Sarah Approves

Choices of the Grasshopper November 2025

By the end of November this playlist will showcase around 50 of the best new alternative tracks released during the month

November 2025 - best new alternative, post-punk and indie tracks

2025: New music (updated daily) - 3

Three Bells

Reflections

Rarely Do I Dream

Gumshoe (Dracula From Arkansas)

Colorado's On Fire Again

Santiago

Down

Year of the Snake

The Life You Save

Afraid

Home Is Where The Zorb Still Is

Joy On Overdrive

Baby

HIGHER!

Everybody Scream

The first single to be taken from СОЮЗ (SOYUZ)'s enthralling fourth album KROK, sees the release of the emotive and personal title track. “Krok” means “step” in Belarusian - and for Alex Chumak and his band this word comes with a lot of meaning. It’s a theme running throughout the album, reflecting the journeys the band has navigated in recent years. 
 
In early 2022, Chumak and original members, Mikita Arlou and Anton Nemahai, joined tens of thousands of Belarusians seeking safety from the political unrest in their homeland and the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Resettling in Warsaw, the band released Force of the Wind in October 2022, garnering widespread acclaim, a string of major European gigs, and led to Polish musicians Albert Karch and Igor Wiśniewski joining the band.
 
Embracing the uncertainty became both the inspiration and main lyrical theme for Alex Chumak, SOYUZ’ composer and arranger. ‘Krok’ was one of the initial songs written for the new album and was the first to feature lyrics. It paved the way for Chumak to find the new poetic language on the record - for the first time in his native Belarusian language. Chumak demoed the song whilst he was still in Minsk in early 2022, and then, as he and his band moved to Poland, he continued developing it. In September 2024, together with other songs, Alex took it on a trip to São Paulo, where he recorded it with the help of his longtime friend and collaborator Sessa and extraordinary musicians Biel Basile and Marcelo Cabral.
 
It is a song about transition and migration, in which this act is poetically reduced to “a step” – into the unknown and unexplored. While singing about it, Chumak also makes a step forward musically. He delivers his very atypical view on samba, which doesn’t pretend to sound Brazilian. A strict yet loose rhythm section is covered with layers of tense acoustic guitars, aleatoric piano lines, and a lush yet restrained arrangement for strings and flutes.
 
This ethereal opening track is taster of the magic to come from СОЮЗ (SOYUZ) new career-defining album.


Крок / Krok

FIG TREE

Telepathic Apathy

Sender Receiver

Good Enough / Wearing Thin

Wearing Thin

Boys These Days

Living In Skin (demo)

The ‘difficult’ second album, they say. We spent 6 years building to our debut, only to release it during a global pandemic - So no, there was nothing difficult about this one. In fact, things couldn’t have been clearer. Whilst observing other bands die in their red pill/blue pill predicament, we fanned the flames, applied pressure and produced a diamond.  

Following 2023's 'A New Breed' EP, (which we jokingly call the ‘Decoy EP')... we prepared for ‘The Big Sad’. An album born from the ashes of those dark times, and represents a beacon of light for the future. An album of honesty and purity, that our current fan base sonically may not be expecting. The sound of a band that got tired of slamming on the fuzz pedal to tick the ‘rock’ box and dares to try something new, dares to shock, and dares to be great. This is an album for us, and we dare people to join us. 

FIG TREE

sleepazoid