Pussy Riot, Nada Surf, Pete Burns, Flaming Lips & John Prine star in Free Music Friday

When not agonising over our Halloween costumes – apologies in advance to everyone we scare sh*%less with our Nigel Farage rigout – Free Music Friday has assembled another all killer, no filler collection of downloads, streams, vids and trailers to ward off them evil spirits.

Pussy Riot return to the fray with ‘Straight Outta Vagina’, a coruscating anti-Trump anthem, which is produced by TV On Radio’s Dave Sitek and includes the immortal line: “I rip shit like Sinéad O’Connor!”
“The owner of vaginas is not some narcissistic stupid orange ape who’d claim that he could easily grab women by their pussies,” the band say. “The owner of vagina is a woman. Who wears her vag as a badge of honour. Pussy is a new dick, ladies. Oh bondage, up yours.”
Bag yourself a copy here
Pussy Riot is no 24 in the Adult Swim free single giveaway, no. 23 being Run The Jewel’s equally incendiary ‘Talk To Me’.

Regular visitors to these shores, Nada Surf, treat us to a four-track sampler of the Peaceful Ghosts live album they’ve recorded with the Babelsberg Film Orchestra. The end result is beyond exquisite.

Also new and highly recommended from Noise Trade is an introduction to The Dig, a psychedelic pop combo from Brooklyn who marry The Kinks to Flaming Lips, and Tennessee twosome Callaghan and Jesse Terry who release a sampler of their respective wares before heading out on US tour together. The former’s cover of Jackson Browne’s 'Somebody's Baby' fair brought a tear to Free Music Friday’s eye, and normally we’re heard-hearted bastards!

Old pals Soulja Boy and Bow Wow reunite on Ignorant Shit, which sounds pretty much how you’d expect it to sound from the title.

Like the decorations on Dublin’s O’Connell Street it’s a bit too bleeding early, but a cappella group Pentatonix spectacularly nail the version of Lennie’s ‘Hallelujah’, which graces their Christmas album. Now, we’ll have more of this sort of thing until December 1!

Heroes In Hiding did wondrous things to The Weeknd’s ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ when they popped into Studio 8 at RTÉ this week for an Eoghan McDermott session.

Not content with releasing his swoonsome Mortality Mortality album today, Marc O’Reilly has conjured up this sundrenched video for lead single ‘Of Nothing’. He’s a bit of an aul’ romantic on the quiet!

American NPR treat us to their usual embarrassment of musical riches. First up is the station’s weekly mix of hot tracks new tracks, which includes John Prine, Run The Jewels, The Flaming Lips and potty-mouthed Speedy Oritz offshoot, Sad13.

Dropping by to perform Tiny Desk Concerts this week are shimmery folk-poppers Blind Pilot, and those most quintessential of country rockers Drive-By Truckers who are in a rich vein of form at the moment.

To the streams now are there are brand spanking new offerings from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James; Kristin Hersh whose Wyatt At The Coyote Palace is named in honour of her son, and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner who’s also flying solo these days.

With the weekend that’s in it, here are some classic pop ‘n’ rock horrors to freeze the marrow in your bones. Or, failing that, to make you laugh uproariously!

This edition of Free Music Friday is dedicated to Pete Burns, one of the true rock ‘n’ roll originals who died this week after 57 years of making the world a more interesting place.

And that’s where we sling our FMF hooks for another week. Happy Halloween and make sure you don't get caught by the ghoulies. Links should, as ever, be zapped to @stuartclark66