Featured image courtesy of Off The Record.
MANILA, Philippines — All-female band NEW LORE just dropped its latest track, “substack girl”, and the response has been immediate and impossible to ignore.
“substack girl,” distills everything that the music group does best. Built on hypnotic production and list-like lyrics, the song circles questions of growth, distance, and whether love survives in routine long after people drift apart. It feels like flipping through someone else’s life from afar and hoping they’re still choosing joy in the ways you remember them.
It’s a tender, self-aware love song about missing someone through the smallest details of who they are. Not grand gestures. Not dramatic goodbyes. Just the quiet wondering. The habits. The identities we attach to love and hope are still intact somewhere out there.
Image courtesy of Off The Record.
Within its first day alone, the track pulled 24,000 streams on Spotify alone. As of today, the track is sitting in 34 Spotify playlists worldwide, spanning continents, cultures, and listening habits.
Since its release, “substack girl” has landed on New Music Friday playlists across the Philippines, India, the UK, Japan, Indonesia, Denmark, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, South Africa, Malaysia, Kenya, Singapore, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iceland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, alongside placements on major international editorial playlists including .ORG (Cover), Oyster, Indie Brandneu, Indie Pop & Chill, Indie Arrivals, Indie Highlights, Our Generation, Jasmine, we SEA you, Travailler en musique, poses (for Grief Cake), and tapioca.
Locally, NEW LORE continues to receive strong editorial support with placements on OPM Rising, .ph (Cover) for both substack girl and Grief Cake, EQUAL Philippines for nariyan and paumanhin, and Relax Tayo for OH MATURITY. On top of this, the band currently holds cover placements on Spotify’s .ORG and .PH playlists, a rare and telling feat for an act still in its early years.
Cover art courtesy of Off The Record.
Visually, NEW LORE continues to move with intention, leaning into their now unmistakable blue and green palette, pairing fashion-forward imagery with emotional storytelling. These girls in blue aren’t just marketing a song. They’re exporting a feeling. A culture. A point of view that travels well, because it’s honest.
Just a year into their existence, NEW LORE stood their ground with music that lives between gallery walls and the dance floor, between chaos and confession. Glitchy synths hum beneath aching basslines. Lyrics arrive like thoughts you weren’t ready to say out loud but recognize instantly once you hear them. This is pop that doesn’t rush for approval. It sits with the feeling until it sharpens.
Their songs are for romantics with rage, loners with carefully built playlists, and kids who cry in the club then go home and sketch what it felt like. Emotional but intentional. Vulnerable but never careless. Poetry, disguised as pop.
The group has since released their debut album “Grief Cake”, a cinematic body of work that quietly traveled beyond borders, landing on major Spotify editorial playlists across Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Since then, they’ve been building something slower and more dangerous than hype: a global audience that seems to understand them instinctively.
And if this trajectory holds, NEW LORE isn’t just another promising act from the Philippines. They may be one of its strongest chances at a true worldwide crossover.
Watch the lyric video for “substack girl” below:
NEW LORE is holding a FREE SHOW on Feb 15, 2026 at Felmans Place in Mandaluyong with front acts tuesday trinkets and Starri & The Moonchild.
Key visual courtesy of Off The Record.
Register here to secure your spot! bit.ly/substackgirlparty
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