Photo by David Wolff-Patrick/WireImage

When looking forward to a new Radiohead album, it’s not a bad idea to look backward. "Nude," a song the rock deconstructionists first teased in their 1998 tour documentary Meeting People Is Easy, didn't show up on a record until 2007's In Rainbows. "I Will," another song teased in the OK Computer-era film, eventually resurfaced twice: first with reversed instrumentation as "Like Spinning Plates," from 2001's Amnesiac, and then moving the usual direction again under its own name on 2003's Hail to the Thief. Maybe that's part of Radiohead's appeal among critics: They're meticulous revisers.

Few details have emerged about the follow-up to 2011's The King of Limbs, but a press release for this year's Primavera Sound Festival promised "the presentation of the new album by the British band Radiohead." The group's members formed a new company in October called Dawn Chorus LLP, similar to steps they took ahead of the last two Radiohead albums. Around the same time, guitarist Jonny Greenwood poured cold water on reports the album was complete, but said that "lots has been recorded." Since then, it has turned out that the Primavera gig is only one of an array of live dates, Radiohead's first since 2012. Adding another wrinkle to the anticipation, Jack White confirmed back in 2012 that Radiohead had recorded something at his Third Man Records in Nashville. Radiohead's management passed along Pitchfork's latest request for any insights about the new album to the band's U.S. publicists, who declined to comment.

With all that in mind, here's a rundown of selected Radiohead songs that have yet to appear on record, potentially making them available for the as-yet-untitled ninth album. Given that Radiohead released their discarded James Bond theme for free last Christmas, it seems a bit unlikely it'll make the cut on the new album; the same goes for unreleased fan favorite "True Love Waits," which appeared on 2001 live EP I Might Be Wrong, and non-album singles from the King of Limbs era (like "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase"). And it's not as if Yorke and Radiohead's setlists over the years are lacking for unreleased material.

Take note, though, that when it comes to Radiohead songs, past performance may not predict future results. "Reckoner," the falsetto- and strings-centered In Rainbow reverie that ranks among the band's best work, was originally debuted live in 2001 as a jagged, guitar-driven number that separately evolved into Yorke's 2009 solo track "Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses." You can't take unfinished songs with you.

"Silent Spring"

"If I was going to write a protest song about climate change in 2015, it would be shit," Yorke said in an interview published by French magazine Télérama last November. On December 4, performing at a climate change concert in Paris, he gave a solo acoustic debut of what has all appearances of a quite powerful protest song. Reputedly titled "Silent Spring," the same as Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 environmental tome, this song finds Yorke warning, "We'll take back what is ours/ One day at a time." In what has been taken as a possible hint that this is a Radiohead song rather than a Yorke solo tune, at one point during the performance he said, "This is Jonny's bit."