Gold Soundz: February 28, 2025

This week's suggested new music, curated by omg!nyc

Feb 28, 2025

February ends with a band and delivers one of the best new music Fridays of the year so far. After returning in 2021 with their comeback record Spiral, electro-psych band DARKSIDE are back once again and now they’re officially a trio. Adding a drummer into the mix of Nicolas Jaar’s spaced-out electronics along with Dave Harrington’s liquid jazz guitar motifs makes for more cosmic odysseys that will surely lead you down twisted paths of proggy funk.

Animal Collective’s most prolific member Panda Bear drops his first solo album since 2019 today and the early singles have hinted at Noah Lennox returning to his jovial, psych-pop roots with hints of Tropicália, Bossa Nova, and other coastal, groovy sounds marrying his love of samples and textured sonics.

Last year, Mdou Moctar dropped their great album Funeral for Justice, an explosive psych-rock album full of mesmerizing guitar licks ready to melt your face. Now, the band has reconstructed those tunes as acoustic renditions, giving them all much more intimate vibes while still retaining their elegant power and force.

Raggedy New York punks The Men have been a staple in the local scene for over a decade with their bruising tunes of blown-out fuzz and urgent rhythms. Always hitting us at a rapid clip, they’re back again with another record of crusty rock tunes full of ragged glory.

Typically, new music from Unknown Mortal Orchestra means some psych-pop party music tunes, but this time the band has returned with a follow-up to 2018’s instrumental record AC-01 Hanoi. The first taste gave us something of an electric-era Miles Davis vibe with some krautrock thrown in as well giving us a heady treat for a blissed-out state of mind.

Kelly Reichardt’s film Old Joy was originally released in 2006, but for the first time ever the soundtrack by Yo La Tengo has been released on vinyl and hit streaming services. Recorded in a single afternoon, the six instrumental tracks were improvised on the spot as an ode to the friendship between the band and the film director.

For many, Deafheaven’s 2022 record Infinite Granite was a let down as the black metal titans ditched their supreme roar for more ambient textures. I still thought it was great, even if it was far from their best work. Their new album seems to take notes from their last record and brings back their devilish howls for something extreme yet sublime.

Sometimes a band arrives with a sound that’s already uniquely their own and a song will define them from the moment you hear it. That seems to be the case with Model/Actriz who just announced their sophomore full-length and shared the bold, brooding, industrial-Ball track “Cinderella” which is full of noisy hooks and strutting rhythms.

“Octopus Jam” is the debut single from electronic duo Crystal Sting and it’s a sparkling tune that recalls the ambient textures of Four Tet, Brian Eno, and Fennesz for something they call the platonic soundtrack of cephalopod funk. It’s a playful and creative track, like an underwater adventure through a prism of sounds that tickles the mind, so it’s fitting that it finds its home on an album called Bubblegum Aquarium.

‘90s inspired rockers Momma have been hitting us with some solid rock tunes for quite some time and their latest single, “Bottle Blonde,” is another great jam with their heavily distorted guitars doing a lot of the lifting while cruising melodies also find their way into the mix making for yet another alt-pop gem.

After facing two lawsuits and then abruptly “quitting” music, the eventual and expected return of Lizzo has arrived via her new single “Love in Real Life.” It’s not exactly the pop-banger you’d have hoped for her given the high stakes comeback at hand, but instead it’s goes for more of a rock vibe with a Strokes-motif circa “Under Cover of Darkness” or “Someday.”

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Songs:

If you’re a Spotify user, you can listen to these songs (and more from 2025) here!

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