The Best Songs of September 2024

Fall is finally here, and last week was one of the most stacked New Music Fridays of 2024. And, as is the case with every month nowadays, there wasn’t a bad week of new singles at all in September. Sure, it makes picking just 10 songs for this list harder, but I’m just happy that the good people of the music world keep churning out hits like this. Whether it was a “Why hasn’t this always been a thing?”-style team-up between Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham, two brilliant singles from Sub Pop artists, or The xx getting back together, September positively rocked. As we all keep hoping that the days get cooler, let’s take a moment to celebrate the best of the best from last month. Without further ado, here are our 10 favorite songs of September 2024. —Matt Mitchell, Music Editor

Andrew Bird & Madison Cunningham: “Crying in the Night”

Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham’s new single “Crying in the Night”—a cover of the legendary pre-Fleetwood Mac collaboration between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks—greets you like an old friend as Bird and Cunningham’s crystal voices effortlessly dance together over the jaunty breeze of the violin. Buckingham Nicks is being reimagined as Cunningham Bird, as the duo has covered the entirety of the buried 1973 album, putting their own spin on the musical arrangements and bringing the lyrics under a modern lens—all while the source material remains absent from streaming. “Crying in the Night” sees the pair comfortably stepping into the shoes of the legendary duo, softening the edges of the original with their jazzy, classical-leaning folk twist. It’s a different energy from two friends rather than two lovers, but Bird and Cunningham perfected a dreamy interpretation of the nostalgic track. —Olivia Abercrombie

Deep Sea Diver: “Billboard Heart”

To mark her signing with Sub Pop, Deep Sea Diver—the project of singer, songwriter and guitarist Jessica Dobson—released their new single “Billboard Heart,” a track billed as a first teaser from an album due out early next year, last month. “Billboard Heart” is like if Sharon Van Etten tried singing a TV on the Radio lyric, as Dobson wails through the anthem of her own catharsis—gentle rock music juxtaposed by a rapture of longing. It’s a tune about letting go and moving forward, about the entanglement of fear, running away and staying kaput. Inspired by Tom Petty and Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas, “Billboard Heart” is a spiritual affair. “Blue sky reach down, swallow me, swallow me,” Dobson sings. “I’m climbing up that billboard heart, I’m scraping up the sign.” Guitars cruise while Dobson’s vocal folds inward; Deep Sea Diver ache beautifully to the surface. —Matt Mitchell

Disintegration: “Hideaway”

If you were wondering what the best band from Cleveland, Ohio is, look no further than Disintegration—the quartet of Haley Himiko, Christopher Brown, Noah Anthony and David Maccluskie. Following up their first EP, Time Moves for Me, the group’s upcoming debut album Shiver in a Weak Light is on the way and new single “Hideway” is fragmentation colliding into symmetry. Himiko’s synthesizers bleed into Anthony’s guitars, while Maccluskie pounds all of his atoms into this bellowing, thunderous undertow of rhythm. Disintegration’s penchant for noir-black synthwave saunters into a glitching, shout-along melody that puts Himiko’s voice on a pedestal. On “Hideaway,” neon electronica lies in bed with chunky, extraterrestrial post-punk, coalescing into one of the best singles of 2024 so far. —MM

Father John Misty: “Screamland”

Upon the announcement of his sixth album as Father John Misty, the Jonathan Wilson and Drew Erickson-co-produced Mahashmashana, Josh Tillman steps into a new version of himself during “Screamland”—a concerto within a concerto, as Tillman muses on the very same apocalyptic scene that have populated his work for over 10 years. “It’s always the darkest right before the end,” he reflects, until the verses crawl through twisted and contorted pianos and into an anthemic breakdown. “Stay young, get numb,” Tillman yells out in a not-so-common-for-him, anthemic belt. “Screamland” packs punch after punch, offering some of Tillman’s strongest line-work in years (“This year’s wine tastes suspicious but just enough like love,” “After every desperate measure, just a miracle will take” and “Maybe we are living in a state of grace returned”). It’s refreshing to hear him tackle such fits of hope, even when the arrangements bubble into noisy, confusing matrimony. “Love must find a way,” he asserts, and you believe him. —MM

Georgia Gets By: “Not This Time”

Split Lip, the forthcoming release from Georgia Gets By (the solo project of BROODS’ Georgia Nott), is my favorite extended play of the year, and “Not This Time” is the final confirmation of that. Georgia bargains with intimacy on the track, returning to an ex and finding reward in familiar comfort. “When heaven forsakes you, I’m coming to save you,” she sings. “Something always gets the best of me, loving you is just a recipe for disaster.” The arrangement, like much of the EP, is minimal, but it’s that soft orchestration that allows Georgia’s voice to remain at half-mast, as she reckons with being in a place she doesn’t belong in with a person she doesn’t belong to anymore. There’s hurt and there’s hope in “Not This Time,” and few voices can juxtapose both truths as personally as Georgia Nott’s. —Matt Mitchell

Half Waif: “The Museum”

As the sixth Half Waif album, See You at the Maypole, is set to arrive this week, Nandi Rose unveiled “The Museum” last month. As is custom for a Half Waif tune, it’s a somber four minutes aimed at the passing of time and the sentimentality we all hold for what’s been lost. “The Museum” is a nostalgic song that doesn’t wash the past with inauthentic remembering. Rose is far more interested in a kind of recollection that comes from sharing “give it another year” with a loved one. Our perpetual forward-motion does not cease its direction; drama and laughter are both habits, but it’s up to us to decide which one to kick. “I still go to the movies, and I think that it’s beautiful,” Rose sings. “Fake lights making everything look like glitter. And when I go to my high school, I see that the view has changed. All the apple trees they planted have finally grown up.” —MM

Jamie xx ft. Romy & Oliver Sim: “Waited All Night”

In the days leading up to his second studio album’s release, Jamie xx hosted a reunion with his two other xx bandmates on “Waited All Night.” It’s hazy and dynamic with a deep, pulsating clubroom energy, making it the most boiler-room friendly track on the album yet. Romy’s vocals return on “Waited All Night” just as light and airy as they were on “Loud Places,” and Oliver Sim’s deep hushes give the song a little bit of a thoughtful edge. Even though all of the xx are on display—this track is still inherently Jamie’s. His strong sampling skill comes through with a wavey, layered breakdown as the song hits its climax. He’s pushing the limits and has no aversion to speeding things up to the point of unintelligibility—his meticulous electronic craftsmanship allowing him to do almost anything. —Allie Dempsey

MJ Lenderman: “Wristwatch”

“I got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.” It’s one of the many bizarre boasts MJ Lenderman makes on “Wristwatch,” the final smoldering single from his hotly anticipated 4th record, Manning Fireworks. This line in particular is very “No one knows what it means but it’s provocative! It gets the people going!”-coded in the way that most idiosyncratic Lendermanisms often are. Inspired by manosphere/billionaire grandest-type egomaniacs who preach behind podcast mics, “Wristwatch” is a strange character sketch that lays bare the absurdity and frailty of scammer masculinity. “So you say I’ve got a funny face / Well it makes me money,” this character retorts, uncanny in his “debate-me” cadence, hollow and alone with all his earthly possessions. —Grace Robins-Somerville

Mount Eerie: “I Walk”

Last month, Phil Elverum announced the next Mount Eerie album, Night Palace, and released two of its songs: “I Walk” and “Broom of Wind.” The former is pure Microphones-style goodness, as Elverum traipses through the melancholy of nature and the soundscape hikes up into lo-fi, buzzed out climax shadowing the wilt. “Walking away, shedding slow the generations the towns dissolve, in my drumming footfall, but I still carry it all,” he sings, as the guitar plod until they don’t, erupting into a volcano of abandonment and surrender. “Until I too dissipate, find me blinking at dawn,” Elverum concludes, and swirls of air gust through the speaker. Skepticism has never sounded so desirable. —MM

The Cure: “Alone”

I do not like the Cure’s 2008 LP 4:13 Dream. In fact, I think it’s a very, very subpar album—especially for the Cure’s standards. As news began swirling that their first record in 16 years was, indeed, on the way, I remained skeptical. Few 40-year bands have ever held the same momentum that galvanized their peak, and the Cure haven’t made a terrific album (in my opinion) in 32 years. Upon listening to the lead single from Songs of a Lost World, I will be letting my guard down slowly. “Alone” is a very good song and, as Paste contributor Elise Soutar told me this morning, “I believe Robert’s cooking when half the song is an intro.” To that measure, the first section of the seven-minute behemoth is all instrumental, à la Disintegration. It’s full of grief and extravagance, as piano, lacerated guitar and synthesizers pin a swirling atmosphere into trauma once Robert Smith begins singing about a dying world. “And the birds falling out of our skies, and the words falling out of our minds, and here is to love,” he bemoans, “to all the love falling out of our lives: Hopes and dreams are gone.” Have no fear—this sounds like a Cure song, and Smith sounds as good as he ever has this century. When he questions “Where did it go?” over and over, his gothic lament somehow, miraculous, begins to bend into the shape of something hopeful. —MM

Listen to our playlist of the best songs of September below.