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Oct 07, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Jacqueline Silberbush

Later this week, indie singer/songwriter Charlie Kaplan is set to share his fourth full-length album, A Hat Upon the Bed. After building his name as a devotee of melodic guitar pop touchstones, Kaplan’s latest work is simultaneously his most intimate and sprawling endeavor, ranging between cracked lo-fi acoustic recordings, painterly art rock, and lushly orchestrated instrumental swings.

The record follows last year’s effort, Eternal Repeater, and once again finds Kaplan returning to the studio alongside longtime collaborators Andrew Daly Frank, Winston Cook-Wilson (Office Culture), Julian Cubillos (Okkervil River, The Antlers, Alena Spanger), and Jason Burger (Big Thief, Twain, Scree). Along the way, much of the record sees Kaplan mediating on the enormity and confounding nature of death and grief. Some songs on the album date all the way back to the beginning of his self-described “fatherless decade,” which began with the loss of his father in 2013 and ended with the birth of his son in 2025.

Kaplan has already shared the album’s lead single, “No More Mistakes,” followed by last month’s single, “Halley,” and ahead of the album’s release, he’s sharing one last single from the record, “Fear of Choking,” premiering with Under the Radar.

Musically, “Fear of Choking” is the most outright jolly and charming of Kaplan’s recent singles, accompanying his twirling vocal tones with a bouncing bassline, dueling twangy guitar licks, and playful piano runs. Kaplan has a preternatural talent for sticky melodies, and he deploys it to full effect, conjuring a mood that is so light and bright that it ultimately feels off-kilter and disconcerting, as if everything is slightly too cheery. Kaplan’s lyrics lean into that discomfort, narrating moments of placid normalcy interrupted with no warning by terrifying intrusive thoughts: “On a subway platform / Cleaning a knife just after dinner over the sink / Drifting off to sleep when suddenly I’m / Splitting open my insides / How am I supposed to want to even stay alive when / I can barely be alone with myself.”

Kaplan says of the track, “‘Fear of Choking’ is my tribute to intrusive thoughts – shocking, sudden, gruesome visions that hit me at my most vulnerable moments, like trying to fall asleep or doing the dishes. They haunted me after my dad passed: Agita leakages seeking expression and popping out unexpectedly. I thought it’d be funny to sing them away with a bouncy, fun song about the myriad ways my subconscious proposed I be grievously injured or killed, turning premonitions into slapstick, delicious, and macabre like Halloween candy.

‘Fear of Choking’ is, to me, Jason Burger’s highlight on the album. He put together a very tight groove on kit and percussion with just the right number of cheeky fills to push it along. I also love the way Winston Cook-Wilson and Andrew Daly Frank’s lead parts interweave.”

Check out the song out below. A Hat Upon the Bed is out October 10th via Glamour Gowns.