“Octoberland” also arrives with a music video

Photo by Javier Morales

Bradford Cox ’s return to the stage was already cause for celebration. When Atlas Sound , his long-dormant solo project, was added to the bill of Philadelphia’s Making Time ∞ festival last month, the Deerhunter frontman hadn’t performed live since 2019, save an impromptu noise set at an Athens, GA vintage market in 2023. What few could have predicted was that Cox would debut a whole album’s worth of all-new material . His eight-song set, which I was blessed to experience firsthand, was sparsely arranged—the accompaniment amounted to a set of brass bells, a bass guitar, and Cox’s trusty SP-404—yet transfixing all the same.

Now, you can hear one of those songs in its full-fledged studio incarnation. It’s called “Octoberland” and it also arrives with a haunting music video, directed by Cox himself.…