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Aug 29, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Gannon Padgett

NYC-based musician Ian Jacobs last released music under his Monograms alias in 2023, following his 2021 album, Floors and Ceilings, with his latest full-length LP, A Fine Commitment. That record offered another taste of Jacob’s corroded ‘Nuke-Wave’ style, blending hints of industrial, dance, new wave, and post punk into a propulsive and acrid mix. Later this year, Jacobs is set to return with a new EP, SHAPES, due out on October 17th. Today, accompanying the news of the forthcoming record, he is sharing the EP’s title track and lead single, “SHAPES,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“SHAPES” finds Jacobs evoking a shadowy contortion of electronic music and post punk, opening the track on textured waves of synth before the guitars pull the track into brooding, gothic depths. Jacobs delivers his vocals in a disaffected drawl as the instrumentation roils and churns, shifting between swirls of sour post punk melody and electronic-tinged instrumental breaks. The results echo Jacobs’ previous nuke-wave efforts, but they also feel distinctly tense and shadowy in contrast to his more electronic efforts. Lyrically, as Jacobs describes, “SHAPES is about loving someone and being willing and ready to change for them… but not always knowing how.” He sings, “I’ll follow you there / I just don’t know where / I’ll take shape, I guess / Into someone else.”

Jacobs continues, saying of the upcoming EP, “The new Monograms SHAPES EP is an amalgamation of songs I put together over the last few years, as I stretched my life into a place that felt more comfortable and less angsty. From my vantage point, this collection of songs just exists as what it is. I played every instrument and word on the EP so even though a lot of the songs came from slightly different timelines… I was able to create a singular voice and structure to things. The songs sonically lean into earlier iterations of the band, playing more real drum kits and a bit less drum machines, but still aiming to retain some of that ‘Nuke-Wave’ sound that I’ve built Monograms around over the years.”

Check out the song below. SHAPES is out everywhere on October 17th via PaperCup Music.