The 10 Best New Songs

Featuring Jordana, Militarie Gun, Wiki & Subjxct 5, and more

Music Lists Best New Songs
The 10 Best New Songs

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 tracks, delivering a weekly playlist of our favorites. Check out this week’s best new songs below.

Alvvays: “After The Earthquake”

On the fifth and final single ahead of their first new album in five years, Alvvays pick up the pieces after disaster. Molly Rankin and Alec O’Hanley intertwine their exhilarating jangle-pop guitar riffs over drummer Sheridan Riley and bassist Abbey Blackwell’s thrumming low end, all in service of “a rapid fire recital of drive-thru breakdown, tectonic breakup and boyfriend in a coma brake failure,” as the quintet describe it. The racing song screeches to a halt in its bridge, bringing Kerri MacLellan’s solemn keys to the forefront, as well as Rankin’s plaintive considerations of the painful fallout of loving and losing: “Why would I ever fall in love again / When every detail is over the guardrail?” Before you know it, the track is back at full throttle and beyond, fearlessly moving forward into its uncertain future. —Scott Russell

Anxious: “Sunsign”

Connecticut’s Anxious don’t miss a beat on “Sunsign,” their first new material since the January release of their acclaimed full-length debut Little Green House. That’s not to say they’re stuck in one place: The band’s new track dials back their emo-tinged post-hardcore intensity while remaining a carthartic, energizing anthem. Recorded and produced by Mike Sapone (Taking Back Sunday, The Front Bottoms, Oso Oso), the track puts an intimate, acoustic guitar-driven foot forward, exhibiting a new high-water mark of dynamism for the band. Vocalist Grady Allen wrestles with feelings of emotional isolation and overwhelm, wondering in the song’s sticky-sweet choruses, “Am I work when I want help? / Am I thinking ‘bout myself?” These questions have no easy answers, as Anxious know well, but ultimately, the conversation itself matters most: “I call you again and you answer the same.” —Scott Russell

Babehoven: “Often

On Babehoven’s newest single “Often,” the band uses the word as anything but a reassurance of familiarity. “You are family / And that means loss to me often / You are family / And that’s lost to me often,” hums vocalist Maya Bon. There are often just muted guitar strings and a singular high synth to guide you through the sorrow of this song. The resolution it reaches is half-hearted, the kind of forgiveness where you have to make peace with it because you know it will happen again, with Bon singing, “Now this isn’t so bad / I’m not hurting like I was hurting for some years.” As an album closer, it’s a heartbreaking one that leaves things realistically up in the air. “‘Often’ is a song about grief, about holding love for a person I’ve lost, about trying to let go and find new paths for myself,” says Bon. “This song changed my life when I wrote it and has provided clarity for me in times of chaos. I hope that, through sharing it, others will find in it comfort and clarity, too.” —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Bicep feat. Clara La San: “Water”

On Bicep’s first new material since their 2021 album Isles, they reunite with vocalist Clara La San (who sang on two of that LP’s tracks) to deliver a luminous new electronic banger. “Water” was born out of the U.K. duo’s experiments with the MEGAfm, a synth that shares its sounds with the SEGA Genesis game console. Though pulsing club drums and La San’s sustained vocals are first and foremost on the track, those old-school bleeps and bloops eventually burst through to the forefront, kicking off a crescendo that makes it easy to see why “Water” is a live fan-favorite. The song manages to evoke both freedom’s escape and nostalgia’s comfort, transporting you out of the present moment in more ways than one. —Scott Russell

Jamila Woods: Boundaries

Prentis Hemphill once wrote, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” This idea of walls built not to keep two people apart, but rather to keep them together inspired Chicago singer/songwriter and poet Jamila Woods, whose resulting single “Boundaries” is her first solo release since 2020’s “SULA (Paperback).” Produced by BLVK, the song builds from a sparse, yet soulful combination of Spanish guitar and tapped hand percussion, the instrumental gradually blossoming as Woods enters. Her velvety vocals wrestle with the question of “How close is too close?”—she sings, “I keep you on the outside / From far enough away you seem pristine / There’ll never be a downside / I’d hate to find a reason I should leave,” expressing these fears of loss the best way she knows how. As the beat beneath her expands and contracts like a living thing, Woods repeats her verses as if locked in an internal debate with no resolution, concluding the tune by simply insisting, “Boundaries, boundaries.” —Scott Russell

Jordana: “SYT

It’s like you accidentally broke a bottle and a rush of tangled sunshine and feelings came pouring out—“SYT,” the newest single from artist and producer Jordana, is a glorious, revitalizing pop explosion. The title stands for “Save your tears,” as the artist tells an ex-lover exactly how she feels. “Don’t cry to me across the country / Then wallow in your non-existent self pity,” she bites, in a way that feels pitying but not without love. With vocals sounding as though they were sung from a distance and golden synths, it’s like a celebration of establishing boundaries. Jordana confirms, “It channels the feelings of empowerment and emotional awareness after a tough breakup.” It is the second single released off her forthcoming EP, I’m Doing Well, Thanks For Asking, coming Nov. 11, the latest in the prolific career of the 22-year-old. This song sounds incredibly hi-fi, notable considering her start in homemade folk and bedroom pop. And although this is an artist who’s worn many different coats, on this project she seems to combine what she already knows and loves, rather than stepping into completely new territory. It’s clear that in her case, practice is making perfect. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Midwife: “Sickworld”

Remember the early days of the pandemic, when all we wanted to know was when things would “go back to normal”? It turns out the answer was “never,” and we’re now stuck in some uncanny in-between zone—neither normal, nor abnormal, but a secret third thing. The first single from Madeline Johnston’s Midwife since her 2021 album Luminol crystallizes this strange fate in song, stretching the artist’s self-described “heaven metal” across seven minutes that are both crushing and ethereal. “Don’t tell me about the future / Don’t ask me about the past / I don’t want to stay here / But I can’t go back,” Johnston drones through the glittering dark, a hypnotic guitar arpeggio looping infinitely beneath her, with synths amassing slowly in the distance. The instrumental breaks apart into outright beauty only after Johnston has offloaded her most disturbing observations (“I’m like a disease / The whole world is sick / I think I’m coming down / I’m coming down with it”), as gorgeous strings herald the track’s mesmerizing final act. —Scott Russell

Militarie Gun: “Let Me Be Normal”

After breaking out with their 2021 All Roads Lead to the Gun EPs, Los Angeles-based rockers Militarie Gun have signed to Loma Vista Recordings and announced a deluxe All Roads Lead to the Gun, a 12-track project that collects their four-track EPs and adds four brand new songs. One of those is “Let Me Be Normal,” which sounds more like the band’s Dazy collaboration “Pressure Cooker” than anything else in their burgeoning catalog. Frontman Ian Shelton leans into the indie-rock influences that set this project apart from his more hardcore-oriented bands, nailing vocal hooks straight from ‘90s/’00s alt-rock radio over the band’s fearsome, yet precise guitars. Though the song’s title is a desperate plea for the ease to be found by fitting in, Shelton embodies defiance on its choruses, snarling, “You ain’t taking me back / Ain’t no way in hell I’m going / Just can’t let it slide / Fall off the cliff to avoid it.” Military Gun back up that go-for-broke mentality by maxing out their muscle and melody both. —Scott Russell

Oso Oso: “De Facto”

In March, Long Island, New York’s Oso Oso (Jade Lilitri) released Sore Thumb, one of Paste’s favorite albums of the mid-year. The emo mastermind now returns with “De Facto,” a troubled love song featuring propulsive drums from Jordan Krimston. Lilitri airs out feelings of guilt (“Violent eyes did it again / Lost my way, path less taken”) and defeat (“This familiar slope, are we headed there? / And if I’m being real, I just don’t care / what happens anymore / I laid my shit out on the floor”), but the song’s defining emotion is the kind of love to which all those headaches pale in comparison. “When you’re not near, I feel nothing at all,” Lilitri punctuates each chorus, each word somehow hookier and more melodic than the last. He takes a quick solo, then breaks the song down to nothing but Krimston’s racing beat and a lone guitar, singing, as if from a distance, about a dream where he “fell through the TV screen / The change was small, nothing really new / Still reciting lines with everyone but you.” It’s a characteristically irresistible Oso Oso song about the kind of connection that matters most. —Scott Russell

Wiki & Subjxct 5: “The Fonz”

New York City emcee Wiki’s flow sounds bottomless on “The Fonz,” the second single from his and New Jersey producer Subjxct 5’s forthcoming collaborative mixtape Cold Cuts. Over a cinematic strings sample and steady drums, Wiki ruminates on “the type of cold leave the hot-headed humble,” on his guard against a rising tide of both foes and fake friends, and the unease that’s a symptom of his ambitions (“There’s somethin’ off in my guts, sittin’ subtle”). With an effortlessly in-control delivery, he spreads his story out in front of you in engrossing detail, declaring his intentions of achieving legendary status while displaying the talent that makes that pursuit possible. If not for the occasional Subjxct 5 ad-lib, there would be nothing here to keep you anchored in your own world—Wiki’s may be cold, but he’s determined to rule it at any cost, “pop[ping] my collar like The Fonz” to ward off a chill. —Scott Russell

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