10 Songs You Need to Hear This Week (October 23, 2025)
Don't miss out on these great new tracks.
Photo of Ekko Astral by Murphy Gerrasch
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.)
Dove Ellis: “Love Is”
Last month, Dove Ellis shared his first-ever single, “To The Sandals,” which I loved very much. It was a debut that summoned Radiohead and Dijon together, and it left an impression on me, to say the least. But Ellis’ new self-produced track, “Love Is,” is even better! I can’t wait to hear it live soon, when his upcoming North American route with Geese stops in Los Angeles. Until then, I’ll protect this recording. Inaugurated by a sparse piano melody, “Love Is” erupts into this wonderful, erratic flush of rock and roll. The drums sound like they’re being pounded on in the next room over, and Ellis’ voice vibrates nearly into a falsetto. But beneath all the fundamental stuff is this undertow of curdling distortion, attic noise, and skinny, bursting strings. None of it ever erupts, only the guitars and the phantom of Ellis’ refrain. This is pop music caught in the bardo. I think I’ll come back and visit “Love Is.” —Matt Mitchell
Dutch Interior: “Play the Song”
If you only read the lyrics to Dutch Interior’s newest song, you might think it was a 2010s pop radio hit. “Play the Song,” which conjures the request of its title repeatedly, is made up of rhymes like “when the beat drops / the whole world stops.” It would sound kitschy anywhere else, but the atmosphere of “Play That Song” paints the lyrics with true earnestness, a mood that’s spearheaded by singer Noah Kurtz’s delicate flip into a falsetto. Dutch Interior has been known to oscillate between soft rock, shoegaze, and country-folk, but this single is a definitive lean in the latter direction. The song gets by with vocals and the simple accompaniment of a piano and fingerpicked guitar. A high-pitched drone guitar floats above it all, discerning the tinge of nostalgia. Kurtz says it best, “Play the Song” is “an homage to those songs that come around every once in a while and grab you in an unexplainable way.” —Caroline Nieto
Anybody who’s been tuned into Paste’s music beat since early 2024 knows 
HAIM’s 
A few years ago, we were promised a proper “indie sleaze” revival, with a new class of acts bringing the same edge and coolness of Y2K. Aside from The Dare becoming the go-to DJ for the hottest events and producing hits for Charli XCX, the promised resurgence didn’t quite materialize. Maybe that’s because few people could figure out how to capture the spirit of that time without making a carbon copy of it. But if there’s someone who should give us hope for that revival to actually happen, it’s hemlock springs. She knows how to channel the essence of pop acts from the late 2000s like Marina, Santigold, and Black Kids while making something that feels completely her own. The moment I heard hemlocke’s song “girlfriend” off her 2023 EP going…GONE! I knew she was destined to become the next big thing. “head, shoulders, knees and ankles,” the second single from her upcoming debut LP, is just as addictive. It invites you into an eerie carnival, leaving you entranced under the hypnotic circus-like instrumentations until the song transforms into a completely different track two minutes in, becoming a Danny Elfman a la Tim Burton-esque ballad. It’s no surprise that Chappell Roan, who’s one of the most refreshing new voices in pop, invited hemlocke to open for her on tour. They’re both exactly the type of artists we need to shake things up. —Tatiana Tenreyro
I dig on Home Front because so much of their stuff is just a combination of two of my favorite things: synth-pop and post-punk. But their new album Watch It Die ain’t no eighties relapse. Instead, Graeme MacKinnon and Clint Frazier root themselves in the classics but ferment the sound in urgent, immediate ideas on “Eulogy.” It’s like two songs in one: a punishment of hardcore on the topline, a glint of pop animated underneath. And then the textures swap places, shuffling into this cresting, love-worn paean reflecting “what it means to lose the people we care about.” MacKinnon and Frazier sound positively mad in these times, in their “last goodbye” melodies. “It comes for me, it’ll come for you,” the former declares, as guitars clang and rupture and synths decoratively splash. “There’s no need to cry.” Home Front move through the onslaught with their scars intact and like a badge of courage. —Matt Mitchell
After seven years of silence, Mirah comes back not whispering but gasping. The 2000s indie-popper’s latest single, “Catch My Breath,” sounds like someone relearning how to need. Over glittery, jangling power-pop—think Tennis with sharper guitars—she untangles the wreckage of a relationship with both bite and self-awareness. “Won’t you come to bed my baby,” she sighs, before snapping back with, “Now I’m not saying I didn’t contribute / to this shitty stupid fucking mess we’ve gotten into.” Joined by Flock of Dimes’ Jenn Wasner, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, and percussionist Andrew Maguire, Mirah turns what could’ve been a breakup lament into a communal exhale. Their harmonies shimmer at the song’s edges, like friends helping her shoulder the breathlessness. The production gleams—neon synths, razor-edged guitars—but her delivery keeps it human, cracked, unguarded. It’s heartache turned into something bright enough to blind. —Casey Epstein-Gross
“Tumbleweed” spins like a fever dream of freedom—half midday rave, half paperwork meltdown. Jane Fitzsimmons sings about borders and bureaucracy like she’s trapped in an embassy with the windows down, her voice half-plea, half-eye-roll: “Grant me the permission / Can I come in please?” The bassline jitters with restless energy, guitars flickering like fluorescent lights on caffeine. By the time she chants “Stay, go, stay, go,” it feels less like red tape and more like a mantra for motion—a dance-floor daydream for anyone who’s ever waited too long for permission to move. The self-directed video makes the metaphor literal: Fitzsimmons leads a color-clad crowd through a sterile office, turning bureaucratic purgatory into a fluorescent bacchanal (think the Music Dance Experience from Severance, if it was actually cathartic instead of immensely unsettling). It’s funny, anxious, and irresistibly alive—bizarro indie rock for the paper-trailed and passport-stamped. —Casey Epstein-Gross
This week, to accompany the tenth anniversary of her U.S. Girls album Half Free, Meg Remy has shared two versions of “Running Errands,” one that takes place “Yesterday” and one “Today.” You can’t go wrong with either, but the “Yesterday” edition is especially great. Remy calls “Running Errands” a “musical ouroboros experiment,” implying that the song eats its own tail, so to speak. I’d say it’s infinite, an obvious idea heard throughout the arrangement’s bed of chopped-up samples and Remy’s swirling, kinetic lullaby, “Busy keeps the pain away, busy keeps our change away.” The song splits the difference between the mosaic art pop of Half Free and the soothing, countrypolitan wash of Remy’s recent album Scratch It. What that means is: “Running Errands (Yesterday)” is a delectable, soulful repetition that’ll turn you boundless. —Matt Mitchell
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