Hi there, every week we bring you the best of the week’s new releases. Recommendations from us just for you that also feature on our longer Essential New Music Playlist (see Spotify link) 5 hours of new tunes! It’s an essential curated roundup of what we think are the best new releases worth your time, as always focussing on emerging and forward-moving artists.

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Lime Garden “Moving Target”

Lime Garden make romantic uncertainty sound deceptively sunny on “Moving Target”. The Brighton quartet balance jangling guitars and bittersweet hooks around the uncomfortable realisation that sometimes you know a relationship is doomed before you’ve even properly started it.

Frieda Star “Micky The Drink”

Micky The Drink” finds FRIEDA STAR continuing to carve out their own strange corner of indie rock. The Black Country five-piece pair Garran Hickman’s offbeat lyricism with wiry guitars and restless rhythms, making for something suitably leftfield without sacrificing a properly memorable chorus.

Bleech 9:3 — Tourniquet

There’s plenty of forward momentum behind Bleech 9:3, and “Tourniquet” sounds built for exactly that. Produced by Dan Carey and mixed by Rich Costey, the Dublin quartet deliver another dose of muscular alternative rock ahead of debut album BLEED.

mary in the junkyard — Jane

mary in the junkyard have never sounded particularly interested in doing things conventionally. “Jane” tackles menstruation with the same candid, slightly surreal energy that defines the London trio, wrapping Clari Freeman-Taylor’s personal subject matter in their wonderfully unruly brand of art-rock.

PVA — Flood (Dream Edition)

PVA’s “Flood” gets a complete rethink on its Dream Edition. Rather than simply remixing the original, the trio expand its world with live instrumentation including cello and harp, transforming one of their electronic cuts into something softer, stranger and considerably more atmospheric.

Mogwai, Iggy Pop — Underground

Iggy Pop narrating the existential misery of a money-making robot over Mogwai’s slow-burning instrumentation? Obviously. “Underground” is an unusually playful collaboration between two very different musical forces, pairing Pop’s unmistakable delivery with Mogwai’s knack for making melancholy sound enormous.

Puppy Teeth — Ghost

Puppy Teeth’s “Ghost” sits somewhere between shoegaze haze and grunge weight, with the Edinburgh five-piece drawing on a distinctly 1990s alternative palette. Dreamy vocals and woozy guitars keep the track suspended somewhere between nostalgia and something considerably more unsettling.

Placebo — HELEN KELLER

Placebo resurrect an idea from their earliest recordings for “HELEN KELLER”, reworking the melody of the previously unreleased “H.K. Farewell” from 1996. What began as an archival fragment becomes something considerably darker, heavier and more fully realised in its new form.

Long Distance Runner — New Song

London instrumentalists Long Distance Runner prove they don’t need ten minutes to create a cinematic world. “New Song” packs jangling guitars, post-rock grandeur and Midwest emo melancholy into less than three minutes, with Tom Kellett helping give the whole thing an appropriately widescreen finish.

Max Cooper, Rival Consoles — AO – Mixed

Two of electronic music’s most meticulous sound designers meet on “AO”. Max Cooper and Rival Consoles bring their respective fascination with texture, repetition and atmosphere together, resulting in a collaboration that feels less like a meeting of styles and more like two parallel worlds briefly occupying the same space.