ALT REBIRTH: NEW MUSIC FRIDAY, OCT 17, 2025
Autumn hits different when guitars start buzzing again. This week’s drop list reads like a mixtape built by someone who still alphabetizes their CDs but streams their feelings. Legacy acts resurface with remasters and reckonings, while the new guard keeps post-punk’s pulse alive through distortion, irony, and just enough melody to hurt.
From Animal Collective’s technicolor nostalgia to Militarie Gun’s hardcore hooks, from Tame Impala’s blissed-out melancholy to Bar Italia’s under-lit art rock, the alt world feels both haunted and newly awake. Even The Mountain Goats have returned to remind everyone that endurance can still sound beautiful.
Call it a season of revival rather than return. The veterans are re-tuning their ghosts, the newcomers are cutting through the static. Either way, it’s a good week to turn the dial to X96 and remember why guitars never really left.
Feels Again: Animal Collective and the Eternal 2005
Animal Collective’s Feels turns twenty, and somehow it still sounds like a transmission from a slightly sunnier dimension. The anniversary reissue pairs with FEELSLive 04/05, a collection of shows that capture the band mid-transcendence, loops half-feral, harmonies half-human. It’s archival gold and ideal fodder for a weekend “2005 Memory Lane” feature. Think blog snippets about flip phones, skinny scarves, and the first time you heard “Grass” through laptop speakers.
For the curious: “Banshee Beat,” “The Purple Bottle,” and the live cut of “Turn Into Something.”
Purchase on vinyl:
Bar Italia: The Art-Rock Mirage
London trio Bar Italia returns with Some Like It Hot, a cool-headed, cryptic album that sounds like The Velvet Underground caught in a warehouse rave. Their blend of deadpan vocals and jagged guitars has found an unlikely second home on U.S. college radio, where they slot neatly between Dry Cleaning and early Interpol. It’s music for night drives and detached smirks, and the Matador Records link will have fans preordering before the second verse lands.
Spin first: “rooster,” “Fundraiser,” “Cowbella.”
Militarie Gun: Riffs With Reach
Los Angeles punks Militarie Gun pack hooks like heat on God Save the Gun. This is hardcore with hummable choruses, the kind of crossover energy that begs to lead the new-music block. Frontman Ian Shelton still sneers, but he does it with melody now, think Fugazi raised on Foo Fighters. If you like songs that make your coffee taste louder, this is the add.
Essential tracks: “BADIDEA,” “Throw Me Away,” “God Owes Me Money.”
Tame Impala: The Psych Returns With Deadbeat
Kevin Parker resurfaces after a quiet spell with Deadbeat, a record that tilts his psychedelic pop toward something looser, stranger, and faintly post-disco. The guitars shimmer like underwater glass while the drums move with the confidence of a man who has lived inside a metronome for fifteen years. Call it left-of-center pop for listeners who never stopped believing Currents was prophecy.
Play immediately: “Dracula,” “Loser,” “End of Summer.”
They Are Gutting a Body of Water: Lotto and the Noise Lottery
Philadelphia’s most bafflingly named shoegazers land on ATO Records with Lotto, a record that feels like it’s both dissolving and detonating. Noise, melody, and feedback wrestle for dominance, and nobody wins, which is the point. It’s a perfect after-midnight listen for the station’s late alt block, the kind of album that makes you stare at static and feel seen.
Best bets: “the chase,” “trainers,” “american food.”
The Mountain Goats: A Remaster Worth Revisiting
John Darnielle’s The Sunset Tree gets a 20th-anniversary polish, and its flagship song “This Year” still carries enough reckless hope to power a small town. The remaster highlights every creak of Darnielle’s acoustic and the emotional grain in his voice. Perfect for a Sunday feature on survival, or a drive-time post about songs that got us through our worst years.
Cue up: “This Year,” “Dance Music,” “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod.”
Katie Schecter: Empress Rules With Grace and Grit
Nashville’s Katie Schecter bares her fangs and her heart on Empress, out today. The record’s lead single, “Hide My Weapons,” co-written with her husband Nick Bockrath of Cage the Elephant, channels the friction of creative partnership into a taut, electrified pop-rock confession.
Courtesy of the artist
The story behind it is pure songwriting myth: a fight turned into melody, love turned into voltage. Recorded live to tape at New York’s Diamond Mine Studio while Schecter was pregnant, Empress radiates the fearless “divine feminine” energy she describes as transcendent. With players like Nick Movshon, Homer Steinweiss, and Leon Michels, the album fuses rock, pop, and soul into something cinematic yet intimate.
Schecter performs a hometown release show tonight at Nashville’s Soft Junk, joined by Zac Cockrell of Alabama Shakes. If you like your alt raw but radiant, “Hide My Weapons” is the track to cue first.
Try: “Hide My Weapons,” “Run River Run,” “Pay It No Mind.”
Rachel Bobbitt: Swimming Towards the Sand and the Art of Quiet Devastation
Toronto’s Rachel Bobbitt releases her debut full-length Swimming Towards the Sand, a record steeped in atmosphere and ache. Her final pre-album single, “Hush,” began as a skeletal demo of layered vocals over drum machine and keys—a ghost choir that grew into a confession.
Courtesy of the label
Where earlier tracks leaned on folk-rock textures, “Hush” floats in dream-pop waters, soft but heavy with the weight of what’s unsaid. It’s a perfect soundtrack for introspection, heartbreak, and quiet rebellion.
Try: “Hush,” “More,” “Two Bit.”
The Ones to Watch
Elias Rønnenfelt’s Speak Daggers drops like a fever dream between Iceage and Lou Reed’s diary. Skullcrusher’s And Your Song Is Like a Circle spins fragile beauty into quiet orbit. Soulwax returns with All Systems Are Lying, their most human-sounding robot record yet. Jane Inc. stretches pop into performance art on A Rupture a Canyon a Birth. And drummer-producer Tom Skinner’s Kaleidoscopic Visions (digital out today) delivers exactly that, rhythmic color exploding in all directions.
Weekend Spin Summary
From Animal Collective’s nostalgic pulse to Bar Italia’s angular cool, this week bridges memory and momentum. It’s a reminder that alternative never stands still, it just keeps reincarnating under new lighting.
