The Beths, Thrice, Prewn, Sloan, Runner, more

So many artists, so many songs, 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, track premieres, and more all day. We update a playlist weekly of some of our current favorite tracks. Here’s a daily roundup with a bunch of interesting, newly released songs in one place.

THE BETHS – “STRAIGHT LINE WAS A LIE”

The Beths’ new album Straight Line Was a Lie is out this Friday and just ahead of that they’ve shared the excellent title track.

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PREWN – “DIRTY DOG”

Prewn’s new album System arrives in October, and the latest single is the noisy, grungy “Dirty Dog.” “‘Dirty Dog’ is a song that lives in the nightmarish dreamscape of the unconscious,” Izzy Hagerup says. “A place of fear and fearlessness, freudian and a little evil. The song is about a self-serving man who’s abandoned his needy mother and comes crawling back when it’s a little too late.”

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SLOAN – “NO DAMN TEARS”

Sloan’s Andrew Scott, who wrote “No Damn Tears,” describes it as “Musically, we can take 4 cups of late stage Jellyfish Babies mixed with several heaping tablespoons of early ‘80s The Fall and to finish before plating – a little dusting of Simon & Garfunkel, not to mention a title reference to our old HFX band with Dave, Jennifer and Doug: No Damn Fears.” Sloan’s new album, Based on the Best Seller, will be out September 29.

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RUNNNER – “CLARITIN”

Runnner’s new album A Welcome Kind of Weakness is out this Friday on Run for Cover, and he’s given us a final preview with “Claritin.” “It’s kind of about allergies,” he says. “But mostly, I think it’s just asking a question of whether I’d prefer to feel it all if it means feeling bad, or choose to feel nothing at all. It was a very fun one to record. It’s less band-y than the other songs and maybe more similar to older Runnner songs where I throw a bunch of random instruments together and see what works. The slide lead is my car key on a guitar with one string, which was recorded in a much older session with my friend Daniel, who so graciously gave me the stem to fly into this version.”

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THRICE – “ALBATROSS”

After getting heavier than they’d been in years on Horizons/West‘s lead single “Gnash,” they show off their more atmospheric side on new single “Albatross.” We had an exclusive vinyl variant of the album that’s now sold out but you can pick it up on opaque maroon or standard black vinyl in the BV shop.

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JACKIE WEST – “OFFER”

“‘Offer’ is about many things,” Jackie West says of her nearly 10-minute new single. “It’s about propaganda— how it’s difficult to trace a message back to its source; how there’s never been much room to ask why and what do you mean by that? We tend to take things at face value and then wonder why all we see is a mask. Offer is about learning to accept your blindspots and realizing we all have them/ how we see someone is generally how we see ourselves, so we must have compassion for ourselves first— real forgiveness and letting go— to see another clearly. Offer is about being attached to the story, generational trauma, seeing it and loving it enough to say, ‘you’ve been with me, my mother, grandmother and great grandmother for so long,’ now you can go back to them— “I don’t need to live according to your script anymore.”

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JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD FT. BLANC DU BLANC – “CELEBRATION DUB”

Rock duo Jeff the Brotherhood are back with an EP of dub versions of songs from 2018’s proggy Magick Songs done by Blanc De Blanc. It’s out October 31 and you can get a taste with “Celebration.”

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OLIVIA BARTON – “KISSING IN PUBLIC”

Olivia Barton’s new album For Myself and For You is out in October, and the latest single is “Kissing in Public,” which she calls “an old fashioned love song. Except that it’s very gay,” adding, ““I wrote this song immediately after finishing the show Heartstopper. I thought about the beginning days with my partner, and I imagined us in a few decades, looking back on our life right now. I feel unbelievably lucky to get to grow old with someone I met when I was only 20.”

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THE BERRIES – “WHITE PEACH” & “WIND CHIMES”

The Berries, aka singer-songwriter Matthew Berry, releases his self-titled debut on Friday and here are two early tastes of his brand of ’70s-inspired pop.

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ER VISIT – “BURNING BUSH” & “BEES IN THE COUCH”

Stone Filipczak of @ announced his debut album as ER Visit, My Children Will Ignore You, My Children Will Type Amen, due out October 24. Of the first two singles, he says, “‘Burning Bush’ is the oldest song on the album, written on the porch of a Baltimore punk house I lived in around 2015 or so. The flutes at the beginning were recorded separately for a different song which got scrapped. They reminded me of what a burning bush might sound like so I included them as an intro. ‘Bees In The Couch’ is named after an occasion where I slept on an outdoor couch while on tour with Palberta. The couch was on a covered porch – everyone else slept inside on the floor. In the morning our host awoke and said ‘don’t sit on the porch couch, it’s full of bees.’ I didn’t get stung and the image of the couch full of bees remained in my mind.

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