| Essential new music also including Doom Club, cootie catcher, Gladboy, Dream Phone and Rockpool Dramas. | 
Goodbye by Annie Dorrett | Words: Brad Sked, Elvis Thirlwell, Eva Karl, Lloyd Bolton, Hazel Blacher |
| | As we prepare to wrap up for the year, we leave you with one last roundup of our essential new releases. With Christmas approaching, even the relentless music industry slows to a virtual stop, making December a relatively quiet month for new singles. That said, the past few weeks have given us quite a bit to get excited about, with a number of singles prefiguring tantalising 2026 releases coming alongside a new contribution to the anti-Christmas Christmas song canon from Dream Phone. We'll be back next year with weekly Tracks roundups but for now, here are our favourite singles from this December. | | Frequent readers of Hard of Hearing over the last 12 months may well be familiar with the band goodbye. Bringing their resplendent wall-of-noise to all corners of the capital via the ever-robust Southern Rail, the Brighton newcomers have been building an expressly word-of-mouth following with their stunning live show. For those who have been eagerly anticipating recorded material from the five-piece, welcome news is here, and their delightful debut offering 'Meat' serves as a splendid early Christmas gift to us all. Laying forth a joyous bathe of bewitching dreampop intwined with jangled 80s indie and shades of haunting goth-rock, goodbye's ethereal wonder is very much worthy of the wait. Arousing the melancholic ruminations of a lonesome evening trudging through the leaden winter fog, 'Meat' is a spectral stunner and excellent first offering from the newcomers. goodbye will be returning to the capital in the new year to cure those New Year blues at the mid-winter edition of East London Block Party on the 10th of January. The south coast outfit will be also appearing at Bristol's Outer Town Festival on 11th April and Wanderlust Festival in Southampton on the 23rd of May. (Brad Sked) | | Fresh from a celebrated series of UK tour dates (including two sold-out shows at the Windmill), noise quartet Prostitute are lining up to be next great abrasive rock import to grace these shores. Following YHWH Nailgun's breakout this year, and Model/Actriz' before that, Prostitute's raucous, captivating tones fit in that mould, but with a voice that's completely their own. Hailing from Dearborn, Michigan – a town with America's largest Muslim population – and using their art to kick back against Arab hatred and xenophobia, last year's debut album Attempted Martyr has grown into a cult hit, set for its first global release on 13th March via Mute Records. New single 'Mr Dada' marks all of this fanfare, neatly capturing all the band's rage, radicalism, transcendence, and volume. (Elvis Thirlwell) | | Melody's Echo Chamber – 'The House That Doesn't Exist' | | Serving as the final single from 'Unclouded', the fourth album from Melody's Echo Chamber, 'The House That Doesn't Exist' maintains French musician Melody Prochet's strong track-record in psychedelia. In a short timespan, the track forgoes any ambivalence in favour of an outright sunbeam of positivity. While anchored in Prochet's pop sensibilities, the track features the sweeping strings of Josefin Runsteen, reminiscent of 20th century film scores. Prochet reflects on 'The House That Doesn't Exist': "the deeper I love life […] the less I need to escape.". Having compared her joyful process to the reparative Japanese art of Kintsugi, Prochet creates a mood that feels harmonious and fully present. 'Unclouded' is out now via Domino Records. (Eva Karl) | | Doom Club – 'Love Connection' | | Doom Club are everything you want from a new band, a brilliant live energy cohering around excellently conceived tracks that pull from an exciting range of influences. Their sound shifts from song to song, but at its core is a punk form of dance music, built more on attitude and simple but effective elements rather than production tricks. On 'Love Connection', the band's first studio single, a raw drum machine beat and an instantly danceable (and very Warmduscher) bass hook are all the band need to set up an epic introductory statement. There is something of a first novel quality in these six minutes, which delves into all the rabbit holes suggested by the song's key components, complete with a speed-up manually dialled in on the drum machine. The lyrics stretch and squeeze metaphors of connection in overlapping romantic and technological terms, at one point cohering into an unexpected and brilliant blues rant that opens, "How many people think that they know what love is??". Anyone who has seen the band live or dug through their archive of Bandcamp demos will attest that this single is only the tip of the iceberg. For newcomers, it is plenty to get your teeth into. (Lloyd Bolton) | | cootie catcher – 'Straight Drop' | | Imbued with the sort of fledgling abandon that crimsons ones' formative memories with fond cackles and japes across humdrum childhood locations – perhaps lining up snails in that random field that adjoined to the back of your parents' house, or sniggering with your mates in the school hall instead of actually doing PE – cootie catcher's new single 'Straight Drop' is a golden cinnamon confection of rose-tinted innocence. A lively sprint of guitar jangle smattered with fluttering synth bleeps and bloops that might draw parallels to some of the Elephant 6 greats, the new single from the Toronto quartet arrives alongside an announcement of their new album 'Something We All Got', due for release in February via Carpark Records. "This one came from frustration of being vulnerable in the 'wrong' places. I can fully have a cry in front of strangers while taking the bus but then clam up when I'm in front of people I'm close with," explains vocalist/bassist Anita Fowl. "That generally parallels my experience performing live, where I'm so unsure in person but can get so much out on stage.". (Hazel Blacher) | | Gladboy – 'Doin' Art Badly' | | The latest release from a flourishing Leeds DIY scene that's shelled out more than its fair share of wonderful music in 2025, 'Doin' Art Badly', the new single from garage-rock quartet Gladboy, feels like a manifesto to the very grassroots scene that spawned them. From its proud, defiant lyric – "doin art badly // doin' it wrong" – to the charming Modern Lovers-esque jank of its production, the track is a self-confessed ode to 'outsider art' that's equal parts playful and rebellious. The sister band to Bug Teeth (featuring no less than 4 of their 5 members), the band are live regulars in Leeds, and beyond, having supported English Teacher on their UK tour last year. (Elvis Thirlwell) | | Dream Phone – 'shite xmas' | | Oxford glitch-pop duo Dream Phone are back with a Christmas tune to close out the year. In keeping with a key part of the band's ethos, which pushes back against social expectations about how to have fun (on their own rather fun terms), 'shite xmas' addresses the highs and lows of the festive season. There is more balance than the title suggests, but the general mode gets to the heart of some of the problems baked into British Christmas traditions. There are some great one-liners throughout, from the frustrated, "How do you make roast potatoes vegetarian?" to the portrayal of a family dinner where you, "Ignore the look of pity when you ask me how the music's going". The band's signature use of autotune here keeps the song from slipping into an excess of seriousness or self-righteousness, while adding a crackle of unreality that anchors the detachment of the lyrics. (Lloyd Bolton) | | Rockpool Dramas – 'The Fens' | | Currently working on their sophomore EP, Amsterdam-based Rockpool Dramas released their new single 'The Fens' earlier this month, its titled inspired by the marshes that inhere in singer Stanley Ward's home county of Yorkshire. The track begins with a guitar and synth riff that is both punchy and glittering, settling back into a more spacious moment of sparse drums that make room for Ward's distinctive vocal. Ward's voice comes through as driving and steadily playful, its tone lending itself to the band's ultimate goal: a new iteration of "rock'n'roll". Guitarist Lautaro Hochman spoke to the Amsterdam venue Paradiso about their process, saying spontaneity is "kind of [their] philosophy. It's rock 'n' roll. It's going to be okay. It's not rocket science." (Eva Karl) | | | | |
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