The Best Songs of August 2024

As summer continues winding down, every week remains as momentous ever. I can’t remember the last Tuesday or Wednesday that wasn’t positively stacked with great new releases, and August provided some of the Paste music team’s favorite songs of the year so far. Whether it was the unlikely but terrific collaboration between A$AP Rocky and Jessica Pratt, the emergence of Geordie Greep’s solo career out of black midi’s ashes or a pop blockbuster from Sabrina Carpenter, August 2024 was a month to remember. As we look onward at the autumn at awaits us, we’d like to celebrate the best of the best from last month. Without further ado, here are our 10 favorite songs of August 2024. —Matt Mitchell, Music Editor

A$AP Rocky ft. Jessica Pratt: “HIGHJACK”

One of the year’s best collaborations that no one expected, A$AP Rocky’s first solo single of 2024 includes the hypnagogic pipes of Los Angeles singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt, whose recent album Here in the Pitch is one of our highest-rated of the decade. On paper, A$AP and Pratt don’t seem like a natural fit—and you wouldn’t have been wrong to worry that “HIGHJACK” would arrive in the same gimmicky stratosphere as something like “FourFiveSeconds.” But “HIGHJACK” is an incredible song that merges the two musicians’ strengths perfectly. A$AP takes flight through verses about expectations, wealth and what he owes his peers (“Want a feature from me? / This ain’t a life raft,” “I don’t even like rats, invested into mice traps,” “Walk into the store, I bought the flow ‘cause I’m like that”). Meanwhile, in the song’s outro, Pratt arrives to sing the final notes, repeating “And when I’m gone” over and over until the song’s sample swirls into a conclusion. —Matt Mitchell

Chris Acker: “Shit Surprise”

Though the title plays into the gnarly humor that often populates Chris Acker’s songwriting, the track is tender and sticky-sweet. “How we’d match our breath in the upstairs room,” he sings, “and we’d hold together ’til I smelled like you.” With Nikolai Shveitser’s pedal steel and Sam Gelband’s snare drum waltzing behind him, Acker enchants during the “but now it smells like I stepped in it, shit surprise” chorus that, when fused with the band’s backing harmonies, binds the whole song together. Acker, ever a man whose work is aglow with countless juxtapositions, fills a sentence beautifully with lines like “I feel her like a pulse in a cut on my thumb” and “I hear you brushing your tongue.” It’s a synergy hunkered down in delicious harmony. Jaw pops, bread slices and cilantro getting confused with parsley all come into focus, as Acker lets out one final thought: “I thought I’d grow up to love you by now.” “Shit Surprise” is a song of the year contender. —MM

Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn: “Traditions”

Dawn Richard, whose song “Babe Ruth” clocked in at #2 on our Best Songs of the Year list in 2023, is pairing up with experimental composer Spencer Zahn for their second album together, Quiet in a World Full of Noise. Earlier in 2024, they released “Breath Out.” Now, new track “Traditions” has taken its place as Richard and Zahn’s finest work. The song doesn’t linger, pacing through a minimal arrangement—piano, acoustic bass and sustain—and lends its focus to Richard’s warming whispers. “My baby don’t go nowhere without his Carolina blues,” she hums. “He a mama’s boy, she a Tarheel fan too. You call it superstitious, I call it traditions.” Zahn’s instrumental sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on a Jon Brion soundtrack, and it cushions Richard’s voice intimately. Where “Babe Ruth” is the kind of song that belongs in a museum, “Traditions” inhales and exhales like the growing world around us. You could get lost in its softness—and maybe we should. —MM

Geordie Greep: “Holy, Holy”

While not a distinct stylistic departure from Geordie Greep’s now defunct post-punk band black midi, “Holy, Holy” is a continuation of the eclectic instrumentation that made him a critical darling in the first place. Greep takes on the role of a delusional sleaze who thinks he’s the womanizer of the century, as the rigid and fast paced instrumentation transitions into a rushing salsa. “Do you know my name? / Of course, you know my name / Everyone does, it’s true,” he taunts over an accompaniment of crisp bongos. The track’s music video single-handedly got the song to click for me; it depicts Greep dancing and bowling strikes on every throw, even when the shot shows him aiming towards the gutter. He scores an eight in the final toss, as the song finds the character’s insecurities boiling over. —leah weinstein

Ginger Root: “Only You”

The new Ginger Root album, SHINBANGUMI, continues to sound great with every song that gets unveiled. This week, producer, singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Cameron Lew dropped “Only You,” the city pop-inspired fifth single and follow-up to our Song of the Summer pick “There Was a Time.” Lew has a strong command of his roots, which blend French and Japanese pop with flavors of American disco and even Paul McCartney’s II era. The sound comes out as retro as it does modern, posing a beautiful, idiosyncratic juxtaposition that effortlessly glides across millenniums with wit and joy. Taking as many cues from Chaka Khan as he does Tatsuro Yamashita, Ginger Root takes flight on “Only You,” weaving in and out of liquid grooves that are heavy and sticky. —MM

Half Waif: “Figurine”

Nandi Rose’s sixth album as Half Waif, See You at the Maypole, comes out in October, and new single “Figurine” is a solemn ballad that was written after Rose experienced a miscarriage. That grief pulses across the entire track, as she lays her loss bare: “I love you when it’s snowing, I love you when it’s warm. I felt it growing in me, and now everything is gone.” Rose’s voice, as always, is a tome that dictates the chorus of the instruments surrounding her, but a soft palette of guitars, percussion and keys flutter beautifully and unfurl gently. “Figurine” sounds like it’s building toward some grandiose, orchestral climax, until it levels out into a conclusion. It’s a stark transition, a sonic choice that aptly mimics the shape of Rose’s anguish. Descriptors just wouldn’t do “Figurine” justice; the song is a complex, emotive portrait of one life altered by the passing of another. —MM

Hinds: “The Bed, The Room, The Rain and You”

I’m pleased to report that there is nothing that Hinds can’t do. The Madrid duo have long proven that they can make the catchiest rock music around. Now, with “The Bed, The Room, The Rain and You,” they’ve taken a swing at Alvvays-style dream pop and landed their fists right on the chin. Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote bask in the glow of love’s simplest magic, singing about “a road that drives me home, let me know where I can find you.” It’s impossible to listen to “The Bed, The Room, The Rain and You” without considering the friendship lit from within it. You can hear the love Cosials and Perrote have for each other glow beneath every note. In Spanish, they sing about the sea, the cherries, the sun and the moon; in English, they sing about a magnetism that pulls two souls together. The song itself is beautiful and brief, but the story it tells spans a forever or two. —MM

Jordana: “Like a Dog”

Jordana’s new single is for anyone out there who has obsessed over someone to an embarrassing degree—and “Like a Dog” is the second track off the LA-based singer-songwriter’s upcoming album, Lively Premonition. “You could leave me for long and I’d keep hanging on / You can tell me you love me back any day you want / Like a dog,” she sings bemoaning the undying love she has for someone who doesn’t care for her the same. It’s a deceptively upbeat poppy track with a delightful piano beat at its center and a crispy wah-wah guitar riff painting the edges. Jordana’s new album is all about cycles of love, and “Like a Dog” captures the painful reality of unrequited adoration. —Olivia Abercrombie

Sabrina Carpenter: “Taste”

“Taste” is an obvious highlight from Sabrina Carpenter’s breakout album, Short n’ Sweet, one that sees the rising star putting her elastic vocals and irreverent one-liners to good use for a shiny piece of pop rock. Instrumentally, “Taste” feels like it could’ve been a song off Haim’s Women in Music III, a bright, shimmering sound that pairs beautifully with Carpenter’s bubbly soprano. It’s also accompanied by yet another in the string of splashy, campy music videos from Carpenter, who plays opposite Jenna Ortega in a bloody tale of violence, crime, and homoerotic jealousy. —Grace Robins-Somerville

TASHA: “Love’s Changing”

Fresh off her run in Illinoise, the Broadway adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’s Illinois, Tasha continues the momentum of her new album All This And So Much More with “Love’s Changing”—an exploration of loss, as well as the beauty in finding the light on the other side of grief. The breezy acoustics and sprightly piano make up a gorgeous arrangement of folk-pop that surrenders to love in exquisite harmony. Tasha’s voice never fails to capture my attention with its effortlessly angelic quality and in “Love’s Changing,” it is the comforting promise that good times await us on the other side of mourning. —OA