There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Wednesday, January 22, 2025.
Circuit des Yeux – ‘Megaloner’
Circuit des Yeux has announced her next album, Halo on the Inside, with the single ‘Megaloner’, whose title is almost as great as the previously unveiled non-album cut ‘God Dick’. The song itself is as haunting as the video that accompanies it, and Haley Fohr calls it “an anthem for the place that exists after an action and inside its consequence. Prices are being paid and hope is our currency. I’m singing about endurance, faith, agency, and the singular, unbelievable path toward one’s own fate.”
Alabaster DePlume – ‘Oh My Actual Days’
British avant-jazz/pop artist Alabaster DePlume has announced his next LP, A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole, arriving March 7. Of the spiritually rousing lead single, the musician said: “We can, if we choose, read this phrase as a call to the divinity of the moment we are in. Wherever we are, whatever is happening, it is our own life – a life that is made up of the time (the days – the actual days) that we spend. And we call to this – the only real thing that we have. Our time. Whatever we are experiencing it belongs to us, it is the ‘actual’ moment we are in. And it is divine. This is the introduction to the album.”
Shygirl feat. PinkPantheress and Isabella Lovestory – ‘True Religion’
After announcing Club Shy Room 2 last month, Shygirl has tapped PinkPantheress and Isabella Lovestory for the bouncy new single ‘True Religion’. Saweetie, Jorja Smith, SadBoi, Bambii, and Yseult also appear on the project, whose full tracklist was unveiled today.
Daneshevskaya – ‘Kermit & Gyro’
Anna Beckerman, aka Daneshevksaya, wrote ‘Kermit & Gyro’ “in the desperation of a break-up,” but the song itself sounds wonderfully delicate and almost peaceful. It features Artur Szerejko on production, arrangements, mixing, guitar, and bass, Finnegan Shanahan on violin, and Madeline Leshner on piano. “I wrote it out of confusion and eagerness,” Beckerman added. “It’s about clinging to the idea of what the relationship brought you and how the relationship can still be a part of you. But also feeling completely untethered and adrift.”
Cross Record – ‘Charred Grass’
“I feel real,” Emily Cross reassures herself on ‘Charred Grass’, the mesmerizing first preview of her upcoming Cross Record LP Crush Me. Cross put out a record with her band Loma last year, but the new album, out March 21, is her first since her 2019 self-titled effort under the moniker. ‘Charred Grass’ is about “moments that stick with me, and help me feel real — essentially, times in which time itself ceases to exist,” Cross explained. “I drive past a lot of fields, and one morning I saw a big fire. The next day there was a baby calf laying on the bit of charred grass close to its mom, who was making eye contact with me as I drove by. Sometimes the car scares the cows but this one seemed to convey only peace and calm.” That otherworldly calmness shines through several layers of instrumentation, which features Ben Babbitt on mallet dobro, Marcin Sulewski on drums, Theo Karon on tape loops, sound design, prepared piano, and synth bass, and Devra Hoff on electric bass, arco upright bass, and arrangement.
Yetsuby – ‘Aestheti-Q’
Yetsuby’s latest EP, B_B, made our list of the best EPs of 2024. Now, the Seoul-based producer and DJ is back with news of her next album, 4EVA, coming out March 26 via Pink Oyster Records. Lead single ‘Aestheti-Q’ is exhilarating and texturally masterful.
Self Esteem – ‘Focus Is Power’
Self Esteem has announced a new album, A Complicated Woman. It’s led by the single ‘Focus Is Power’, which is as uplifting as you’d expect from the Prioritize Pleasure follow-up.
Röyksopp – ‘What Else Is There? (True Electric)’
The Norwegian duo have offered an update on their 2005 track, ‘What Else Is There?’, with features from Fever Ray and Trentemøller. It’s taken from the just-announced True Electric, which “consists of recordings and renditions, meant to capture the essence of our live shows bearing the same name. The idea was to put an emphasis on the clubbier aspects of our music, as well as returning to our roots within the realms of electronic music.”
The Jesus Lizard – ‘Westside’
If you can believe it, “‘Westside’ goes along with the previous single, ‘Cost Of Living,’ which was subconsciously influenced by Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and hence the name,” the Jesus Lizard’s Duane Denison remarked in a statement. “Really.” Frontman David Yow added of the monstrous track: “There is a part in ‘Westside’ where the lyrics say, ‘Give him back his arm.’ That was inspired by David Lynch’s Lost Highway, when Robert Blake’s character says, ‘Give me back my phone.’”
quickly, quickly – ‘Enything’
“I wrote this song from a fictional place of dumb love,” quickly, quickly’s Graham Johnson said of the lovely new single ‘Enything’, which leads his forthcoming LP I Heard That Noise (out April 18 via Ghostly International). “There is a place you can find yourself in where you are so infatuated with a person you would do anything to impress them, even to a fault, drastically changing yourself to match the idea of someone you barely know. That is what I tried to embody on this one.”
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – ‘Stitches’
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have announced a new album, Death Hilarious, with the riotous yet nervy single ‘Stitches’. “I’m aware our band sits in a world largely commandeered by bravado, confidence, and machoism, but ‘Stitches’ is an expression of vulnerability, paradoxical emotions, and those so familiar pangs of anxiety I wrestle with while butting heads with societal expectations and personal struggles,” frontman Matt Baty said in a press release.
Shura – ‘Recognise’
Shura has announced a new album, I Got Too Sad For My Friends, which arrives in May via [PIAS] and features an interesting cast of collaborators: Helado Negro, Cassandra Jenkins, and Becca Mancari. Of the soothing, radiant lead single, Shura said: “Following a period a despair in January, I felt like I had to hide myself from the world,” Shura says of her new single, which builds with fat ’80s drums and tinkling keys. “Recognise is about coming out of the other side of that feeling. Slowly understanding that everything is ok.”
Snapped Ankles – ‘Raoul’
London post-punks Snapped Ankles have announced a new LP, Hard Times Furious Dancing (out March 28), which is led by the freaky yet tuneful ‘Raoul’. It doesn’t exactly sound Paramore’s ‘Hard Times’, but it’s got some of that same disco-punk appeal.
Cheekface – ‘Growth Sux’
Cheekface are back with a new song called ‘Growth Sux’. “This is a little drum machine-driven hip-shaker about how growth sucks,” vocalist/guitarist Greg Katz said in a statement. “The last year or so has been an era of forced ‘growth’ for me and Mandy, and it’s impossible to ignore that it sucks. It just fucking sucks. The urge to put my heels in the ground and try to stop it is strong. Rather than use some kind of metaphor, we figured, why not just say it?” He (jokingly) added, “I guess the drum machine is giving indie sleaze a little bit, but please don’t hold that against us.”
Star 99 – ‘Kill’
Star 99 have a new album on the way, Gaman, arriving March 7 via Lauren Records. The follow-up to 2023’s Bitch Unlimited is led by the riveting and heartfelt ‘Kill’, which is about the existential dread “that’s telling me I need to get pre-Botox and sabotage my relationships,” according to siter/guitarist Saoirse Alesandro.
Cornelia Murr – ‘Skylight’
London-born, NY-based singer-songwriter Cornelia Murr has previewed her upcoming LP Run to the Center with the dreamy new single ‘Skylight’. “‘Skylight’ is about waking up out of the doldrums thanks to chance encounters that remind you life can change and look so many different ways, as if looking through windows into other timelines,” Murr explained in a press statement. “Director Laura-Lynn Petrick and I approached the video much the same way. We just played with the environment we had, which happened to be the Hudson Valley in summertime, and caught whatever good happenstance we could find. It amounted to trains, bridges, and truck rides among other scenes that suited the sense of movement the song is all about.”
Sister Ray – ‘Believer’
Sister Ray (aka Ella Coyes) is prepping asophomore album, Believer, which will get released on Royal Mountain Records on April 4. It’s led by the expansive single ‘Believer’, of which Coys said: “I’ve always been the kind of person that wants to believe in some kind of salvation or truth, and can’t quite make myself believe all the way. When I wrote this song I wanted to write about the liminal space that exists there, and the way it weaves itself into the beginnings of love; wanting to know this kind of all encompassing safety and trust, but feeling alienated by my own skepticism.”
Matt Maltese – ‘Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow’
Matt Maltese has shared an intimate new single, ‘Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow’, his first new music of 2025. “I think there are those people for all of us that occupy a certain incomprehensible place in our brain… a place we don’t quite have control over. People that have affected you so deeply you almost live with them still, remembering and imagining them against your will. And this song speaks to that, and to the physical (sorry) side of it too.”
Teether & Kuya Neil – ‘ZOO’
Teether and Kuya Neil have announced their debut LP, YEARN IV, following their 2023 mixtape STRESSOR. It’s out on May 2, and the zany new single ‘ZOO’ is out first preview. “It’s wild that each day, in whatever city you find yourself, there’s millions of people waking up and doing whatever they deem most important, all at once,” they said in a statement. “It’s going to be chaos. We’re animals running wild, acting like it all makes sense. ZOO is a song we made one day where this idea felt extra strange.”