Leaves down, volume up: 12 new releases for your Aussie autumn playlist
image via @sonicreducer.band/instagram
Words by Frankie Anderson-Byrne
Rugged up and tuned in.
Somewhere between the clocks going back and the first real excuse to stay inside, Australian music decided to have a very good season. From major comebacks and debut singles, to albums that’ve been years in the making, there’s more worth listening to right now than any one person should reasonably have to sort through. So I did.
I’ve done the digging, stacked the playlist, and here’s a bunch of wonderful new releases worth your time right now.
Discover more artists and music we love at FJ’s Music section.
Courtney Barnett
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Creature of Habit is Courtney Barnett’s first album in nearly five years and her fourth overall, and it really sounds like someone who’s done the work. Barnett moved from Melbourne to LA, shut down Milk! Records after more than a decade, and took a long, uncomfortable look at herself in the process.
What came out the other side is an expansive, sun-drenched record with more joy in it than anything she’s made before. There’s a collaboration with Waxahatchee on ‘Site Unseen’, and Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers playing bass on ‘One Thing At A Time’, which builds into a five-minute guitar solo that earns every second. Still unmistakably her, just lighter.
Cry Club
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Cry Club’s third album is their first made entirely on their own terms: self-recorded, self-produced, self-engineered. High Voltage Anxiety moves between tenderness and fury with the kind of conviction that comes from two people who’ve spent 18 months touring Europe, supporting The Darkness, and quietly becoming one of Australia’s most vital acts. Heather Riley and Jonathon Tooke are calling it industrial pop, which is accurate, but undersells how cathartically danceable it is.
Matt Corby
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Matt Corby plays most of the instruments on Tragic Magic himself, which tells you everything about where he’s at creatively. Out on April 17, the 13-track record sits in a lineage of psychedelic soul and blues-tinged folk, but fatherhood has quietly rewired the whole thing. There’s a warmth and groundedness here that I low-key always expect from Corby’s sound, but there’s the whisper of a new era for him here. ‘War to Love’, the fifth single from the record, is described by Corby as being about choosing love even when it costs you something. Ooft.
The Temper Trap
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‘Sweet Disposition’ just cracked one billion streams. I’m here for it, this has been a longtime fave and now The Temper Trap are back with Sungazer, their first studio album in a decade. Out July 10, Sungazer veers from yearning intimacy to full-throttle catharsis, from guitar-driven indie to heavy electronica, all anchored in Mandagi’s instantly recognisable voice.
Title track ‘Sungazer’ is a letter from Mandagi to his son Ziggy (stop itttt so cute), a promise to stand beside him throughout his life, building through moody trip-hop introspection before erupting into exactly the kind of outro that made this band matter in the first place. The band will support Muse across a North America tour this July and August.
Ecca Vandal
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Ecca Vandal’s second album Looking for People to Unfollow arrives May 22, and based on the newly-dropped single ‘SORRY! CRASH’ it’s shaping up to be one of the most uncompromising Australian records of the year. Makes sense for Ecca, honestly. Made completely DIY and entirely offline (which explains the title), it’s her answer to a simple but radical idea: if you can’t see yourself represented, become your own reference.
The album sits at the intersection of alternative and skateboarding culture, genre-agnostic and community-led, drawing a line from the Riot Grrrl movement through to the millennial nostalgia that gen Z keep gravitating toward. ‘SORRY! CRASH’ is the sound of someone hitting a wall and deciding to stop pretending otherwise.
Sidney Phillips
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Sidney Phillips is one of Australian rap’s most genuinely original voices, and 2026 is shaping up as her year to break through properly. The Brisbane rapper fuses pluggnb production with lyrical references so specifically and irreducibly Australian (eshay fashion, Mother energy drinks, catching the train) that it loops back around to being universally relatable.
Her recent singles, ‘Fire Walk With Me’ and ‘Certified Lazy’ continue that thread: colloquial, candid and delivered in an accent that never pretends to be from anywhere else. Underground in the best sense.
Dugong Jr
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‘Keepsake’, the latest single from Melbourne producer and multi-instrumentalist Dugong Jr, features Perth vocalist Georgi Kay and was written during a turbulent personal stretch. It’s built around a hypnotic arpeggiator and the warmth of an upright piano, music as a way of making sense of something that doesn’t quite fit. The accompanying video draws from Twin Peaks, Stranger Things and Akira, which tells you a lot about the aesthetic world Dugong Jr is building.
The Lazy Eyes
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Four years between releases and The Lazy Eyes come back (yay!) with a single about lingering and letting go. ‘The One Who Got Away’ is woozy, wistful track that works as a spiritual sequel to their earlier ‘Imaginary Girl’, it carries the weight of the years spent between.
Second album Cheesy Love Songs is due August 21, made with the minimalist instincts of Rick Rubin and drawing from The Kinks, The Beach Boys, Sparklehorse and Amy Winehouse. These are four musicians, all still under 25, who’ve shared stages with The Strokes, Wet Leg and Djo, played SXSW and All Points East, and are now quietly building something lasting and super cool. There’s free single launch shows in Melbourne and Sydney in late April. See you there!
Kit Genesis
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Naarm-based alt-indie artist Kit Genesis turns inward on ‘Childlike’, a nostalgic indie-rock cut shaped by seaside imagery. Where their previous releases responded to the immediacy of life in motion, this one traces core memories and asks what it might mean to carry childhood’s curiosity forward rather than leave it at the door of adulthood.
Inspired by a songwriting course led by Adrianne Lenker and shaped by time spent working alongside children, Kit lets the song unfold like a half-remembered summer: imagistic and unhurried (the only way I want to move through life tbh). The track holds personal significance in the wake of Kit’s top surgery and a more affirming relationship with their body. A secret location single launch in Coburg is coming up…
Kathleen Halloran
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Fifteen years of playing guitar on other people’s stages and records, and Kathleen Halloran has stepped into her own spotlight with a debut single that makes the wait feel completely justified. ‘Wolves Like You’ is a hard-rock statement about resilience and the particular experience of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. It was co-written with Dusty Lee Stephensen, produced by Roscoe James Irwin, and directed visually by filmmaker WILK with a raw, smoky ’70s urgency. Debut album Nobody’s Baby drops May 8 with a national tour to follow. A genuine shredder who’s finally front and centre.
Sonic Reducer
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Canberra punk four-piece Sonic Reducer are 21 years old, won Best Live Act and Artist of the Year at the 2024 MAMAs, and have just dropped ‘I Know (In the End)’, a track about the sharp clarity of hindsight built on distorted guitars and a rhythm section that doesn’t let up. It sits in a catalogue that has already pulled Triple J airplay, critical praise, and a loyal live following across Australia’s underground circuit. These guys have a little something something, an effortless cool taken straight from The Clash and Sex Pistols era.
The Foxy Junes
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Formed in late 2024 and already on the Ocean Sounds lineup alongside The Teskey Brothers, The Foxy Junes are a Melbourne five-piece pulling from ’70s funk, alt-rock and pop in a way that feels incredibly alive. ‘Short Term Love’ is their debut original single, featuring keys, twin guitars, bass, drums, and the occasional synth, and it launched this week at the Leadbeater Hotel in Richmond. Dense and vibrant and built for a warm room. Get in early.
For more Australian music news, head here.
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