Our roundup of essential new releases, also featuring big long sun, Slowhandclap, Another Country $$$$, Eppie and Committee of Sleep.

Lime Garden – ‘Maybe Not Tonight’

Brighton four-piece Lime Garden are sexy procrastination personified on their latest track ‘Maybe Not Tonight’. A smudged chalk drawing of a London night out, Chloe Howard (vocals) confesses to blurry, half-formed intentions as her inner villainess idles at the curb, cigarette in hand. “I wanna kiss a stranger and make them feel like they’re the one”, she sings, half-in love with the moment, half pretending not to care. The track bottles up the thrill of uncertainty and shakes it until bursting point, its beat building into a glitchy carnival ride gone off the rails. Howard’s wants and needs whir past you like late-night traffic as she’s torn between the desire to feel wanted and the desire to feel nothing at all. “It’s the soundtrack to a woman on the edge of making all the wrong choices”, the group explain, “It feels like getting punched in the face with the morning after a night out”. The new single and equally manic music video arrive just before the band’s stint with Everything Everything later this month and precedes five newly announced headline shows scheduled for March next year. Tickets are on sale Friday November 14^th. (Heather Collier)

DEADLETTER – ‘To The Brim’

DEADLETTER twist tension into rhythm on their latest single, ‘To the Brim’. The track opens with a delusive calm, where mellow saxophone lines and gentle guitar strums paint a fragile stillness before it cracks open into dissonance. Urgent drums drive the song into a feverish industrial pulse, where distortion becomes language. The saxophone slips into darkness as Zac Lawrence’s vocals cut through the haze, teetering between a declaration and a dare: ‘Who’s got something that they want to say / Who’s got something to declare?’ ‘To the Brim’ moves between groove and grit, where basslines rumble like machinery and scratching guitars claw at the mix. Drone textures and feedback edges give the track a visceral immediacy. The single arrives alongside the announcement of DEADLETTER’s second album, ‘Existence is Bliss’, out February 27th via So Recordings. The south London–via–Yorkshire six-piece sharpen their post-punk sound into rhythmic chaos. Rough strings, gritty saxophone textures, and sharp-edged lyrics delivered with restrained energy collide in a frenzied wave of experimental rock. (Isabel Kilevold)

Hot Face – ‘Pink Liquor’

For nearly 50 years, the intensity, speed and ferocity of punk has remained one of the defining sounds of rebellion and outcry. With blistering tempos, buzzsaw guitars and howled vocals, few genres illuminate the feral urge lying dormant than punk. On ‘Pink Liquor’, London’s Hot Face return with the production majesty of Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey to produce a track of nosebleed, psych-speckled punk. Distorted guitars and clipping hi-hats blur across the openings of ‘Pink Liquor’ as bass thrums struggle mightily to keep up with the scratchy chaos unfolding. Chanted vocals trip over one another as the track threatens to run away from itself, unlatching from any rooted base it may have ever had. Matching the attitude of 70s British punk with the speed of DC hardcore, on ‘Pink Liquor’, Hot Face exemplify the enduring catharsis of punk long into the mid 2020s with violence, fury and savagery. (A. L. Noonan)

big long sun – ‘my stars aligning’

The Brighton psychedelic octet big long sun are back with ‘My Stars Align’ via London label and distributor, State 51, just a few short months after the release of their album ‘whatever (whatever)’. Here the prolific psych-poppers abandon their more avant-garde, wonky-pop sensibilities, opting instead for a genre-bending careen towards a Flaming Lips meets MGMT sound, where its final form feels akin to being gunged head to toe in some sort of delicious psychedelic ooze. The joyous, sprightly psych banger is also wonderfully quilted in a surf-tinged bassline for those salty days lost by beach pier arcades, where pennies are unmercifully devoured by the 2p machines. Really great stuff again from the outfit. (Brad Sked)

Slowhandclap – ‘Horses In Transit’

Across politically outspoken music of late, a shared, stunted malaise is becoming more noticeable. Spiralling costs of living, a financialised housing market and a slow cancellation of the future is presenting itself openly in music searching for alternatives to cynicism. On their latest single ‘Horses In Transit’, Manchester’s Slowhandclap embody this malaise, expressing the stagnation and hopelessness that is seemingly ubiquitous in modern Britain. Between off-kilter, post-punk guitar strikes and driving bass and drums, ‘Horses In Transit’ jerks and lurches between noisy grooves and murky swells of angst and desperation. Shifting and mutating, ‘Horses In Transit’ builds into an erratic swarm of skipping guitars and drumlines as vocalist Sam Bullock moans: ‘I jump the fence and run around, I jump the fence and burn it down.’ A declarative tableau of late capitalist Britain, on ‘Horses In Transit’, Slowhandclap are unyielding in their depiction of struggling against the nihilism of the day. (A. L. Noonan)

Another Country $$$$ – ‘CURSED FRAME’

Palpating with the sort of transcendental bliss that strikes you at 4am on the dancefloor, when the composite of factors that led to that very spot all come together and euphoria strikes your heart and limbs in perfect synchronicity, ‘CURSED FRAME’ is the latest propulsive offering from Another Country $$$$. Emerging from the same underground Manchester scene that spawned the likes of SILVERWINGKILLER and Ship Sket, the duo have been stirring up intrigue with their high-energy, shapeshifting hopecore beats – with a recent packed out Café Oto show at Pitchfork Festival a testament to their ascent – and latest single ‘CURSED FRAME’ draws on elements of hyperpop and drum and bass in an empyrean constellation of uplifting dance elation. ‘CURSED FRAME’ serves as the titular track from their upcoming EP of the same name, due for release in January via UK tastemaker label Spinny Nights. (Hazel Blacher)

Eppie – ‘Listening To Charm’

A bouquet of sun-blushed ambrosial wonderment, Eppie’s ‘Listening To Charm’ is a sublime, halcyon escape from the everyday doom and gloom. The trio are the latest thrilling prospect to emerge from the prospering Dublin music scene, and their new single basks jangly, feather-light bedroom indie-pop in a buttery, dulcet summer warmth that oozes with charm and prettiness. ‘Listening To Charm’ is said to be lyrically inspired by lead singer Palomi Macdonald’s younger sister – a figure that the band were supposedly named after – and it serves as the second single from their upcoming EP ‘Songs of Sunshine’. (Hazel Blacher)

Committee of Sleep – ‘The Planet of Chocolate Bars’

Northern DIY four-piece Committee of Sleep’s third release could have been absolutely anything. Debut cut ‘Mind the Gap’ was a charming, minimalist indie pop effort, whilst follow up ‘Steel Chairs’ seemed to signal a move toward a much more experimental and industrial style. Now they’ve given us ‘The Planet of Chocolate Bars,’ a spacious and reverb-besotted lo-fi pop song that would find a natural home on an early Cleaners from Venus record. It showcases another side of the band but in a way feels like a middle ground between their two previous releases: the effortlessly infectious melody that carries the song through recalls their first release whilst the hazier composition has a creative curiosity more akin to their second. It’s an impressive place for the band’s sound to have landed and they’re certainly one to keep an eye on. (Marty Hill)