Best New Songs (October 2, 2025)

At Paste Music, we’re listening to so many new tunes on any given day, we barely have any time to listen to each other. Nevertheless, every week we can swing it, we take stock of the previous seven days’ best new songs, delivering a weekly playlist of our favorites. Check out this week’s material, in alphabetical order. (You can check out an ongoing playlist of every best new songs pick of 2025 here.)

1010benja: “YAM”

1010benja is still the madman he was on Ten Total last year. Incorporating influences spanning Hideo Kojima and John Frusciante, his work is engulfed in pop, trap, drill, and gospel music. His new song “YAM” is tremendous and brief, noodling in maximalist soul singing and scraping guitar licks. Put on a pair of headphones and the song turns into a ceremony. 1010benja’s voice is gummy and poppy; his harmonies are robust and passionate. The song’s cymbalism and gospel-snippet backdrop contracts while a guitar solo cruises. “Such a loveliness,” 1010benja sings, “a soft-hearted bashfulness.” Recorded in a Kansas City basement, “YAM” stands for “YOUR ASS, MAN” and that tone refracts in the music, when 1010benja’s croons tone into the muscular and his guitar playing lands there even more so. —Matt Mitchell

Casey Dienel: “The Butcher Is My Friend”

It’s time to have a conversation about Casey Dienel’s first record after quitting the business and ditching their old name, My Heart Is An Outlaw: We’re four singles in and they’ve all been starry, epic, and gorgeous. “Seventeen” and “Your Girl’s Upstairs” were vivid sprawls, but “The Butcher Is My Friend” (paired with A-side “People Can Change”) is Dienel’s straightest effort yet—and probably their best. The song sticks to you even when it flirts with total unrest. A chugging tandem of Max Jaffe’s percussion and Spencer Zahn’s bass anchors the tone while Meg Duffy’s splashy, twisting guitar howls above water. And Dienel rummages in the melody in a perfect, curious way, cresting through ideas about new love and a potent, if-not-detrimental fear of abandonment—of the self and the one you covet. “Cruise out to the spit, pelicans swan giving,” they sing. “Draw the moon so near, take a bite. It’s so soft, I could get used to this. But this heart won’t trust it.” Woodwinds and horns, courtesy of Aaron Rockers, Adam Dotson, Adam Schatz, and Jonah Parzen-Johnson, uncork in the scrim. Dienel declares, “Make a little fist, dive in,” until Schatz’s synth programming starts to sweep and blade. “Who cares who loves more?” This drip-fed rebirth of Dienel’s is a marvel to sit with. —Matt Mitchell

Chanel Beads: “The Coward Forgets His Nightmare”

Chanel Beads’ 2024 debut album Your Day Will Come was one of my favorites of last year, a record that I must’ve listened to hundreds of times until eventually wearing it down for myself. So, needless to say, I’m thrilled that we have a new Chanel Beads track, “The Coward Forgets His Nightmare,” with its release coinciding with the major milestone of the trio opening for Lorde at Madison Square Garden. Chanel Beads has gone pop before in “Unifying Thought” and “I Think I Saw,” but “The Coward Forgets His Name” is particularly jaunty and sticky-sweet, even as bandleader Shane Lavers and his bandmates Maya McGrory and Zach Paul add experimental touches that make it feel like it’s recorded at an extraterrestrial construction site. Lavers has a way of writing that feels cryptic while still being deeply personal to him and in “Coward” it’s almost as if you’re dropped into a emotional conversation with no context, as he sings, “When you’re out there running with disease in your feet / Thought the music would save you like it saved me / I pray the world will show you mercy like my daddy showed me / I thought I saw you smiling in all my memories.” —Tatiana Tenreyro

Dry Cleaning: “Hit My Head All Day”

I think Dry Cleaning is one of the best living bands. Their first two records, New Long Leg and Stumpwork, are all-timers, which means I’ve been waiting for LP3 since, roughly, October 21, 2022. Secret Love is coming in January, which is certainly too far away. But I will cope, because “Hit My Head All Day” is an instant-classic single. Ripe with Nick Buxton’s humid, glowy programming, Tom Dowse’s atonal guitar topline, and Florence Shaw’s magnetic, sensual delivery, the song is Dry Cleaning sauntering, not busting, into a new definition. The song was inspired, at the demo stage, by Sly and The Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On but it comes out far more dubby and intonated on the Cate Le Bon-produced final concoction. It’s a little bit bizarre, but most Dry Cleaning songs are, and it’s a little bit psychedelic, which feels like a new body for Shaw and her bandmates to dress up. “When I was a child, I wanted to try a horse,” Shaw murmurs. “Onions, carrots, and celery. Excuse me, what?” Buxton, Dowse, and Lewis Maynard quickly file in, robotically chanting, “I’m using up makeup, I’m using up makeup.” Eventually, Shaw reaches her conclusion: “I simply must have experiences.” Listening to “Hit My Head All Day” certainly is one and I keep having it. —Matt Mitchell

Geese: “Long Island City Here I Come”

Geese has been an unstoppable force since the release of their sophomore record, Getting Killed, last Friday. After the success of their rousing anthemic singles, “Taxes” and “100 Horses,” Geese showed off their knack for deft lyricism with album tracks like “Au Pays du Cocaine” and “Long Island City Here I Come.” The 6-minute latter pulses with gripping anxiety, mirroring an impatient foot tapping when the train gets delayed. Singer Cameron Winter calls to the spirits Joan of Arc and the biblical figure Joshua to expound his determination to go somewhere, even if he’s not quite sure where. He repeats “here I come” like a sick prayer, while the band creates a ruckus with errant percussion and the aimless pounding of piano keys. Whether they are traveling “like Charlemagne on the midnight bus,” or simply taking the 7 down to Court Street, Geese move with a vengeance, never coming up for air, and never slowing down. —Caroline Nieto