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 Thursday, January 9, 2025.
Mac Miller – ‘5 Dollar Pony Rides’
The Mac Miller estate has shared a new single from the upcoming posthumous album Balloonerism, which the rapper recorded over a decade ago. (The project has long been leaked, but it’s being officially released next week.) ‘5 Dollar Pony Rides’, the slinky lead single, slots into the sound Miller was playing with around 2013’s Watching Movies With the Sound Off.
Blondshell – ‘T&A’
“There’s a Rolling Stones song on Tattoo You called ‘Little T&A’ and at one point in the song, he says ‘tits and ass,’ so I’m borrowing that,” Teitelbaum said of ‘T&A’, the soaring lead single from her just-announced sophomore LP. “I think in music, it’s easy to see things as either more sexualized or more romantic, and I wanted this to be both. I see it as a love story — maybe not the most fairy tale love story — but I wanted it to feel like a really narrative song, where one thing leads to another and then you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. Normally that’s not how I write, but I wanted a song like that.”
PUP – ‘Paranoid’
PUP are back with their first new music in two years. ‘Paranoid’ was recorded with producer John Congleton, who does little to mess with the band’s anthemic freneticism – in fact, the track only gets progressively more chaotic and unexpected. “My favourite part of this song is the breakdown 1:45 in,” frontman Stefan Babcock remarked. “Whenever we try and do a heavy breakdown with catchy vocals we end up sounding like the world’s worst melodic hardcore band. But somehow it worked on this song. I think because it’s so intense in that moment that it’s actually kind of funny and a bit hard to take seriously. There’s some humour in that and how it plays against what I’m yelling about in a way I really like. Plus Nestor plays the melody from ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ on the bass at the heaviest moment in the song which really cracks me up every time I hear it.”
Dean Wareham – ‘You Were the Ones I Had to Betray”
Dean Wareham has announced a new album, That’s the Price of Loving Me. It’s out March 28, and it marks his first collaboration with former Galaxie 500 producer Kramer in 34 years. “I wrote this at the last minute, thinking about how love and friendship seem to actually invite betrayal,” Wareham said of the lead single. “I didn’t really anticipate where the song would end up musically; it was transformed when Gabe Noel added the cello arrangement in the studio.” What it turns into is both dreamlike and beautiful.
serpentwithfeet – ‘Writhing in the Wind’
serpentwithfeet has announced GRIP SEQUEL (the deluxe), a sequel to his third album, arriving February 28. It features alternate versions of three GRIP tracks as well as six new songs, including the just-unveiled ‘Writhing in the Wind’. serpentwithfeet described it as “the sound of a lover begging. He knows he messed up but desperately wants a second chance.” It’s very short, but the desperation comes through.
Heaven – ‘I Need You More Somehow’
Heaven have announced their first LP in seven years, All Love Is Blue, and ‘I Need You More Somehow’ is a great showcase of the band’s dreamy jangle-pop sound. “Both at home on the beach in California or a seedy underground nightclub in Glasgow or Berlin, the song layers two worlds,” the band explained. “The lyrics are purposefully ambiguous, needing more of someone and longing for more connection, but also sounding content and blissful with the present situation at the same time.”
Fust – ‘Spangled’
‘Spangled’ is the lead single and opening track off the new LP by Fust, the project of project of Aaron Dowdy. The album features contributions from Merce Lemon, the War On Drugs’ Dave Hartley, and the Deslondes’ John James Tourville, and if you’re a fan of any of those artists, you’ll find a lot to love in the evocative, roughhewn country rock that ‘Spangled’ delivers. “I don’t think you can really hear the word ‘spangled’ without thinking about America and its national anthem,” Dowdy said in a statement. “I wanted to write a personal, pained kind of national anthem made up of esoteric and American themes like trauma and time out of joint, self-destruction and intoxication, frailty and hubris. It’s an American ghost story, where hurts linger in places long after the buildings and bridges they happened in have disappeared.”
Sleeper’s Bell – ‘Room’
Sleeper’s Bell, the Chicago duo of Blaine Teppema and Evan Green, have previewed their upcoming LP Clover with a new single, ‘Room’. It’s pensive but full of earnest grit. “Love is a kind of carefulness,” Teppema sings, “and I’m fallin’ over and droppin’ shit.”
Morgan Nagler – ‘Cradle the Pain’
Morgan Nagler – the Los Angeles musician who plays in the bands Whispertown and Supermoon and has co-written for Phoebe Bridgers, the Breeders, Haim, and Madi Diaz – has shared a new track, ‘Cradle the Pain’. The fuzzy, mesmerizing track was produced by King Tuff’s Kyle Thomas, mixed by Alex Farrar, and features Meg Duffy of Hand Habits on guitar and Josh Adams (Cat Power, Weyes Blood) on drums. “I originally wrote this song as a sort of letter to one of my dear friends,” Nagler wrote. “It’s funny how it’s often easier to cut to the core of truth when the message is disguised as being for somebody else. It has since taken on many new and personal meanings to me, currently serving as more of a mantra. I think we inherently know it’s all in our own hands, but the allure of not being accountable allows us to romanticize falling victim to the whims of fate. I am constantly needing the reminder that perspective truly is the key to life, and only we contain our own salvations. We have to just keep getting back on the saddle again and again. Cradle the pain, it’s all the same, it’s what you make of it.”
Runnner – ‘Coinstar’
“When I first wrote this song I was very excited,” Runnner’s Noah Weinman said of his shimmering, expansive new single ‘Coinstar’. “It felt like a flying train (if that makes sense). I quickly made a demo at home and thought about finishing it the way I so often did, but I wanted to see how far I could push it. To really pack that punch with big guitars and that soaring pedal steel from Tommy. It’s the first song I’ve done since starting Runnner that I really wanted to do in a studio to get that big sound.” He continued, “To me this song is about trying merge the parts of me that crave stability and comfort (wanting to one day have a family and settle down and all that) with the parts that want to keep touring and living this kind of exciting troubadour life. What I sometimes jokingly call my romantic life vs my Romantic life. I always saw myself as someone who would have a family but I also acknowledge that basically all the steps I’ve taken in my adult life seem to oppose that. So in the song I’m seeking answers in coin flips and laughing at myself for the futility.”