The 10 Best New Songs

Featuring Paramore, The Go! Team, Bonny Light Horseman 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.

2nd Grade: “Teenage Overpopulation

Kicking down the gate with confidence comes power-pop band 2nd Grade on their latest single “Teenage Overpopulation.” Simultaneously sympathizing with the hardship today’s younger generation has to shoulder, but making fun of them all the same, the song is the perfect blend of good humor to dance to and laugh with. Lyrics like, “There’s too many teens in the world / Ruinin’ the human experience / Too many teens takin’ summer jobs from hard-workin’ Americans” force a giggle, while also reminding one a bit too closely of real news headlines (or perhaps your local codger at the corner store). The single comes as the last release off their forthcoming album Easy Listening, out this Friday, Sept. 30, on Double Double Whammy. It’s pulled forward by the upbeat guitar riffs, which move with incredible purpose. Gill’s vocals perfectly blend enthusiasm with a slightly bratty, tongue-in-cheek undertone, creating something easy to sing along to after the first couple listens. The song closes with the band shouting out the names of famous teenagers, with both Hannah Montana and Joan of Arc being name-checked (have you ever heard a song in which those two were combined? Yeah. Didn’t think so). In a way, the track as a whole truly does feel like a teenager who’s had way too much coffee in the most delightful way. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Bill Callahan: “Natural Information”

Immediately asking you to dance at the same time as loosening up your chest, the newest single from Bill Callahan would make you crack a smile even in the midst of tears. The whole song feels like a beautiful blend of humor and touching genuineness, with Callahan singing, “I wrote this song in five and forever / I’m writing it right now.” A playful acoustic guitar catches you quickly, with horns bringing just the right touches of lightness to it all. It’s the second single off his forthcoming album YTILAER, and provides the perfect balance to the sweet, sentimental “Coyotes,” released a couple weeks ago. He seems to be just a traveler with his guitar, content going through life and learning about what greets him. Through it all comes a short electric guitar solo, bouncing its way through the controlled chaos of movement around it. Listening to this, you instinctively open your arms to it all. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Bonny Light Horseman: “Someone to Weep For Me”

It starts off so light you’re almost afraid to breathe, the guitar strings picked like they might break. And then the typical gravitas of folk supergroup Bonny Light Horseman kicks in, with their simple melodies emphasized by beautifully drawn out notes and bittersweet harmonies. It always feels like they’re singing you a tale passed down through many hands, at the same time as it feels incredibly personal. In this track, this rings particularly true, with the opening lines, “I was named after my father, in a long line of nobodies.” With this story covering multiple generations, the song does feel like its wingspan stretches throughout time. A sweeping and desolate picture is painted; the instrumentation is simple and not overcrowded, yet still full, producing a wide-skyed feeling. You can feel the band coming together and holding each other up through their instruments. It’s one of those catchy ballads that sweeps you with melancholy, yet begs you to press rewind as soon as the track comes to an end. Produced by band member Josh Kaufman, this is the fifth and final single off the band’s their forthcoming album Rolling Golden Holy, out Oct. 7 via 37d03d. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Björk feat. Kasimyn: “Fossora”

Surrounded by a formal chorus of clarinets and other reeds that sound like they popped up from among the mushrooms, Björk’s voice greets us once again on this latest single, pushing its way from the singer’s throat. In classic Björk style, every vocal move feels cautiously deliberate, yet forceful. And the physicality of it makes sense—Björk has addressed her forthcoming album of the same name, saying, “each album always starts with a feeling that i try to shape into a sound[.] this time around the feeling was landing on the earth and digging my feet into the ground[.]” Every second of the song forces you to recalibrate and readjust yourself, as the song has no clearly drawn path. There is a hard-won flexibility to this, as the song delves into industrial, intense drum machines by the end. Meanwhile, the artist sings to a chorus of herself, remaining deep in the chaos of the song, yet also above it all. Oh, and what does “fossora” mean? “it is a word i made up,” answers Björk. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Dazy: “Split

Richmond, Virginia-based rocker James Goodson has announced his much-anticipated debut album as Dazy, OUTOFBODY, coming Oct. 28 on Lame-O Records (and with a cassette release via Convulse Records). The news is accompanied by the video for “Split,” our second preview of the record after last month’s two-song single “Rollercoaster Ride” b/w “Peel.” “Split” is the kind of immediately appealing pop-rock for which Dazy has shown an unwavering knack, with fuzzy guitars and a punchy backbeat beneath Goodson’s hooky vocals. “So split my brain and watch me stumble / Every day and every night,” he sings in the crashing choruses, his narrator seeming to not just accept, but welcome the emotional control his subject has over him. The track rips through its runtime in under two minutes, with its tenure in your head having only just begun. —Scott Russell

Frankie Cosmos: “F.O.O.F.”

With Inner World Peace, coming Oct. 21 on Sub Pop, Greta Kline’s indie-rock project Frankie Cosmos found a way forward after an indefinite pandemic hiatus, emerging from isolation with their fifth album and follow-up to 2019’s Close It Quietly. Their latest preview of the record, “F.O.O.F.” (short for “Freak Out on Friday”) is a concise song about the way certain feelings are anything but. Over a breezy pop-rock instrumental accented by gently psychedelic guitars and keys, Kline marvels at the elasticity of time: “Counting down the days of the week / Ever since I decided to freak out on Friday / What a sight to see before 1 p.m., me / Listening to 2007 indie, exercising.” That last lyric later becomes, “What a sight to see before 1 a.m., me / Listening to 2019 Frankie,” the band’s own history folding in on itself. The song captures, on multiple levels, how the pandemic era has rewritten the rules of societal tension and release, complicating emotional regulation to the point that we each have to get reacquainted with who we really are. —Scott Russell

The Go! Team: “Divebomb

Kaleidoscopic indie-pop act The Go! Team are back with a follow-up to last year’s Get Up Sequences Part One, coming Feb. 3, 2023, on Memphis Industries. Lead single “Divebomb” is out now to light a fire under your day. Punchy piano and blown-out guitars lead the way on “Divebomb,” a pro-choice protest song that showcases 19-year-old Detroit rapper IndigoYaj. The emcee raises her voice to underscore the importance of doing exactly that: “I’ve got the viewpoint and I’m taking aim now,” she raps over The Go! Team’s characteristically vibrant instrumental, which is later accented by police sirens and the whistle of falling bombs. Few bands could make taking a fierce stand for reproductive rights sound so fun. —Scott Russell

Louis Cole: “Dead Inside Shuffle”

Louis Cole’s latest single feels like someone struggling to get out of their bed in the morning, then spending a few minutes jumping up and down on it, finding joy in spite of themselves. The Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist’s latest Quality Over Opinion (Oct. 14, Brainfeeder Records) single pairs delightfully funky instrumentation with lyrics that appear dark, until you spot the light shining in around the edges. Cole does it all on the song, handling drums, synth bass, keys and vocals, with Henry Solomon (saxophone), Rob Sheppard (flute), Jon Hatamiya (trombone) and Aidan Lombard (trumpet) backing him on brass. The quintet’s Stevie Wonder-esque instrumental is an ebullient backdrop to Cole’s candid consideration of depression (“Time moving / Nothing stays the same / But I’ve been in this same shirt for so many days”), which he defies with every breath: “I hear nothing callin’ out my name / That’s OK / Here I am, fuckin’ answering anyway,” he croons in the prechorus, bringing you along as he dances his way toward “A little light, yeah, up ahead.” —Scott Russell

Palm: “On the Sly

Art-rock band Palm have done it again, releasing looping, overlapping single “On the Sly,” the third off their forthcoming album Nicks and Grazes. It feels like a kaleidoscope filled with grit and sand particles, with a space-filling blend of sounds. This track, as described in a press release, came together from hours of jamming sessions by band members, creating its instinctive, layered feeling. There are hypnotic repeated guitar lines weaving in between unexpected drum syncopations, all navigated by echo-y, auto-tuned voices. This will be the group’s third album, out via Saddle Creek next month. The band has been playing together for over a decade; although the track sometimes feels like you are wandering around blindfolded, not knowing what will come next, these musicians know each other so well that they seem to find their way through it all easily. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski

Paramore: “This Is Why

Pop-rock darlings Paramore are back with their first new material in five years, announcing their sixth studio album This Is Why and sharing the video for its title track. The Nashville-based trio of Hayley Williams, Zac Farro and Taylor York recorded their After Laughter (2017) follow-up—due out Feb. 10, 2023, on Atlantic Records—with their long-time collaborator Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, delivering 10 new tracks. “This Is Why” is an exciting return for Paramore, and an anthem for the fears and furies of the pandemic era—one big, irresistibly hooky “I told you so” to a collapsing planet. Over Farro’s rolling drumbeat, York’s spidery guitars and a pulse-quickening bass line, Williams croons with incongruous delicacy, “If you have an opinion / Maybe you should shove it,” then considers, “Or maybe you could scream it / Might be best to keep it to yourself.” It’s in the track’s funked-out bridge that Williams’ emotional unrest comes most clearly into focus, as she sings, “One step beyond your door / It might as well have been a free fall.” —Scott Russell

Share Tweet Submit Pin