The 10 Best Songs of April 2025
Don't miss our favorite singles released last month!
Photo of McKinley Dixon by Dennis Larance
Q2 is in full swing and, for new music, April was the best month of 2025 so far. Summer is nearly home now, and we ought to soundtrack the hot days with a couple of these tracks. Bookended by two great New Music Fridays, April was everything it promised to be. We got awesome albums from the likes of Black Country, New Road and Samia, and the new Sunflower Bean LP earned a Paste Pick designation. The singles were stellar, too, including another Y2K banger from Addison Rae, some country-fried instant-classics from Dylan Earl and Florry, and a rap gem from McKinley Dixon. We also got the returns of Indigo De Souza and Wet Leg, and some post-album, one-off magic from Nilüfer Yanya. So, let’s take a moment to celebrate the best singles released in the last 30 days. Here are our 10 favorite songs of April 2025. —Matt Mitchell, Music Editor
Addison Rae: “Headphones On”
There’s nothing wrong with paying tribute to a good cigarette. In fact, I encourage it wholeheartedly. Two new pop songs this week do exactly that—Addison Rae’s “Headphones On” and Lorde’s “What Was That”—but it’s Rae’s latest that’s captured my heart. Co-written with Luka Closer and Elvira Anderfjärd, “Headphones On” is the fourth single from Rae’s upcoming debut album, Addison, and it keeps her streak of great pop hardware. “Diet Pepsi” was a life-affirming, say-you-love-me pop classic, while “Aquamarine” and “High Fashion” paid dividends to the Addison faithful who’ve been watching her cook since her AR days. A sugary, Y2K gloss burns at the heart of “Headphones On” but song is a shockingly full of hurt, as Rae reckons with her parents’ divorce (“Wish my mom and dad could’ve been in love, guess some things aren’t meant to last forever”) and imposter syndrome (“I compare my life to the new it girl, jealousy’s a riptide, it pulls me under”) without plodding in heavy-handed nostalgia. “Headphones On” should be in the conversation for Song of the Summer; the “You can’t fix what has already been broken, you just have to surrender to the moment” pre-chorus allows Rae’s R&B and electropop fascinations to perfectly collide. Her TikTok fame has proved fully illusory. This is well-done Madonna worship for the doom-scrolling generation. —Matt Mitchell
Asher White: “Kratom Headache Girls Night”
In the past year, I’ve gone from not having heard of Asher White to hearing her name everywhere. When an emerging artist puts out a critically acclaimed record like White’s Home Constellation Study and generates tons of buzz, you wonder whether they’ll be able to keep the momentum going with their new releases. Thankfully, White delivers with her single “Kratom Headache Girls Night.” It’s a bright, summery ode to friendship that instantly lifts your spirits. With the kaleidoscope of glockenspiel, digital mellotron, beads and rice shakers, and even samples of YouTube videos, White creates a genre-defying sound that sparks the perfect symphony. After listening, I found myself repeatedly returning to it, craving more. It’s only mid-April but it’s a strong contender for the indie song of the summer. —Tatiana Tenreyro
Billie Marten: “Leap Year”
The latest track from Billie Marten’s fifth album, Dog Eared, is the UK singer-songwriter at her all-time best. Arriving in the wake of the very good “Feeling” and the even better “Crown,” “Leap Year” is, by Marten’s own admission, the first fictional love song she’s ever penned. She turns her focus towards a couple who can only see each other every four years, on February 29th. It’s a unique and heartbreaking circumstance, built upon a generous consideration for what barriers of love can’t be broken. On the track, Marten balances traditional folk structure and abstract poetry: “I could’ve loved you, but the day’s already gone. I could’ve held you, but the sun’s already shone” fades into “I carve the time away in my ivory hall, I sing my songs and I climb the walls. The clock is ticking murder at me now, a solitude, insufferable.” I’m ready to make an argument for the two-minute guitar solo from Sam Evian in “Leap Year”’s coda being the best musical moment of 2025 thus far. The language in his instrument is one we’d all be lucky to speak. —Matt Mitchell
Dylan Earl: “High on Ouachita”
I hold a lot of opinions, but few feel closer to fact than this one: Dylan Earl’s songwriting makes America a safer place. From his mom’s ‘89 Econoline to the shuffles of a line-dancing bar in South Austin, Texas, Earl has delivered his anti-fascist, pro-misconception country music to the hungry, happy, hopeless, and hopeful. His last album, I Saw the Arkansas, was my favorite country record from that year, and the one he’s gearing up to release in 2025 will surely be at the top of my list again. “High on Ouachita,” a honky tonk-hued rabble-rouser recorded in a snowstorm, arrives with a heart on every sleeve, as the Fayetteville troubadour sings sweetly about the mountain range in his backyard, one that touches Arkansas and Oklahoma. Meredith Kimbrough and the great Jude Brothers sing harmonies, while a band of Hamilton Belk, Chris Wood, Dick Darden, Lee Zodrow, and Grady Philip Drugg fall around Earl’s verses. “I’m used to livin’ on the edge of decisions,” he sings out. “I’m pretty good in poor conditions, where I don’t ever have to ask permission to be.” “High on Ouachita” is a blissed-out, levee-breaking, mountain-screaming afternoon ready to be wasted. Let Earl’s words be your compass: “The further I drift, the more frequent I dream.” I think we could all use a slice of that. —Matt Mitchell
The newest Florry single absolutely cooks. “First it was a movie, then it was a book” is a sentence-case dream of rollicking, country-fried rock gravitas. Francie Medosch and John Murray collide into each other, stretching two-ton riffs around organ, pedal steel, and homespun, jammy crescendos. Medosch sings about her life turning into a Hollywood picture that made her sad “‘cos I saw myself in everyone.” “How’d they make a movie like that?” she wails, her voice splitting in two. There’s a Holly Hunter mention in here, and there’s emptiness too. Caught someplace between the Stones’ honky-tonk crashouts, a migraine-addled Wilco, and Sonic Youth’s distorted debauchery, “First it was a movie, then it was a book” is a six-string car-crash heavy on the abandon. Florry become a paradox across seven minutes, twisting off the cliff like an avalanche in one ear yet skyscraping towards something far above sea level in the other. This is everything I want rock music to sound like in 2025. I think I’ll go watch Broadcast News today. —Matt Mitchell
There’s a long history of women turning songs about sexual assault into catchy pop songs, from Amanda Palmer’s “Oasis” to Charly Bliss’ “Chatroom.” It’s the ultimate “fuck you” and a way to reclaim your power while reminding listeners that they’re not alone in the form of abuse that sadly is too common. Indigo De Souza’s lead single “Heartthrob” off her upcoming album Precipice sounds jubilant and effervescent, evoking being in a “bounce house,” which she references in the first verse. Its melody is a striking contrast to the lyrics, in which she paints vivid imagery about her experience of being sexually assaulted. “And I was just so cold at first / But after all that moving around / I start to warm up to the feeling / I really put my back into it,” she sarcastically belts out. The track excels at making you uncomfortable over how pleasantly earworm-y it is, as you find yourself having the tune stuck in your head and confronting the horrors that women are told to take. —Tatiana Tenreyro 
McKinley Dixon is three-for-three on Magic, Alive! singles so far, the latest being the Teller Bank$-assisted “Recitatif.” The title comes from Toni Morrison’s short story of the same name, a French word for “recitative.” Dixon takes that to heart, turning “Recitatif” into a dialogue between verse and arrangement. The track paces itself on a snare-and-cymbal rhythm, as Dixon’s flow gradually ticks up in volume. A drumstick scrapes across the hoop lip while whispers of flute coil and exhale. “So hellbent on being so heaven sent,” Dixon raps. “Burning through whatever’s next, just to find out what forever meant.” Two minutes in, the beat flips, and the melody crunches. Dixon’s delivery is bombastic, summoning a double entendre: “I’m tryna be everywhere that the sun is at! Red holes up in his fleece, you know that we finna drop.” Three minutes in, Dixon’s yelps gurgle like Freddy Krueger. “Run,” he tells us, before Teller’s pitch-shifted verse projectiles into view: “Them and dead is a synonym, him and him, bet this chopper spit quicker than Eminem.” “Recitatif” is an oratorio climaxing in power: “With this shogun, I’m a shogun.” —Matt Mitchell 
The opening of Nilüfer Yanya’s “Cold Heart” somehow sounds like light raindrops hitting highway headlights at dusk, making them twinkle briefly in the light; if that visual sight could be rendered audible, it might sound something like the first few moments of this track: effervescent, melancholy, and soothing all at once. But then an old-school drum kit kicks in beneath the gauzy synth, and all of a sudden you’re in that highway car and your foot is pressed to the pedal and you’re driving straight through the rainy night. This is Yanya’s first release since her incredible 2024 album My Method Actor, but “Cold Heart” doesn’t suffer at all from this rapid turnaround. Co-written with longtime collaborator Wilma Archer, the track’s lyrics are elliptical, carrying forward the previous album’s precarious balancing act between intimacy and detachment. A looping synth motif sets the pace, minimal and hypnotic, as a vintage drum kit kicks in to give the song its pulse. Yanya’s vocal—soft-edged, reverbed, slightly submerged—floats above it all: “Heaven knows the way you hold me,” she breathes out, airy and weighted all at once. “Let them know I feel this lonely.” It’s a song that never quite breaks open, but that’s its quiet power: tension held like a breath, ache wrapped in shimmer. “Cold Heart” doesn’t chase resolution; instead, it lingers in the half-light, content to haunt, to hum, to hold its shape just out of reach. —Casey Epstein-Gross 
Wet Leg are back, and they’re ready to throw hands. “catch these fists” is a punch-drunk, bass-throbbing, bratty little brawler of a track that feels like the spiritual successor to arguably the best Victorious song of all time, “Take a Hint.” (I mean, look at Wet Leg’s second verse: “Some guy comes up and says I’m his type / I just threw up in my mouth / When he just tried to ask me out / Yeah, don’t approach me / I just wanna dance with my friends.” And the band is a duo, too! Wait, then who’s Jade and who’s Tori?) Over a groove that stomps and sneers in equal measure and a low-end thump that wouldn’t be out of place on a Viagra Boys track, Rhian Teasdale delivers every line like she’s side-eyeing you from across the room, drawling, “I know all too well just what you’re like” with the kind of weary exasperation that only comes from years of putting up with belligerent men. The song itself is a natural evolution from the hooks and deadpan humor of “Angelica” and “Chaise Longue”—it’s poppier than their previous work in some ways, a little more in line with Olivia Rodrigo than Courtney Barnett, but never sacrifices the grime and bite that drew fans to them in the first place. —Casey Epstein-Gross
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