Four decades after igniting college-radio airwaves and launching R.E.M.’s remarkable career, their 1981 debut single “Radio Free Europe” is broadcasting a new signal. Today, R.E.M. proudly announces Radio Free Europe 2025, a five-track benefit EP led by a never-before-released 2025 remix by the band’s longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee. The release celebrates the 75th anniversary of the “OG” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and arrives just ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

Radio Free Europe 2025 is available to stream and download today. A limited-edition 10-inch orange-vinyl pressing—available for pre-order now exclusively via the official R.E.M. store and independent record stores—lands September 12. Proceeds from all vinyl sales will go to RFE/RL, an editorially independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was established by the United States 75 years ago and currently broadcasts news and information in 27 languages to 23 countries where a free press is either banned by the government or under threat. Throughout the Cold War and continuing today, RFE/RL is often the only lifeline to the outside world for people living under extreme censorship.

Released through Craft Recordings, the Radio Free Europe 2025 EP was overseen by the band’s original producer Mitch Easter—who first captured R.E.M. at his Drive-In Studio during their maiden road trip to a professional studio in April 1981. That seminal session yielded the band’s earliest recordings of “Radio Free Europe,” “Sitting Still,” and the instrumental “Wh. Tornado,” all collected here.

Courtesy of R.E.M. archives

The set opens with the 2025 remix by GRAMMY®-winner Jacknife Lee (U2, Snow Patrol, Taylor Swift, The Killers), who also produced R.E.M.’s final two studio albums, Accelerate and Collapse Into Now. Lee gives the track a fresh take while staying true to its indie-rock DNA. Completing the package are Mitch Easter’s original 1981 recordings—the sought-after Hib-Tone single mix of “Radio Free Europe,” its flip-side “Sitting Still,” the “Wh. Tornado” demo, and Easter’s long-rumoured, never-before-released 1981 remix “Radio Free Dub.”

In 2009, “Radio Free Europe” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for “setting the pattern for later indie-rock releases.”

Click here to pre-order/stream Radio Free Europe 2025 now.

Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.