Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for new radio (NR) communications in narrowband regions of unlicensed spectrum. A method that may be performed by a user equipment (UE) includes determining, using an energy detector (ED), that received energy in a first bandwidth (BW) is lower than a threshold; and transmitting, in response to determining that received energy in the first BW is lower than the threshold, a first uplink (UL) transmission to a base station (BS) in a second BW smaller than the first BW and contained within the first BW.