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, February 19, 2025.
Perfume Genius – ‘No Front Teeth’ [feat. Aldous Harding]
Aldous Harding joins Perfume Genius on ‘No Front Teeth’, the latest single from his forthcoming album Glory. It’s a breathtaking song whose six-minute runtime feels like a dream, made particularly vivid by a revelatory chorus (not to mention a memorable music video directed by Cody Critcheloe). It follows lead single ‘It’s A Mirror’, which made our list of the best songs of January 2025.
Sleigh Bells – ‘Bunky Pop’
‘Bunky Pop’ is as absurdly playful and explosive as you’d expect the opener of an album called Bunky Becky Birthday Boy to sound – especially coming from Sleigh Bells. But there’s an emotional backstory to it, too. “‘Bunky Becky’ was a nickname for Alexis’ dog Riz, who passed away in December 2023,” producer/guitarist Derek Miller explained. “When she passed away, Alexis and I had been talking about writing an anthem for her. And then Alexis’ son Wilder was born, and he’s the birthday boy. Even though the title sounds a little ridiculous – and it’s totally okay to laugh at it — with a little bit of context, it’s actually life and death. We lost somebody that we love, and we gained somebody that we love.”
McKinley Dixon – ‘Sugar Water’ [feat. Quelle Chris and Anjimile]
McKinley Dixon has announced his fifth album, Magic, Alive!, with the vibrant and stirring new single ‘Sugar Water’, which features Quelle Chris and Anjimile. “I guess if it don’t kill you, make you harder/ Bring him back just for my heart?/ Shit, it seem an easy barter,” Dixon raps on the song, which he explained “is a discussion on how to make fleeting moments last forever, and how to carry those not here with you through time and space. It raises the question ‘what’s the price to pay for an eternal life lived through others memories?’”
Maria Somerville – ‘Garden’
Maria Somerville has announced Luster, the follow-up to 2019’s All My People and her debut album for 4AD. It’s out April 25 via 4AD, and accompanying the news is a cavernous slice of dream-pop called ‘Garden’, which was produced by Diego Herrera, aka Suzanne Kraft.
Maia Friedman – ‘New Flowers’
Maia Friedman has announced a new LP, Goodbye Long Winter Shadow, with the single ‘New Flowers’, which is mournful but steadily builds out hope. It’s “about love lost, and the inevitable process of losing oneself and finding oneself again,” the New York songwriter explained. “I enlisted my dear friend Hannah Cohen to sing harmonies, and the closing guitarmony solo was dueled out by Maddy Baltor and I, side by side. It was joyful to say the least. We knew this one needed drums so we called in the legendary Kenny Wollesen and he got it on the first take. I love how Oliver Hill interpreted my demo into this beautiful arrangement for woodwinds and strings.”
Wishy – ‘Fly’
The new Wishy track is, unsurprisingly, perfectly sun-kissed and fuzzy. It’s set to appear on their new EP Planet Popstar, which will be packaged along with 2023’s Paradise as a double EP. “This song conveys a general theme of enjoying the present, being in love, and not taking yourself too seriously,” Nina Pitchkites said in a press release. “Me, Kevin, and Steve Marino co-wrote this song around the same time we wrote the track ‘Triple Seven’. It was one of several demos that Steve brought to the table for us to toy with.”
Brian D’Addario – ‘Till The Morning’
The Lemon Twigs’ Brian D’Addario has announced his debut solo album, Till The Morning, arriving March 20 via Headstack Records. “It’s a love song having to do with those fleeting moments when you grasp something real, amidst all the noise and propaganda,” D’Addario said of the radiant title track, out now. “‘The night is pitch black until the morning.’ Maybe things need to completely collapse before they get better.”
Fust – ‘Mountain Language’
The latest single from Fust’s upcoming full-length Big Ugly is equal parts rowdy and hopeful. “It’s a song championing the power of the underling, the dispossessed wage worker, the Dollar General shopper in a backroad food desert, the uninsured,” bandleader Aaron Dowdy said of ‘Mountain Language’. “And it’s a dream of the future, about a language of friendship speakable only in less dominating times.”
Weatherday – ‘Tiara’
Weatherday has previewed their forthcoming LP Hornet Disaster with ‘Tiara’, a frantic and impassioned noise-pop tune tackling alienation. “‘Tiara’ is partially about trying to catch up with the speed and excitement of a social scene,” project mastermind Sputnik explained in a press release. “While being intimidated and feeling alien, the song’s narrator still quickly buys into the lifestyle and ways of thinking enthusiastically. At the core of this angle of the song, there’s an honest attempt at making connections, although they’re not channeled in the most productive directions as the narrator still feels distance.”
Gordi – ‘Peripheral Lover’
Gordi has announced a new album, Like Plasticine, due out May 30 on Mushroom Music. It’s led by the danceable and anthemic ‘Peripheral Lover’, of which Gordi said: “I was thinking about the beginnings of queer relationships. I’m talking real early, like so early that at least one person is still in the closet. Accepting the available love instead of it orbiting around you. There comes a breaking point, a demand, a pleading for honesty — and the relationship either explodes into the open or melts from the periphery away into nothing. From these thoughts, “Peripheral Lover” was born. It exploded into being in about three hours.”
Niis – ‘The Bow’
Niis have shared ‘The Bow’, a guttural new single from their forthcoming album Niis World. The record lands March 28 via Get Better Records.
Mamalarky – ‘#1 Best of All Time’
Mamalarky have announced a new LP, Hex Key, which is out April 11 on Epitaph. It features the early singles ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ and ‘Feels So Wrong’, as well as the new track ‘#1 Best of All Time’, which is jittery and infectious. “Through a lot of games of UNO, I’ve discovered I’m actually a pretty competitive person,” singer/guitarist Livvy Bennett explained. “And somehow, the feeling of losing has become highly motivating to me. I always feel like I’m competing against myself, trying to best my last attempt at whatever I’ve set out to do. Like, you probably can’t be the best of all time, but you’ll always be the best you of all time — no one can dispute that. I wanted to write something that felt powerful but funny, too, like laughing in the face of doubt. ‘Cause betting on yourself even when you feel like a losing horse pays off in big ways! If you can make yourself feel like you’re winning right at the moment of failure and only measure yourself against your own barometers, you’re gonna be a lot happier.
“When we recorded this, we asked Dylan to just play something ‘crazy’ on the drums and worked backwards from there,” she added. “He powered through this insane performance, and the song came together autonomously from there.”
Jensen McRae – ‘Praying For Your Downfall’
Jensen McRae has announced her sophomore album, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, arriving April 25 via Dead Oceans. The folk musician recorded the LP in North Carolina with Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver), and it features contributions from Nathan Stocker (Hippo Campus), Matthew McCaughan (Bon Iver), and her brother Holden McRae. It’s led by the biting yet resolute ‘Praying For Your Downfall’.
Sextile – ‘Freak Eyes’
Los Angeles electro-punks Sextile have announced a new album: yes, please. is out May 2 via Sacred Bones. Lead single ‘Freak Eyes’ is a rager, and it’s “about the pressures of making art, living, and aspiring,” according to the band’s Brady Keehn. “The sound was inspired by house parties we went to in NY, where certain tracks had the conversation stopping power. If you were in the middle of convo with a friend and heard certain songs, it didn’t matter what you were talking about, you stopped and joined the party in the collective release of emotion, singing, dancing, and drinks flying everywhere. It was like in that moment, nothing else mattered but that energy that we all collectively felt. And I felt like I hadn’t seen that at a party, or anywhere in a while, and wanted to try to bring that feeling back into the world again.
quickly, quickly – ‘Raven’
quickly, quickly has previewed his upcoming LP, I Heard That Noise, with ‘Raven’ which he described as “kind of the oddball on the album. It strays from the loose narrative of the songs and is also sonically very different from the rest of the album, but I felt it still fit somehow. The lyrics to me are about bridging the gap between superstition/fear and real pain, as I often tend to mix up the two. The person in the song knows the difference ‘I don’t believe in what I cannot perceive’ but still sees the wolf and the raven as signs of something. We shot the video at mt tabor park in Portland OR. It took almost an hour to drag all the equipment up a massive hill and I had an asthma attack while doing so. After about 2 hours of shooting we got the take and dragged all the gear back down the hill! Thanks to everyone who helped make the video happen in any way. Was definitely a group effort!”
Alan Duggan Borges – ‘Slip Angle’
Gilla Band guitarist/producer Alan Duggan Borges has shared a new song with his experimental project, the Null Club, whose debut EP arrives April 4. It features Faris Badwan of the Horrors, Valentine Caulfield of Mandy, Indiana, and ELUCID of Armand Hammer. Caulfield appears on the new single ‘Slip Angle’, which hews quite close to Mandy, Indiana’s techno-infused noise. “I tired to mix techno and noise with this one,” Duggan Borges explained. “I first saw Mandy, Indiana in Manchester at the psych fest in 2021. We managed to say hello, and from there I reached out to Val to see if she would be interested in working on the track. Thankfully she was into it. I sent her on the instrumental and she came back with rough vocals using the mic from headphones for phones. We re-recorded the vocals in her home in Manchester in 2021 surrounded by her cats, but actually kept some of the headphone takes in the track.”
Snapped Ankles – ‘Pay the Rent’
Snapped Ankles have dropped a frenetic new single, ‘Pay the Rent’, taken from their forthcoming LP Hard Times Furious Dancing. To accompany the release, the band will launch a GoFundTrees campaign on February 21, which aims to raise awareness about the true cost of touring in 2025 and provide opportunities for bands to donate funds to the band ahead of their upcoming tour.
spill tab – ‘Angie’
LA-based French-Korean singer-songwriter has detailed her long-awaited debut full length: ANGIE arrives May 16 on Because Music, and it’s led by the grungy yet joyful title track. “I love this collection of songs so deeply,” Claire Chicha commented, “they feel more honest than anything I’ve created in a long time, and I’m so proud of the hundreds (thousands??) of hours that were spent writing, producing, chipping away at vocals, tightening up harmonies, re-writing bass lines, deleting entire sections, coming up with completely new ones, with all the the insane collaborators that worked on this project. It’s really special to hear all these experiences on love and loss, rejection and passion, walking away and holding on too tight, all coexisting together in one place: a cumulation of these last few years of my life.”