Today, dust share ‘Alastair’, a jaggedly anthemic new single that serves as the latest preview of their debut album Sky Is Falling out Oct 10 via Virgin Music Group and Kanine Records. LISTEN + WATCH ALASTAIR HERE + PRE-SAVE LP HERE.

While the fast-rising group have always demonstrated a deft melodic touch, it’s often buried within a maelstrom of neck-breaking tempos, free jazz-indebted tears of saxophone, and broken glass guitar. Taken at a slightly slower clip, ‘Alastair’ takes the labyrinthine logic of dust songs and injects it with a newfound warmth. While a cascade of potential influences flash to mind — Sonic Youth’s ping-ponged guitar interplay, the chiming Rickenbacker tone of The Byrds, both the cleverly shuffling drum patterns and cryptic barfly poetry of The National circa Alligator — the track is firmly planted in dust’s burgeoning vision of a damaged, but ultimately redemptive, world.

Of the single, dust’s Gabriel Stove and Justin Teale explain: “Alastair is a song about meeting someone down on their luck and feeling conflictingly empathetic for them. It is navigating the challenges of growing up without getting bitter. It’s a short story from when we went on a writing trip in Mullumbimby. We met a man named Alastair at the Mullumbimby Motel and within 5 minutes of meeting him he recounted his whole recent years of life, how he couldn’t get ahead.”

Alastair’ follows the pummelling ‘Drawbacks‘, a track that turned heads with its “euphoric freneticism”(Stereogum) and “head-swirling post-punk excellence” (Wonderland) — landing airplay on leading stations around the world, from triple j to BBC 6 Music to KEXP.

Since first emerging in 2023 with their iteration of Australian post-punk on debut EP et cetera, etc, the group have continued to dominate. dust’s industrially shaped rock, endemic to their steel city origins, has taken them out of this world: major continental tours across Australia, the UK and US supporting formative influences Slowdive, Interpol, Bloc Party, Protomartyr, and Militarie Gun, to stages with Hockey Dad, The Belair Lip Bombs, Armlock, Shady Nasty, and more.

Industry alike clammer, word of mouth fever following them across un/official showcases at BIGSOUND, SXSW Austin and Sydney, The Great Escape to landing appearances at Laneway, Pitchfork Music Festival, London Calling – as Monster Children firmly put it, once you experience dust, you “will never be the same.” Indicative of their strength to straddle accessibility with newfound audiences to resonance with their musical heroes. Ground Control Touring took notice and have welcomed the band among their esteemed roster.

dust’s evolution continues on debut Sky Is Falling. Their sound, grounded in genre defiance and reinvention – shoegaze and electronic experimentalism side-by-side with elusive saxophone arrangements and abrasive guitar lines – is firmly rooted in melancholia and self-inquiry. Anarchic propulsion that denotes Geese to Double Virgo level extremities, with blissful nods to the classics, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine.

Their debut album, dust reveal, is a seminal moment. “On our first international tour, the sky is falling seemed to summarize the infinite and indefinite possibilities ahead. It was a phrase that kept surfacing between that formative moment on tour and the nihilistic lull after returning home to normal work and life. Accepting the unknown has made us more comfortable experimenting and taking risks in our songwriting. Truly immersing ourselves, we’ve spent hundreds of rehearsals and live shows crafting and conceptualising this album.”

Sky Is Falling springboards contemporaries in Moin and untitled (halo) – their fusion, slightly softer and refined while still raw and spontaneous. Diverse in approach and wholly sub-genre agnostic, at once nostalgic and forward-leaning. Reflective of their restless engagement with the social zeitgeist, slouching towards the future that they uneasily attempt to define. Enter: Sky Is Falling, dust’s attempt at making sense of it all.