10 new albums to listen to in October, including Pixies, Bon Iver, and more

Honey is Canadian electronic musician Dan Snaith’s first album as Caribou in more than four years. In the time since his previous album, Suddenly, was released in 2020, Smith has focused on recording as his more dance-focused music alter-ego, Daphni. Now, he’s switched back to Caribou, though it’s easy to hear the Daphni influence in the three new tracks he’s released so far. The sound is bigger and more universal than any other Caribou record, but it feels like a natural evolution rather than the two projects bleeding into one another.

Don’t be fooled by the exclamation point in the title: Finneas is still in mellow, introspective pop mode on For Cryin’ Out Loud! On his second solo album, Billie Eilish’s brother/creative collaborator gets raw about an unhealthy relationship. The titular lead single also features a brass section, which is a departure from his previous album, 2021’s Optimist. On For Cryin’ Out Loud!, Finneas leans more heavily on collaboration with other musicians, bringing more depth to his sound.

Good news, Radiohead fans: Thom Yorke is back with his side project, The Smile, for their second album in under a year. It sounds… well, mostly like Radiohead, but a little more otherworldly and hypnotic. The trippy music video for the lead single, “Don’t Get Me Started,” is a whole mood, so hopefully that trend continues throughout the rest of Cutouts, too.

I Should Call Them might be Dua Saleh’s first full-length album, but they’ve been steadily building hype since their first EP, Nūr, dropped in 2019. The Sudanese-American poet/musician’s sound is hard to categorize, mixing elements of R&B, electronic, rap, and pop. On “want,” it all coalesces into a song that sounds exactly as intoxicating as the situationship it describes.

GloRilla originally shot to fame when her song “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” went viral on TikTok in 2022, and she’s only capitalized on that success since then. “TGIF,” the lead single from her upcoming debut full-length, Glorious, blends ’90s-style R&B with modern trap, making for a nostalgic yet unique sound. Even Rihanna can’t wait to hear the rest of the album.

With Cunningham Bird, Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham are going beyond the mere cover song: they’re covering an entire album. The album in question is Stevie Nicks’ pre-Fleetwood Mac collaboration with Lindsey Buckingham, Buckingham Nicks. “Bold” is perhaps the kindest way to describe such an ambitious project—but hey, if they can pull it off, it might really be something special.

After nearly five years, Justin Vernon is officially back, once again forcing us to begrudgingly accept that the pretension inherent to his work is kind of warranted. Yeah, that comma really is officially part of SABLE,’s title, and yeah, the lead single, “S P E Y S I D E,” really is spelled that way, and it’s all deeply annoying, and yet we can’t stop listening to it. There are just three songs on Bon Iver’s upcoming EP, which makes all the quirks seem even more egregious, but let’s be honest: when SABLE, drops, we’re going to lap it up and beg for seconds.

Halsey is in their Y2K Britney era. “Lucky,” the lead single off their upcoming fifth album, The Great Impersonator, borrows the melody from Britney Spears’ 2000 hit of the same name, and the music video is heavily inspired by Spears. Whether or not Britney is happy about this is up for debate, but it’s a clever way of approaching an album that addresses shifting perceptions and the realities of fame.

Even though it has a title straight out of a horror movie, Black Francis claims that Pixies’ upcoming album, The Night The Zombies Came, isn’t a theme record. It does have several songs that mention zombies, though. Whatever’s going on, this will be the band’s first album with new bassist Emma Richardson, formerly of Band Of Skulls. The Night The Zombies Came is Pixies’ tenth album overall.

Sophie Allison, a.k.a. Soccer Mommy, grapples with a deeply personal loss on her upcoming fourth album, Evergreen. Sonically, the album marks a return to her earlier sound, focusing more on guitars and drums than synthesizers. The songs are stripped down to their core elements, meant to evoke the feeling of demos. There is a rawness here that her previous album, Sometimes, Forever, lacked, and it comes through in the grief-stricken lyrics and melancholy chords.