Paste Magazine's Best New Songs of the Week (May 15, 2025)

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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.)

Coach Party: “Girls!”

There are songs to sink into when you’re sad, and there are others to blast in your car when you feel like the luckiest person in the world. Coach Party’s new single is the latter. A grungy garage-rock track rife with driving rhythms, “GIRLS!” is an anthemic tribute to the people in our lives that lift us up. Buzzing guitars collide with driving drums to frame frontwoman Jess Eastwood’s searing vocals. “Where are fuck are my girls?” she sings, her voice ricocheting against a chaotic spider web of rhythms. For lovers of groups like Amyl and Sniffers or Lambrini Girls, this one’s for you, too. —Camryn Teder

Folk Bitch Trio: “Cathode Ray”

“Cathode Ray” comes alongside the announcement of Folk Bitch Trio’s debut full-length album, Now Would Be A Good Time (out July 25). The Australian three-piece recently signed to Jagjaguwar following a steady, three-year run of singles. I’ve been a big fan of the band since I heard “Analogue,” their close harmonies and blunt lyrics charming me in a witchy, whimsigoth kind of way. “Cathode Ray” continues these themes, with stacked harmonies even eerier and a beat all the more sauntering. Its accompanying video is a coven-coded fever dream, Lynchian in its dreamlike haze and ominous location (what very well might be a haunted house) and Andersonian (Wes and Paul Thomas, if I have to be specific) in its overwhelmingly pink lighting and voyeuristic camerawork. The vocals become more and more overmodulated as the song continues, releasing this tension and returning to those crisp harmonies on the closing hook: “Come undone.” —Cassidy Sollazzo

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: “Grow Wings and Fly”

You never know what to expect in the Gizzverse. A new song can mean anything: a thrash-metal rocker, a 20-minute instrumental made exclusively from modular synths, a bootleg track from 10 years ago. On “Grow Wings and Fly,” the third single off Phantom Island, it’s more rock-band instrumentalism, this time with the twangy psychedelic jams that have long been synonymous with the King Gizzard name. Sweeping strings lay over a bare acoustic riff, with circling woodwinds and ripping percussion sending the song into a fiddle-forward country rock tear. Melodic vocal passages add an operatic glimmer, creating perfect opportunities to sneak in low-key, introspective verses, like “The distorted view from my misty window has a thin ray of light that’s got a peaking crescendo / The moon is a clock face that’s tick, tick, ticking with a crooked smile / We’re all in the rat race / Together we go the extra mile.” A mouthful, sure, but I’m right there with them. —Cassidy Sollazzo

Maruja: “Look Down On Us”

Last Friday, UK post-rock foursome Maruja unearthed the news of their long-awaited debut album, Pain to Power. I heard lead single “Look Down On Us” for the first time at SXSW in March, when the band 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

Midwife: “Signs”

Known for her dreamy slowcore discography, Midwife just shared a lost single from her acclaimed 2024 album No Depression in Heaven. Building on the project’s exploration of grief, “Signs” is just as lush as the rest of the record in all its expansive, shoegaze glory. In it, a grungy guitar rings out alongside singer Madeline Johnston’s vocals. Softly echoing, her voice is a lone mermaid’s call from the blackness of a dead sea. Johnston reflects on the people she’s lost in the lyrics, and how she still looks for connections to them in the present. The sparse alternative rock sound feels like something you’d find in ‘90s alternative groups like Nirvana or Mazzy Star. The result is a song that is simple yet enchanting. —Camryn Teder

Miley Cyrus: “More to Lose”

I grew up watching Miley Cyrus on Disney Channel; I was a teenager when she set out on that run of solo albums that included the very good Bangerz and its very bad psychedelic follow-up, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. What she’s done in the 10 years since has been unpredictable, to say the least, but I’m glad I’ve been witness to the journey. She’s made stops in country, glam rock, and industry pop, picking up two Grammy Awards in the process. And say what you will about how overplayed “Flowers” was two years ago, but Miley has proved that she’s incapable of staying in one genre lane for longer than an album cycle. And I appreciate that about her artistry, even if the results are sometimes less than great. Luckily, the forthcoming Something Beautiful looks to be the greatest effort of her career, if the four singles so far—which span the depths of jazz, psych-pop, industrial rock, and R&B—are any indication. “Prelude” featured writing from Model/Actriz’s Cole Haden. The title track was a dramatic, angular blast of distortion and trip-hop. “End of the World” featured Alvvays and dipped into the dream-pop world. Now, “More to Lose” puts Miley’s God-given mezzo-soprano voice to good work. Co-producer Jonathan Rado plays, by my count, 10 instruments here, and Nelson Devereaux’s saxophone solo perfectly underscores Miley’s singing—which is as epic and heavy-hearted as ever. The way she grips the “but I wish it wasn’t true” line, screaming it with dramatic abandon, will give you chills. Miley Cyrus at her very best was well worth the wait. —Matt Mitchell

Nation of Language: “Inept Apollo”

Brooklyn trio Nation of Language—the best synth-pop band in the world—are the newest Sub Pop signees and have returned with “Inept Apollo,” their first single post-Strange Disciple. The track feels like a Gary Numan-meets-Devo-meets-A.G. Cook fever dream. Aidan Noell’s synths are punchier than ever, flourishing in tandem with Alex MacKay’s ever-danceable bass melodies, and Ian Devaney’s vocals remain mysterious and enticing. The song shapeshifts as it unfolds, becoming its own reflection of the creative process. The accompanying video drives this idea home, depicting Devaney, Noell, and MacKay rehearsing in the studio and drifting between practice spaces, catching glimpses of producers, models, stage actors, dancers, and filmmakers. Everyone’s doing something different, yet they all feel bound by the same pursuit: a drive to create, to sharpen their craft. Devaney frames the song’s perspective best: “Work is a respite from pain. Whether it’s a paying job or just the thing you pour yourself into, having a direction to move in, finding a flow state, it can move focus away from the heaviness of the heart… But the artistic process also tends to be when impostor syndrome rears its ugly head. The beautiful thing is the striving and continuing on, rather than the final product or any notion of ‘success.’ The power of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.” —Cassidy Sollazzo

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

Tchotchke: “Did You Hear?”

Let me introduce you to your new favorite band: Tchotchke, the Los Angeles-bred, NYC-based trio of Anastasia Sanchez, Eva Chambers, and Emily Tooraen. This week marks their first new music release in nearly three years, not since their eponymous debut album hit the shelves in July 2022. “Did You Hear?” is the belle of the ball, a “timeless story of a girl dating a knowingly deceptive man and hiding her pain.” Sanchez elaborates: “In a fleeting romance, she starts to convince herself that she could be the one to change him. The lines blur between hope and reality, and the fantasy fades into contempt.” “Did You Hear?” was produced by the Lemon Twigs, and the track is girl-group bliss with a modern bedroom edge. It’s diva-rock full of kaleidoscopic pop color, as the trio rise up to meet the moment, escalating their reverie of retro with cool-blue guitar riffs and Merseybeat drum fills. And, as always, “Did You Hear?” those Tchotchke vocals reach for the high-heavens. “I’m not a fool, still I’m wondering, ‘Will he ever really love me?’ In spite of all that he’s done, I was #1,” the girls harmonize, pinning this new sun-dappled pop-rock anthem into their already rich vocabulary of talents. —Matt Mitchell

yeule: “Dudu”

The new yeule album, Evangelic Girl Is A Gun, is shaping up to be a very, very good one. Just as their previous full-length effort, softscars was a glitch-pop memoir of reclaimed grief and trauma, Evangelic Girl Is A Gun remains anchored in the personal. The album’s focus track, the Clams Casino and Fitness-assisted “Skullcrusher,” was the Singaporean musician’s homage to their life as a painter, while new song “Dudu” is about “unrequited love and stifling yourself” while returning to the former’s imagery with hues of collapsing romance: “Ripped my painting off the frame, I screamed and screamed and screamed your name. All my paint washed away.” What yeule presents to us here is a collage of millennial pop and cassette rock. Think: Avril Lavigne but with a synthesizer and drum machine. “Dudu” might be the catchiest song they’ve ever made, cushioned ever so nostalgically by lines like “I chased the sun, I chased the flames” and “I’ll leave a trace before you forget my face.” This is yeule at their very best. —Matt Mitchell

Other Notable Songs This Week: Alan Sparhawk ft. Trampled By Turtles: “Not Broken”; Aunt Katrina: “Peace of Mind”; Arca: “Sola”; Billie Marten: “Swing”; Dylan Earl: “Outlaw Country”; Elias Rønnenfelt: “Carry-On Bag”; Golomb: “Real Power”; Good Looks: “I Don’t Want to Die”; Horsepower: “Excalibur”; Kevin Devine: “Laughing in the Ambulance Again”; Kilo Kish: “enough”; Liquid Mike: “Selling Swords”; Little Simz: “Young”; No Joy: “Bugland”; Pile: “Born at Night”; Rocket: “One Million”; Sofia Kourtesis & Daphni: “Unidos”; Subsonic Eye: “My iPhone Screen”; Waterbaby: “Amiss”; Yaya Bey: “wake up b*tch”

Check out a playlist of this week’s best new songs below.

Best New Songs (May 15, 2025)

Don't miss out on these great new tracks.