The 60 Best Songs of 2025 So Far

50. Lily Seabird: “It was like you were coming to wake us back up”

There are songs you can physically feel the hurt in, and from the very first moment of Lily Seabird’s “It was like you were coming to wake us back up” (which, coincidentally, doubles as the first line), you can already tell that it is going to crack you open from the inside. Whisper-delicate, heart-rending and insistent all at once, “It was like…” traps you within a moment barely the length of a breath—that split-second pulse skip of seeing a long-gone loved one across the way before the yearning desperation fades away and reality takes its place, leaving behind only a stranger. Seabird is at her most Adrianne Lenker-esque here, that gorgeous, raw, nasally croon splitting at the ends with the enormity of her own emotion. “All the silvery stuff was floating around your beautiful head,” she murmurs, aching with it. “It was like we’d forgotten that you had been dead.” As the song goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that Seabird is putting everything on the line here, every ounce of her spilling into and bleeding out of the softness of her tone. There is restraint, but there’s something beyond it, too; it’s almost like Seabird is attempting to keep her voice taut on a leash while simultaneously buckling beneath the exertion of the act. “It was like you were here,” she sings over and over again, guitars churning below. It’s brutal, and it’s beautiful. —Casey Epstein-Gross

49. Alex G: “Afterlife”

Alex G is in the big leagues now. After scoring Jane Schoenbrun’s films and producing Halsey’s latest record, it was inevitable for the Philly musician to graduate from “indie star” to the mainstream. He signed with Sony imprint RCA Records in 2024 and recently announced his first LP under the new label: Headlights. It’s a crapshoot when a beloved indie artist makes this shift. Will they lose the spark that makes them special to appease the masses and suits, disregarding the sound that caused this breakthrough in their career? Thankfully, that’s not the case with Alex G. His forthcoming album’s lead single, “Afterlife,” is an Americana pop track that retains the magic touch present in Alex G’s previous work. Led by bright mandolin strums, he recreates that feeling of being a kid and enjoying the simplicity of life. In the lyrics, he looks back at feeling that childlike wonder (“Let me run on afterlife / Filling up the tank with it / Like a kid I ran it past / Rolling in the tiger grass”) as he reflects on beginning a new life “when the light came,” seemingly referencing his new role as a father. —Tatiana Tenreyro

48. caroline: “Total euphoria”

“Total euphoria” is the piercing opener that kicks caroline 2 off with a jolt. It was the eight-piece collective’s first release of 2025, and the first hint at what would eventually become their all-consuming sophomore album. The track is built on rhythmically mismatched guitars and drums, swirling around each other on their own time, the syncopations just barely locking into place. Splitting synth tones mix with horns to form an unsettling sound that modulates in and out beneath the guitars. A wall of blown-out feedback takes over two-thirds of the way through, hitting decibels that can make your teeth chatter, before colliding with grating strings that add an entirely new level of tension to the track’s final stretch. “Total euphoria” is heavy and frontloaded, sitting at the edge of your headphones and reaching deep into your core. Fragmented lyrics and a deft use of silence create a chilling mix of grit and refinement. It’s the most overtly post-rock on the record, highlighting the group’s affinity for the incongruent. —Cassidy Sollazzo

47. Sex Week: “Coach”

Last year, Sex Week released a terrific EP and debuted the collaborative relationship at the project’s heart: an enduring and endearing friendship shared between New Yorkers Pearl Amanda Dickson and Richard Orofino. In fact, I fell so in love with this band that I named them the Best of What’s Next. Dickson and Orofino are simply too talented to ignore; their music flutters through warped collages of sounds as sticky as they are terrifying. Sex Week sprawled even in brevity, reaching the same corners as Alex G and Deafheaven in one gasp before settling in the symphonic MIDI gurgles that defined the band’s first chapter. But a new EP, Upper Mezzanine, is on the way, and Sex Week’s best-ever song, “Coach,” is no longer a secret. Dickson and Orofino said they wanted the track to “feel like Romanian Popcorn music was playing in an American dive bar.” True to their wishes, “Coach” is nothing but a trance, full of syncopated synthesizers and subterranean guitar plucks. The song bursts into a chromatic dance without abandoning its anchors. There are winces of pedal steel and banjo that might just be well-manipulated synths, letting “Coach” sound like a house song playing tug-of-war with country-fried habits. Sex Week is the unpredictable, hypnotic bard of the moment. —Matt Mitchell

46. Lifeguard: “It Will Get Worse”

Chicago trio Lifeguard—Asher Case, Isaac Lowenstein, and Kai Slater—put out their debut album (Ripped and Torn) this month, and lead single “It Will Get Worse” firmly cemented the arrival of a new musical vanguard in the city. Lifeguard have been together since pre-COVID, when they were teens transforming Chicago’s youth DIY scene. Their two previous EPs, Dressed in Trenches and Crowd Can Talk, quickly established them as torchbearers of a storied, multi-generational musical legacy. Inspired by Television and Dredd Foole, Ripped and Torn is renaissance post-punk with a twist of anthemic, post-Y2K bombast. Lead single “It Will Get Worse” ought to be everyone else’s wake-up moment. The song sounds like the Cleaners From Venus covering Pavement, as metallic, thrashing guitars vibrate through lo-fi, distorted hooks. And, truth be told, who wouldn’t want every song in existence to sound exactly like that? You better get hip to Lifeguard now; the moon is firmly in their sights. —Matt Mitchell

45. Laufey: “Silver Lining”

The debut track from Laufey’s next album, A Matter of Time, is beautiful. Sometimes, words fail me, and it’s hard to describe “Silver Lining” as anything else but that. It’s a perfect song! The jazzy arrangement slowly builds, sauntering through velvety details and confident, swooning vocals. The tune is wrapped in gooey cliché, as Laufey sings about the terrors of the world being endurable because she’s enduring them with you—well, the “you” she’s singing to. “I propose, it’s long overdue, when you go to Hell, I’ll go there with you, too,” she croons. “And when we’re punished for being so cruel, the silver lining is I’ll be there with you.” I get lost in “Silver Lining” every time I click play. —Matt Mitchell

44. Jim Legxacy: “father”

I hate to admit it, but I was late to the Jim Legxacy wave. The rapper/singer first surfaced in South London’s notoriously chaotic music scene back in 2021, dropping a flood of singles that soon found him at the precipice of mainstream success. Still, he continued to fly under my radar. My friends were blasting “dj” and “eyetell(!)” on repeat, hyping him up as “the future of UK R&B,” but I remained oblivious even then. I swear, I must have had my head in the sand, but hey, better late than never. It wasn’t until late 2023—when Legxacy linked up with Fred again.. for “ten”—that I finally caught on, and I’ve been all in ever since. “father” is an exposé of versatility—a showcase of his Batman-sized artistic toolbelt and his knack for seamlessly blending musical genres as well as his wide array of emotions. Built around an amped up sample of George Smallwood’s 1981 track “I Love My Father,” the song layers in drill-style production and a nod to DJ Shadoe Haze’s iconic “Damn son, where’d you find this?” soundbite. “father” stands out as an outlier in Legxacy’s discography, though. He momentarily tucks away his melodic side and leans fully into rapping, reminiscing on his teenage hustle, making moves at 16 and dropping this undeniable bar: “On the block, I was listenin’ to Mitski.” The contrast is striking—his raw upbringing clashing against the introspective, emotive world inside his head. Jim Legxacy is in peak form, still keeping us on our toes as we await his black british music (2025) mixtape. —Gavyn Green

43. Deafheaven: “Amethyst”

Like the best Deafheaven material, “Amethyst” waltzes and churns before erupting into fiery chaos by its end, when Shiv Mehra and Kerry McCoy drag and stack their guitars on top of a rumbling backline from Chris Johnson and Daniel Tracy. Sequenced as the centerpiece to the record, “Amethyst” thematically encapsulates everything about Lonely People—from the artwork and video rollout on social media to the lyric, especially, as George Clarke’s narrator grapples with familial trauma much like he did on “The Pecan Tree” from Sunbather 12 years ago. On “The Pecan Tree,” Clarke lamented being unable to escape his father’s shadow: “I am my father’s son / I am no one / I cannot love / It’s in my blood.” “Amethyst” seems to directly speak to that line, as Clarke screams, “Wondering if I could ever wind up being him / He’s not me! He’s not me! / All this daydreaming without sympathy” before the song begins its descent into blown-out chaos. —Jeff Yerger

42. Jason Isbell: “Crimson and Clay”

There is a specific kind of comfort in music made by folks who come from home. While it has its share of ugly qualities (like most places), Alabama’s way of life is precious. Even after seven years in a big city in a neighboring state, I regularly feel my roots tugging me back toward my beautiful, sometimes brutish, frequently misunderstood home state. And no one in modern music captures that pull as beautifully, and bittersweetly, as Jason Isbell, particularly on the exceptional “Crimson and Clay.” It can only be compared to how New Jerseyians must feel while listening to Springsteen, or Michiganders enjoying some Seger. “Crimson and Clay” sounds like holding back tears while heading east over the I-20 state line; the space between the trees in the Talladega Forest; taking in the quiet expanse of the Gulf from the shore; walking the length of Moundville on a Saturday morning, with nothing but your own demons to keep you company. It sounds like heartbreak in the holler.“You could strip me of everything I own / Just leave me with the memories of my Alabama home,” he sings, and it tastes like boiled peanut brine. Isbell may now be a longtime Nashville resident, but it’s clearer than ever that he keeps his origins close to his heart. Bama’s in my bones, and it’s in his: “I can’t seem to keep myself away.” —Ellen Johnson

41. Turnstile: “SEEIN’ STARS”

My relationship with Turnstile includes me liking exactly (1) song from every album they put out, and that’s it (though I am indebted eternally to bassist Franz Lyons for proudly wearing a Cleveland Guardians cap in public). When GLOW ON dropped three years ago, it was the Blood Orange-assisted “ALIEN LOVE CALL” that got its hooks into me. Flash to now, and it’s “SEEIN’ STARS”—the least-hardcore song from hardcore’s most popular band (whether or not Turnstile is actually a hardcore band is none of my business). But seriously, the only heavy thing about “SEEIN’ STARS” is that sugary disco groove—a bass ‘n’ snare beat so humid it may as well evaporate in the company of Brendan Yates’ singing. You can thank producer Will Yip for the new wave deliciousness oozing out of Pat McCrory’s guitar; Turnstile’s echoing catchiness has never sounded so accessible. Maybe someday they’ll do an entire album like this. By the time “BIRDS” comes screaming into view, I’ve already stopped listening. “SEEIN’ STARS” gives me just the fill I need. —Matt Mitchell

40. Lana Del Rey: “Henry, come on”

While awash with Lana Del Rey’s distinctive, film noir-befitting glamor, there’s also a real lived-in feel to the musical arrangement on “Henry, come on.” Its western trimmings are spare—a hand-plucked acoustic melody preludes our cowgirl crooner’s emergence; burnt Southern rock electric guitar bends and wafts of pedal steel drift through the ethereal, string-forward chorus—but Del Rey’s language is classic country: “Last call / Hey, y’all / Hang his hat up on the wall,” she exhales in a breathy falsetto on what might be among the catchiest and most quotable choruses of the year so far. “Tell him that his cowgirl is gone / Go on and giddy up.” A chronicle of tragic divine, enamored intervention told through memories of soft leather and blue jeans, untethered troubadours and a ne’er-to-be mother-in-law, “Henry, come on” affirms that Del Rey remains among pop music’s strongest contemporary surveyors of American iconography, blowing off the dust of tried-and-true tropes to reveal unexpected divinity beneath their familiar surfaces. I listen to the sunset ballad, and I want to drape myself in white lace; slip into my scuffed-up, velvet-lined cowgirl boots; and coalesce with the ghosts of lost loves lingering in the depths of my weary soul. Get yourself a cowboy and get your heart broken; Southern Gothic Summer is impending. —Anna Pichler

39. Post Animal: “Pie in the Sky”

Last month, Post Animal not only announced their new album IRON, but they revealed that founding member Joe Keery had returned to the band. It was, as Jake Hirshland put it, “a revitalization of our friendships and our band.” “Last Goodbye” was a great teaser, but “Pie in the Sky” is exactly the kind of song I want from this band. It’s a kooky, trippy, classic rock-style burner that’s not very deep but it is quite the ruckus—just listen to Dalton Allison’s big bass rhythm, which sounds like a spoof of Grand Funk Railroad’s “Some Kind of Wonderful,” or the little coils of guitar riffs that poke through the glitz. “Pie in the Sky” is two, three, maybe four songs all rolled into one ambitious jam. The core-five members of the band (Allison, Hirshland, Javi Reyes, Wesley Toledo, and Matt Williams, all in different singing fonts) trade vocals around Keery’s anchoring voice, before “Pie in the Sky” climaxes with a skyscraping, three-part guitar phrase and a dashing, big-cheddar exclamation point: “Hit me with your shine!” —Matt Mitchell

38. Saya Gray: “LIE DOWN..”

This music that Saya Gray makes is vibrant and seemingly never-ending, as if her most critical intent is to challenge the very limitations of her own potential. It’s why SAYA is a shoegaze album, a metal album, an art-pop album, an electronic album, and a folk album all rolled into one massive constellation of enjoyment. It’s why “LIE DOWN..” is a sublime finale measured by the wonders of who gets forgotten and who gets to recover in the refuge of language. “How green is the grass on the other side?” Gray questions, rustling in the idiom, catapulted by slithering bass notes and transmissions of vocal fragments. “LIE DOWN..” is confirmation that Gray’s music is its own kind of cinema. The song is spiritual, even in its cell-splicing beats, reverb sonar, and drive-you-mad transitions; the guitars are intricate and the rhythms lope and twang through wounded frames. —Matt Mitchell

37. Momma: “I Want You (Fever)”

We’re big fans of Momma already; their 2022 breakthrough Household Name made our list of that year’s best LPs, though personally their 2020 concept album Two of Me will always have a special place in my heart. This spring, the Brooklyn band returned with their fourth record, Welcome to My Blue Sky, and shared its yearning lead single “I Want You (Fever).” Momma say of the track: “‘I Want You (Fever)’ is a song we wrote about wanting to be with someone who has a girlfriend, or someone who isn’t over their ex. It’s pining after someone, but there’s also some confidence knowing that that person wants to be with you. The second we wrote that song we felt like we were entering a new era—we scrapped everything we had written for the album up to that point because it felt so fresh and so exciting.” Warped, glitching sounds kick off the track, making you feel like you’re headed into a flashback sequence and feeding into the single’s sun-drenched nostalgia. Crunchy, reckless guitar gives the song just enough bite, and vocalist/guitarists Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten’s sugar-sweet vocals are as charmingly infectious as ever. The chorus is invitingly simple in an instant-classic sort of way. You can just picture many a lovelorn Momma fan screaming along: “Pick up and leave her / I want you, fever.” This song has all the rush of a rapturous summer fling.—Clare Martin

36. Model/Actriz: “Cinderella”

I was late to the party on Model/Actriz, but I eventually figured it out, and we named their debut album Dogsbody one of the best of 2023. Songs like “Donkey Show” and “Mosquito” were full of noise and charisma, turning Biblical plagues into high body counts and messy, hilarious plagues of provocation—all thanks to frontman Cole Haden’s, as our writer Madelyn Dawson so perfectly framed it, “sinister eroticism.” I’d been waiting on the Brooklyn band’s second album, Pirouette, ever since, and Haden returned this spring with a vocal pulling from the same queer, strobing physique that Dogbody made fucked-up, widescreen, and divine. I can hear his body roll and contort through every note of “Cinderella,” a feat rarely achieved by anyone, let alone 1/4th of a post-punk band from New York City. The track is industrial, clubby and sensationally hedonistic, reeking of sex and bumps while building towards a climax like a hydrogen bomb slowly leaking. Desire is its own beast on “Cinderella,” and Haden’s words cut into me—lines like “I notice you are gentle by the way your posture is so elegant,” “In your eyes, I am naked, screaming like a tornado in the dark” and “You make me want to be ready” drip off of his tongue and onto mine. Pleasure sounds ugly in the company of “Cinderella”; it’s a song that demands something more alive than that. —Matt Mitchell

35. Ethel Cain: “Nettles”

Historically, I have always played catch-up with Ethel Cain’s music. It took me a long time to “get” Preacher’s Daughter, and I am still coming around to the crunchy, horrific ambience of Perverts, Cain’s EP from January. And, true to form, it took me a few listens to really nestle in with “Nettles.” But if she was going to convert me with a song, it was always going to be this one—an 8-minute banjo ballad that never totally climaxes but rambles cosmically across what purgatory awaited Cain after the dark of Preacher’s Daughter. The pedal steel is pitched like a synthesizer, a medley of guitars collapses into itself, and Cain’s voice compresses to the serenade of Donny Carpenter’s wincing fiddle. It’s the first real preview of her new album, Willoughby Tucker—a chronicling of Cain’s romance with her first love. “Every once in a blue moon, it feels good to slough off the macabre and to simply let love be,” she said in a press release, and “Nettles” features some of her most intimate fiction yet. “I want to bleed, I want to hurt the way that boys do,” she sings. “Maybe you’re right and we should stop watching the news.” Cain imagines not only a wedding, but a surrender—a chance for two people to hold each other close and not worry about how they will destroy themselves: “To love me is to suffer me.” —Matt Mitchell

34. Sabrina Carpenter: “15 Minutes”

Two weeks after winning a few Grammys for her great, great pop album, Short ‘N Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter released a deluxe edition of it, including four new tracks and a “Please Please Please” remix featuring Dolly Parton. But I would like to point your compass at “15 Minutes,” a song so good it’s immediately better than 75% of the original album. Once again, the combination of Carpenter and Amy Allen is among the best active songwriting matches. Together, they capitalize on the former’s ability to sell an innuendo better than almost anyone else in the business. “I can do a lot with 15 minutes, only gonna take two to make you finish” is just one of the many vibrant, sticky lyrics that ups the voltage on Rob Moose’s torrential downpour of strings and John Ryan’s country of programmed instrumentation. Don’t sleep on Julian Bunetta’s thumping bassline, either. A song like this makes for a perfect curtain call on Carpenter’s chart-topping and award-winning breakout era. —Matt Mitchell

33. Horsegirl: “Frontrunner”

My first “favorite” album of 2025 was Horsegirl’s Phonetics On and On, a truly remarkable, stripped-back and splendid indie-rock record pulled beautifully out of the Velvet Underground’s post-John Cale lineage. The trio didn’t make a widescreen record, nor did they make a big-budget, overzealous follow-up to their terrific debut, Visions of Modern Performance. Instead, they lent a soft focus towards their craft and came out with “Frontrunner,” a single that has been playing through all of the stereos in my home since it dropped three weeks ago. It’s a cocktail of cowboy chords and la-la-la harmonies shared by Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein, a song landing somewhere in-between Kimya Dawson and Broadcast. It’s grandiose, to me, because it gnaws at my soul deeply, even if the melody never gets louder than a lullaby. —Matt Mitchell

32. Backxwash: “History of Violence”

A synth begins like a lullaby on “History of Violence” before patiently building into an armor of metal drums and Michael Go’s thrashing guitars. “Is Heaven the only semblance of peace?,” Backxwash asks. The song is not just a reflection of her own political climate-inciting agony, or an uncomfortable interrogating of cultural abuse, but an annihilation on global power, corruption and gluttony; Backxwash prosecutes the fascists enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza, shouting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” She condemns the world’s leaders using freedom as a bartering chip; she recalls videos of dying Palestinian children and reckons with what power fuels a slaughtering of innocent children: “These fuckers gonna say it’s all about peace. Check the stats, motherfucker, it’s all about greed.” The perspective repeatedly switches between micro and macro, as Backxwash, ever the intergenerational, socio-political magician in rap, casts a spell on Black trans life through gothic, scorched-earth overtures, unpredictable pop tangents and prompt lyrical critiques of global corruption and genocide. —Matt Mitchell

31. Lady Gaga: “Vanish Into You”

When Lady Gaga said that Mayhem is a “pop album,” she was using that description loosely. It’s not a sibling of The Fame, or Born This Way, or Chromatica—even though all of those titles have mothered Mayhem into existence. Gaga, who is knocking on the doorstep of 40, has finally drawn from her greatest wellspring of inspiration, be it the chaos of counterculture punk, the panging, crushing metallic walls of Nine Inch Nails, Prince’s output with the New Power Generation or, unequivocally, David Bowie’s discography, namely Fame. With the help of Andrew Watt and Cirkut, she returns to the spaces of Chromatica, pulling from boogie and French house; she restores the sleazy, crooked divinity of The Fame with a potent dose of sex, power and resistance. And yet, “Vanish Into You” is none of those things. It’s a daring pop song because it doesn’t flutter once. It’s my favorite thing she’s made since “Judas,” potent with a high-pitch, glass-breaking chorus and picture-perfect, sugary production. It’s also the most joyous Gaga has sounded on a track in more than a decade, all but confirmed in “Vanish Into You”‘s emphatic, “We were happy just to be alive” chorus. —Matt Mitchell

30. Florry: “Pretty Eyes Lorraine”

“Pretty Eyes Lorraine” begins with genealogy and ends in revelation—or perhaps vice versa. The song finds Florry at their most raw, cracked, mythic, and personal. Over the band’s familiar lattice of fiddle, pedal steel, and sunburnt guitar, Francie Medosch sings with that delightfully rusted edge, channeling heartbreak through the lens of a lost homeland, existential yearning through the experience of discovering during your fourth year studying German that you’ve been Irish the whole time. The “Lorraine” at the song’s center is a person, place, and thing all at once—Alsace-Lorraine, or the personified dream of it, or maybe just a stray entry in a German textbook. What emerges is part-John Berger reverie, part-East Coast road song, part-late-night dig through the family tree (Medosch off-handedly drops some insane lore in the press release about being related to serial killer H.H. Holmes?? It’s honestly kind of a fierce sidebar). As with the all the best Florry material, the beauty isn’t polished but jagged, lived-in—what you get when you raise your Aimee Mann records on a diet of truck stop tea, Philly basements, and the burgeoning Burlington indie scene (see: Lily Seabird, Greg Freeman, and so on). And all the while, Medosch’s voice remains the song’s beating heart, cracked and present, dragging every lyric across the gravel of a long and confusing personal mythology: “Ooh baby on our trip down the Rhine / You showed me that life’s all about how you ride.” —Casey Epstein-Gross

29. feeble little horse: “This Is Real”

Babe, wake up. New feeble little horse just dropped. After two years of periodic touring, not to mention a brief yet alarming rumor that the band had disbanded altogether, our favorite Pittsburgh noise-poppers are back with “This is Real.” It’s their first single since 2023’s Girl With Fish, which we named one of our favorite albums that year, but “This is Real” sees the band decidedly coloring outside the lines of their sophomore LP. The song unfolds like a Pompeii-level eruption—one second Lydia Slocum is nonchalantly singing about smoking in the back of a car, only to quickly pummel us with waves of double kick drum, bit-crushed guitar and a near-screamo pre-chorus of “Like I could be the moon / Like I could be the moon / Like I could be the moon.” Then, just like that: The detonation is over, punctuated by a warped acoustic guitar and a calm, warm outro. When I say I was floored upon my first listen, I’m putting it lightly (I didn’t know Slocum had it in her to scream like that, but it was absolutely awesome, and I hope this isn’t the last we hear of it). “This is Real” manages to feel both more structured and more spontaneous than anything feeble little horse has done so far—like it’s mutating unpredictably with every inharmonious guitar note. I also can’t get enough of the cybercore meets webcore, late ‘90s aesthetic that ties together the whole release. If “This is Real” is a launchpad for feeble little horse’s next album, I’m fully on board and I want more of it as soon as possible. I get it though, genius takes time. —Gavyn Green

28. Car Seat Headrest: “Reality”

“Reality,” which features Ethan Ives on lead vocals and takes inspiration from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era, is shimmery yet solemn, soundtracking the apparent demise of the Chanticleer, a narrator of sorts. Similar to Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character from his own 1972 rock opera The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, the ghost of the Chanticleer feels that his role as a savior of sorts has failed. But Will Toledo uses this track to self-reference as well, with an unknown character (who could be interpreted as Toledo’s own conscience) admitting that he missed the calls for caution of the dangers to come: “I got bored of all this / And didn’t listen / Didn’t listen / Muttering ‘BLID’ to make it through the next 12 minutes.” This calls back to Twin Fantasy‘s “Beach Life-In-Death,” in which Toledo, then a student at the College of William and Mary, wrote about ignoring warning signs about the ramifications of one of his first romances after coming to terms with his sexuality. Its mention in “Reality” could be interpreted as Toledo’s way of saying he’s staying true to himself, taking the reins of his life and career, returning to the confidence as a songwriter he felt when he was self-releasing albums on Bandcamp without concerns about a wider audience. While Toledo’s own coming-of-age songwriting that propelled Car Seat Headrest to fame isn’t present, with no anthemic choruses about struggling with depression, ill-fated romances, or coming to terms with your identity, we instead get a better gift: an invitation into his fantasy world, full of magic and mystery. You’ll want to linger in it a bit longer and get lost in it. —Tatiana Tenreyro

27. Jane Remover: “Professional Vengeance”

On Revengeseekerz, Jane Remover is a self-referential tornado rummaging around in a maximalist ether, embellishing micro-genres and splitting continuums into their own playground of crushing techno, EDM, and blazing hyperpop. “Professional Vengeance” sends them back into the pop lane they dominated in 2024, and it’s the tightest track on the album—full of answered prayers and “dollar bill dreaming.” Yet the song is also an epitaph for the self’s brutal hierarchies. “Until the grave I feel the shame of an army,” Jane sings. “Feel the worst pain and let it turn you ugly.” They use found audio clips to brighten the early corners of an ever-escalating drip of alt-rock and bubblegum pop; there’s a vignette in the song’s breakdown that sounds like Paramore turned inside out. —Matt Mitchell

26. Daneshevskaya: “Kermit & Gyro”

It’s rare to exist at the same time as an artist like Daneshevskaya, an artist so deeply astonishing that I am faithfully floored by her work every time she makes something new. Brooklyn’s music population is not lacking in originality or singer-songwriters, but Anna Beckerman may very well be the best one living there. I say that as a non-New Yorker, but I am undoubtedly correct. Daneshevskaya’s debut album, Long Is The Tunnel, remains in my constant rotation, and she one-upped herself last year with a one-off single, “Scrooge.” But again Daneshevskaya has blessed us, this time with “Kermit & Gyro,” a lullaby dappled in the sun-treated symphonics of a breathless orchestra. The song may be a puzzle, but I promise that the pieces are easy to gather—Beckerman tenderly pairs her voice with a finger-picked guitar melody and a string section. There is a moment when she is singing, “At least I know we had a good time,” where her vocal coils into a falsetto emphasizing the “know” of it all. It’s just a beautiful thing, and I feel lucky visiting a song like “Kermit & Gyro”; a sentence like “Of course I forget how to move in the sun” will remain with me. —Matt Mitchell

25. SZA: “Scorsese Baby Daddy”

“Scorsese Baby Daddy” could go toe-to-toe with any of SZA’s best. Co-written by Tyler Johnson, Tyler Page, Owen Stoutt, and Michael Uzowuru, The track finds SZA on the hunt for a partner straight out of a violent Martin Scorsese movie—à la Travis Bickle or Max Cady. It’s a guitar song merging ‘80s rock textures with silky pop singing, and it’s got some of my favorite SZA lyrics since Ctrl—like “I’d rather fuck about it, addicted to the drama” and “I would pretend to do my favorite man, he’d call me tasty / Furious lady, then I wonder if I could do, baby / One day, I’ll understand all that it takes to be a lady.” The production on “Scorsese Baby Daddy” doesn’t feel too far away from the Mk.gee/Dijon universe, and the way SZA sings the “I’ma crash out, baby, don’t slow me down” hook at the 1:07 mark became a last-minute edition to my running list of favorite vocal moments in 2024. Midway through 2025 and I’m still humming along. —Matt Mitchell

24. Asher White: “Kratom Headache Girls Night”

In the past year, I’ve gone from not having heard of Asher White to hearing her name everywhere. When an emerging artist puts out a critically acclaimed record like White’s Home Constellation Study and generates tons of buzz, you wonder whether they’ll be able to keep the momentum going with their new releases. Thankfully, White delivers with her single “Kratom Headache Girls Night.” It’s a bright, summery ode to friendship that instantly lifts your spirits. With the kaleidoscope of glockenspiel, digital mellotron, beads and rice shakers, and even samples of YouTube videos, White creates a genre-defying sound that sparks the perfect symphony. After listening, I found myself repeatedly returning to it, craving more. It’s only mid-April but it’s a strong contender for the indie song of the summer. —Tatiana Tenreyro

23. William Tyler: “Star of Hope”

Time Indefinite cushions William Tyler’s guitar with disorienting ambience and crunchy, expired cassette tones. The music is as sylvan as it is ominous, as Tyler unearths manipulated arrangements that flutter between bright and terrifying. A hiss of cosmos becomes his toolkit, as he replicates the non-linear path of healing in guitar volleys, piecemeal synth patches, and strangled found-sounds. “Star of Hope” is Time Indefinite’s greatest transmission—a 5-minute stretch of nirvana born out of Tyler’s “macro-tragic” montages of grief. Milky samples of choir-singing are chopped up beneath his strumming, emulating what it must sound like when the noise of the living is cut silent by the closing of a casket lid. Gone are the space-rock fusions of Secret Stratosphere and the fatalistic, micro-orchestras of Impossible Truth. “Star of Hope” aches with uncertainty and a flavor unbound to just one page of the American folk songbook. Hymns fall apart note by note; instrumental breaks feel deliberately sun-faded; heirlooms sound inaudible. Tyler has never sounded so boldly adrift. —Matt Mitchell

22. Black Country, New Road: “For the Cold Country”

Forever Howlong is a record of uncanny restraint and quiet daring. It doesn’t attempt to replicate the bombast of its predecessor, nor does it posture as a bold new era through flash or artifice. Instead, it chooses something riskier: sincerity, softness, and specificity. It is both a breakthrough and a breakdown—of expectations, of sound, of ego. After the thunderous grief of Ants From Up There, Black Country, New Road’s sound has folded inward, towards a gentler, stranger terrain. Where once they split open with ecstatic crescendo, now they drift. They withhold, they simmer. The expansive journey of “For the Cold Country” represents some of the album’s most abstract and allegorical material. May Kershaw writes in loose metaphors and elliptical verse—knights crawling into caves, kites burning in trees, conversations between heads and roots. Her voice, misty and earnest, floats over baroque instrumentation like a half-remembered spell. The six-and-a-half-minute epic opens with choral harmonies, a violin line that could’ve wandered in from a renaissance fair, and a positively medieval narrative, but it builds into a peak as intense as it is recognizable. In that long-awaited climax, when the percussion crashes in and Kershaw pleads, “Are you there? Can you see me? Are you listening? Won’t you stay now?,” the illusion of pure fantasy collapses, and we find ourselves suddenly in the realm of the devastatingly real. It’s one of the few true emotional eruptions on the record, and it hits precisely because it takes so long to arrive. —Casey Epstein-Gross

21. billy woods ft. Yolanda Watson: “A Doll Fulla Pins”

The best lyrical performance of 2025 so far belongs to billy woods on “A Doll Fulla Pins.” Playing on the curse of the doll that lingers in the title of GOLLIWOG, woods interrogates histories of misplaced trust, voodoo, abuse, and revenge. His phrases paint the images in his best song since Athiopes. Beatings, a long-gone soul for purchase, and white women’s tears linger like consequences. “The air pregnant, the whole city just waiting,” he slurs. “Tasting my own blood in bracelets, the plug impatient. Like, fuck all that, I lived in the bus station.” “A Doll Fulla Pins” rummages through a woozy, sensual saxophone solo and tape feedback; the pure muscle in Yolanda Watson’s “come to me with your sins” chorus will shatter you clean. —Matt Mitchell

20. Panda Bear: “Praise”

Noah Lennox’s vocal harmonies are always compelling enough on their own, but the calculated ska rhythms he pairs them with on “Praise” make this satisfying psych-rock track feel irresistible. Detailing Lennox’s frustration with unreciprocated feelings in a familial relationship, he wrote this song about the lifetime dance that is fatherhood. Through all the ignored calls and harsh interactions that come from a teenager, his love persists. Chasing the relentless optimism, Lennox is prepared to fight for the relationship, even if it means doing it “again and again and again and again.” The inevitable triumph of this dance shines through in the song’s distinct pop disposition and Lennox’s bright vocal tones, while the call-and-response lyrics with Rivka Ravede perfectly reflect the cyclical conversations had between father and son. Altogether the song is another signifier of Lennox’s instinctual musical genius, as he expertly conveys an emotional story through an unlikely experimental lens. —Camryn Teder

19. Lonnie Holley: “Seeds”

Tonky begins in a sprawl, however, as “Seeds” spans nine minutes of contracting strings, teardrop synths, and background chants. Lonnie Holley likens his time at the Alabama Industrial School to slaves “coming in by the shiploads.” He talks, not sings, about going to bed bloody from whippings “for the same damn thing” every day, about “lines of boy and cries of girls,” about being afraid in a captivity of “seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months” where nobody came to help. “Seeds,” like all of Holley’s work, is a memory. “I remember this place called Horseshoe Bend,” he says. “When you got there, nothing but cotton had been planted within, cotton for many a mile. And it almost scared you to death. On one hand, it was so white and beautiful. On the other hand, you had to pick it and pick it right.” Tonky is a profound exchange between generations and a sharing—not passing—of the torch. A change will come, but those who speak the dialect may not live to feel it. I return to the end of “Seeds often, where Holley acknowledges his wish to rob his memory and, like Midas, turn his thoughts into gold: “I try to tell my children, ‘This brain that I have, I’ve given it to you all and I understand the responsibility to the truth we bear.'” —Matt Mitchell

18. Matt Berninger: “Bonnet of Pins”

Paste writer Candace McDuffie praised the National frontman Matt Berninger’s debut solo effort, Serpentine Prison, in 2020, writing that the album “displays infinite promise from an artist who has already given us a catalogue that has made a lasting impact on rock music as we know it.” With “Bonnet of Pins”—the first single from his sophomore solo record Get Sunk—Berninger lives up to that expectation. The song boasts the lived-in texture of a Neil Young song, but delivered with a rush of rock fervor that sits distinctly in The National’s sonic palette. Beaming, arena-ready guitar shines even brighter thanks to spacious synths, bringing light to the narrator’s somewhat dark vignette about encountering an old flame. “Never thought I’d ever see her here / Never thought I’d see her again,” Berninger intones wistfully. He recounts their exchange on the chorus, their conversation brought to life by the addition of a female vocalist. As melancholic as the lyrics can be (“The closest thing she’s ever found to love / Is the kind you can’t get rid of fast enough”), this expansive stadium rock moment exposes the seemingly small stories of normal people as the emotional epics they really are. —Clare Martin

17. FKA twigs: “Striptease”

Put every song from EUSEXUA into a hat and whichever one gets pulled out is probably worth a spot here. But I think the post-trap, four-on-the-floor juke flex of “Striptease” is the winner—and FKA twigs’ best song since MAGDALENE. One of my favorite lines of the year lingers here, when twigs sings “I’ve got a birthmark on my mind, I think you’ll like it,” and the images that follow are just as striking (“My sternum stretched wide”; “Opening me feels like a striptease”). “Striptease” is escstatic and clubby until it’s not, as the BPM swells into a drum ‘n’ bass breakout and twigs morphs into a glitch. Eventually, words fail her, and she makes a language out of high-pitched intonations that sprawl like Dolores O’Riordan’s vocal runs on “Dreams.” Nestled somewhere in-between Disclosure and Ray of Light-era Madonna, “Striptease” is the work that keeps FKA twigs firmly at the top of her class. —Matt Mitchell

16. Dead Gowns: “Wet Dog”

Genevieve Beaudoin recorded her debut album, It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded By Snow, in bedrooms, gymnasiums, and churches around Maine and its coastal islands, and her blizzards of expressions—a caterwauling, crushing rasp and metallic, fried riffs—are poetic and sung with lived-in courage. Every verse of “Wet Dog” is a rapture, as Beaudoin sings with the quivering, rusted might of Burn Your Fire For No Witness-era Angel Olsen and a band barrels alongside her like bar-busking stage tramps. “Oh, you know you are so frustrating,” she howls from her belly. “A horse cut from the carousel, you are grating the lines from every spore that point us where we were on the ferris wheel.” A bridge of “oohs” transports her through tethers of want and touch. Then, the outro’s tempo thaws out, revealing Beaudoin’s final wail: “I am your wet dog. Wet dogs don’t like fireworks.” —Matt Mitchell

15. jasmine.4.t: “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation”

You Are the Morning, the debut release from jasmine.4.t, is a dramatic, prismatic and dynamic trans album—music that subtly and boldly captures gestures of joy and solidarity after living with PTSD and seeing the other side of homelessness, hate crimes, and global transphobia. A song like “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” tells its listeners, “I see you, and here’s the proof.” And that oneness extends beyond the queer community, too—be it jasmine’s siblings, or other trans people who’ve made steps towards dismantling machines of violence. “It’s not me there, it’s someone wearing my hair, telling you I’m okay and I’ll be back soon,” she sings, attempting to outmuscle the assault within herself. “But I’m not even anywhere, it’s so fucking unfair. They’ve done this and they still sleep in our room.” “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” is a song that speaks the language of ghosts; I ache when jasmine sings “got nothing left to dread but my leaving.” But the throbs eventually transform into awe. When I listen to “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation,” I think of jasmine’s hair, dyed blue and pink, and the way it shouts in defiance. And I think of her and Phoebe Bridgers trading verses with each other, only to come together and sing, “We can rewind and un-dent, reprocess and desensitize” as one voice. It’s divine, and celebratory. —Matt Mitchell

14. Aesop Rock ft. Hanni El Khatib: “Unbelievable Shenanigans”

When Aesop Rock is acting sardonic, he’s at his best. On “Unbelievable Shenanigans,” the final song on Black Hole Superette, he telegraphs his flow in conversational poetry. “People be like, ‘Wow, you’re such a hypocrite.’ And I’m like, ‘Yo, you can’t be this completely fuckin’ stupid. I hope you suffer horribly. Like, I’m not even a violent person, which makes me a double hypocrite.’” Rock excavates the selectiveness of memory (“It’s interesting what the memory cherry picks and what it pardons”) and reckons with trauma’s place in transformation (“We’re nothing if not silver linings stuffed into compartments”). He dissects the inner-workings of his own complications, rapping non-chalantly over choppy rhythm samples, clipped symphonies, and psychedelic vocal pieces. Hanni El Khatib closes the song—and album—on my favorite image of the year so far: “Memory, waiting on the edge of the sun, burning in the shape that I’ve become.” —Matt Mitchell

13. Perfume Genius: “Full On”

My favorite part of the new Perfume Genius album Glory happens in “Full On,” when Alan Wyffels’ flute part, while gently duetting with Blake Mills’ guitar, speaks in paragraphs without stepping up to the microphone. Mike Hadreas says the demo for “Full On” was “piano and gibberish,” but that making it felt “very magical and very arrival-y.” Kinetic and windswept, “Full On” is as messy and wounded as anything else on any Perfume Genius album that precedes it, as Hadreas’ narrator watches quarterbacks cry while an unmarked boy goes “limp as a veil, thrown in a cruel fashion.” And yet, the lifespan of queerness holds a particular beauty here; even in violence, a boy is “laid up on the grass and nodding like a violet.” Hedonism wanes in the glow of the living. —Matt Mitchell

12. McKinley Dixon: “Magic, Alive!”

Every chapter of Magic, Alive! is bigger than McKinley Dixon, yet his verses focus on the micro with historical hip-hop citations, literary allusions, and horror films metabolized into heady sonic palettes. Like the illustrations he animates in his spare time, the rarely-pedantic rapper meticulously sketches expressions of people he both knows and imagines. His lyrical fascinations with mythology are decorated in rare and endangered fits of orchestral patterns; the noisy percussion, mechanical poetry, and blood-boiling strings haunt the magic Dixon is chasing in the epilogue of Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?’s block-bending cynicism but never smear it. The album’s title track turns the “tale we’ll become, a blaze of glory” sunset from “Listen Gentle” into a party of the immortals. Glued together by Etienne Stoufflet’s rowdy saxophone, Brandi Wellman’s ghostly coos, gang vocals, flutters of Sobel’s flute, and a rapture, McKinley Dixon praises the homies who ran, danced, and flew: “Instead of us watchin’ it all collapse, we huddle and between us a butterfly wing flaps. To live forever is to tell the stories of who light up ya eyes.” —Matt Mitchell

11. Tunde Adebimpe: “Somebody New”

In my review of Tunde Adebimpe’s debut album, Thee Black Boltz, I highlighted “Somebody New” as not only a standout moment of the record, but my favorite track period. It arrives fashionably late in the tracklist, careening in like it’s prom night circa 1983. The arpeggiating synths, Adebimpe’s vocoded vocals, the snare hits splashing with gated reverb—it’s a groove just begging to hit the dance floor. However, “Somebody New” is a major creative departure from both the rest of Thee Black Boltz, as well as Adebimpe’s music in general. He’s best known for mingling post-punk, electronic, noise-rock and jazz as the frontman and visionary of renowned New York art-rock group TV On The Radio. But after 20-odd years, Adebimpe has finally committed to a solo project entirely his own. On Thee Black Boltz, he’s untethered by creative expectations, diving into acoustic ballads, beatboxing, and, of course, the vibrant ‘80s neon of “Somebody New.” But the track doesn’t feel like such a stark left turn. Instead, Adebimpe is simply tuning the dial to a different frequency—one I’ve gladly received with open ears and open arms. —Gavyn Green

10. Addison Rae: “Headphones On”

There’s nothing wrong with paying tribute to a good cigarette. In fact, I encourage it wholeheartedly. A sugary, Y2K gloss burns at the heart of “Headphones On,” but the song is a shockingly full of hurt, as Addison Rae reckons with her parents’ divorce (“Wish my mom and dad could’ve been in love, guess some things aren’t meant to last forever”) and imposter syndrome (“I compare my life to the new it girl, jealousy’s a riptide, it pulls me under”) without plodding in heavy-handed nostalgia. “Headphones On” should be in the conversation for Song of the Summer; the “You can’t fix what has already been broken, you just have to surrender to the moment” pre-chorus allows Rae’s R&B and electropop fascinations to perfectly collide. Her TikTok fame has proved fully illusory. This is well-done Madonna worship for the doom-scrolling generation. —Matt Mitchell

9. Saba & No ID ft. Love Mansuy, Ogi, & Smino: “a FEW songs”

From the Private Collection of Saba and No ID is a family album—a vault of a Midwestern great’s most trusted collaborators. The beats scoring its closer, “a FEW songs,” loop and bounce; stabs of a half-dozen different keys pierce through a soul-stirring vocal harmony from Ogi. Love Mansuy’s “shit is temporary” chorus bridges Saba’s verse into Smino’s, as they rap about their long search for a come-up in a changing ‘hood (“We been on our way—fashionably late, past tense”). “Back in the day, we was on blogs and searching for different perspectives,” Saba spits. “And Benjamins and Jacksons, ‘cause it was a recession.” Smino picks up the story down the road, talking about going “from North Side to Porsche rides to courtside to sold-out shows” and flashes a double entendre of “We bae” and Wee-Bay from The Wire. “a FEW songs” spans a decade or two and ends in affirmative revelation: “It’s okay to change it all, so beautiful,” Ogi hums on a piano fadeout. Saba and his counterpart No ID should make a thousand songs together. But if I can only have one for the rest of my life, I’ll pick “a FEW songs” every time. —Matt Mitchell

8. Wednesday: “Elderberry Wine”

Their first new piece of music since their 2023 album Rat Saw God (which we named the #1 album of that year), beloved indie rock outfit Wednesday is back. The band hails from the Carolinas and, as someone who was also born and raised here, I can vouch for the special sense of peace that permeates the air. Is it something hidden in the lush, green landscape of the foothills, or in the open call of the ocean by the shore? Wednesday’s new song reminds me that the allure of this place isn’t just in the landscape, but in the people. “Elderberry Wine” explores the fine line that exists between love and pain. Just like elderberries provide healing benefits in moderation, some of life’s most beloved things, from relationships to success, are best enjoyed in small doses. A tale told through singer Karly Hartzman’s signature twangy vocals, the song is a nostalgic, old-country rock track that feels just like home. “Everybody gets along just fine ‘cause the champagne tastes like elderberry wine,” Hartzman croons. The song’s accompanying music video, which showcases a motley crew of regulars holed up in a Greensboro bar, points to the song’s innate sense of community. We might be different, but we’re all vulnerable to life’s blurred edges. When the inevitable stumble comes, we can always lean on one another to make it through. —Camryn Teder

7. Maruja: “Look Down On Us”

I heard “Look Down On Us” for the first time at SXSW in March, when the Maruja turned its instruments up so loud that businesses at the end of the street could hear the four of them wail. “Look Down On Us” was a near-10-minute rapture of jazz, post-hardcore, rap, and spoken-word poetry; the Texas crowd ruptured into a mosh pit—parted down the middle by saxophonist Joe Carroll, who swung his saxophone at phone cameras and puffed ferocity into the mouthpiece. In the center of the chaos writhed a shirtless, sweaty Harry Wilkinson. It was so heavy, brought to life by Englishmen in board shorts and tennis shoes railing against late-stage capitalism and tapping into a provocative, society-questioning type of protest music that the world needs now. Wilkinson calls the song a “reflection of the times we live in.” It’s grotesque and visceral, vibrating between critique and solidarity. He shouts the song’s title through a head-splitting medley of sonic struggle, telling us to “Put faith in love, be firm and loyal. In yourself, put trust. Be twice the ocean, be twice the land. Be twice the water for your sons and daughters.” —Matt Mitchell

6. Fust: “Spangled”

I have been listening to the new Fust album, Big Ugly, on repeat since it first landed in my inbox last December. It’s a real-deal AOTY contender and my pick for the best thing that came out this spring, as the songs gesture towards the Durham crew taking a major leap in their sound—crafting this dense, wayfaring ecosystem that brings Aaron Dowdy’s stories to life. Lead single “Spangled,” which Fust had been teasing live for more than a year, is a whopping strain of mountain music that nurtures the very soil it eulogizes. It’s deeply textured, but it’s not collage-y. Every piece of “Spangled,” from Libby Rodenbough’s crying fiddle to Frank Meadows’s keys plunking into the melody like tear drops, or the curls of Justin Morris’s pedal steel and Dowdy’s hushes exploding into the best pronunciation of “Shenandoah” ever put in a rock song, fits into the next. “I float on forever,” Dowdy lets out, adrift in the arms of his band. “Spangled” is a medley of some of this living world’s best players locking into themselves. If one song could be an entire pocket, it’s this one—a drunken trance of sentimental mystery, of friends coming and friends going, of a beauty you can drive past and remember. —Matt Mitchell

5. Little Simz: “Free”

It’s a special level of rap when you can take the lyrics, omit the music, and be left with just a beautiful piece of writing. Furthermore, it takes a special caliber of rapper to construct these phrases and rhyme schemes into reflections of human emotion that are both digestible and entertaining for audiences. I think of generational talents like Black Thought, Rakim, Ms. Lauryn Hill, and, in recent years, Little Simz. The London rapper has more than earned her place in any “best lyricists” conversation, repeatedly proving why she is one of the most compelling voices contributing to modern hip-hop. Opening along an infectious bass groove and soul-infused vocal refrain, “Free” is a bouncing, stirring anthem of self-liberation and resilience. In the first verse, Simz expounds on her definition of love before testing it against her feelings of fear, delivering each line completely composed yet with unclouded emotional intent. Never have I wanted to quote an entire song as much as here. Each bar is a masterful display of storytelling and personal affirmation—every line standing resolute for its sharp portrayal of life, trust, obsession, mortality, and knowledge, but it would be a waste to try and tackle everything Simz covers in the mere three-and-a-half-minute run time of “Free.” Instead, I thought of a 2011 interview with Jay-Z in which he said, “Rap is poetry. It’s thought provoking; there’s thought behind it… If you take those lyrics and you pull them away from the music and put ‘em on the wall somewhere and someone had to look at them, they would say, ‘This is genius. This is genius work,” and if “Free” doesn’t deserve that spot on the wall, no song does. —Gavyn Green

4. Nourished by Time: “Max Potential”

Like many others, I jumped on the Nourished by Time bandwagon after the release of his 2024 EP Catching Chickens, which also made Paste’s list of the best EPs of 2024. I was entranced by his simultaneously timely and lush single “Hell of a Ride” and quickly dove into the rest of his energized discography of delicious synth-pop and ‘90s R&B. After seeing him live this winter, it solidified my belief that Marcus Brown is one of the most exciting producers of this age. The dreamy “Max Potential” makes me all the more excited for his upcoming album, The Passionate Ones. The song’s ethereal soundscape, a textured pool of reverbed samples, sets the foundation for Brown’s brawny vocals as he sings passionately of a personal evolution. With searing guitar, funky piano chords, twinkling synth, and resonant drums, the layered track is a triumphant acceptance of one’s fate. In the face of a disorienting world, it’s not only a cathartic track, but a reminder that we can still take control of our lives. Empowerment is possible. —Camryn Teder

3. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band: “New Threats From the Soul”

My first thought upon listening to “New Threats From the Soul”: There’s signs of Silver Jews all over this. My second thought upon listening to “New Threats From the Soul”: What the fuck? Lovingly, Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band’s latest single, which is also the title track from their upcoming second album, is a deranged piece of music. Forget about how great this song sounds for a moment. Can we talk about Davis’ writing? You’d be foolish to do anything but hold every sentence in the light of your closeness. There’s an education to be had here, as the Louisville-bred lyrical marksman takes the loudmouth tempo of Jerry Jeff Walker, the literary devastation of David Berman, and the oddball charm of a John Prine verse and blends them all into a potent, drunken recital of strangeness. The devil is in the details too, of course—in languages unexpectedly woven into each other. “I was a cactus flower, I had Heisman buzz,” Davis sings. “Now it’s a pissing competition between the man I am and the guy I was.” Sweet nothings taste bitter, hell or high water is rising, and mismeasurements are six in one, half-dozen in the other. With Freakwater’s Catherine Irwin singing harmony, “New Threats From the Soul” is chicken soup for the rambling, anointed soul. The “I thought that I could make a better life with bubblegum and driftwood” refrain and those licks of saxophone and flute all point me in the only direction I wanna go. —Matt Mitchell

2. Holy Palmers’ Kiss & Melody English: “Horribly”

I’ve been into a lot of new music this year, from Lifeguard to Addison Rae, but there is no song I’ve revisited more than Holy Palmers’ Kiss and Melody English’s “Horribly.” It’s a song that reminds me of the early 2010s indie pop I loved growing up, in the vein of Passion Pit and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, while not feeling like it’s intentionally going for the nostalgia factor. English’s syrupy vocals over see-saw synths feel so blissfully sweet that I find myself needing more, hitting play again and again. It was self-released without much fanfare, but I’m convinced that it’ll experience a similar fate to their contemporary The Dare’s now-hit “Girls”: it’s only about time until people outside of the New York City DIY bubble find it and become as enamored with it as I have. It’s vastly different from the rest of Holy Palmers’ Kiss and English’s other work, but one can hope that at some point they team up again for more releases in this direction. —Tatiana Tenreyro

1. The Waterboys ft. Fiona Apple: “Letter From An Unknown Girlfriend”

Though it’s credited to the Waterboys, “Letter From An Unknown Girlfriend” belongs to Fiona Apple. The Scottish rockers penned an entire double-album to the late Dennis Hopper, but Apple’s cameo midway through the project puts the story’s perspective into the hands of a nameless woman who loathes Hopper just as much as she marvels at his mystique. “You had the charm, charm enough to sweep me,” she sings, pushing her voice against a bare piano melody. “Took me in your arms, so you’d satisfy and keep me. Too late, I knew that it was all and only about you. All about you, sweet you.” The chords never yell, remaining patient as Apple’s words climb through a thrashing pocket in her throat. You can hear her muscles clench as the suffering becomes clearer, as her roars dilute the adoration and reveal abuse. “I was intoxicated by the child in you!” she bursts. “I loved the satyr running wild in you, but I never met anyone who stunk like you, who talked junk like you, who fell in a funk like you, or got half as goddamn drunk as you!” But as the song begins to dissolve, Apple reveals the truth: “I used to say no man would ever cage me. And no man ever has. No, not even you. Oh, no, not you, sweet you.” “Letters From An Unknown Girlfriend” is a portrait of a woman aching over a piano, guided only by her memory. Rebelling against tedium, the Waterboys use the only thing they could ever need: Fiona Apple’s voice, an instrument touched by something more remarkable than God itself. —Matt Mitchell