October didn’t exactly dazzle with standout releases, but even so, I had to go through 1,213 albums to realize that (you’ll find the full list attached on Boosty and Patreon, as usual). Still, the top 10 turned out excellent. I keep the bar high: only albums scoring above 0,820 make the cut, so what you’ll find here are the most distilled and polished picks, each one truly deserving its place here.
Emoji showcases popularity, from total unknowns to superstars: [🌌🌑🌙☄️✨🌟]
10. Breymer - When I Get Through
🇺🇸 US, California / October 18 / 0,825 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
indie pop / alternative pop / folk
Top-10 opens with an album that’s modest in terms of vocals but equally rich in composition. No longer a newcomer, “When I Get Through” is her third album, yet still completely unknown, Breymer mentioned in an interview that she didn’t even consider whether she could pull off performing these songs, having poured all her energy into songwriting. Most of the album’s tracks surprise with their chord progressions: sometimes it’s a rather major-sounding song with emerging dark contrasts, like in “Medication”; in another track called “The Feeling (When I See You)”, there’s a drift between a restrained B♭ minor scale and a disguised modulation in the chorus to a dignified-sounding E♭ major - all of this in a broken 5/4 time signature. And sometimes the chord progressions become much more complex - like in “Wrong Path”, where Breymer seems to pick entirely random chords, yet the song doesn’t fall apart, because a single note (D♯, if you're curious) repeats on the offbeat throughout the entire piece, serving as the thread that ties everything together.
09. Mother Of Millions - Magna Mater
🇬🇷 Greece / October 4 / 0,828 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
progressive metal / alternative metal
Among modern rock/metal bands, there’s a certain category of groups with the potential to produce high-quality material, but they exist within their own logic of development - more precisely, in a constant search for a signature style, reinventing themselves for each new release. If you’re on the lookout for top-notch albums, these bands aren’t the ones to rely on - but they’re definitely worth keeping an eye on. They have all the fundamental capabilities to exceed expectations, as was the case with Caligula’s Horse in 2020, Hippotraktor in 2024, and now, a new breakout example - Mother of Millions. The album opens with the track "Inside", instantly delivering a gripping and memorable riff, which has become a rarity in modern metal that tends to favor monotonous rhythms over ostinato movement - and that formula has become just as stale now as it was once novel. The album stays firmly rooted in high-quality, riff-driven material, and when the band strays from that path, it’s only for the sake of even more intriguing experiments, such as "Irae", which leans into a shoegazing post-metal presentation.
08. Geordie Greep - The New Sound
🇬🇧 UK, England / October 4 / 0,833 / ☄️
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
progressive rock / art rock / latin jazz / avant-garde / samba
Something strange happened with black midi, what once felt like a blazing, three-album-long creative whirlwind now seems more like a band breakup disguised as a hiatus. Initially, they agreed not to comment on why black midi went on an indefinite pause, but since then, almost everyone has spoken out. What’s clear now is that the chemistry between the members is gone, and perhaps there was even a falling-out. Geordie Greep has said that the door remains open, but this doesn’t sit well with the provocative title and cover of his new album, which metaphorically decapitates his past with the band. Interestingly, former black midi members were invited to record the album - everyone except bassist Cameron Picton, possibly making the conflict more obvious. But the new sound is genuinely surprising - the erratic chaos of black midi, which always put me off, is gone. Now the tracks feel more causally structured, following a clear narrative need. The album was recorded between studios in London and São Paulo, and this Latin flavor turned out to be a brilliant addition to Greep’s evolving style.
07. Plume - The Rules
🇳🇱 Netherlands / October 4 / 0,835 / 🌑
Spotify / Apple Music
jazz pop
We’ve managed to catch a rising star right at the cusp of her debut - The Rules is just one side of a vinyl, twenty-two minutes long, but it’s already enough to pique serious interest. Pleun Bierbooms began her career in the mid-2010s, participating in the Dutch version of The Voice, where she performed Adele’s "Million Years Ago". Seven years later, after releasing her first original single, she kept the Adele-inspired aesthetic, added a touch of Lana Del Rey’s mannerisms, and aimed for a James Bond soundtrack vibe. But imitating Adele in image and vocal tone is only half the battle - what’s needed are exceptional songs: precise, thoughtful, and deep enough to reveal new layers over time. With help from co-writer Ravvel, a Belgian songwriter who has been grinding out Eurovision entries for the past 14 years. No, Plume’s not a new Adele. But she shows real promise for a full-length debut, and it’ll be interesting to follow her evolution.
06. bôa - Whiplash
🇬🇧 UK, England / October 18 / 0,836 / 🌟
Spotify / Apple Music
alternative rock / post-britpop / indie rock
You probably weren’t even aware this band existed - yet they have 10 million active listeners on Spotify, which is more than Thirty Seconds to Mars, even though both bands had their moments of fame in the early 2000s. The latter need no introduction, while the former seem to have gained those numbers out of nowhere. The secret to bôa’s popularity lies in the anime "Serial Experiments Lain", for which they recorded the single "Duvet". That song first became beloved in the late ’90s by fans of the anime TV series, and years later it was rediscovered and used widely in melancholic and depressive Instagram/TikTok memes centered on nostalgia. Back in 1998, "Duvet" was released as part of the album "The Race of a Thousand Camels" (later reissued in 2001 as "Twilight"), which remains their only widely known album. Subsequent attempts to find success didn’t bear fruit - bôa tried shifting toward indie rock in 2005, and rode the TikTok revival wave with "Whiplash" in 2024, but both albums, while pleasant, failed to make a major splash. What’s most interesting, though, is the story of their lost album, which surfaced only recently - after the death of one of the original members. It was found uploaded to his abandoned personal website, revealing a surprising jazz-funk incarnation of the band. Definitely worth a listen if you’re curious.
05. CHARLOT - Lost Like Alice
🇳🇱 Netherlands / October 31 / 0,839 / 🌑
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
alternative pop / chamber / indie / dream pop
The story of Lotte Mulder’s debut album began when she finished conservatory in Haarlem and gathered a band around her to start writing music. Her first single, "Better When It’s Dark", came out in 2020 - and it was already a solid electro-pop track, with unexpected intervals in the chorus and a string finale. In 2022, CHARLOT managed to put together an EP, but the turning point came with the writing of the track "Lost Like Alice". After that, Lotte decided to reread Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, giving herself the task of transforming inspiration from each of the 12 chapters into a separate song - a sort of pre-programmed creativity with no waiting around for divine inspiration. No waiting for the muse - just disciplined, deliberate creativity. The final album has 13 tracks, including two interludes, so which of Lewis Carroll’s chapters CHARLOT 'lost' along the way remains a mystery.
04. Soccer Mommy - Evergreen
🇺🇸 US, Tennessee / 🇨🇭 Switzerland / October 25 / 0,841 / ✨
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
indie rock
The entire career of Sophie Allison, better known as Soccer Mommy, is an ode to loneliness in all its forms. Whether she’s grieving her mother’s passing in "Lost", or lingering in the haunted quiet of her childhood home in "Changes", where she reflects on the fragility of memory and living in her mother’s house, where everything reminds her of the loss - and at the same time, there’s an oppressive sense of emptiness. Her songwriting is full of imagery behind the wheel: cruising alone in muscle cars, exploring solitude through stream-of-consciousness, touching on whatever thoughts come to mind. And even a song about romantic feelings for a character in the video game Stardew Valley - a love that can never be real, compressed inside her like a tightly coiled spring. But don’t mistake melancholy for melodrama. Allison’s true gift lies in subtlety - lacing introspective lyrics with harmonic detours into parallel majors, leaning on mediant chords to build a sense of emotional drift. Her songs might begin as humble strums, but they unfold into graceful architecture, every progression weighted with thought and feeling.
03. Myles Kennedy - The Art Of Letting Go
🇺🇸 US, Washington / October 11 / 0,844 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
hard rock / blues rock / post-grunge / alternative metal
Myles Kennedy’s early solo ventures felt like spin-off projects - first a stripped-back acoustic record in 2018, then a bluesy, slide-guitar-driven follow-up in 2021. Both had their moments (like "Devil on the Wall" or "In Stride"), but neither seemed meant to compete with the towering legacy of Alter Bridge. The desire to create non-format music under his own name felt natural. But the release of The Art of Letting Go shatters that previous pattern. This isn’t a side effort 'for the soul' anymore - Kennedy’s new album stands shoulder to shoulder with Alter Bridge’s best work and easily outshines anything he’s released alongside Slash. It’s focused, full-bodied, and for the first time, feels like Kennedy’s putting his full creative weight behind the music bearing his name.
02. KO KO MO - STRIPED
🇫🇷 France / October 25 / 0,873 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music
blues rock / garage rock / indie
The French duo Ko Ko Mo continue to deliver excellent music on their fourth album, maintaining consistent quality without a single misstep. Despite this, the band remains relatively unknown - unlike their stylistic counterparts The Black Keys and Royal Blood. From the former, they draw a vintage aesthetic; from the latter, a dense riff-driven approach in the bass spectrum (the key difference: Royal Blood use an octaver to raise the bass guitar, while Ko Ko Mo use an octaver to lower a regular guitar). Their limited recognition may stem from their odd strategy: singing in English while keeping all their social media in French. That said, the band might not be too happy with comparisons to The Black Keys or Royal Blood. After all, their name itself references one of the earliest rock ’n’ roll songs ever recorded: “Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)”, from 1954, which was famously covered by nearly every vocalist of that era and is considered one of the first underground-to-mainstream crossover hits. It’s a bold name, and a bold lineage - and Ko Ko Mo are more than living up to it.
01. The Smile - Cutouts
🇬🇧 UK, England / October 4 / 0,949 / ✨
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
experimental rock / art rock / math rock
A few years ago, around the release of The Smile’s first album, Thom Yorke mentioned in an interview that they had about 30 demos, which they divided into several groups to stay focused and not spread themselves too thin. Now, all thirty tracks have been released, neatly spread across three standalone albums. Naturally, one might assume Cutouts, with its ambiguous title, consists of B-sides of B-sides. And considering that some songs on A Light for Attracting Attention were actually unreleased Radiohead tracks from the King of Limbs era, this would make Cutouts something like B-sides³. But the effect is the exact opposite: I met ALFAA as a Radiohead fan with mixed feelings, Wall of Eyes was the first time the trio felt like a fully independent band, and now Cutouts gives the sense that The Smile are making work as significant and weighty as that of their parent band. The album delivers a unique emotional experience at every level - elegant musical callbacks (like how “No Words” nods to King Crimson’s “Frame by Frame”), graceful and precise harmonic control that conjures dread about looming global catastrophe and a bleak future. It’s nearly impossible to summarize where and how each harmonic decision was made. These ten songs seem not to live within keys or modes, but in superpositions, where there are no majors or minors - only eerie, chilling transitions between different modalities. The musicianship is stunning. Some tracks even make you wonder: is it physically possible to play this? The guitar part in “Zero Sum” impressed me so much I scoured the internet to figure out how it’s done. It is possible, but very difficult. You’ll need some serious practice... and a dotted-eighth delay pedal.
