Wastelands is the third single from Linkin Park's sixth studio album, "The Hunting Party" and is track six on the album. The first knowledge that Wastelands was going to be a single was when MMA organisation UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) aired a 1 minute promotional video that featured the song for their upcoming UFC 174 PPV during their UFC 173 PPV on May 24th, 2014. The song was subsequently performed live and in full for the first time ever in Tucson, Arizona for KFMA Day 2014 on the very same night on May 24th, 2014. Recordings of the full performance surfaced online that night.

On May 30th, 2014 Linkin Park played the Rock in Rio festival in Lisbon, Portugal. This show contained a unique moment where Mike Shinoda handed out burned CD-r copies of the song before performing Wastelands. Copies were also handed out at the meet and greet for fans to "leak" online, which actually happened that night, May 31st, 2014, giving fans the first full studio recording of the track. A day later on June 1st, 2014 the song was released to radio via Sirius XM radio with the track getting an official release on June 2nd, 2014.