Monthly Music Recap: October ‘25
As cobwebs come down and niche accessories from Halloween costumes disappear only to be found when spring cleaning, other scary phenomena take form with October’s end: the end-of-year new music drought. Of course, there is still bound to be stellar new releases in the final months of the year, but many artists choose to drop projects in January to avoid getting lost amidst a Mariah Carey and sleigh bell-filled market.
That being said, October saw one last spurt of overflowing New Music Friday playlists to prime the coming months. Keep reading to discover some last minute contenders for your personal indie tracks and albums of the year.
Dodie fires musical musings into the atmosphere in sophomore album
For an artist who built an adoring following of millions starting on YouTube in the early 2010s, it’s hard to believe dodie’s second studio album came out just this month. Fans have watched the British singer-songwriter evolve from her days as queen of the YouTube ukulele cover golden age, to releasing acoustic originals and dropping her first studio album, Build A Problem, in 2021. Now, dodie’s sophomore album, Not For Lack Of Trying, is a testament to the 30-year-old artist’s gentle wit, mixing her recognizable Essex-accented soprano with sophisticated production and explorative soundscapes.
Taking aspects from this summer’s singles — the refined grandiosity of “I’M FINE!” and playful lyrics of the Bossa nova “I Feel Bad For You, Dave” — “Hold Fire” is an exemplary piece of art from the album. Dodie’s silky voice is only ever accompanied by a grooving bass line, soft rim clicks, toms and swelling backing vocals, creating a subtle intensity throughout the song and reflecting the internalized struggle dodie sings of. “Did I f*ck this, break the boundary again? / Really the only one who thinks it's pretend / I wanna talk about it / But no one wants to talk about it,” she croons in the first verse, expressing her frustration with social norms she can’t quite figure out. Tying the track together are the whispery ad libs in the outro that bounce around the song’s sonic atmosphere, as if being shot out of a canon at random intervals — dodie refusing to “hold fire.”
Rocket makes bold choices that pay off in debut album
Rocket are exactly who they think they are. If I opened for The Smashing Pumpkins with only eight released songs, I too would claim a letter of the alphabet as my own. In their debut album, R is for Rocket, the Los Angeles-based indie rock quartet channel the ‘90s alternative revival sound while bringing new noise — both sonically and lyrically — to the table.
The record’s opening track, “The Choice,” careens through distinct sonic landscapes and has the production of a band ten years their senior. In the three-minute track, Rocket shows their hand, building a dreamy yet raunchy shoegaze world without laying all their cards on the table right away. Throughout the following nine tracks, the four-piece covers issues like generational trauma, fleeting time and romantic, platonic and familial relationships. Whether it’s on tracks like “Pretending” and “Crossing Fingers” that lean into the dissonant, wall-of-sound grunge of ‘90s punk, or ones like “Number One Fan” that showcase the band’s more delicate flair, Rocket has made a declarative entrance into the current rock scene.
R is for Rocket sets the bar high for a group of 20-somethings with stories to tell and melodies to blast.
Eliza McLamb finds freedom in sophomore record
From Substack celeb, to former podcastress to pop-rock up-and-comer, Eliza McLamb does it all. The 24-year-old singer-songwriter’s acute way with words is showcased most prolifically in her music, which she’s been releasing since her original songs gained traction on TikTok in 2020. Following her debut album Going Through It, McLamb’s sophomore record, Good Story, tactfully reflects on finding yourself in your 20s while delivering some of the catchiest guitar-based indie pop melodies of the year.
Good Story’s coming-of-age bliss culminates in the closing track, “Getting Free.” As the liberating title suggests, “Getting Free” is an anthemic ode to self-discovery from an artist who has truly been there and done that. “Well I never got my degree / Somewhere out there, another me / She’s filing papers or in a car on the other side of the street / Spilling drinks at the waitress job,” she muses in the second verse, for example. McLamb has always been honest her fraught relationship with stereotypical success (see 2024 single “God Take Me Out of LA,” for instance), and as the album’s closer, “Getting Free” reframes that stuck feeling and puts it in the rearview: “When it’s just me and the world I make a place I can find escape from / Running down the street, away from what I thought I wanted / Getting free.” Top the track off with some bright guitars, driving drums and a dense atmosphere, and “Getting Free” is perfect to soundtrack the end of a coming-of-age movie.
bar italia are on the prowl for sonic nostalgia in “Lioness”
In 2023, bar italia’s vocalist and guitarist Jezmi Fehmi told The Guardian, “I’d rather be boring than mysterious.” Until the British indie rock trio’s career-defining album Tracey Denim made waves that year, the band had developed an aloof and ambiguous reputation with their spacey music and aversion to the spotlight. Now, bar italia is compensating for their anonymity with Some Like It Hot, a 12-track record that builds upon raucous nostalgic influences with impossible-to-ignore fervor.
A standout track on the album is “Lioness,” a song that evokes the angsty ambience of icons like Elliott Smith and Hole. Sonically, hollow, muted guitar lines get layered with straight-forward strumming, giving the track a shoegaze feel. Like the instrumentation, the vocals in “Lioness” feel like a conversation, with each band member taking the lead over different verses. Fehmi and Sam Fenton’s sullen baritones evoke the inflection of The Cure’s Robert Smith, while Nina Cristante’s tastefully nasally soprano almost has a Kate Bush je ne sais quoi as they sing of a lover being at their wit’s end in a relationship.
Other tracks on Some Like It Hot, like “Eyepatch” and single “rooster,” carry a post-punk air that meshes delightfully with the album’s hazier moments like on “the lady vanishes” and “Plastered.”
Staff Picks:
Jackie Fortis - “Good ‘Ol Days” by Hayley Williams
Madison Avery - “Telephone Busy” by 5 Seconds of Summer
Maddy Yen - “Saddle Again” by ROLE MODEL
Tabita Bernardus - “Lucky Girl” by Nieve Ella
Logan Goettemoeller - “Copycats” by Danny Brown and underscores
Seay Howell - “Everything” by Monobloc
Check out some of our October coverage!
Live Shows:
“Once the waves of Brown’s methodical vocals hit, there wasn’t a stationary person in the house. The crowd fell in line almost instantly with the tempo and bridge of the song.” - Regan Jones on Water From Your Eyes in Detroit
“Out of the darkness appears Geese, fronted by Cameron Winter, someone the audience will come to know as a man of few remarks. No words wasted, his only opening turn of phrase, ‘Oh, shit.’” - Reegan Johnson on Geese in Chicago
“As the lights dimmed and the final notes faded, one thing was clear—Wet Leg didn’t just wrap up a tour. They threw a victory party three years in the making, and Los Angeles got the loudest, wildest celebration of them all.” - Makenna Cordiano on Wet Leg in Los Angeles
New Music Reviews:
“The result is lush, anti-imperialist, anti-feudal weirdeval jams fit for frolicking through the kingdom, late-night introspection under the stars, and witty verbal jousting.” - Seay Howell on Small Fools’s Voices in the Atmosphere
“Evenson’s brilliance lies in the unexpected sonic twists and turns, but she remains in the driver's seat, evoking the exact emotional response she wants to convey.” - Tabita Bernardus on Ally Evenson’s “Phetamines”
“From The Pyre is not just a follow-up; it’s an evolution. If their debut announced them as a band to watch, this record solidifies them as a band to be reckoned with—unapologetically grand, richly layered, and brimming with both artifice and real emotion. It’s a reminder that rock can still be daring, theatrical, and gloriously alive.” - Arna Churiwala on The Last Dinner Party’s From The Pyre
Interviews:
“The news was just very intense at the time we were writing the songs as well, so I think it was hard not to want to release some of that stuff that's brewing inside you in a very direct way. But at the same time, you want to be able to just elevate people in ways that aren't so literal. I think that blend was important.” - Oracle Sisters’s Chris Willatt on Divinations in an interview with Brooke Shapiro
“I think the best songs come from being uncomfortable, experiencing new things, and when you’re willing to say the thing you’d usually keep to yourself. Writing this album was very cathartic for me. I had to be super honest, not just about other people, but about my own role in certain situations.” - Elijah Woods on Can We Talk? in an interview with Alex Stefan
Music Extras:
“Your Next Listen, Based on Your Favorite Movies” by Cassidy LaPointe
“Press Play on the Essential Fall Soundtrack” by Maddy Yen