The 10 Best Songs of March 2025

Florry: “Hey Baby”

Back in 2023, we named Florry’s “Drunk and High” the #7 song of the year. It was the crown jewel of their album The Holey Bible, and I’ve been clamoring for a follow-up ever since. LP3—Sounds Like…—is coming out in May, and lead single “Hey Baby” finds Florry’s full-band sound growing ten-fold, with Colin Miller behind the boards and influences of the Jackass theme song and country-fried Minutmen serving as a raw-hemmed, honking template for Francie Medosch and their crew. “Hey Baby” is an up-to-no-good, fully-cooked country-rock ditty beefed up with a raving guitar solo and Medosch’s barmy vocal. “If I could turn back time,” they sing over and over, and Florry nearly gets all the way there—uniting the sounds of Philly, Asheville and the Santa Monica Mountains into one blistering, catchy-as-all-get-out, jerried barn-burner. —Matt Mitchell

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

Matt Berninger: “Bonnet of Pins”

Paste writer Candace McDuffie praised National frontman Matt Berninger’s debut solo effort, Serpentine Prison, in 2020, writing that the album “displays infinite promise from an artist who has already given us a catalogue that has made a lasting impact on rock music as we know it.” With “Bonnet of Pins”—the first single from his sophomore solo record Get Sunk—Berninger lives up to that expectation. The song boasts the lived-in texture of a Neil Young song, but delivered with a rush of rock fervor that sits distinctly in The National’s sonic palette. Beaming, arena-ready guitar shines even brighter thanks to spacious synths, bringing light to the narrator’s somewhat dark vignette about encountering an old flame. “Never thought I’d ever see her here / Never thought I’d see her again,” Berninger intones wistfully. He recounts their exchange on the chorus, their conversation brought to life by the addition of a female vocalist. As melancholic as the lyrics can be (“The closest thing she’s ever found to love / Is the kind you can’t get rid of fast enough”), this expansive stadium rock moment exposes the seemingly small stories of normal people as the emotional epics they really are. —Clare Martin

Moon Mullins: “Lobby Music”

Well, that was the weirdest elevator ride I’ve been on in quite a while. By “that,” I’m referring to “Lobby Music,” the newest song by Brooklyn-based ambient artist Moon Mullins. It’s the lead single to his forthcoming album, Hotel Paradiso—and quite the introduction to the titular lodging. Upon pressing play, you’re immediately transported to a dimly-lit pocket of a sleazy hostel and served up a way-too-tall cocktail (or maybe something a little more mind-altering). It feels a little bit sinister, a little bit seductive: swirls of synth intertwine like legs locking in a surreal tango, while the ominous beat sounds like it’s been submerged underwater, or crushed beneath a weighted blanket. Call it what you want, but “Lobby Music” surely isn’t just background music—Mullins possesses the ability to tell stories without verbal language, channeling imagistic, dynamic narratives into his sinewy melodies and visceral production. —Anna Pichler

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

Perfume Genius: “Full On”

My favorite part of the new Perfume Genius album Glory happens in “Full On,” when Alan Wyffels’ flute part, while gently duetting with Blake Mills’ guitar, speaks in paragraphs without stepping up to the microphone. Mike Hadreas says the demo for “Full On” was “piano and gibberish,” but that making it felt “very magical and very arrival-y.” Kinetic and windswept, “Full On” is as messy and wounded as anything else on any Perfume Genius album that precedes it, as Hadreas’ narrator watches quarterbacks cry while an unmarked boy goes “limp as a veil, thrown in a cruel fashion.” And yet, the lifespan of queerness holds a particular beauty here; even in violence, a boy is “laid up on the grass and nodding like a violet.” Hedonism wanes in the glow of the living. —Matt Mitchell