# Hole and Smashing Pumpkins icon Melissa Auf der Maur digs into archive to unveil first new music in 16 years

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/hole-and-smashing-pumpkins-icon-melissa-auf-der-maur-digs-into-archive-to-unveil-first-new-music-in-16-years/
- Published: 2026-07-21T09:31:32+00:00
- Updated: 2026-07-21T12:03:57+00:00
- Original publisher: NME
- Original article: https://www.nme.com/news/music/hole-and-smashing-pumpkins-icon-melissa-auf-der-maur-digs-into-archive-to-unveil-first-new-music-in-16-years-3958151?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hole-and-smashing-pumpkins-icon-melissa-auf-der-maur-digs-into-archive-to-unveil-first-new-music-in-16-years
- Topics: Art, Culture, Entertainment, Music

## Key points

- Melissa Auf der Maur announces first new album in 16 years
- 'Bass Womb Room' features unreleased 1990s demos, out 4 September
- Album ties in with a Toronto photo exhibition and 240-page photobook

## Summary

Melissa Auf der Maur, bassist for Hole and former touring member of The Smashing Pumpkins, is releasing her first new music in 16 years. The album, 'Bass Womb Room: My '90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings', collects previously unreleased living-room demos she recorded in the 1990s using a handycam propped on her amp, alongside eight new interludes, and marks a rare archival release from a prominent figure of the era's alt-rock scene.

The 15-track album arrives digitally and on cassette on 4 September, timed to coincide with a photography exhibition of the same name opening on 2 September at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, plus a 240-page photobook featuring 200 images published on 8 September. The book includes candid shots of Courtney Love, Frances Bean Cobain, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Beck and Drew Barrymore, alongside behind-the-scenes material from Hole's 'Celebrity Skin' video. It follows her 2010 album 'Out Of Our Minds' and an earlier 2026 memoir, 'Even The Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir'.

---
Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.