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.

Badge Epoque Ensemble & Lammping feat. O.C. & THE03: “Each Ain’t 2 Same”

“Each Ain’t 2 Same” moves smokily, the sample assimilating you into its creators’ dream world while the lyrics hit a point of foreboding. The slow tempo does not come from laid-backness or patience—no, it is the swagger that comes with knowing you can take your time. The upward curves of the synths underneath feel like question marks underlining the track, an uneasiness that returns time and again. O.C. and THE03 flow self-assuredly over it all, pulling it together with rapping that emphasizes the beat. This is yet another standout single ahead of Badge Epoque Ensemble & Lammping’s forthcoming album Clouds of Joy: Chance of Reign, out Nov. 18 via Telephone Explosion Records. You can feel your own steps pulling you to the ground when you listen—while it is not heavy, the track carries a certain weight, and it’s not afraid to let you know. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Fever Ray: ”Carbon Dioxide”

Karin Dreijer reckons with the highs and lows of love on Radical Romantics, their first new album as Fever Ray since 2017’s Plunge. Ahead of the album’s March 10, 2023, release via Mute, the artist has shared a visualizer for “Carbon Dioxide,” the bold lead single co-produced by experimental artist and producer Vessel. On Radical Romantics as a whole, Fever Ray “presents their struggle with love, or to be precise, the myth of love,” per a press release. “Carbon Dioxide” foregrounds its allure: A bouncy, abundant electro-pop jam flecked with harpsichord, keys and strings, the track’s beat bumps and its synths dazzle, while Fever Ray and Vessel explicitly connect all that musical ebullience to the exhilaration of infatuation. “Can’t say it out loud, I’m afraid to lose it / The melody is pure music,” Dreijer’s layered voices croon over bass pulse, adding with both fear and joy in the choruses, “Holding my heart.” —Scott Russell

Fievel Is Glauque: “Clues Not to Read”

Fievel Is Glauque’s jazzy latest single feels like following an endless staircase just to see where it goes. The direction is certainly onwards, but other than that remains nebulous. The song feels open to the possibilities of the future—something apt for such a shifting band. Formed with bandleader and pianist Zach Phillips and singer Ma Clément at its core, the rest of the ensemble is a changing group from all over the world. Perhaps it is thanks to the global nature of the musicians and their rotation in and out that the collective feels like it won’t ever stand still. Philips comments, “Musically, Ma directed melodic impetus and I directed harmonic and rhythmic framing. Lyrically, we fought and embraced our initial impulses alternatingly; above all, we tried to trust and document the psychodynamics of the process itself rather than attempting to express concrete, prefab emotional or intellectual messaging. This approach to writing is intended to promote poetry while avoiding alibis and the hall-of-mirrors reproduction of excessive self-identification.” There is a lightness, like tiptoeing instead of finding a point to ground oneself. But this is what keeps their audience excited, guessing and listening. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Floating Points: “Someone Close”

Of the four songs Floating Points (Sam Shepherd) has released this year, “Someone Close” is the most akin to the transcendent Promises, his acclaimed collaboration with the late, great Pharoah Sanders. The over-eight-minute track is more somber and atmospheric than its predecessors (“Grammar,” “Vocoder” and “Problems”), orbiting around a flickering central synth figure that floats free of any percussion, self-regulating its rhythms. Meanwhile, Shepherd winds what sounds like a lone, mournful, electronically manipulated horn around that center, playing against his own electronic soundscape the way Sanders so indelibly did on Promises, as if in tribute to his fallen friend—to “Someone Close.” The song’s synths cut out unexpectedly at its end, leaving only a distant, resonant hum behind. —Scott Russell

Hatchie: “Nosedive”

Australian pop singer/songwriter Hariette Pilbeam released her second album as Hatchie in April, making “Nosedive” her first release since Giving the World Away. A big, blindingly bright track with dark industrial undertones, “Nosedive” is “about realizing you don’t have control over your life despite your best efforts,” says Hatchie, adding, “I wanted the lyrics to sound like the devil on your shoulder convincing you to self sabotage.” Throwback dance-pop percussion underpins buzzsaw guitars and glimmering keys as Pilbeam turns breathy vocalizations into a killer hook—it’s just as well that it’s lyric-less, since the verses steer you right into a “Nosedive.” Over the track’s showstopping outro, though, something seems to give as Pilbeam sings, “I’m so ready to fuck fortuity / I’m so sick of the bruises on my knees.” —Scott Russell

LANNDS: “Overseas/BACK 2 U”

There is a deep dreaminess to the newest single from psych-pop duo LANNDS, one so physical that you could imagine you were still in bed, feeling the sheets between your fingers and stretching before you have to leave. Like a lot of music in this genre, there is a deep patience to their musicality, as they take their time to fully encase you. But despite the floaty quality of the production, the song is grounded in real things, as vocalist/guitarist Rania Woodward explains: “This song is meant to capture the tragedies of unfortunate unrequited love. Sometimes you meet a person and you realize you both are in different places in your lives and it just doesn’t work out. I wanted to write about the feelings in between the silence, the feelings after you realize you wish things were different, and the moments you realize that no matter what this person will still and always occupy a space in your heart and the way you move through life from then on.” The resulting track puts you up in the clouds, but is willing to take you right back down again. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Manchester Orchestra: “No Rule”

The first proper single from Andy Hull and company since their acclaimed 2021 album The Million Masks of God, “No Rule” first took shape during the Million Masks recording sessions. Produced by the band’s lead songwriting duo of Hull and Robert McDowell, in collaboration with Catherine Marks (PJ Harvey, The Killers) and Ethan Gruska (Phoebe Bridgers), “this brave soul took a little longer to cook than the rest,” as Hull puts it in a statement. Built on a foundation of gentle acoustic guitar and piano, “No Rule” soon gains a momentum it will seldom surrender, drums racing as Hull murmurs paradoxically, “There’s no rule, but you still break the rule,” and imagines Death “waiting in the limousine.” Guitars spike and arc as the track continues its metaphysical journey, encountering layered vocal hooks, a furious solo and spacy call-and-response riffs along the way. Manchester Orchestra were right to take their time with “No Rule,” an epic unto itself. —Scott Russell

Nadine Khouri: “Keep On Pushing These Walls”

This is the second single from Beirut-born, London-based singer/songwriter Nadine Khouri’s new album Another Life, coming Nov. 18 on Talitres. Khouri recorded the long-awaited follow-up to her acclaimed 2017 debut The Salted Air with longtime collaborator John Parish (PJ Harvey, Dry Cleaning), using confident minimalism as a means to do more with less. On “Keep On Pushing These Walls,” Khouri pays tribute to the late Canadian singer/songwriter Lhasa, who died at only 37 in 2010. She does so by uplifting the indelible connections art can forge between people, crooning softly over drum machine and Mellotron sax, “Keep on pushing these walls, keep on striving for something real / A moment in time, throw me a line I can’t help but feel.” Like a friendly ghost, the song is somehow both haunting and heartfelt, a reminder of the ways in which those we lose will always live on. —Scott Russell

Phony Ppl: “dialtone.”

This track is pointed, and the point is: You’re supposed to dance. Elbows, hips and shoulders find their place easily on this track, settling into the angles. Synths and guitar filled with attitude give the edge needed when the refrain is, “Ooh, what’s a motherfucker supposed to do?” The lyrics paint a complex picture of some sort of obsessive relationship, with the tone playing on an ironic edge. Phony Ppl say, “lyrically written in split screen, dialtone. is actually two different sonGs at once! one sonG (the cause) is about a Guy realizinG space is only expandinG between him and his lover. the other sonG (the effect) is about a relationship that only exists in the mind of said Guy. either way, there’s somethinG wronG!- did thrifted. either way, sinG to the cause, whistle to the effect and dance to both at once.” —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Pile: “Loops”

Our first preview of Pile’s forthcoming eighth album All Fiction (Feb. 17, 2023, Exploding in Sound) is also the latest reminder of why the Nashville-based, Rick Maguire-led outfit are frequently referred to as “your favorite band’s favorite band.” A roiling, propulsive rocker, “Loops” finds Maguire self-interrogating as a songwriter, “reflecting on whether what I’m creating is for personal growth or for personal gain,” as he puts it. Pounding drums and chugging guitars goose the track’s momentum as Maguire’s vocals drone like they’re weighed down by his own misgivings: “Tell me, are you being honest? / I would never lie to you,” he asks and answers in its choruses, a Mobius strip of introspection. Later, he frames the contradictions of his position more harrowingly: “You are building your brand / You are splitting the difference / You are making demands / You are begging forgiveness / With your fingers dug into the cliff.” All the while, the “Loops” instrumental never moves quite the way you expect it will, like the music has a mind of its own. —Scott Russell