Best New Songs (March 6, 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.)

Car Seat Headrest: “Gethsemane”

Car Seat Headrest’s new album, The Scholars, is centered around the lives, loves and losses of a group of students (scholars, if you get my gist) attending the fictional Parnassus University, who “range from the tortured and doubt-filled young playwright Beolco to Devereaux, a person born to religious conservatives who finds themselves desperate for higher guidance.” Taking inspiration from Shakespeare, Mozart, classical opera and, of course, Biblical/spiritual/religious texts, lead single “Gethsemane” is just one 11-minute chapter in a nine-song, hour-long tale of a college torn apart by the age-old battle between tradition and progress, history and present. There’s also supernatural resurrection, hidden underground passages, magical powers and a potential cult of ancient beings who secretly control the entire school. Lyrically and metaphorically dense, “Gethsemane” (and the wonderfully bizarre music video that accompanies it) seems like the band is attempting to combine the technical improvements and varied sounds of Making A Door Less Open with the intricately-woven storytelling and multi-part trajectories of old fan favorites, like “The Ballad of Costa Concordia” and “The Ending of Dramamine.” The song is undoubtedly rooted in questions of spirituality and the bloody wounds of yearning, although it might take most of us a couple of listens to begin to parse everything that’s going on. —Casey Epstein-Gross

Dean Johnson: “Blue Moon”

In 2023, Dean Johnson released his long-awaited debut album, Nothing For Me, Please, a “widely spun tapestry of colored lands where curious eyes and hearts roam” that took two decades to finish. But we won’t have to wait another 20 years for Johnson’s next move, as he’s signed with Saddle Creek and announced a 7” for April—and one can only assume that means LP2 is on the way. We got a taste of what’s to come from Johnson this week, lead single “Blue Moon,” which features a wrinkle of ornery pedal steel that weeps beneath Johnson’s chugging acoustic guitar. “Blue Moon” is a doo-wop track colored by the chords of a gentle cowboy’s aching six-string and memories of an anxious joy and young, wayfaring love. “She climbs on down in her white nightgown, across the field in her bare feet,” Johnson sings. “She puts her hand flat on my chest and laughs at my heartbeat.” He remains the closest thing we’ve got to Jim Croce, or maybe Sweet Baby James-era James Taylor. A gentleness wraps around every note Johnson sings; his language is the one I adore most. —Matt Mitchell

Delivery Service: “Ghost”

Few debut singles are as fully-formed and casually captivating as “Ghost,” the first release from Dublin alt-rockers Delivery Service. Bassist Becca Daly started the group after watching a Bikini Kill documentary, and she shares vocal duties with guitarist Ashley Abbedeen—whose other project hotgirl made our list of Irish bands you need to know in 2025. The band is rounded out by guitarist/keyboard player Ciara O’Neill and drummer Niall Thornton, and “Ghost” was recorded with fellow Irish favorite of ours Aaron Corcoran, a.k.a. Skinner (his release Calling in Sick made our list of the best EPs of 2024). Daly and Abbedeen’s voices intertwine, alternating between sweet and sour, over chugging bass and grungy guitar. “Ghost” smolders with the narrator’s overwhelming desire: “I wanna be the one he brings home,” Delivery Service implore. Safe to say we’ll be keeping an eye out for their debut EP, which is due for release later this year. —Clare Martin

Destroyer: “Cataract Time”

Ah, Destroyer, you’ve done it again. My onset existential crisis from “Bologna” had finally faded, and as I continue to lick my wounds from “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World,” you go and drop “Cataract Time.” Seriously, how am I expected to walk away unscathed when the song’s opening lines are “You’re sick of winning games / Been out on the road too long / Carve yourself out of illusion / You take the long way round / A setting sun”? Dan Bejar sings like he’s reading his subconscious verbatim back at me (or maybe I’m just projecting). Either way, his three latest singles have been a masterclass in crafting half-devastating, half-beautiful indie impressionism, but “Cataract Time” is the centerpiece of them all. It’s an astonishing, eight-minute opus that finds Bejar as a full-on poetic-wanderer—meandering along an airy, meditative drum beat that collects bits of sax, harp, synth and electric guitar along its way. Longtime collaborator John Collins also helped shape the track and its accompanying music video into one cohesive work of art—creating a musical inner-monologue that floats weightlessly through time, battles the untethered illusion of control and hides in that devastated no man’s land between clarity and confusion. With only a few weeks until Dan’s Boogie arrives in full, I can’t fathom what the remainder of the record has in store. I’m neither emotionally nor spiritually prepared, but more Destroyer is worth a little pain. —Gavyn Green

Dutch Interior: “Beekeeping”

Before Monday, the last we’d heard from Dutch Interior—the latest act we’ve named the Best of What’s Next—was “Fourth Street,” a woozy, fuzzed-out barnburner that sounds like taking a drag of a cigarette feels. The driving MJ Lenderman-esque electric guitar riff is mercilessly charred, while Noah Kurtz’s vocals float above it like a wispy smoke you could almost run your fingers through. From the glossy, xylophonic plinks that usher in their newest single, “Beekeeping”—the closing track to their forthcoming album, Moneyball—it’s clear that we’re about to experience something entirely different, but just as visceral. There’s a dash of Black Country New Road-esque balladry to the fragile-hearted dirge (it’s somewhat reminiscent of “Bread Song,” specifically), to which member Shane Barton lends wrenchingly tender lead vocals. He whispers as though singing a lullaby, but the dreamstate he waltzes into swirls into a nightmare when a storm of sonic distortion tears through the wall of delicate orchestral strings. It’s hard to imagine Moneyball ending on a more haunting note. —Anna Pichler

Jim Legxacy: “father”

I hate to admit it, but I was late to the Jim Legxacy wave. The rapper/singer first surfaced in South London’s notoriously chaotic music scene back in 2021, dropping a flood of singles that soon found him at the precipice of mainstream success. Still, he continued to fly under my radar. My friends were blasting “dj” and “eyetell(!)” on repeat, hyping him up as “the future of UK R&B,” but I remained oblivious even then. I swear, I must have had my head in the sand, but hey, better late than never. It wasn’t until late 2023—when Legxacy linked up with Fred again.. for “ten”—that I finally caught on, and I’ve been all in ever since. His latest track, “father,” is an exposé of versatility—a showcase of his Batman-sized artistic toolbelt and his knack for seamlessly blending musical genres as well as his wide array of emotions. Built around an amped up sample of George Smallwood’s 1981 track “I Love My Father,” the song layers in drill-style production and a nod to DJ Shadoe Haze’s iconic “Damn son, where’d you find this?” soundbite. “father” stands out as an outlier in Legxacy’s discography, though. He momentarily tucks away his melodic side and leans fully into rapping, reminiscing on his teenage hustle, making moves at 16 and dropping this undeniable bar: “On the block, I was listenin’ to Mitski.” The contrast is striking—his raw upbringing clashing against the introspective, emotive world inside his head. Jim Legxacy is in peak form, still keeping us on our toes as we await his black british music (2025) mixtape. —Gavyn Green

Lucius ft. Madison Cunningham: “Impressions”

Holy hell, what a track. Lucius, the pop titans co-led by Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, have always been great (Wildewoman is, without a doubt, one of the best pop vocal albums of this century), and the vocalists have unlocked a completely new gear on this upcoming self-titled record of theirs. I saw Wolfe and Laessig sing with Joni Mitchell last year, and just watching them share a stage with the woman who made The Hissing of Summer Lawns had me clamoring for a Lucius-takes-Laurel Canyon album—and “Impressions” puts me one step closer to it. Featuring Madison Cunningham—who has become one of indie-rock’s greatest features, thanks to her work on recent songs with Deep Sea Diver and Andrew Bird—“Impressions” is a collision of schools both old and new. At the single’s heart, Lucius charm through pop-country singing and soul. But, behind the silk and rhinestones is an effervescent nod of electronica. The three-part harmony shared between Wolfe, Laessig and Cunningham is bulletproof, a singalong so earnest and catchy it makes the plinking synth-and-bass melody behind them sound big enough to fill a stadium. —Matt Mitchell

Paco Cathcart: “Bottleneck Blues”

You might be familiar with Paco Cathcart already, if you know about the couple-dozen albums they’ve recorded under the name The Cradle (a project with strong influence, one that’s touched artists like Water From Your Eyes and Palm). But Paco is switching things up, recording under their own name now for the first time and heralding a new era, one that will be end-capped by an LP titled Down on Them in May—an album that will feature the likes of Miriam Elhajli, Ellie Shannon and fantasy of a broken heart’s Bailey Wollowitz. Lead single “Bottleneck Blues” is powerfully intimate yet written in the stars, a song inspired by a bike ride from Rockaway Beach through a “brinier New York,” through Dead Horse Bay, Fort Tilden and “the bike paths winding through the marshes by Canarsie Park” and the beaches nearby, inspired the city-driven emptiness coloring Paco’s storytelling. A finger-picked guitar lopes across the melody of “Bottleneck Blues,” reversing the titular claustrophobia with airy, generous strides of serendipitous reeds, harmonies and pattering snare hits. I can’t quite describe it, but Paco’s use of “and” in their lyrics is especially charming. It’s never “or,” always “and.” When I think of “kaleidoscopic music,” I will think of Paco’s “Bottleneck Blues” indefinitely. —Matt Mitchell

Sister.: “Blood in the Vines”

Last summer, New York-based trio Sister. (Hannah Pruzinsky, also known as h. pruz, Ceci Sturman and James Chrisman) released a single called “Colorado,” a quietly revelatory, achingly beautiful alt-folk masterpiece. Yesterday, they shared “Blood in the Vines,” their first release since, which was well worth the wait. Lovely as ever, Pruzinsky and Sturman’s harmonies effortlessly swirl into waves of synthesizer, hovering like a diaphanous mist above the jumpy arpeggio zig-zagging throughout. This is, perhaps, the first Sister. song with math-rock in its DNA. It’s an unexpected gene to throw into the band’s sonic pool, but it allows them to build an exquisite tension that beautifully parallels Pruzinsky’s musings on a torturously ambiguous relationship. “You grabbed the wrong hand, we were just friends. I overthought it, I dropped your wrist,” they softly drawl on the first verse, their turmoil bleeding into the viscerally evocative chorus: “Suffocating, suffocating, blood in the vines.” The song’s musical and lyrical complexities are stunning and inexhaustible, and it’s all the more impressive considering that it’s a product of the band challenging themselves to write something new within just 30 minutes. If “Blood in the Vines” proves anything, it’s that Sister. is absolutely limitless. —Anna Pichler

Water Damage: “Reel 25”

It’s a single, but it’s also an EP. “Reel 25,” the latest release from Austin outfit Water Damage, is the opening paragraph to a new album called Instruments. The 10-piece—more eaze, Thor Harris, Nate Cross, Jeff and Greg Piwonka, Mike Kanin, Danielle Hills, George Dishner, Jonathan Horne and Travis Austin—have called upon David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol, Squirrel Bait, Bastro) to complete “Reel 25,” a 20-minute medley of drones, crushing guitars, sore, bruised drum pounds, fits of still-rendering glitches and a screech I can only compare to the sound of a fork being scraped across a piano string (or, the flashbulb sound in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise). The song is epic by all means, with a real flavor of repetition that requires your full attention as it builds. With some instrumentals, the sky’s the limit; for Water Damage, “Reel 25” keeps the collective grounded. —Matt Mitchell

Other Notable Songs This Week: Alien Boy: “Changes”; Anika: “Walk Away”; Black Country, New Road: “Happy Birthday”; Case Oats: “Seventeen”; cootie catcher: “Dumb Lit”; Dean Wareham: “Yesterday’s Hero”; Djo: “Delete Ya”; Doechii: “Anxiety”; fantasy of a broken heart: “We Confront the Demon in Mysterious Ways”; Finn Wolfhard: “Choose the latter”; girlpuppy: “Since April”; I’m With Her: “Ancient Light”; illuminati hotties: “777”; Lucky Cloud: “Invitation”; lullahush: “Maggie na bhFlaitheas”; M(h)aol: “DM:AM”; Mei Semones: “I can do what I want”; Miynt: “Rain Money Dogs”; Runnner: “Spackle”; Sedona ft. Claud: “She’s So Pretty”; SPELLLING: “Destiny Arrives”; Teen Mortgage: “Party”; The Ophelias: “Salome”; TOLEDO: “Amends”; Tunde Adebimpe: “God Knows”; Tune-Yards: “Limelight”; Two Shell: “Oops…”; Weatherday: “Ripped Apart By Hands”; Yaeji: “Pondeggi”; yeule: “Skullcrusher”; YHWH Nailgun: “Animal Death Already Breathing”

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