Why You Should Listen to the Recently Excavated Pixies Track ‘Punk Loop,’ Absent From Streaming for Three Decades
'We have lots of songs that are unreleased and others that are in different stages (of completion)," Francis said. "Some of them go back more than 10 years," Black Francis told Esquire PH in May.
by JV Ordoñez
Published on Nov 11, 2026
It is a remarkable moment when a legendary band as incomparably abrasive and era-defining as the Pixies unearths a cut from one of their most underrated records in a music landscape that desperately needs something a little less sterile.
Frank Black (now known as Black Francis) indulges his usual proclivity for trance-like, guttural yelping over groovy punk rock instrumentation. If you’re a fan of their classic older stuff, like the prime Pixies, you need to add this track to your listening list. The alt-rock outfit, which has gone through as many transmogrifications in member composition as it has eras, is as cryptic and mythical lyrically on “Punk Loop” as it has ever been.
It is a previously archived track from the band’s sessions with the legendary producer Steve Albini, emerging as a bonus track from the Trompe le Monde LP, produced by Gil Norton. It was previously a bonus 7-inch track alongside “Dig for Fire (Albini Version),” “Go Man Go,” and “Brackish Boy" and had been unavailable on streaming platforms until now.
Their fourth record is an iteration of the Pixies in which Francis takes center stage, with their iconic bassist Kim Deal in a much reduced role. Despite this, the record was received as a compelling album for the band, though it remains an underrated project within their own catalog.
In case you’re living under a rock, the Pixies played a lights-out show in Manila last May, marking guitarist Joey Santiago’s long-overdue Filipino homecoming.
The pioneering rock band was on Esquire Philippines’ May cover issue, where we chopped it up with perpetual eyeball slicers on the importance of being fearless as a musician and the unyielding refusal to pivot from a vision.
“Well, if you’re going to be an artist, you have to be willing to fail. You don’t think about these things,” Francis said during our cover story shoot in May, a few hours before they took the stage at the Filinvest Tent in Alabang.
“Also, being in tune is overrated.”
Listen to Punk Loop by the Pixies here
Esquire PH's resident music scribe, wristwatch disciple, and essayist fluent in niche internet subcultures and Philippine politics.
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