Best New Songs of the Week (September 18, 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.)

Agriculture: “Dan’s Love Song”

Walk with me for a moment. Beneath a sludgy, soupy, disgusting film of noise, I swear to God, “Dan’s Love Song” sounds like Pink Floyd’s “On the Turning Away.” That’s how soothing Dan Meyer’s vocal is… once you locate it, of course. And the lyrics collapsing out of him and into me are so beautiful. “Just as empty skies are filled, every moment touches all of time” and “May you see that, even right now, so many years before you, you can be found and I love you” kiss me like perfume. It’s a colossal statement from Agriculture, one that gestures toward real shoegaze—a sub-genre I have mostly detested the so-called revival of. But “Dan’s Love Song” is much more than my bloody valentine progeny. It’s a spiritual folksong spoken into a strata of pull-apart melody and harsh, atonal, neck-breaking bedlam that shocks but never quite overwhelms. The music blasts ecstatic black metal with numbing intensity until it’s reborn into vibrance. —Matt Mitchell

Anastasia Coope: “Oregon”

If you hear a horse galloping, a heel clicking, or a whistle through the trees, it’s probably just Anastasia Coope. The newest song from her upcoming DOT EP, “Oregon,” pulses and prods, stemming from an intrepid bass drum and aligning in a duet with the vocal line. Coope sings in tight, pinchy harmony with herself, haunting the track with her sighs and exclamations. Plucky guitars sound off, creating an eerie backdrop of twinkling sound. She’s never shied away from experimentation, and “Oregon” is the culmination of her past projects—wacky, eccentric, and cryptic—and the potential of her sonic future. Listen to this song on a moonlit walk, a trod through tall grass, or any moment when you want to feel enchanted by a musical experience. —Caroline Nieto

Avery Tucker: “My Life Isn’t Leaving You”

Avery Tucker has been previewing his post-Girlpool era with a handful of singles from his upcoming debut solo album, Paw, but it’s “My Life Isn’t Leaving You,” co-produced by A.G. Cook, that has stood out to me the most. Throughout its almost 4-minute run, it transforms and grows, almost as a reflection of Tucker’s own artistic journey. It begins with sparse instrumentation, just guitar and Tucker’s husky voice, but morphs into an impassioned pop song. Its catchy chorus (“I wonder sometimes if the feeling’s alarming / You look at me like you need a reminding / But I can tell my life isn’t leaving you / It’s not supposed to”) feels ripe for radio play, a foray that wouldn’t have been fitting for Girlpool. With Tucker’s Girlpool bandmate Harmony Tividad entering the pop realm with her 2024 album Gossip, I’m all here for the former duo’s pop domination. —Tatiana Tenreyro

duendita: “Big One”

duendita, through collaborations with MIKE, Wiki, and Jamila Woods, established herself as one of the better feature artists of our time at the dusk of the 2010s. Ever since releasing the spiritual, psychedelic “Open Eyes” in 2021, her long-form work hasn’t quite stuck with me me, though the Queens-based musician’s last album, April’s a strong desire to survive, did flash what makes her so great: a balmy, sometimes-towering and spellbound voice that soothes the clashing styles that oft-permeate her work. “baby teeth” is a great example of a non-negotiable fact: duendita can absolutely wail, with a voice as dramatic as Haley Fohr’s and as seductive as Kali Uchis’. But it’s her range of quiet that becomes an airy, tranquil superpower on her new single, “Big One.” Written after she went “to the club five nights in a row [and] saw the sun rise every single morning,” duendita sings alongside Emily Akpan and Vanessa Camacho over a Noah Becker beat, in a bump of joy and “hella gratitude.” You can hear the sheets crinkle. “Every time we touch, oh, my love, I’m lifted up,” duendita vibrates. “Filled up on your love, spilling from my honey cup. Going, the night is gone.” “Big One” is a gas, cavernously and stars-aligningly so. —Matt Mitchell

Helado Negro: “More”

Helado Negro recently announced that after years of being under 4AD, he’s signed to Ninja Tune subsidiary Big Dada. It’s a more fitting label home for him and marks a fresh beginning for an artist who has consistently put out fantastic music for nearly two decades. Hearing “More,” his first preview from his upcoming EP The Last Sound on Earth, the song lives up to its title—I need more. It calls back to the heyday of ’90s electronica with a psychedelic funk beat, tinged with acid house. It’s a shame that the song arrived at the tail end of summer, as I can easily imagine this being a DJ fixture at any rooftop party. —Tatiana Tenreyro

Jeff Tweedy: “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”

Early in the pandemic, Jeff Tweedy realized he even missed the things he used to hate about concerts: sticky carpets, spilled drinks, strangers blowing smoke in his face. On “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” (Tweedy’s final single prior to the release of his upcoming triple LP, Twilight Override), he reframes that grime as a kind of sacred inheritance. Reed’s music, Tweedy has said, was his truest early mentor, and you can hear that devotion in the way he chants rock’s resurrection—”rock and roll is dead, but the dead don’t die”—like a sequel to “Rock ‘N’ Roll” itself. Acoustic strums lilt toward alt-country, only to rupture into noisy bursts of guitar and clashing drums that pulse beneath the headbanging mantra of “the dead don’t die.” The title isn’t a gag so much as an autobiography: Reed’s music was Tweedy’s truest early mentor, a voice equal parts joy and darkness, cynicism and salvation. That “beautiful conflict,” as Tweedy called it in a statement, runs through the song, which celebrates not comfort but contradiction—the way rock’s mess, menace, and noise can still feel like the most reliable caretaker. —Casey Epstein-Gross

Jenny On Holiday: “Every Ounce of Me”

Here’s a perfect pop song for you, courtesy of one-half of the great and deeply missed band Let’s Eat Grandma. Jenny Hollingsworth, whose short discography with Rosa Walton has floored me for almost ten years, is stepping out on her own now, and her debut single, “Every Ounce of Me,” released under the name Jenny On Holiday, is remarkably catchy. The song is ecstatic, pilled by ‘80s FM radio synth voicings and box-office rhythms. The chugging, skittering programming briefly reminds me of that in Kenny Loggins’ “Playing With the Boys,” and Holliingsworth’s vocal inflection drips from the ribs of Debbie Gibson and Pat Benatar. “Every Ounce of Me” flashes and fascinates at every note. And that burst of stadium-melting electric guitar that barrels into view as the track concludes? Wowza. I suppose I could wait a lifetime for the next Let’s Eat Grandma album, especially if that means getting a hundred more songs like “Every Ounce of Me” first. —Matt Mitchell

keiyaA: “take it”

keiyaA’s debut record, Forever, Ya Girl, came out five years ago and is still one of this young decade’s very best. Now on XL’s roster, alongside Fabiana Palladino, Burial, Nourished by Time, and Fontaines D.C., her great lo-fi post-R&B is in even greater company. The Chicago-bred, New York-based instrumentalist/producer’s second LP, hooke’s law, will unfurl on Halloween, and keiyaA says it’s an “album about the journey of self love, from an angle that isn’t all affirmations and capitalistic self-care. It’s not a linear story with a moral at the end. It’s more of a cycle, a spiral.” New single “take it” blurs and shadows. After a mutated “bring that one back from the top” sample makes a slit in the curtain, keiyaA’s deconstructions come spilling out, in a blend of broken glass, jazz drumming, and organ. Harmonies feather into hers until the melody snares into fits of DnB while she repeats “take it” forty-two times. Desire teems in a disembodied vocal. “Let me come without my mask,” it beckons. “Let me come, naked, dark. Let me come, let me lay beside you.” “take it” is richly adrift. —Matt Mitchell

Rocket: “Another Second Chance”

Ahead of their upcoming album, R is for Rocket, Rocket has released a slate of fresh, punchy tracks that recall the triumphs of 2023’s Versions of You EP. Their newest single, “Another Second Chance,” draws from their typical well of inspiration, employing the rousing percussive style and fuzzy guitars of ‘90s rock bands. What sets Rocket apart from their predecessors are the sticky-sweet melodies from singer/bassist Alithea Tuttle, who cuts the friction of the band with her voice. She paints the song with pent up passion, asking every bit of the chorus’s central question: “What if you open me up and decide it’s never enough for you?” It’s a song that begs you to sing along, to roll down your windows and savor in the retreating days of a languid summer. That tightly crafted refrain unwinds into a dreamy post-chorus, unspooling the instrumentation one by one and building it back up again. Drummer Cooper Ladomade comes in with a calculated, syncopated series of snare hits, and Tuttle sings in rounds of whirling echoes. Harmonies stream as she declares, “I wanna be the one that makes it out of your dreams.” —Caroline Nieto

Wicca Phase Springs Eternal ft. Ethel Cain: “Meet Me Anywhere”

After being introduced to Ethel Cain’s music in 2020 by a Twitter friend, one of the first tracks I heard of hers besides “Crush” (which I raved about while working at The A.V. Club) that clued me in on Cain becoming the next big thing in pop music was “God’s Country,” featuring Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. It was the perfect marriage between Cain’s ethereal, Florence + the Machine-inspired approach and SoundCloud emo rap. Now that Hayden Anhedönia’s work under the Ethel Cain moniker has turned her into a household name—one who even Fox News pundits have tried to (unsuccessfully) take down—it’s a wonderful full-circle moment for her to collaborate with Wicca Phase again. This time, it’s Cain being featured in Wicca Phase’s EP, with “Meet Me Anywhere” being a departure from the type of Americana alt-pop Anhedönia is known for. Instead, Wicca Phase is entering his country crooner era, with a breathtaking duet that combines Cain’s breathy, haunting vocals with the former Tigers Jaw member’s gravelly twang. —Tatiana Tenreyro

Other Notable Songs This Week: Anna von Hausswolff: “Facing Atlas”; Cardinals: “Masquerade”; Carly Rae Jepsen: “Guardian Angel”; claire rousay: “somewhat burdensome”; Courtney Marie Andrews: “Cons and Clowns”; Flock of Dimes: “Defeat”; Good Flying Birds: “I Care For You”; Hannah Frances: “Life’s Work”; ira glass: “fd&c red 40”; Liz Cooper: “New Day”; Nick Shoulders: “Bored Fightin’”; Peel Dream Magazine: “Venus in Nadir”; PONY: “Superglue”; Snooper: “Pom Pom”

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

Best New Songs (September 18, 2025)

Don't miss out on these great new tracks.