.” “This song was originally going to be released back in 2014, but I didn’t feel the version I had was good enough to release,” The Drums’ Jonny Pierce explains. “It was only after we re-recorded it with bending, haunting strings did the song feel good enough to let into the world. It’s a song about loving someone at peak level only to get little to nothing in return.”

SERPENTWITHFEET – “RECEIPTS” (ft. TY DOLLA $IGN)

serpentwithfeet and Ty Dolla $ign are both powerful crooners, but their music tends to be very different — serpentwithfeet favors orchestral indie-R&B while Ty Dolla $ign has a soulful twist on mainstream rap. Here, they’ve met in the middle and made a song that speaks to both of their strengths.

RUSSIAN CIRCLES – “MILANO”

Post-metal greats Russian Circles’ new album Blood Year drops August 2nd via Sargent House, and the band have now shared second single “Milano.” As you’d expect from this band, the new song sounds gigantic, and that crisp engineering from Kurt Ballou is the perfect fit. (The crack of Dave Turncrantz’s snare is the gut-punch that this otherwise atmospheric song needs.)

CLARK – “CANNIBAL HOMECOMING”

Long-running electronic musician Clark will release his new album Kiri Variations on July 26 via his own Throttle Records. The first single is the crackling, swelling “Cannibal Homecoming.”

ALL OUT WAR – “GEHENNA LIGHTS ETERNAL”

NY hardcore/metalcore vets All Out War, who are touring with Eyehategod soon, have shared another song from their upcoming album Crawl Among the Filth, and it’s a serious ass-whooper that proves these guys can still bring it all these years later.

SEER – “CHILDREN OF THE DYING LIGHT”

Vancouver black metal band Seer have shared a new song via the Adult Swim Singles series called “Children of the Dying Light.” It’s ten minutes of genre-defying black metal featuring synths by Wormwitch’s Robin Harris, and it was recorded by Tim Creviston (who produced the new Wormwitch album) and mixed/mastered by Colin Marston (of Gorguts, Krallice, Dysrhythmia, etc).

SLAUGHTER BEACH, DOG – “HEART ATTACK”

Modern Baseball co-frontman Jake Ewald took his solo project, Slaughter Beach, Dog, to a full band affair for upcoming album Safe And Also No Fear, due out August 2 via Lame-O Records. New single “Heart Attack” may be their most instantly appealing yet, just under three minutes of hooky indie rock.

ESSENCE OF DATUM – “PENDULUM”

Minsk instrumental metal duo Eseence of Datum (aka Dmitry Ramanouski on guitar and Pavel Vilchytsk of Relics Of Humanity on drums) have signed to Season of Mist for their third album
Spellcrying Machine
, which comes out on August 30 via their new label home. The first single is “Pendulum,” which offers up a heaping dose of classic-style riffage and fiery solos.

BLEACHED – “REBOUND CITY”

LA duo Bleached are releasing Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough on July 12 via Dead Oceans, and they’ve shared what they say is the final single before the album’s release, the upbeat, anthemic “Rebound City.” The song is “a brief history of the mistakes I’ve made,” the band says, “…except there really are no mistakes, they’re all lessons in the end. No regrets! Listen Loud!”

DEAN HURLEY – “FAR BOUNDARIES”

Music supervisor and longtime David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley is releasing Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond, due out July 12 via Sacred Bones, and following a teaser “documentary” he’s shared the album’s first “single,” the abstract and slightly eerie “Far Boundaries.” “My stuff more often than not operates in the zone between sound design and music,” Dean says. “‘Far Boundaries’ is the only track on this album that actually has a quantifiable meter and resembles a song. Within the arc of the album experience, the track specifically represents the paradigm of time…illustrated through its single arpeggiated phrase, metered to the second-hand tick of a traditional clock. Our own understanding of time is so bizarre that we simply outright suspend the concept that we actually experience everything in the past. Behind the curtain, so to speak, the entire mechanism of the brain is working on a sliding scale of latency (some say from 15-70 milliseconds)…operating in a mode of prediction-based anticipation. Essentially, our whole lives are being lived on a delay…and our brains are calculating this latency into its predictions of reality. When you stop to think about how our minds glide through time and how our memory provides links to the past and envisions the future, it sounds like bonafide time travel. Could we be capable of actually remembering the future, or does the architecture of our brains permanently shackle us to a linear understanding of time? This, to me, is the outer boundary of logic and what perhaps keeps us from truly grasping the larger concepts of what is truly beyond our physical reality.”

KORN – “YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME”

Nu metal giants Korn announced a new album and released the lead single, and you can read more about it here.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD – “ORGAN FARMER”

As you may have heard, for their second album of 2019, Australia’s King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard are going full-on thrash metal. Here’s a third punch in the face from the album.

MAJEURE – “LONGING, LOVE, LOSS”

Majeure, aka AE Paterra of modern prog duo Zombi, will release new solo album Mass Flashback on September 27 via Holodeck. (Pre-order.) Nearly 20 years into his career, Majeure’s mastery of atmosphere, dynamics, soundscapes and emotion remains in top form, as you can hear on the album’s towering opening track.

FIONN REGAN – “COLLAR OF FUR” (ACOUSTIC)

Fionn Regan’s new album Cala comes out in August and the studio version of lead single “Collar of Fur” is coming soon, but first here’s a video of Fionn performing the new song acoustic. You can read more about it here.

HUNDREDTH – “CAUTERIZE”

Atmospheric post-hardcore band Hundredth are in the midst of a series of new singles, and you can read more about the latest, “Cauterize,” here.

CEREMONY – “TURN AWAY THE BAD THING”

Shapeshifting punks Ceremony have signed to Relapse for their next album, which was produced by Will Yip and mixed by Ben Greenberg (of Uniform, ex-The Men). Read more about the album and lead single “Turn Away The Bad Thing” here.

BLARF – CEASE & DESIST (ALBUM STREAM)

BLARF, who may or may not be Eric Andre, has released his debut album on Stones Throw, and we wrote more about it here.

ASHBRINGER – ABSOLUTION (ALBUM STREAM)

Twin Cities black metal ensemble Ashbringer are releasing their third album and first for Prosthetic Records, Absolution, this Friday (6/28), and the whole thing is streaming now. We wrote more about it here.

BRING ME THE HORIZON – “DRONE BOMB ME” (ANOHNI COVER)

We never would’ve thought ANOHNI’s music would be covered by a Hot Topic metalcore-turned-EDM-pop band but here we are.

Looking for even more new songs? Browse the ‘New Songs’ archive.