Best New Songs (January 2, 2025)
Don't miss these great tracks.
Photo by Tonje Thilesen
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.)
Beach Fossils: “Inside Out”
Beach Fossils are no strangers to an out-of-left-field cover song, as they’ve tackled tracks by Kelly Lee Owens (“L.I.N.E.”), Disclosure and Sam Smith (“Latch”) and Yung Lean (“Agony”) over the last six, seven years. But their latest effort, a rendition of Duster’s “Inside Out” from 1998, is a bit more on-the-nose for the Brooklyn indie troupe. It’s out via Numero Group (Duster’s label) rather than Beach Fossils’ mothership Bayonet, so who knows what the label is cooking up right now. The Stratosphere song sounds great in the hands of Dustin Payseur and his bandmates, and it’s a two-minute slowcore arrangement that comes and goes even quicker than that. Beach Fossils make Duster sound more high-definition here, but it’s still a woozy, warm guitar track slowly stretching out. —Matt Mitchell
girlpuppy: “Windows”
“Today I drove past your old house and sat outside for a while / If I look close enough, I can see us through the windows,” intones Becca Harvey—the Atlanta singer-songwriter better known under her stage name of girlpuppy—on “Windows,” a soft, wistful track about the end of a relationship. Past comparisons made between Harvey and indie-pop icon Phoebe Bridgers definitely find purchase on “Windows,” but Harvey’s work stands on its own as well. Warm with yearning and steely with certainty, the song chronicles the impossibility of separating two intertwined lives—for both parties involved. “However much I might miss you,” Harvey sings, her voice clear, angelic: “You’ll always have to miss me more.” —Casey Epstein-Gross
hemlock: “anything at all (nov nineteen)”
Just after the holiday, hemlock—the one-person-project-but-sometimes-full-band led by Caroline Chauffe—released november, the sixth and latest entry in their ongoing “song-a-day” series. They wrote and recorded 30 tracks at the end of 2024, continuing their ever prolific release streak to coincide with their perma-tour. Sifting through the acoustic fragments recorded onto a Sire app on their phone, there’s so much on november to love but I return most often to “anything at all,” Chauffe’s entry from November 19th and a sweet, two-minute lullaby about the entanglements of loving and leaving. Chauffe calls the song-a-day exercise an “ongoing exercise in practicing imperfection,” and “anything at all” taps right into that: “you’re good as dead still blending in among the living, you’re good as dead and haunting my heart for a living.” —Matt Mitchell
Hour: “At the Bar Where You Literally Saved Me From Fatal Heartbreak – Live at PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA – 4/12/24”
On Valentine’s Day, the Philadelphia-based, instrumental chamber folk and Americana ensemble Hour will put out Subminiature, a new collection of live material captured in various cities across the East Coast. In 2024, we named Hour’s last LP, Ease the Work, one of the 100 best albums of the year, and they’re sticking around in 2025 already. Some of Subminiature draws from the band’s seven-year existence, and lead single “At the Bar Where You Literally Saved Me From Fatal Heartbreak,” captured at PhilaMOCA in April 2024, gets a beautiful, aching tune-up from its album-recorded version six years ago. The song’s lifespan has been made anew by Michael Cormier-O’Leary’s and his bandmates (Jason Calhoun, Em Downing, Matt Fox, Peter Gill, Lucas Knapp, Evan McGonagill, Erika Nininger, Abi Reimold and Adelyn Strei). When the crowd’s yelping cheers flood the finale, I remember that “At the Bar Where You Literally Saved Me From Fatal Heartbreak” is being played live. Hour blur the line with a deeply profound and well-curated chemistry. —Matt Mitchell
Jane Remover: “JRJRJR”
After dropping three of the best singles of 2024 (“Dream Sequence,” “Magic I Want U,” “Flash in the Pan”), Jane Remover is going to have a busy, busy spring. Their side project Venturing has already announced a new record, Ghostholding, that’s due out 2/14. Now, Jane is following up their terrific, shoegaze oriented 2023 LP Census Designated with Revengeseezkerz, set to arrive sometime in the coming months. The project’s lead single, “JRJRJR,” glitches into focus, cycling through fits of noise, strobing trap beats and metallic hyperpop. It’s textbook Jane Remover—a popping culmination of Frailty’s most digital moments and Census Designated’s heaviest strains of chaos—and it’s purposefully disorienting. What draws me to Jane’s work is how unpredictable it is, even when it’s this digicore enmeshment of everything they do perfectly. Their new song is so non-categorical that your best bet is to just call it what it is: “JRJRJR.” —Matt Mitchell
Jeff Rosenstock: “The Sunrise Song”
DIY legend—and self-described “really good musician and lyricist and human [who] does NOT like vomit!”—Jeff Rosenstock quietly released his first track since 2023’s phenomenal record HELLMODE on Group Picture Vol. 14, the 14th compilation album from California art collective Making New Enemies. “The Sunrise Song” is a mellow, insomniac anthem that sees Rosenstock return to his lo-fi, pared-down roots (à la his underrated 2012 track “The Internet is Everywhere,” which still breaks my heart every time I hear it). As a renowned insomniac myself, I can officially confirm that Rosenstock’s depiction is spot-on; the lines “I’ll drift off, if not tonight or tomorrow / Soon enough I’ll get another night of sleep / I’ll feel fine, if not tonight or tomorrow / Soon enough I’ll get another night of sleep” are repeated over and over, like a mantra. It’s an understated, beautiful little diddy, all Rosenstock and his guitar (save for a small interlude featuring a lo-fi, vaguely mellotron-sounding melody)—a pleasant surprise for all us Rosenstock-heads as we await whatever he has in store for us next. —Casey Epstein-Gross
Little Simz: “Hello, Hi”
Rapping involves plenty of bravado, but when it comes to English-Nigerian artist Little Simz’s bars, she’s not boasting—she’s simply stating the facts. Her last three LPs have topped the UK Hip Hop and R&B Albums Chart, and then there’s her Ivor Novello Award, NME Award and Mercury Prize to consider. And, we named her Drop 7 EP one of the best of last year. Suffice it to say, we adore her new single “Hello, Hi” and are so behind her when she says, “My shit has a standard, I couldn’t slip if I tried to.” Over a chipmunked backing vocal and melodic, early ‘00s-style beat, Little Simz shrugs off naysayers and sheep-like fad followers. “SS Simz ’25, you ain’t never seen this season / Takin’ it to another level this year and I got every reason,” Little Simz promises on the track. Maybe these next 12 months won’t be so bad after all.—Clare Martin
Miya Folick: “This Time Around”
Miya Folick’s third LP, Erotica Veronica, is undoubtedly one of our most highly anticipated albums of 2025. Following the unabashed sexual freedom of her previous single “Erotica” is the comparatively soul-searching “This Time Around.” Folick addresses a noncommittal partner and sings of hopefully escaping their relationship’s doomed cycle. Her voice is exquisitely delicate and vulnerable—a reflection of her interiority—over a dark, forlorn acoustic guitar to start. Her simple yet poetic lyrics—“You cut me with a comment in parentheses”—feel even more melancholy thanks to the slight country twang in her voice and Meg Duffy’s guitar. Folick’s downplaying of her feelings will be familiar to anyone who had to walk on eggshells around their partner: “Hey, babe, it’s okay, I just feel like I’m on fire / The pulsing in my chest sorta feels like desire.” —Clare Martin
SZA: “Scorsese Baby Daddy”
Right before the holiday, SZA finally released Lana, the long-awaited deluxe-edition of her 2022 masterpiece SOS. Most of the new tracks, like “30 for 30,” “Drive” and “Crybaby,” are fine entries into SZA’s catalog, and “Saturn,” which was released way back in February 2024, still sounds as good as ever. But a lot of Lana fails to make SOS better—except for “Scorsese Baby Daddy,” which I think could go toe-to-toe with the best SOS tracks. Co-written by Tyler Johnson, Tyler Page, Owen Stoutt and Michael Uzowuru, “Scorsese Baby Daddy” 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. —Matt Mitchell
Thursday: “Taking Inventory of A Frozen Lake”
One of the first new songs I heard in 2025 was this dreary yet formidable single from the longstanding post-rock group Thursday, crafted during off days during the band’s 2022 tour with My Chemical Romance. Regarded by the band on their Instagram as the A-side to “White Bikes,” which was released in early December, “Taking Inventory of a Frozen Lake” lives up to its title. It’s a brooding rumination of what happened in the past tense, and what waits ahead in the dark and cold wintertime. Between muffed screeches and pitched yelps from vocalist Geoff Rickly and the coalescence of moody, spacious guitars, Thursday wrestle with the isolation and rigidness that comes when the temperature drops. “As you walked the platform in a daze / You swore that sleep was a place we would never reach,” Rickly laments in a restless spoken-word. “Taking Inventory of a Frozen Lake” exists in the middle space between staying contained and being atmospheric, intimate in its body-focused lyrics but progressive in its windy and echoed instrumentals. The new year can be a dizzying time, and the way Ricky wanders through the empty hearts of subway platforms makes that sensation a little more relatable and all the more comforting. —Alli Dempsey
Other Notable Songs This Week: Bad Bunny: “PIToRRO DE COCO”; E L U C I D: “Interference Pattern”; Fleshwater: “Standalone”; Joey Bada$$: “The Ruler’s Back”; Sun June & Advance Base: “Christmas is Over”; The Alchemist: “Floppy Disks”; Yawners: “1 de enero”; Your Old Droog: “Suspects”
Check out a playlist of this week’s best new songs below.