It’s once again spooky season, and your friends at Radio UTD are excited to bring more Halloween vibes for the spookiest day of the year. We also asked one of our favorite all-time DJs for his recommendation (huge thank you to Nardwuar!), so you know it’s good this year.

Florence + The Machine, Everybody Scream

Olivia Foster – Editor

If you were to ask someone which musical artists were most likely to be witches, I think Stevie Nicks would be their number one pick. It makes sense, I suppose, with the flowy outfits, referential lyrics, and her appearance on American Horror Story’s “Coven” season. My answer, however, would be the queen of indie-alt-semi-baroque-pop-rock, Florence Welch. I think this Halloween, October 31st, 2025, was meant for Welch, especially considering the release of her newest album, Everybody Scream. Looking through Welch’s discography, any of her albums could be recommended for a spooky season listen. With Everybody Scream, however, it’s like the album was specifically engineered to celebrate dark, guttural rage; dancing naked under the moonlight with your sisters; and crawl through the dirt back to life. Welch’s hauntingly ethereal—and at times, husky and gritty—vocals work in perfect tandem alongside a chilling, powerful backing chorus and her typical baroque-esque instrumentals to deliver what is sure to go down as one of the most legendary Halloween releases of all time.

Salvia Palth, melanchole

Kavya Racheeti – Programming Director / DJ

The epitome of unrefined teenage angst sound, melanchole by salvia palth is a top contender to me for a spooky album. The songs are equal parts haunting and guttural, as you at first listen to Palth crone about his desire to be loved, only for the sound to devolve into hauntingly dissonant and simultaneously, this crunching electronic instrumental. Palth’s debut album, made when he was just 15, captures perhaps the scariest aspect of living for us all: the familiar and aching emptiness of being a sad teenager. If you’re into albums that you can absolutely not fall asleep to, I’d highly recommend melanchole.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra, CURSE

Mickey Dolphin – AMP Managing Editor / DJ

As a fan of psychedelic rock, I believe that Unknown Mortal Orchestra has achieved legendary status within the genre, and if we’re talking about spooky season, then I can’t think of a better entry than CURSE. Yes, I know it’s technically an EP, but those twelve and a half minutes are truly a treat for the senses. Ruban Nielson’s deliciously rich basslines give a brooding, almost sinister accompaniment to his achingly soft voice. The opening track, “AURA,” sets the tone with an occult vibe—a raspy voice cries out as it’s overtaken by warbling guitar tones, abruptly transitioning into shrill, buzzing strings that sound almost like a hive of furious hornets. With other track names such as “DEATH COMES FROM THE SKY,” “ONE HUNDRED BATS,” and “SORCERERS OF SILENCE,” you can’t not put this on the Halloween playlist! If you’ve got some spare time and a desire to get a little weird with it, I’d highly recommend giving it a listen.

Haunt Me, Watch You Bleed

Madeline Wright – Assistant Programming Director / Blog Writer

Last year on my show Overcast, I would play the crap out of this album even when it was only a trainee show! Literally featuring soundbites from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this album screams VAMP from the top of the highest tower in Transylvania. If you’re a fan of synth, dark brooding vocals, (and vampires), this is the album for you. My personal favorites are “Bleed for Me,” “Inhale Exhale,” and “Devour” (fonna have to cap the faves at three tracks, otherwise I’d just list the whole album). I hope you all enjoy Watch You Bleed and the spooky season!

The Exorcist GBG, The Exorcist GBG

Landon Hart – DJ Trainee

Did you ever watch Are You Afraid of the Dark on Nickelodeon as a kid? Maybe the Goosebumps show? I think an essential part of growing up is a connection to late-90’s kids horror TV. The soundtracks were always overwhelmingly made up of spooky synth tracks. That’s exactly what The Exorcist GBG’s self-titled album is. This is late-night driving or walking music for when the nights start getting cold and you’ve internalized the feeling of being a creepy-crawly night creature. I discovered this album recently by listening to a different project by the same people, Uran GBG, which is a bit more alien. The Exorcist GBG beats out all of the other dungeon synth and horror ambient I can recommend, and if you like old-school horror and electronic music then you should one-hundred percent listen to this album one night.

Portishead, Dummy

Abir Faisal – Assistant Promos Director / DJ

Widely considered to be a touchstone of trip-hop, Dummy encompasses the chilling mystique of autumn, blending rhythmic hip-hop and breakbeat with jazz. Beth Gibbons’ voice wavers from low croons to lilting whispers, complimenting the gloomy sonic atmosphere created by twanging bells (“Sour Times”), groaning organs (“It’s a Fire”), and a wavering theremin (“Mysterons”). Described as a gothic approach to trip hop, the haunting psychedelic beats coupled with Gibbons’ ethereal wails creates a series of siren songs, a vampire slowly luring you through the halls of her desolate lair. It is not the kind of horror that bares its fangs to warn you, but the kind that silently casts a spell through its haunting melancholy, enrapturing you through its 49-minute runtime.

Dead Brothers, 5th Sin-Phonie

Summer Kulcsar – DJ

If you’re looking for something spooky yet soulful this Halloween season, 5th Sin-Phonie by Dead Brothers is the album for you. It’s a haunting masterpiece that blends gothic blues, smoky jazz, and ghostly folk into one eerie experience. It’s like stepping into a haunted cabaret where every note feels like a séance. The album’s mix of rasping vocals and creaking strings creates the perfect October soundtrack for candlelit nights and creeping dark shadows. If you enjoy eerie storytelling, vintage horror, and theatrical melancholy, this album is pure magic.

Nine Inch Nails, Tron Ares (Soundtrack)

Gavin Vallee – Blog Writer

Tron Ares, a movie releasing during October, is an extension of the franchise that personifies technology in a luminous way. This film modernizes the technologies and raises some interesting, yet unsettling questions about the capabilities and concerns of AI. The choice of Nine Inch Nails for the soundtrack effectively reflects the scariness that AI can portray, represented by “Forked Reality.” The project combines sounds of computerized title tracks such as “No Going Back” with dissonant frequencies like “100% Expendable,” utilizing both into the grueling track “Who Wants To Live Forever?”

Of course, there are also some classic Tron-esque bops that are wonderful to speed to phonk style, such as the opening track “Init” and “As Alive As You Need Me To Be”–sounds similar to the iconic Daft Punk’s soundtrack from Tron: Legacy.

Overall this soundtrack was electrifying to listen to on my two hour drive home on a precip twilight night. After passing through Hillsboro into the dark, gloomy nothingness that spanned East to West, a heavy fog sheathed the I-35–the gloom enhanced “Empathetic Response” and “What Have You Done?” Nine Inch Nails’ wicked guitars and eerie synths deliver that frightening Halloween atmosphere, encapsulating the spooky season.

DJ小女孩 (DJ Gurl), 头7 (The 7th Day)

Yizhuo Wu (Izo) – DJ Trainee

If you’re into experimental electronic music that actually unsettles you, DJ小女孩’s 头7, released on Qingming Festival in 2025, is a 12-day speedrun through death itself. This Guizhou producer weaponizes traditional Chinese instrument samples, Hanmai vocal chops, and glitchy electro, trap, baile funk collages into something that feels like millennium-era QQ space aesthetics possessed by actual ghosts. Built around the 头七 tradition—when the dead return on the seventh day—each track peels back layers of rural patriarchal violence through deconstructed club music and Feizhuliu rap fragments. It’s zhiguai fiction as sonic revenge: the girl comes back, but she’s dead, and now she’s raving on her own grave. The album functions as “ghost molding” (guisu)—not elevating humans to gods, but empowering ghosts as forces that expose what the living refuse to see. Not easy listening, but irreplaceable.

Ice Nine Kills, (Literally Any Album)

Charishma Chelluboina – DJ / Blog Writer

Ice Nine Kills is an artist that makes music for and/or referencing horror movies and personally, I think every song is a banger. Whether you like to watch horror movies, are a fan of mental music, or just want to get into the spooky mood, Ice Nine kills has the spirt for the season. Their album The Silver Scream, Welcome to Hollywood; The Silver Scream 2, and The Work of Art were made for the movies. while songs like “The Great Unknown,” “Suffocate City,” and “Mad” sound like halloween music because they reference themes found in horror movies or just have that spooky sound to them. To me, something about metal music during October will just get me into the mood for halloween and it hits different. My all time favorite song by Ice Nine Kills, which also from The Silver Scream 2 album, is “To Hip To Be Scared.” Words cannot explain the amount of dopamine I get from this song, I love that it mixed mental music with theatre aspects/show music. There’s one part of the song that gets a little piece of 80’s funk music that blends to rest of mental song and it’s just gets me so happy and hyped. Specific songs from the Sliver Scream albums that I recommend (and that are my personal favorites) are “A Grave mistake,” “The American Nightmare,” and “Rainy Day.” Even if mental isn’t really your thing, Ice Nine is definitely worth giving a try for the spoopy season!

Grouper, The Man Who Died In His Boat

Charishma Chelluboina – DJ / Blog Writer

Who better to make a Halloween vibe album than Motionless In White? Again, I think mental music just hits different in October and even though I’m not the biggest fan of Motionless In White, this album was soooo good. The theme of death throughout the album and the sound of the whole album is perfect for Halloween. Specific songs that I think are perfect for Halloween are “Puppets 3 (The Grand Finale),” “Dead as F**k,” and “Final Dictvm.” “Puppets 3” is one of my favorite songs in the whole album because of the funky voice that is in the beginning of the song, I don’t know what it is about it but I absolutely love it. The voice also just fits perfectly with Halloween, because it kinda sounds like someone from a horror movie running behind you trying to kill you. Hopefully that image comes to mind every time you listen to that song now. “Dead as F**k” is also a perfect halloween song, not only because of the sound but the lyrics from the chorus match perfectly; “She maybe be f*cking dead, but I don’t care!/ D-E-A-D/ She’s my graveyard baby/ D-E-A-D/ She’s my horror queen/ Bride of Frankeinstien, I’ll make you come alive/ Oh baby please be mine/ D-E-AD/ She never tricks, she only treats.” Disregarding the halloween theme, my all time favorite song of the album is “Unstoppable.” I love the lyrics for this song; I find it very motivating since the lyrics go “I will justify this pain/ I will live another day/ I will fight to earn my place/ I will be unstoppable,” and on top of that the song itself is insanely hype. Listening to this song while in the gym or during finals season helps so much, you won’t understand until you try it trust me.

Rema, Ravage

Jimeto Kalunta – DJ

Rema’s Ravage is a spooky Afrobeats experience that blends dark, mysterious sounds with stunning visuals. My favorites are “DND” and “Don’t Leave Me.” “DND” has that upbeat energy with a haunting soundtrack vibe, while “Don’t Leave Me” slows things down but keeps the eerie emotion. The visuals were wild, full of bats, red lights, dark silhouettes, and explosions. It wasn’t just the music, the whole thing felt like a full-on visual and sonic experience that really fit the spooky October vibe. I still remember when the “DND” snippet dropped, it shook the industry. Ravage really nails that dark, energetic vibe that makes October so special.

Grouper, The Man Who Died In His Boat

Muna Ali – Music Director / DJ

When I think of spooky albums, I think of goth, new wave, perhaps songs that would play on the TV show Wednesday. I don’t feel as well-versed in those genres compared to others. My version of spooky is something dreary, something you would play on the gloomiest of October days to comfort your coldness. The Man Who Died In His Boat by Grouper is a record I always find myself going back to in this season. It’s ethereal and atmospheric, psychedelic and dreamy, and the best type of spookiness (in my humble opinion).

Frankie Stein and His Ghouls, and Various, The Hollow Weeners

Nardwuar the Human Serviette

I would say Frankie Stein and his Ghouls (…) is one of the legendary records I play every year. For the spooky thing, for me, I think of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and there was actually a 7-inch record put out in the 1980s called Hollow Weiners. It was a big compilation, and one of the bands in there was Tartan Haggis, and they eventually [morphed] into the Real McKenzies, who are on Fat Wreck Chords. But I love playing the Hollow Winers seven-inch, because it’s local and it’s Halloween. And there’s also a band called Bags of Dirt [on there], and they were an amazing female band that opened for the Dead Kennedys. I love the local connection. So, it’s kind of like, yes, I guess I could get the world-wide ghoul connections or whatever, but for me, it’s (…) Frankie Stein and his Ghouls, I love that, and also the Hollow Weiners record. I guess I would play something from that. Which probably wouldn’t mean a lot to somebody else, but it does say “hollow wieners” on it. But yes, many episodes of the Nardwuar Halloween Special, me and Roger Allen presenting that over and over.

Happy Halloween!

From,
Your Friends at Radio UTD