11 Best Songs of the Week: These New Puritans, Adult Mom, Hannah Cohen, The WAEVE, and More
Mar 14, 2025
Welcome to the eighth Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Mark Moody, and Stephen Humphries helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 11.
Recently we announced Issue 74, The Protest Issue. It features Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Strange on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
We’re also hoping to get 600 new (or renewed) subscribers on board in the next three months and so we’re offering 30% off subscriptions right now.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 11 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. These New Puritans: “Industrial Love Song” (Feat. Caroline Polachek)
This week, British brother duo These New Puritans announced a new album, Crooked Wing, and shared its first two singles, “Industrial Love Song” (which features Caroline Polachek) and “Bells.”Crooked Wing is due out May 23 via Domino. We liked both tracks, but “Industrial Love Song” was our favorite and “Bells” makes honorable mentions.
These New Puritans are led by brothers Jack and George Barnett. Jack produced the album with Bark Psychosis’ Graham Sutton and George executive produced Crooked Wing. Sutton produced the band’s Hidden (2010) and Field of Reeds (2013). In 2019 These New Puritans releasedInside the Rose, which was followed by the 2020 companion album, The Cut [2016-2019].
“This album is both more surreal and somehow more direct than anything we’ve ever done,” says George in a press release. “A crooked wing is an ear, you have one on each side of your body, and they have a rippled shape. Maybe if you’re lucky they can help you fly,” he adds, regarding the album title.
Of “Industrial Love Song,” Jacks says: “‘Industrial Love Song’ is a duet between two cranes on a building site. Caroline sings the part of one crane, I sing the other; they can’t touch (their movements are controlled by the operator), but when the sun rises they hope that their shadows will cross. I like how the title George came up with misdirects expectations - it’s not that kind of industrial.”
Jack adds: “As we exit the mechanical age, you realize how much we have in common with our machines, how human they are. Suddenly it didn’t feel so absurd to write a love song from their perspective.”
George says of the song: “It’s hard to attach a time period to this song. It’s progressive music made with instruments that have been around for hundreds of years.”
Artist/photographer Harley Weir directed the video for “Industrial Love Song.”
As for the other new single, “Bells,” Jack says: “This song started with a field recording we made of a bell in a small Orthodox Greek church. You can hear it in the song, and the rest of the song grew out of it. That one bell strike set a lot of the album in motion.”
This week, four-piece indie rock band Adult Mom announced their first album in four years, Natural Causes. The announcement was supported by a new single, “Crystal,” the second behind “Door Is Your Hand,” released last month. Natural Causes is due out May 9 on Epitaph.
Natural Causes was written between 2020 and 2023. The press release says that Adult Mom channeled the global turmoil that accompanied those years into “rage that burns so bright you can light your way by it.”
“Crystal” begins folk-influenced and jangly, crescendoing into its climax introducing loud drums and distorted guitar. Lyrically, it laments feeling stuck in an uncommunicative relationship, fantasizing about any way to get out.
Lead vocalist and songwriter Stevie Knipe, who identifies as queer and non-binary, had this to say about the song in the press release: “‘Crystal’ is written from the perspective of feeling trapped while still being seen in a distorted way. It’s about knowing yourself but not being ready to face it. Thematically, I got more comfortable with getting darker. I knew there were things I wanted to explore that I didn’t get to on Driver, like the traumatic side of trying to unravel all this learned straightness. There were things happening interpersonally where I was like, ‘OK, now I need to really tackle the tough parts of this process.’”
The album follows 2021’s Driver and was recorded at Artfarm Recording studio in New York’s Hudson Valley. Compared to Knipe’s usual process, they describe the undertaking of Natural Causes as a “very communist practice of making a record. It was the whole band and our engineer Chance [Milestone], and we were all making choices as a unit. Every guitar tone, every sound that you hear was all decided together. We’re all the collective producer. I’ve never made a record like that before.” By Issa Nasatir
3. Hannah Cohen: “Dusty”
Upstate New York-based singer/songwriter Hannah Cohen is releasing a new album, Earthstar Mountain, on March 28 via Bella Union / Congrats Records. This week she shared its third single, “Dusty.”
Cohen had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Dusty’ is about the relentless passage of time that we will all experience, and the way beauty and sorrow intertwine at every turn.”
Fellow singer/songwriter Sam Evian (aka Sam Owens, also Cohen’s romantic partner) produced Earthstar Mountain, recording it at their Flying Cloud Recordings in the Catskills, New York. The album features Sufjan Stevens, Clairo, Liam Kazar, Oliver Hill, and Sean Mullins.
Previously Cohen released the album’s near title track, “Earthstar.” Then she shared its second single, “Draggin’,” and announced some new shows. “Draggin’” was one of our Songs of the Week. By Mark Redfern
Eternal EP follows City Lights, a new album the band released last year via Transgressive (stream it here). It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2024. In January The WAEVE also released City Lights Sessions, a live album recorded live in the studio.
The band shared the album’s title track, “City Lights,” in May. It was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced in June, they shared its second single, “You Saw,” via a music video. It was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared its third single, “Broken Boys,” along with a live performance video for the song. “Broken Boys” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. When City Lights was released, both “Druantia” and “Song For Eliza May” made our Songs of the Week list, with “Druantia” at #1.
As with their debut album, James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence & The Machine, Foals, HAIM) produced City Lights. As with their last album, the album features Coxon on saxophone, among other instruments.
Coxon and Dougall first met backstage at a charity concert in London in 2020 and soon the idea was hatched for them to collaborate.
“I didn’t know when I was going to work again or try writing again until Rose came out and said, ‘How about we try writing together?’” said Coxon in a press release announcing City Lights.
“When I listen to the first album, I can hear me and Graham getting to know each other through making the record,” said Dougall.
They not only hit off musically, but romantically, falling in love and having a baby daughter together, Eliza, who was born in August 2022.
Dougall was also one of the artists on the cover of our special 20th Anniversary print issue, where you can read an exclusive interview with her. By Mark Redfern
5. HAIM: “Relationships”
HAIM returned earlier this week with a brand new song, “Relationships,” shared via a music video. It is the first single from an upcoming new album on Columbia Records. Details of the album, such as its title or release date, have yet to be released.
The sister trio is Danielle, Este, and Alanna Haim. Danielle produced the song with longtime collaborator Rostam Batmanglij. Camille Summers-Valli directed the “Relationships” video, which costars actor Drew Starkey. In the song Danielle sings about being stuck in a relationship. A press release says the song’s pop sound is an outlier in a more rock-focussed fourth HAIM album.
Get Sunk is Berninger’s second solo album and follows 2020’s Serpentine Prison. For the new album, Berninger partnered with Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer Sean O’Brien, who co-wrote many of the album’s songs. Get Sunk was recorded in a basement studio in Silverlake, CA. The album features a slew of special guests, including Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Booker T Jones, Harrison Whitford, Mike Brewer, and The Walkmen’s Walter Martin and Paul Maroon.
A press release says Get Sunk is “not necessarily an autobiographical album, the narrator is processing how he became himself. Berninger is an expert in what it feels like to lose all bravery, and Get Sunk points to an undulating reflection in the water. It’s about realizing that you are not yourself without a thousand others: parents, friends, siblings, spouses and exes, college roommates, childhood best friends, cousins, kids, and even strangers.”
The album was partially inspired by the singer/songwriter’s move to Connecticut after years living in Los Angeles. Once there he enjoyed the flora and fauna of the state and “rearranged dust-covered items in his barn into strange and surreal works of art. It felt good to be creating and to understand why he loves what he does,” as the press release points out.
Berninger adds: “I was able to get the blurry picture as close to just right for me.”
11 Best Songs of the Week: Car Seat Headrest, Destroyer, Tunde Adebimpe, Tune-Yards, and More
Mar 07, 2025
Welcome to the seventh Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humphries helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 11.
Last week we announced Issue 74, The Protest Issue. It features Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Strange on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
We’re also hoping to get 600 new (or renewed) subscribers on board in the next three months and so we’re offering 30% off subscriptions right now.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 11 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. Car Seat Headrest: “Gethsemane”
This week, Car Seat Headrest announced a new album/rock opera, The Scholars, and shared its first single, the 11-minute multi-part track “Gethsemane,” via a short film. They also announced some new tour dates. The Scholars is due out May 2 via Matador.
A press release explains the concept of the album in greater detail: “Set at the fictional college campus Parnassus University, the songs on The Scholars are populated with students and staff whose travails illuminate a loose narrative of life, death, and rebirth.”
The band collectively had this to say about “Gethsemane” in the press release: “Rosa studies at the medical school of Parnassus University. After an experience bringing a medically deceased patient back to life, she begins to regain powers suppressed since childhood, of healing others by absorbing their pain. Each night, instead of dreams, she encounters the raw pain and stories of the souls she touches throughout the day. Reality blurs, and she finds herself taken deep into secret facilities buried beneath the medical school, where ancient beings that covertly reign over the college bring forth their dark plans.”
Car Seat Headrest is frontman Will Toledo, lead guitarist Ethan Ives, drummer Andrew Katz, and bassist Seth Dalby. The band’s last album, Making a Door Less Open,came out in 2020 via Matador, meaning the band’s touring for that album was derailed by the pandemic.
Toledo self-produced the album, which has a wide range of influences, including Shakespeare, Mozart, classical opera, The Who’s Tommy, and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. “One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot,” Toledo says. “I didn’t want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it’s like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance.”
Car Seat Headrest started out as a solo project from Toledo, but over the years has grown into a full on collaborative band.
“What we’ve been doing more of in recent years is just taking the pulses of each other,” says Toledo. “We’ve really been leaning into that sort of cocoon that started off with the pandemic years and just turned into this special space that we were creating all on our own. I was coming out of it as a solo project and it always just felt like it was in pieces. There’s the album we’re working on, and then there’s a live show that we’re doing, and then there’s everything in between. And it didn’t really feel to me like things got in sync in an inner feeling way until this record, with that internal communal energy. And it’s become that band feeling for me in a much more realized way. That’s been a big journey.”
Bejar had this to say in a press release: “The song is a reckoning, a dressing down, a walk in the park where you carefully record your steps and describe the park and somehow the recording and the description undoes you. Which is why it’s important that the song be as groovy as it is. That part I didn’t see coming. There is a lightness that points to a future, even if I think it’s the heaviest thing I’ve ever written. John [Collins] outdid himself in the mix. His filigree harps changed everything. I think it is his favourite song on the record.”
Destroyer’s last album, LABYRINTHITIS, came out in March 2022 via Merge. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2022. Read our interview with Destroyer on the album here.
The song is about the end of a complicated relationship, as Adebimpe sings “God knows you’re the worst thing I ever loved.”
Of the new single, Adebimpe simply had this to say in a press release: “Breaking up is hard to down dooby doo down do.”
Adebimpe has also announced a Los Angeles record release show on the eve of the album’s release, at Zebulon on Thursday, April 17.
Three Black Boltz includes “Magnetic,” a new song Adebimpe shared in October via a self-directed music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced in January he released its second single, “Drop,” also one of our Songs of the Week.
Adebimpe produced the album with Wilder Zoby, and Zoby executive produced it. There was additional production and contributions from TV on the Radio members Jaleel Bunton and Jahphet Landis. Landis produced “Drop,” for example.
TV on the Radio also features David Sitek and Kyp Malone. In a press release Adebimpe says that when writing and recording music with the band he can rely on the other members to help finish his initial ideas, but with his solo album he was out on his own limb.
“I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”
Adebimpe is also an actor, having appeared in last year’s blockbuster Twisters, as well as in Rachel Getting Married and the recent Disney+ show Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.As a solo musician he’s also collaborated with Massive Attack, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Run the Jewels.
After several years of inactivity, last September TV on the Radio resurfaced with plans to put out a 20th anniversary reissue of their debut album, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, as well as the announcement of their first shows in five years. The reissue includes five bonus tracks and in September they shared one of them, “Final Fantasy.”Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes (20th Anniversary Edition) came out in November via Touch & Go. The band’s last album, Seeds, came out a decade ago in 2014.
We first interviewed TV on the Radio in Issue 5 of Under the Radar in 2003, in honor of their debut EP, Young Liars. That article isn’t online, but you can revisit our 2008 interview with the band.
4. Tune-Yards: “Limelight”
This week,Tune-Yards announced a new album, Better Dreaming, and shared a new song, “Limelight,” via a video for the single. They also announced some new tour dates. Better Dreaming is due out May 26 via 4AD.
Tune-Yards is Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner, who are also married. “Limelight” was inspired by the family dancing to George Clinton music and their 3-year-old can be heard singing on the song. “This one almost didn’t make it onto the album because it felt trite, especially given multiple genocides across the globe and the particular impact on children (the kids are not ‘alright’),” says Garbus in a press release. “But it kept coming back as people kept responding positively to it, in particular our own kid. Who am I to talk about getting free, about us all getting free? Fannie Lou Hamer said, ‘Nobody’s free until everybody’s free’ and it feels vulnerable but important to see myself as part of that ‘everybody.’”
Cabral had this to say about the new single in a press release: “I wanted to have some moments on this album like on [the 2021 SPELLLING album] The Turning Wheel that honor my love of strings and the whimsical, romantic Stevie Wonder Secret Life of Plants-style synth theatrics. I’m really happy those elements of SPELLLING get to shine on this track. ‘Destiny Arrives’ kind of acts as this sweet moment of purity and optimism amongst the more punchy and aggressive songs on Portrait of My Heart.”
Of the video she adds: “I was thinking about courage and how scary it can be to accept change and to follow your true path in life. In the video we are making these subtle allusions to a werewolf transformation to show this idea of Destiny as being an affliction or curse when you are resistant to your true calling. Embracing the danger of the unknown becomes a euphoric state by the end of the song.”
SPELLLING’s last regular album was 2021’s The Turning Wheel, although in 2023 she released SPELLLING & the Mystery School,a collection of re-envisioned versions of songs from her previous albums re-recorded with her touring band. Said band is featured on Portrait of My Heart: Wyatt Overson (guitar), Patrick Shelley (drums), and Giulio Xavier Cetto (bass). The album also features Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi (who sings on the duet “Mount Analogue”), Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory, and Zulu’s Braxton Marcellous. Cabral worked with three producers on the new album—The Turning Wheel mixing engineer Drew Vandenberg, SZA collaborator Rob Bisel, and Yves Tumor producer Psymun.
England’s Black Country, New Road are releasing a new album, Forever Howlong, on April 4 via Ninja Tune. This week they released its second single, “Happy Birthday,” via a stop-motion animated video. Lesley-anne Rose directed the video.
The band’s lineup is Georgia Ellery (acoustic guitar, mandolin, tenor recorder, violin, vocals), Lewis Evans (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet, flutes, tenor recorder), Tyler Hyde (acoustic guitar, bass guitar, clarinet, harmonium, piano, tenor recorder, vocals), May Kershaw (accordion, harpsichord, piano, vocals), Luke Mark (acoustic guitar, baritone guitar, electric guitar, lap steel, tenor recorder), and Charlie Wayne (banjo, drums, percussion, tenor recorder, tuned percussion).
Ellery wrote “Besties,” whereas Hyde wrote “Happy Birthday.” Hyde had this to say about the song in a press release: “When I wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ I had Georgia’s song ‘Besties’ in my head. Therefore, the structure of it is heavily influenced by it.”
When Black Country, New Road’s former frontman, Isaac Wood, announced that he was leaving the band in 2022 only days before the release of their sophomore album, Ants From Up There (also on Ninja Tune), the band vowed to continue on and to not perform any of the material from Ants From Up There without Wood and so they wrote all new songs to perform live. That resulted in the 2023 live album, Live at Bush Hall, and concert film of the same name.
Forever Howlong is thus the band’s first studio album recorded without Wood. Vocal duties, as well as the bulk of the songwriting, is now split between Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw. “It created a real through line for the album, having three girls singing,” says Ellery in a press release. “It’s definitely very different to Ants From Up There, because of the female perspective—and the music we’ve made also complements that.”
“Besties” was the band’s first studio single to feature lead vocals from Ellery. James Ford (Fontaines D.C., Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur) produced Forever Howlong.
11 Best Songs of the Week: Cheekface, Julien Baker and TORRES, Miki Berenyi Trio, Momma, and More
Feb 28, 2025
Welcome to the sixth Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 11.
Today we announced Issue 74, The Protest Issue. It features Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Strange on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
We’re also hoping to get 600 new (or renewed) subscribers on board in the next three months and so we’re offering 30% off subscriptions right now.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 11 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. Cheekface: “Living Lo-Fi”
Los Angeles-based indie rock trio Cheekface have been teasing a new album, Middle Spoon, on social media for about three weeks and as promised, it was released earlier this week. They also shared a video for the album’s latest single, “Living Lo-Fi.” Stream the album here.
Ben Epstein and David Combs directed the “Living Lo-Fi” video, which guest stars fellow musician Chris Farren and centers around a music video shoot gone wrong.
Cheekface is vocalist/guitarist Greg Katz, bassist Amanda Tannen (formerly of stellastarr*), and drummer Mark “Echo” Edwards. Greg Cortez produced and recorded the album at New Monkey Studio and 64Sound in Los Angeles. Tannen did the album’s cover artwork, as is always the case with the band. Cheekface surprise-released a new album, It’s Sorted, in March 2024. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2024. Middle Spoon is the band’s fifth album.
Julien Baker and TORRES (aka MacKenzie Scott) are releasing their debut album together, Send a Prayer My Way, on April 14 via Matador. This week they shared its third single, “Tuesday,” which is sung by TORRES and about a girl she had a crush on in her youth and the resistance to it from the girl’s mother.
A press release says the song “centers on trying to overcome and heal from the guilt, shame and religious abuse that so many people experience discovering their identity and growing up Queer.”
Send a Prayer My Way is considered a country album. The duo released their debut single together, “Sugar in the Tank,” in December only days after the two beloved queer indie rock singer/songwriters performed the song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. When the album was announced they released its second single, “Sylvia,” which made our Songs of the Week list.
The album has been in the works since the two first performed together in 2016 and one of them suggested that they one day make a country album.
TORRES released a new album, What an enormous room, in January 2024 via Merge. In August 2024 she teamed up with Fruit Bats for the collaborative EP, A Decoration, also on Merge.
Baker’s last solo album was 2021’s Little Oblivions, which was followed by the accompanying B-Sides EP, both released via Matador. Little Oblivions was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2021. Read our Protest Issue interview with Baker, where she discusses the album, here. Also listen to our Under the Radar podcastinterview with Baker here.
Miki Berenyi Trio—led by the former singer/guitarist with 1990s shoegaze, dream pop, and Britpop band Lush—are releasing their debut album, Tripla, on April 4 via Bella Union. This week they shared its third single, “Big I Am,” via a music video. Sébastien Faits-Divers directed the song’s video, which was filmed at the Consortium Museum (Contemporary Art Center) in Dijon, France.
The song tackles macho aggression and toxic masculinity, including misogynistic social media personality Andrew Tate, as Berenyi explains in a press release: “I’ve witnessed 50+ years of the trends in masculinity and frankly, nothing much changes—as ever, there are good men and there are shit men, and there are boys who can be misguided but easily mature into the best of their sex. But this latest incarnation of ‘winning’ the sex war is a laughably infantile and wilfully regressive new low.”
Tripla includes the band’s debut single, “Vertigo,” which was released in May 2024 and was #1 on our Songs of the Week list that week. When the album was announced, they shared another new song from it, “8th Deadly Sin,” via a music video. “8th Deadly Sin” was also one of our Songs of the Week.
After Lush, Berenyi was also in the band Piroshka and for the trio she is backed by two members of that band—Berenyi’s life partner KJ “Moose” McKillop (of ’90s shoegazers Moose) and guitarist Oliver Cherer. Miki Berenyi Trio (or MB3 for short) is a full on collaboration between the three members and not just a Berenyi solo project. Tripla is the Hungarian word for “triple,” named in a nod to Berenyi’s Hungarian father.
Bella Union is the label founded by Simon Raymonde, formerly of Cocteau Twins, a band previously associated with Lush. Bella Union also released the two Piroshka albums.
Paul Gregory (of Bella Union labelmates Lanterns on the Lake) mixed the album. The album was recorded at home and the trio have also taken a DIY approach to touring. “There is something very ‘grass roots’ about what we’re doing,” says Berenyi. “There’s no point following the ‘announce the album, then tour, then record the next album’ route—we just want to wring as much enjoyment out of this as we can, and hope that it resonates somewhere!”
In 2022, Berenyi released her acclaimed memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, and the trio was partially born out of the need to perform at book events.
Berenyi did a joint interview with Australian dream pop artist Hatchie in The ’90s Issue of our print magazine, where she discussed her memoir and Lush. Buy a copy directly from us here.
Pirohska, which also features former Elastica drummer Justin Welch, released their second studio album, Love Drips and Gathers, in 2021 via Bella Union. Read our interview with them about it here.
Pirsoshka also contributed to our Covers of Coversalbum in honor of our 20th Anniversary, where they covered Grandaddy’s “The Crystal Lake.” Berenyi was also one of the artists on the cover of our 20th Anniversary Issue.
Brooklyn-based band Momma are releasing a new album, Welcome to My Blue Sky, on April 4 via Polyvinyl/Lucky Number. This week shared the album’s third single, “Bottle Blonde,” via a music video self-directed by the band.
Momma is Etta Friedman (songwriter/vocalist/guitarist), Allegra Weingarten (songwriter/vocalist/guitarist), Aron Kobayashi Ritch (producer/bassist), and Preston Fulks (drummer).
Friedman and Weingarten wrote “Bottle Blonde” and collectively had this to say about it in a press release: “We wrote this song as a letter to our past selves, when we were 23 and 24, stumbling through an extremely grueling tour that ended up taking a huge toll on our hearts and minds. We both had bleached hair and were in the midst of making huge decisions that would change our lives and also our perceptions of ourselves. The song started out as kind of an affirmation to our younger selves, that everything would be ok if you just follow your heart, but now looking back on it the lyrics could also be read as us talking to each other.”
Ritch produced the album, which was recorded live with the full band at Studio G in Brooklyn.
“With this album we were less concerned with sounding cool and heavy and rock & roll and much more focused on good, clean songwriting that hopefully inspires people to sing along and mean every word,” said Weingarten in a previous press release.
In 2023 Momma released the single “Bang Bang.” It was also one of our Songs of the Week, but it’s not featured on the new album.
Momma’s last album, Household Name, came out in 2022 via Polyvinyl.
11 Best Songs of the Week: Fontaines D.C., Youth Lagoon, Perfume Genius, Lael Neale, and More
Feb 21, 2025
Welcome to the fifth Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 11.
Issue 73 is still out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
We’re also hoping to get 600 new (or renewed) subscribers on board in the next three months and so we’re offering 30% off subscriptions right now.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 11 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. Fontaines D.C.: “It’s Amazing to Be Young”
Irish five-piece Fontaines D.C. released a new album, Romance, last August via XL. Today they released a brand new single, “It’s Amazing to Be Young,” via a cinematic seven-and-a-half-minute music video. The song itself is only three-and-a-half minutes long, but the video also features moments for dialogue and plot. Below is both the video and the audio-only YouTube video for the song.
As he did Romance, James Ford produced “It’s Amazing to Be Young.” The song will be released on limited edition 7-inch vinyl featuring the new B-side “Before You I Just Forget.”
Fontaines D.C. features Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass), and Tom Coll (drums).
Deegan had this to say about the new song in a press release: “‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’ is a song that was written in the presence of a newborn child—Carlos’ child. It sounded more like a lullaby or a music box then, but with the same lyric—‘it’s amazing to be young.’ The feeling of hope a child can give is profound and moving, especially for young men like us. That sense of wanting to create a world for them to grow up in happily. It’s a feeling that fights against the cynicism that can often overtake us in the modern world. So we wanted to declare which side we were on—it really is amazing to be young. We are still free, and want to make that feeling spread. We want to protect it for the others around us, and maybe in doing that, can also help protect it for ourselves.”
Director Luna Carmoon had this to say about making the new video: “I love this new track—it’s one of my favorites Fontaines have done and I love that I got to complete the trilogy of videos for it. It was all natural and kind of a surprise that the three videos came together. I’ve got to work with such a beautiful team and was really given the space and breath to create the worlds that automatically came to me when hearing the music. I feel like we’re living in this weird time where romantic love is being pushed to the side, and sex and love is unvirtuous and no longer what people want to see. I don’t believe that at all. I love that these two people have fallen in love with themselves, and I wanted to see them fall in love with each other. I planted the seed after I did the carjitsu video (‘In the Modern World’) and then I had a couple of days to write the video for ‘It’s Amazing to Be Young.’ There are a lot of odes to Santa Sangre it. It also reminds me of my first short film Shagbands.”
Fontaines D.C. are interviewed about Romance in our current print issue (Issue 73). Check out our in-depth interview and photo shoot with the band by buying the issue directly from us.
Romance is the band’s fourth album, the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed Skinty Fia (which was #1 on both the UK and Irish album charts), 2020’s Grammy-nominated A Hero’s Death, and 2019’s Mercury Prize-nominated Dogrel. It finds them working with producer James Ford for the first time.
The band was formed in Dublin but is now based in London. Ideas for the new album started to form while they were touring the U.S. and Mexico with Arctic Monkeys. Then the band members went their separate ways for a while, before reconvening for a three weeks of pre-production in a North London studio and one month of recording in a chateau near Paris.
In 2023 Chatten released his debut solo album, Chaos For the Fly. Read our interview with him about it here. By Mark Redfern
2. Youth Lagoon: “Gumshoe (Dracula From Arkansas)”
“Someone said my music makes them feel like they died in the forest, and I’ve honestly never heard a better compliment,” Powers says of the new song in a press release. “I don’t think I have a song that’s more suited for that description than ‘Gumshoe.’ I usually write out of pure love, delirium, or just to get the devil off my back, and this one checks all three boxes…it may be the closest I’ve come so far to finding real freedom in music.”
Powers adds that the song is “a love letter to my 1990s small-town boyhood—taking all of those fragments of memory and stitching them into a present-day folktale. I grew up homeschooled in a house full of brothers where there was enough mischief and make-believe to make any mother crack. Our world was whatever we wanted it to be, and I don’t think that ever changed for me.”
Powers says the video is “a stew of home movies, family archive, and footage I took just a few months ago around my current neighborhood.”
Rarely Do I Dream is the fairly quick followup to Heaven Is a Junkyard, released in June 2023 via Fat Possum.
The album was inspired by home videos of his childhood that Powers found in the fall of 2023 in a shoebox in his parent’s basement.
“When I took the tapes home and popped in the first one, it was my brother Bobby and I at the state fair. I was 4 years old choking on a corn dog,” Powers said in a previous press release. “If anything’s a summary of life, that is.”
He then started recording moments from the home movies off the TV and sampling some of the audio to work it into songs. “What I was really consumed with was how much I could zoom in on my actual history,” said Powers. “I wanted to really make someone feel like they were inside my living room in 1993, but rearrange the furniture a bit. Something about combining that level of hyperreality with fairytales of devils and detectives weirdly felt like the truest way to immortalize these pieces of my family.”
“The more I rewind the tapes of my life, the more I can hear the voice of my soul,” Powers added. “This isn’t nostalgia. Life’s much more messy than that. It’s a dedication to all the parts of who I was, who I am, and who I’m going to be.”
Powers recorded the album with co-producer/mixer/engineer Rodaidh McDonald (Weyes Blood, The xx, Gil Scott-Heron).
As Youth Lagoon, Powers released three albums: 2011’s The Year of Hibernation, 2013’s Wondrous Bughouse, and 2015’s Savage Hills Ballroom. Then he retired the name in 2016 and released two albums simply as Trevor Powers: 2018’s Mulberry Violence and 2020’s surprise-released Capricorn. All before returning to Youth Lagoon for Heaven Is a Junkyard.
3. Perfume Genius: “No Front Teeth” (Feat. Aldous Harding)
Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) is releasing a new album, Glory, on March 28 via Matador. This week he released its second single, “No Front Teeth,” which features New Zealand singer/songwriter Aldous Harding. It was shared via a music video for the song directed by Cody Critcheloe (who also directed Perfume Genius’ “Queen” video). Hadreas and Harding both star in the video, alongside longtime Perfume Genius band member and co-writer Alan Wyffels.
Glory once again finds Hadreas teaming up with long-time producer Blake Mills and keyboardist/co-writer/life partner Alan Wyffels. The album also features other previous collaborators, including guitarists Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) and Greg Uhlmann, drummers Tim Carr and Jim Keltner, and bassist Pat Kelly.
On Glory, Hadreas says in a press release that he was more open to input from his band and collaborators. “I’m more engaged with the band and the audience,” he says. “I’m still on some wild tear, but there’s more access and it’s more collaborative, in a way that makes it better, but also scary—because it feels more vulnerable.”
This week minimalist singer/songwriter Lael Neale announced a new album, Altogether Stranger, and shared its first single, “Tell Me How to Be Here,” via a self-directed video. She also announced some tour dates. Altogether Stranger is due out May 2 via Sub Pop.
Altogether Stranger finds Neale returning to Los Angeles after three years of living in rural Virginia. She was born and raised in Virginia before moving to Los Angeles then back to VA during the pandemic and now back to LA again. The video for “Tell Me How to Be Here” superimposes images of LA on top of a double exposed Neale as she sings the song.
“On returning to Los Angeles I felt like an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet so I’m writing from the perspective of a being from another realm witnessing the peculiarities of humanity,” says Neale in a press release.
“In the course of writing this record there was one song I could never finish. The main line was, ‘I don’t belong here, I am an altogether stranger.’ I meant ‘stranger’ as a noun, not an adjective. Even though I abandoned the song, the lost chorus stuck with me & became the unspoken motif of the record,” says Neale of the album’s title.
Blondshell (aka Sabrina Teitelbaum) has unveiled “Two Times,” a delicate new single that marks a striking departure from her usual sound. The track, accompanied by a lyric video, showcases an intimate arrangement built around acoustic guitar and piano, revealing a more vulnerable side of the acclaimed artist.
This release follows the bold, arena-ready “T&A” from last month, which announced her sophomore album If You Asked For a Picture, scheduled for release on May 2, 2025 via Partisan Records. “T&A” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. The new album, produced by Yves Rothman, promises to build on the foundation laid by Blondshell’s self-titled 2023 debut, which established her as one of music’s most compelling new voices.
Reflecting on “Two Times,” Blondshell shares: “I feel like I’m always seeing movies and shows where conflict is the only way love is expressed. It’s a lot of stories where someone has to work really hard to get somebody else to love them, and that’s what seems to make the relationship valuable. This song was basically like, what if it’s just solid? What if it’s just good and the relationship’s healthy? Does that mean it is less valuable? I think that’s a painful question because it’s essentially asking how capable you are of being in a decent relationship. But it’s also a love song in that way.”
You can grab our print issue (Issue 71) to read our exclusive interview with Blondshell. Read our review of her last album here. By Andy Von Pip
6. Samia: “Lizard”
7. Snapped Ankles: “Pay the Rent”
8. Wishy: “Fly”
9. Hannah Cohen: “Draggin’”
10. The Horrors: “Ariel”
11. Mamalarky: “#1 Best of All Time”
Honorable Mentions:
These songs almost made the Top 11.
Brian D’Addario: “Till the Morning”
King Hannah: “Leftovers”
James Krivchenia: “Probably Wizards”
The Murder Capital: “A Distant Life”
The Null Club: “Slip Angle” (Feat. Valentine Caulfield)
Oslo Twins: “I Wake Up Slowly”
Porridge Radio: “The Machine Starts to Sing”
Sleigh Bells: “Bunky Pop”
Sunday 1994: “Doomsday”
Triathalon: “RIP”
Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 11 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:
20 Best Songs of the Week: The WAEVE, Anika, Deep Sea Diver, Destroyer, Andy Bell, Doves, and More
Feb 14, 2025
Welcome to the fourth Songs of the Week of 2025. We didn’t do a Songs of the Week last week, as I was out of town covering MegaCon, a comic-con in Orlando, FL. So this week’s supersized list covers the last two weeks. And what a couple of weeks they were for new tracks!
This week Andy Von Pip, Matt the Raven, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 50 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 20.
Issue 73 is still out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last two weeks, we have picked the 20 best the last 14 days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. The WAEVE: “Love Is All Pain”
Earlier today, The WAEVE—aka Rose Elinor Dougall and Blur guitarist Graham Coxon—announced a new EP, Eternal EP, and shared its first single, “Love Is All Pain,” via a music video. Simeon Leeder directed the song’s video, which was shot on black & white Super-8 film in London.
Eternal EP follows City Lights, a new album the band released last year via Transgressive (stream it here). It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2024. Last month The WAEVE also released City Lights Sessions, a live album recorded live in the studio.
The band shared the album’s title track, “City Lights,” in May. It was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced in June, they shared its second single, “You Saw,” via a music video. It was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared its third single, “Broken Boys,” along with a live performance video for the song. “Broken Boys” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. When City Lights was released, both “Druantia” and “Song For Eliza May” made our Songs of the Week list, with “Druantia” at #1.
As with their debut album, James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence & The Machine, Foals, HAIM) produced City Lights. As with their last album, the album features Coxon on saxophone, among other instruments.
Coxon and Dougall first met backstage at a charity concert in London in 2020 and soon the idea was hatched for them to collaborate.
“I didn’t know when I was going to work again or try writing again until Rose came out and said, ‘How about we try writing together?’” said Coxon in a press release announcing City Lights.
“When I listen to the first album, I can hear me and Graham getting to know each other through making the record,” said Dougall.
They not only hit off musically, but romantically, falling in love and having a baby daughter together, Eliza, who was born in August 2022.
The WAEVE were interviewed in Issue 71 of our print magazine (get it here). By Mark Redfern
2. Anika: “Hearsay”
Last week, British-born, Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson, better known as Anika, announced her new album Abyss, out April 4th on Sacred Bones, and shared its lead single and video, “Hearsay.”
Born out of frustration, anger, and confusion with the modern world, the 10-track album promises to be raw, urgent, and emotionally charged. “Hearsay” hones in on the extreme divisions between the left and right in contemporary society. Anika explains, “This song is about media moguls—about the power of the media, whether social, TV or beyond—we are as much under its spell as we ever were and some nasties are exploiting it for their own gains. Parasites feeding off the blood of the public—PJ Harvey inspired for sure.”
The track arrives alongside a video directed by Laura Martinova, who says, “The ‘Hearsay’ music video is inspired by vampire aesthetics and seeks to connect with the grungy essence of Anika’s new album. We aimed to create a dark yet dynamic and surprising video. My collaboration with contemporary dancers and the use of raw camera movement transcends this imagery, while Zeynep Schilling’s creative direction elevates the video to another level—somewhere between evil and heaven. We worked with stylist Danny Muster and emerging designers to craft a timeless aesthetic.” By Andy Von Pip
3. Deep Sea Diver: “Let Me Go” (Feat. Madison Cunningham)
The album’s title track, “Billboard Heart,” was shared in September via a music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced, its second single, “Shovel,” was released via a music video. “Shovel” again landed on Songs of the Week.
Deep Sea Diver is singer and multi-instrumentalist Jessica Dobson, drummer Peter Mansen (also Dobson’s partner), and keyboardist Elliot Jackson. Billboard Heart is their first album for Sub Pop.
Dobson and Mansen directed the “Let Me Go” video with Tyler Kalberg. The video was filmed in Los Angeles on January 5, 2025 and also features Cunningham. It was inspired by French New Wave films.
Dobson had this to say about the song and its video in a press release: “I’ve been wanting to collaborate with Madison for a long time, and I was over the moon when this song came in such an unexpected moment. We were just jamming in the studio and I started playing a guitar riff that I’ve had kicking around since high school that Madison started immediately winding around on her guitar. We looped a drum machine that my co-producer Andy Park started playing and a few hours later most of the song was finished. This song felt effortlessly cool from the start; It reminds me of some of my favorite PJ Harvey songs, full of grit & power. We shot the music video with the same spirit, and as two LA natives who both love the city—we wanted to explore our hometown. Not knowing that it was two days before the LA fires, it has subsequently taken on a new meaning as a love letter to the city we both adore.”
Dobson has previously also performed in The Shins and in Beck’s band. Billboard Heart also features Dobson’s former The Shins’ bandmate Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose, and Greg Leisz. Dobson produced the album with Andy D. Park (who also mixed the album), with additional production from Adam Schatz. Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone mastered the album. By Mark Redfern
4. Destroyer: “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World”
Bejar had this to say in a press release: “Me and Sydney started this off as a ‘Hydroplaning’ visualizer, dusting off her 24-year-old Canon GL2 after many dormant years. I love the grain of the picture. Then things ballooned into a full-on video. I walk around in it, trying to look Parisian, talking to the crows. Basically a day in the life of…. I shot the nighttime stuff and it is my finest hour. Sydney did the rest.”
Hermant adds: “The video is a nesting doll of visualizers that are relaxing until they are not: Enter Dan’s night footage. Dan was trying to capture the wind. He did, but not in the way he thought he did.”
Previously Destroyer shared Dan’s Boogie’s first single “Bologna,” via a music video. The song features Fiver’s Simone Schmidt and was one of our Songs of the Week.
Destroyer’s last album, LABYRINTHITIS, came out in March 2022 via Merge. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2022. Read our interview with Destroyer on the album here. By Mark Redfern
5. Andy Bell: “apple green ufo”
Andy Bell of British shoegazers Ride is releasing a new solo album, pinball wanderer, on February 28 via Sonic Cathedral. This week he shared another song from it, the eight-minute long “apple green ufo.” It’s got a Stone Roses gone Afrobeat vibe.
“I had this riff on an acoustic and it was kind of like one of those Led Zeppelin folk bangers, but I brought it into the Serge Gainsbourg world and gave it a glass of absinthe,” says Bell in a press release, referencing Dougie Wright’s bass and Dave Richmond’s drumming on Gainsbourg’s classic “Histoire de Melody Nelson” as an influence on “apple green ufo.”
“The lyrics imagine if I met an alien and had to show them around Earth, what would I want to show them?” Bell continues. “It also references The Simpsons’ Mr Burns (‘I bring you love’) and ET (‘If you’re lonely, phone home’).
“I would like to highlight the ‘ring modulated’ fuzz guitar solo, which I couldn’t have made without an effect pedal called Randy’s Revenge’ by Fairfield Circuitry—my favorite company. This is not an ad!”
Constellations For the Lonely was due out today, but its release has been pushed back two weeks due to manufacturing delays.
Doves is Jimi Goodwin (lead vocals, bass) and brothers Andy Williams (drums, vocals) and Jez Williams (guitar, vocals).
“Saint Teresa” was inspired by a late night internet search by Goodwin, as a press release explains: “The 16th Century Spanish nun and reformer caught the band’s imagination after discovering that her burial, pre-canonisation, was interrupted. Following two, initial exhumations, numerous body parts were removed and taken to locations in Rome, Paris, Lisbon and elsewhere.”
The song had a protracted writing and recording period. Goodwin says: “By keeping it to one side, we were able to reappraise it and make it better. Andy and Jez helped out with it and it’s great that it’s found a home. My Catholicism went out of the window years ago, but I love the iconography associated with the church. They put on a really good show. I identify with it all from my childhood. The story of Saint Teresa is fascinating.”
Jez Williams adds: “Sometimes songs can be like a Rubik’s Cube. You play with it but have to go back to it after a time and, only then, do you really know what to do with it. ‘Saint Teresa’ was still knocking on the door when we came to record the album, so we took it into sessions with Dan [Austin—co-producer], replacing some of it, changing a few of the lyrics and it turned out great.”
Previously Doves shared the album’s first single, “Renegade,” via a music video. “Renegade” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared its second single, “Cold Dreaming,” via a music video. “Cold Dreaming” also landed on Songs of the Week.
Constellations For the Lonely is the band’s sixth album and follows 2020’s The Universal Want, which was their first album in 11 years after an eight-year hiatus. The band launched writing and recording sessions for the new album as early as 2020.
The band wrote, recorded, and produced the album in Greater Manchester, North Wales, and Cheshire. Long-term collaborator Dan Austin contributed additional production. Constellations For the Lonely finds Goodwin taking a bit of a step back, with him contributing in the studio, but not touring the record. The Williams brothers will be sharing lead vocals live.
Andy Williams had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Cold Dreaming’ is a song about forgiveness. Trying to forgive and move on. As a minimum, these days, resilience is the thing that you need more than ever, certainly as a musician. Perhaps the lyrics do touch a bit on what we’ve been through.”
Doves have released five albums: 2000’s Lost Souls, 2002’s The Last Broadcast, 2005’s Some Cities, 2009’s Kingdom of Rust, and 2020’s The Universal Want.
We go way back with Doves, they were interviewed about Lost Souls in our very first print issue in 2001 and we have covered every album since. By Mark Redfern
7. Bartees Strange: “17”
Bartees Strange released a new album, Horror, today via 4AD. Earlier this week he released its fifth single, album closer “Backseat Banton,” and performed that song on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, debuting it on the show. While we certainly liked “Backseat Banton,” there was an album track we liked even better, “17,” which surprisingly wasn’t released as a single from the album. As its title suggests, in the song Strange tackles his teenage years.
Strange first worked on Horror with Yves Rothman and Lawrence Rothman, before finishing it with Jack Antonoff after he worked with Antonoff’s band Bleachers.
A previous press release said the album is about “facing your fears and becoming feared.”
The press release added: “Strange was raised on fear. His family told scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared.”
Strange further elaborated: “In a way I think I made this record to reach out to people who may feel afraid of things in their lives too. For me it’s love, locations, cosmic bad luck, or that feeling of doom that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I think that it’s easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feels the same. This album is just me trying to connect. I’m trying to shrink the size of the world. I’m trying to feel close—so I’m less afraid.”
In November, Strange released the new holiday-themed standalone single “Xmas” that isn’t featured on Horror but did just make our Songs of the Week list.
Strange first garnered attention for covering a string of The National tracks, including on Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, his EP of National covers released in 2020 on Brassland, a label run by members of the band. He was born in Ipswich, England, but grew up in Mustang, a largely the white and conservative rural town outside Oklahoma City, before launching his music career in Washington, D.C. In between he also worked in the Obama administration.
“‘Mega Circuit’ was one of the first songs I wrote, intent on making a creepier, more guitar driven record,” Zauner explains in a press release. “The song is sort of an examination of contemporary masculinity, and explores a conflicted desire to embrace a generation that in the absence of positive role models has found refuge in violence and bigotry. We had the legendary Jim Keltner—who’s played on everything from ‘These Days,’ to ‘Here You Come Again’ to ‘Dream Weaver’—come in and play the fiercest shuffle you’ve ever heard.”
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is the follow-up to Jubilee, which was our #1 album of 2021 and landed Japanese Breakfast on the cover of our print magazine (buy a copy directly from us here or read our cover story interview here). In 2021 Zauner also put out her acclaimed debut memoir, Crying In H Mart, on Knopf. The book debuted at #2 on The New York Times’ Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers List and is being adapted into a film.
Speaking of all the success she had with her last album and memoir and how it impacted the new album, Zauner says in a press release: “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted. I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.”
Blake Mills produced For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), which was recorded at Sound City in Los Angeles, where classic albums such as After the Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac, and Nevermind were also made. One song on the album features legendary actor/musician Jeff Bridges.
This week, UK’s dream-pop duo Wings of Desire (aka James Taylor and Chloe Little) shared a new single, “A Few More Years.” It’s due to be released as a white label 7-inch single with a remix by Ghost Culture on the B-side.
Taylor had this to say about the single in a press release: “‘A Few More Years’ is a sober reflection on the heady days of youth. As we live through a world in flux let’s hark back to a time before algorithms and the financialization of social life. Windows down, Benson & Hedges lit. Watching the sun come up with dread as others march to their daily commute. A note on a past period of personal crisis, and a message to my younger self. Hold on for a few more years as things do get better with time. Everything looks beautiful from here.”
Leithauser had this to say about the song in a press release: “I finished this song in the spring of 2024, and then in the summer my friend sent me a link to a Joe Rogan event called ‘Burn the Boats.’ At first I thought, ‘Oh fuck. Aw shit. Oh fuck this shit!!!,’ but then I listened to Joe Rogan’s podcast for the first time, and I learned that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about and I don’t care about his nonsense. My song is about being at a party, falling in love with someone, and deciding you want nothing more than to go home with them. At the same time, the party’s now kinda boring, and you’d really like to speed up the process. ‘I wanna go home!’ Who can’t relate to that? I wrote a backup line for my friend Lachrisha, which was definitely inspired by Funkadelic, and the guitar playing was definitely inspired by David Bowie’s Low.”
Leithauser shared the album’s title track in December. When the album was announced in January, he released a new single from it, “Knockin’ Heart,” via a music video. “Knockin’ Heart” was one of our Songs of the Week.
Leithauser co-produced the album with his wife Anna Stumpf and The National’s Aaron Dessner. Leithauser worked on the album in his home studio in New York City, The Struggle Hut, but finished it at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio in Hudson Valley, New York.
15 Best Songs of the Week: Momma; Black Country, New Road; SASAMI; Tunde Adebimpe; and More
Jan 31, 2025
Welcome to the third Songs of the Week of 2025. We didn’t do a Songs of the Week last week, with Martin Luther King Day plus Trump’s second inauguration equalling less songs released last week and leaving us uninspired to do a list. So this week’s supersized list covers the last two weeks. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Mark Moody, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humphries helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 40 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 15.
Over the holiday break we posted our Top 100 Albums of 2024 list. We also put together a 10-hour Spotify playlist featuring at least one song from every album on the Top 100, as well as some honorable mentions.
Issue 73 is still out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
We are also having a 30% subscriptions sale right now, as our new issue will be shipping out soon.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last two weeks, we have picked the 15 best the last 14 days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. Momma: “I Want You (Fever)”
This week, Brooklyn-based band Momma announced a new album, Welcome to My Blue Sky, and released a new single from it, “I Want You (Fever),” via a music video. They also announced some tour dates. Welcome to My Blue Sky is due out April 4 via Polyvinyl/Lucky Number.
Momma is Etta Friedman (songwriter/vocalist/guitarist), Allegra Weingarten (songwriter/vocalist/guitarist), Aron Kobayashi Ritch (producer/bassist), and Preston Fulks (drummer). Ritch produced the album, which was recorded live with the full band at Studio G in Brooklyn.
“With this album we were less concerned with sounding cool and heavy and rock & roll and much more focused on good, clean songwriting that hopefully inspires people to sing along and mean every word,” says Weingarten in a press release.
The band collectively had this to say about the new single: “‘I Want You (Fever)’ is a song we wrote about wanting to be with someone who has a girlfriend, or someone who isn’t over their ex. It’s pining after someone, but there’s also some confidence knowing that that person wants to be with you. The second we wrote that song we felt like we were entering a new era—we scrapped everything we had written for the album up to that point because it felt so fresh and so exciting.”
The band’s lineup is Georgia Ellery (acoustic guitar, mandolin, tenor recorder, violin, vocals), Lewis Evans (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet, flutes, tenor recorder), Tyler Hyde (acoustic guitar, bass guitar, clarinet, harmonium, piano, tenor recorder, vocals), May Kershaw (accordion, harpsichord, piano, vocals), Luke Mark (acoustic guitar, baritone guitar, electric guitar, lap steel, tenor recorder), and Charlie Wayne (banjo, drums, percussion, tenor recorder, tuned percussion).
When Black Country, New Road’s former frontman, Isaac Wood, announced that he was leaving the band in 2022 only days before the release of their sophomore album, Ants From Up There (also on Ninja Tune), the band vowed to continue on and to not perform any of the material from Ants From Up There without Wood and so they wrote all new songs to perform live. That resulted in the 2023 live album, Live at Bush Hall, and concert film of the same name.
Forever Howlong is thus the band’s first studio album recorded without Wood. Vocal duties, as well as the bulk of the songwriting, is now split between Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw. “It created a real through line for the album, having three girls singing,” says Ellery in a press release. “It’s definitely very different to Ants From Up There, because of the female perspective—and the music we’ve made also complements that.”
“Besties” is the band’s first studio single to feature lead vocals from Ellery. James Ford (Fontaines D.C., Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur) produced Forever Howlong.
Rianne White directed the “Besties” video and had this to say about it: “‘Besties’ came into my world with a dance of feelings, with such an understood concept of exploring the core emotion of taking on the world, and its obstacles to be with her, the bestie, again.
“Building this with the band took me to so many memories, informed by a collective of experiences from my childhood writing letters and maps to my bestie, into formulating our own map and sliding-doors effect narrative—charged with the instinctual punch and intuition of—I need to be with my bestie now. Working with Georgia, May, and Tyler was a real treat across their performances especially, and quite literally, running from the more conventional lip-sync world, and injecting cameo moments with Charlie, Lewis, and Luke. Knee-high in January’s jacket of mud, darkness, fields, street corners, and a pack of hounds we found the beating heart of a world made better by chasing love and connection. Shooting in these conditions, and having fun is a real testament to a fantastic team and collective of people! It’s been such a pleasure, this song was love at first harpsichord!”
Read our interview with Black Country, New Road on Ants From Up There and Wood’s departure here.
Read our interview with them on Live at Bush Hall here.
3. SASAMI: “In Love With a Memory” (Feat. Clairo)
SASAMI (aka Los Angeles-based musician Sasami Ashworth) is releasing a new album, Blood on the Silver Screen, on March 7 via Domino. This week she released another new single from it, “In Love With a Memory,” which features Clairo and is accompanied by a music video. She also announced some new tour dates.
“‘In Love With a Memory’ was actually the first song I wrote that ended up on Blood on the Silver Screen,” SASAMI says in a press release. “I grew up going to Japanese or Korean ‘noraebang’ private karaoke rooms with my mom, who was secretly the most incredible singer. Most of her go-to numbers were oooold Japanese and Korean folk songs that low key kind of made me feel like I was in a horror film or David Lynch movie. I can picture my mom in a Julee Cruise-type setting—single, jazz lounge spotlight and cigarette smoke hanging stalely in the air—singing one of those old songs with the most gorgeously haunting vibrato and breathtaking vocal control. That’s the feeling I was tapping into when I started writing ‘In Love With a Memory,’ and there is a very timeless but relevant crooning feeling imbued in the song that I think was perfectly reflected by the production that Rostam and I orchestrated together. Claire has been a longtime, long distance friend and dream collaborator for me, so it was such a magnificent gift for her to lend her voice to the narrative. I really imagine this track as a cinematic duet with a ghost.”
Blood on the Silver Screen includes “Honeycrash,” a new song SASAMI shared in May via a music video. When the album was announced, she released another new song from it, “Slugger,” via a baseball-themed music video. “Slugger” was one of our Songs of the Week. “Just Be Friends” was the next single and also one of our Songs of the Week.
Blood on the Silver Screen is described as an all-out pop record. “This album is all about learning and respecting the craft of pop songwriting, about relenting to illogical passion, obsession, and guiltless pleasure,” Ashworth says in a press release. “It’s about leaning into the chaos of romance and sweeping devotion—romanticism to the point of self-destruction.”
Ashworth adds: “I wanted to be more playful and communicate more with pop culture. When I listen to music, I think about how I feel, how I want to feel, how I want to move to it. And that’s what’s special about music—how it connects to culture, how it connects to different styles of music, how it connects to the timbre of the voice of the person singing it.”
Jenn Decilveo and Rostam co-produced the album with Ashworth and she is the sole writer of the songs. Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, Sia, Prince, Japanese city pop, and Bruce Springsteen are all listed as influences on Blood on the Silver Screen.
“I wanted to go all out with this album,”Ashworth says. “I wanted to, in my tenderness and emotionality, have the bravery to undertake something as epic as making a pop record about love. I hope it makes people feel empowered and embodied, too. It’s important to not box yourself in.”
SASAMI’s last album was 2022’s Squeeze, released by Domino. Ashworth’s self-titled debut album, SASAMI, came out in 2019, also via Domino. Read our interview with her on the album.
4. Tunde Adebimpe: “Drop”
This week, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio officially announced his debut solo album, Three Black Boltz, after teasing it last year, and shared a new song from it, “Drop,” via a music video. Three Black Boltz is due out April 18 via Sub Pop.
Three Black Boltz includes “Magnetic,” a new song Adebimpe shared in October via a self-directed music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week.
Adebimpe produced the album with Wilder Zoby, and Zoby executive produced it. There was additional production and contributions from TV on the Radio members Jaleel Bunton and Jahphet Landis. Landis produced “Drop,” for example.
TV on the Radio also features David Sitek and Kyp Malone. In a press release Adebimpe says that when writing and recording music with the band he can rely on the other members to help finish his initial ideas, but with his solo album he was out on his own limb.
“I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”
Adebimpe is also an actor, having appeared in last year’s blockbuster Twisters, as well as in Rachel Getting Married and the recent Disney+ show Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.As a solo musician he’s also collaborated with Massive Attack, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Run the Jewels.
After several years of inactivity, last September TV on the Radio resurfaced with plans to put out a 20th anniversary reissue of their debut album, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, as well as the announcement of their first shows in five years. The reissue includes five bonus tracks and in September they shared one of them, “Final Fantasy.”Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes (20th Anniversary Edition) came out in November via Touch & Go. The band’s last album, Seeds, came out a decade ago in 2014.
We first interviewed TV on the Radio in Issue 5 of Under the Radar in 2003, in honor of their debut EP, Young Liars. That article isn’t online, but you can revisit our 2008 interview with the band.
5. Julien Baker & TORRES: “Sylvia”
And yet another album announcement makes this week’s list. This week, Julien Baker and TORRES (aka MacKenzie Scott) announced their debut album together, Send a Prayer My Way, and shared a new single from it, “Sylvia.”Send a Prayer My Way is considered a country album and is due out April 14 via Matador.
The duo released their debut single together, “Sugar in the Tank,” in December only days after the two beloved queer indie rock singer/songwriters performed the country song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The album has been in the works since the two first performed together in 2016 and one of them suggested that they one day make a country album.
TORRES had this to say about “Sylvia” in a press release: “The morning I went to pick up my dog Sylvia from an upstate shelter, I was at home making my coffee and I turned on WFMU and Dolly Parton’s ‘Cracker Jack’ was on. I burst into tears—it felt like the universe was telling me she was going to be mine (Sylvia was only meant to be a foster). I remember thinking that I’d love to write a song like that, a song that people could feel in their chest within five seconds of turning on the radio, because anyone who has ever had the honor of sharing a home with a beloved pet knows that a pet is family—they’re the best friends you could ever have.”
TORRES released a new album, What an enormous room, in January 2024 via Merge. In August 2024 she teamed up with Fruit Bats for the collaborative EP, A Decoration, also on Merge.
Baker’s last solo album was 2021’s Little Oblivions, which was followed by the accompanying B-Sides EP, both released via Matador. Little Oblivions was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2021. Read our Protest Issue interview with Baker, where she discusses the album, here. Also listen to our Under the Radar podcastinterview with Baker here.
10. Caroline Rose: “conversation with shiv (liquid k song)”
11. Lord Huron: “Who Laughs Last” (Feat. Kristen Stewart)
12. Djo: “Basic Being Basic”
13. Sunflower Bean: “Champagne Taste”
14. Cheekface: “Growth Sux”
15. Das Koolies: “Som Bom Magnífico”
Honorable Mentions:
These songs almost made the Top 15.
Hannah Cohen: “Earthstar”
Cross Record: “Charred Grass”
Dutch Interior: “Fourth Street”
Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt: “Orchestra”
Craig Finn: “People of Substance”
Lonnie Holley: “Protest With Love”
Meat Wave: “Dehydrated”
Pictoria Vark: “San Diego”
Sandhouse: “Circus”
Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 15 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions (note that the Caroline Rose song is not on Spotify so it’s not on the playlist):
Welcome to the second Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 10.
Over the holiday break we posted our Top 100 Albums of 2024 list. We also put together a 10-hour Spotify playlist featuring at least one song from every album on the Top 100, as well as some honorable mentions.
Issue 73 is still out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 10 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
Strange had this to say about the song in a press release: “I realized a couple years ago that if music is really going to work out long-term, I want/need more fans. Of course—it’s a timing and numbers game—but race is a powerful component too. I don’t see a lot of people like me in the indie space making long term livings on their records. I worry people may have a hard time connecting to me because I don’t look/sound like them. That I’m fun to root for, but not actually supported. This song is about how much that worries me—fully understanding that a lot of these neurosis are of my own making.”
Strange first worked on Horror with Yves Rothman and Lawrence Rothman, before finishing it with Jack Antonoff after he worked with Antonoff’s band Bleachers.
A press release says the album is about “facing your fears and becoming feared.”
The press release adds: “Strange was raised on fear. His family told scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared.”
Strange further elaborates: “In a way I think I made this record to reach out to people who may feel afraid of things in their lives too. For me it’s love, locations, cosmic bad luck, or that feeling of doom that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I think that it’s easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feels the same. This album is just me trying to connect. I’m trying to shrink the size of the world. I’m trying to feel close—so I’m less afraid.”
Horror includes “Lie 95,” a new song that Strange released in July. When the album was announced he shared its second single, “Sober,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then he shared its third single, “Too Much,” via a music video. “Too Much” was again one of our Songs of the Week.
In November, Strange released the new holiday-themed standalone single “Xmas” that isn’t featured on Horror but did just make our Songs of the Week list.
Strange first garnered attention for covering a string of The National tracks, including on Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, his EP of National covers released in 2020 on Brassland, a label run by members of the band. He was born in Ipswich, England, but grew up in Mustang, a largely the white and conservative rural town outside Oklahoma City, before launching his music career in Washington, D.C. In between he also worked in the Obama administration.
This week,Miki Berenyi Trio—led by the former singer/guitarist with 1990s shoegaze, dream pop, and Britpop band Lush—announced their debut album, Tripla, and shared a new song from it, “8th Deadly Sin,” via a music video. Tripla is due out April 4 via Bella Union.
Tripla includes the band’s debut single, “Vertigo,” which was released in May 2024 and was #1 on our Songs of the Week list that week.
After Lush, Berenyi was also in the band Piroshka and for the trio she is backed by two members of that band—Berenyi’s life partner KJ “Moose” McKillop (of ’90s shoegazers Moose) and guitarist Oliver Cherer. Miki Berenyi Trio (or MB3 for short) is a full on collaboration between the three members and not just a Berenyi solo project. Tripla is the Hungarian word for “triple,” named in a nod to Berenyi’s Hungarian father.
Bella Union is the label founded by Simon Raymonde, formerly of Cocteau Twins, a band previously associated with Lush. Bella Union also released the two Piroshka albums.
“8th Deadly Sin” addresses the climate crisis and “the absolute disrespect for Mother Earth,” as McKillop puts it in a press release.
Berenyi had this to add about the single: “Simon Raymonde instantly picked this out as a single and it immediately went down a storm when we played it live. I can’t pretend that I am in a position to lecture others over their green credentials but there’s a broader philosophy in the song that I can relate to—humanity hurtling toward its own destruction, which (to me) applies as much to wars and social intolerance as it does environmental issues.”
Sébastien Faits-Divers directed “8th Deadly Sin” video, which combines live footage filmed in Dijon, France with artwork by Chris Bigg.
Bigg, who did the artwork for Piroshka and contributed to all of Lush’s album artwork, also did the artwork for Tripla. The artwork incorporates photography by Martin Andersen.
Paul Gregory (of Bella Union labelmates Lanterns on the Lake) mixed the album. The album was recorded at home and the trio have also taken a DIY approach to touring. “There is something very ‘grass roots’ about what we’re doing,” says Berenyi. “There’s no point following the ‘announce the album, then tour, then record the next album’ route—we just want to wring as much enjoyment out of this as we can, and hope that it resonates somewhere!”
In 2022, Berenyi released her acclaimed memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, and the trio was partially born out of the need to perform at book events.
Berenyi did a joint interview with Australian dream pop artist Hatchie in The ’90s Issue of our print magazine, where she discussed her memoir and Lush. Buy a copy directly from us here.
Pirohska, which also features former Elastica drummer Justin Welch, released their second studio album, Love Drips and Gathers, in 2021 via Bella Union. Read our interview with them about it here.
Pirsoshka also contributed to our Covers of Coversalbum in honor of our 20th Anniversary, where they covered Grandaddy’s “The Crystal Lake.” Berenyi was also one of the artists on the cover of our 20th Anniversary Issue.
The Weather Station (the project of Toronto-based singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman) released a new album, Humanhood, today via Fat Possum. Earlier this week she shared its fourth and final single, “Mirror.” Philippe Léonard directed the song’s video.
In “Mirror” Lindeman sings: “You were dousing your fields in a chemical rain, you were cutting my arm to transcend your own pain / Oh but god is a mirror - everything is.”
“The confrontation is gentle, because I’ve been there too,” Lindeman explains in a press release. “But life and nature is a giant biofeedback machine. What you put out there responds. And you respond; you can’t help it. That’s what is always happening. That’s one of the many things I meant when I said ‘god is a Mirror.’”
Lindeman adds: “I wanted the song to warp and disintegrate; to come in and out of being like the imaginary scaffold that holds up a fantasy or cognitive dissonance. In the end, the band grows garbled and comes apart, giving way to a suspension of synth and string textures. I wanted it to feel like being bathed in light; maybe the light I was talking about in the song.”
Previously The Weather Station shared the album’s first single, “Neon Signs.” Lindeman co-directed the “Neon Signs” video with Jared Raab and the single made our Songs of the Week list. Then she shared its second single, “Window,” and announced some new tour dates. Lindeman co-directed the song’s video with Philippe Léonard and “Window” was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then The Weather Station shared the album’s third single, “Body Moves.” While we weren’t doing Songs of the Week posts in mid-December, when “Body Moves” was released, we included it as a bonus cut in our first Songs of the Week of 2025
Lindeman co-produced Humanhood with Marcus Paquin, recording it in the fall of 2023 at Canterbury Music Company. The main backing band on the album is drummer Kieran Adams, keyboardist Ben Boye, percussionist Philippe Melanson, reed-and-wind specialist Karen Ng, and bassist Ben Whiteley. The album also features Sam Amidon, James Elkington, and Joseph Shabason. Joseph Lorge mixed the album.
4. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory: “Trouble”
Sharon Van Etten is releasing a new album written and recorded with her backing band, The Attachment Theory, simply titled Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, onFebruary 7, 2025 via Jagjaguwar. This week they shared its third single, “Trouble.” They also shared a video of the band performing the song live at the Church Studios in London. Check out both the studio and live versions of the song below.
In a press release, Van Etten had this to say about the song: “‘Trouble’ is about the idea of having to coexist with people you love who have opposing views, and not being able to share deep parts of yourself and your narrative based on someone else’s beliefs. It’s about when there’s that big part of you that someone who loves you can’t know because it’s not something they want to hear or are willing to learn about or understand, and those painful realizations when you choose to love and respect someone else’s needs over your own to salvage a relationship.”
The Attachment Theory is Jorge Balbi (drums, machines), Devra Hoff (bass, vocals), and Teeny Lieberson (synth, piano, guitar, vocals). While they have previously backed Van Etten on some of her solo work, this was the first time that the singer/songwriter/guitarist wrote and recorded an album in full collaboration with the band.
“For the first time in my life I asked the band if we could just jam. Words that have never come out of my mouth—ever! But I loved all the sounds we were getting. I was curious—what would happen?” says Van Etten in a press release. “In an hour we wrote two songs that ended up becoming ‘I Can’t Imagine’ and ‘Southern Life.’”
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory was recorded at The Church, Eurythmics’ former studio in London, and was produced by Marta Salogni (Björk, Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Mica Levi).
“Sometimes it’s exciting, sometimes it’s scary, sometimes you feel stuck,” Van Etten says of fully collaborating with her band on the album. “It’s like every day feels a little different—just being at peace with whatever you’re feeling and whoever you are and how you relate to people in that moment. If I can just keep a sense of openness while knowing that my feelings change every day, that is all I can do right now. That and try to be the best person I can be while letting other people be who they are and not taking it personally and just being. I’m not there, but I’m trying to be there every day.”
On Wednesday night she was the musical guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she performed “Ankles” with a string section and was clad in the same dress she wore in the “Ankles” video. Watch the performance here.
Bridgers, Baker, Blake Mills, Bartees Strange, Hozier, Madison Cunningham, Collin Pastore, Jake Finch, and Melina Duterte all contributed to the new album.
Dacus wrote most of the songs on the album between fall 2022 and summer 2024. “I got kicked in the head with emotions,” she says in a press release. “Falling in love, falling out of love…. You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.”
Of the album’s title, Dacus adds: “You can’t actually capture forever. But I think we feel forever in moments. I don’t know how much time I’ve spent in forever, but I know I’ve visited.”
The video for “Ankles” was filmed in Paris and features actress Havana Rose Liu alongside Dacus, who plays someone that has escaped from a famous painting. The album’s cover artwork is a different painting of Dacus by visual artist Will St. John.
For the new tour, Dacus has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes “to providing critical relief and long-term recovery support for individuals, families, and communities impacted by the devastating LA wildfires via the PLUS1 LA Fires Fund.”
Listen to our in-depth Under the Radar Podcast interview with Dacus on Home Videohere.
This week, New York-based quartet Florist announced a new album, Jellywish, and released its lead single, “Have Heaven,” with an accompanying music video. Jellywish is due out April 4 via Double Double Whammy.
Jellywish follows the band’s self-titled album from 2022 and 2019’s Emily Alone, which was essentially a solo album from singer/guitarist/principle songwriter Emily Sprague. Florist is Sprague, Jonnie Baker, Rick Spataro, and Felix Walworth.
In a press release Sprague says the album is purposely complicated. “It’s a gentle delivery of something that is really chaotic, confusing, and multifaceted,” she explains. “It has this Technicolor that’s inspired by our world and also fantasy elements that we can use to escape our world.”
Or as the press release puts it: “On Jellywish, Florist explores life’s big questions without offering silver linings, morals, or definitive answers. Instead, the band asks perhaps the most difficult of questions: Is it possible to break free from our ingrained thought cycles and pedestrian way of life? That, Florist posits, may be the only way to be truly happy, fulfilled, and free.”
Of the new single, Sprague says: “We enter an observational fever dream about floating through liminal space between lifetimes, individual perceptions. There is reflection on our connectedness in joy and suffering through the wish for a peaceful place for our spirits to live and land. ‘Have Heaven’ establishes the world of the album to be not quite always lucid, but rather a perspective that is blended into the worlds of the magic and death realms swirling around us. The chorus is a chant that pleads for a better symbiosis between these worlds, and between our earthly forms trying to survive alongside each other, bound to the systems we must exist within.”
Animator Kohana Wilson made the song’s video. By Mark Redfern
Hadreas had this to say about “It’s a Mirror” in a press release: “I wake up overwhelmed even when nothing is going on. I spend the rest of the day trying to regulate, which I prefer to do at home alone with my thoughts. But why? They are mostly bad. They also haven’t really changed for decades. I wrote ‘It’s a Mirror’ while stuck in one of these isolating loops, seeing that something different and maybe even beautiful is out there but not quite knowing how to venture out. I have a lot more practice keeping the door closed.”
Glory once again finds Hadreas teaming up with long-time producer Blake Mills and keyboardist/co-writer/life partner Alan Wyffels. The album also features other previous collaborators, including guitarists Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) and Greg Uhlmann, drummers Tim Carr and Jim Keltner, and bassist Pat Kelly. New Zealand singer/songwriter Aldous Harding also guests on one song.
On Glory, Hadreas says that he was more open to input from his band and collaborators. “I’m more engaged with the band and the audience,” he says. “I’m still on some wild tear, but there’s more access and it’s more collaborative, in a way that makes it better, but also scary—because it feels more vulnerable.”
Samia announced a new album this week too. Bloodless is due out April 25 via Grand Jury Music and this week she released a video for its first single, “Bovine Excision.”
“I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction—this clinical pursuit of emptiness,” says Samia of the song in a press release. By Mark Redfern
9. The Pill: “Money Mullet”
Isle of Wight-based duo The Pill were back today with their fourth single, “Money Mullet,” a sharp and raucous takedown of the divisive haircut that refuses to fade into obscurity. With its scuzzy, high-octane guitars and biting humor, the track embodies the chaotic energy that has become the band’s hallmark.
Blending raw power with unapologetic wit, “Money Mullet” joins their growing collection of raucous singles where The Pill dismantle societal conventions and gender norms with relentless, tongue-in-cheek ferocity.
“Please be sure to show your hairdresser (your girlfriend) this song before embarking on another mullet,” says Lily Hutchings, guitarist and vocalist for the duo. “Our fourth single, ‘Money Mullet,’ is a hate song. Sorry, we just really don’t like them.”
New York-via-Chicago-based rock trio Horsegirl are releasing a new album, Phonetics On and On, on February 14, 2025 via Matador. This week they shared its third single, “Switch Over.” Guy Kozak directed the song’s video, which features the band watching itself perform in the same room.
Horsegirl previously shared the album’s first single, “2468,” via a music video. “2468” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then shared its second single, “Julie,” and announced some new EU and UK tour dates. While we weren’t doing Songs of the Week posts in mid-December, when “Julie” was released, we included it as a bonus cut in our first Songs of the Week of 2025.
Phonetics On and On is the band’s sophomore album and the follow-up to 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance. Horsegirl is Penelope Lowenstein (guitar, vocals), Nora Cheng (guitar, vocals), and Gigi Reece (drums). In the fall of 2022 the band relocated to NYC for Lowenstein and Reece to attend NYU. In January 2024 the trio returned to Chicago to record the album at The Loft, with Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon producing.
Read our review of Versions of Modern Performancehere. By Mark Redfern
Welcome to the first Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Mariel Fechik, Mark Moody, Matt the Raven, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 13. It was a packed week for new songs, including a lot of album announcements, so there was a plethora to choose from.
Over the holiday break we posted our Top 100 Albums of 2024 list. We also put together a 10-hour Spotify playlist featuring at least one song from every album on the Top 100, as well as some honorable mentions.
Issue 73 is still out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 13 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. Blondshell: “T&A”
Blondshell(aka Sabrina Teitelbaum) will release her sophomore album, If You Asked For a Picture, via Partisan Records on May 2. It was announced this week. Once again working with producer Yves Rothman, who also worked on her acclaimed self-titled debut Teitlebaum promises a more biographical nuanced album. This week she also shared a new track in the form of the “accidental love story” “T&A,” accompanied by a video directed by Hannah Bon. Featuring three rescue dogs (Luna, Rooster, and, aptly for this site, Radar) paired with male counterparts, the video offers a nuanced take on the “men are like dogs” adage. It delves into the idea that the loudest barks often come from the most frightened, hiding any vulnerability beneath a tough exterior.
Discussing the song, Teitelbaum says, “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. 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.”
The album’s title, If You Asked For a Picture, is drawn from Mary Oliver’s 1986 poem “Dogfish.” In the poem, Oliver reflects on the complexity of sharing one’s story—deciding what to reveal and what to hold back. These were the same questions Teitelbaum considered while writing the new album. “There’s a part of the poem that says: ‘I don’t need to tell you everything I’ve been through. It’s just another story of somebody trying to survive,’” Teitelbaum explains. “Something I love about songs is that you’re showing a snapshot of a person or a relationship, and showing a glimpse into a story can be just as important as trying to capture the entire thing. Sometimes it’s even truer to the entire picture than if you tried to write everything down.”
The forthcoming album promises a more introspective and layered narrative than its predecessor. Teitelbaum reflects, “The first record feels really black-and-white to me. This record has more questions.” By Andy Von Pip
2. SPELLLING: “Portrait of My Heart”
This week, SPELLLING (aka Chrystia Cabral) announced a new album, Portrait of My Heart, and released its lead single, title track “Portrait of My Heart,” via a music video. Portrait of My Heart is due out March 28 via Sacred Bones. Check out the single and the album details, as well as her upcoming tour dates, here.
Cabral had this to say about the new single in a press release: “When the lyrics for the title track came together, it really started to morph everything in this more energetic direction, instead of this more whimsical landscape that I’ve worked with before. It started to become more driven, higher energy, more focused. And I have a big affection for it because of that. I love that it feels like it withstood transformation, which is something I always want to aspire to with things that I make. I want them to have this sense of timelessness. It could exist like this, or like that, or like this, but this is the one for right now.”
SPELLLING’s last regular album was 2021’s The Turning Wheel, although in 2023 she released SPELLLING & the Mystery School,a collection of re-envisioned versions of songs from her previous albums re-recorded with her touring band. Said band is featured on Portrait of My Heart: Wyatt Overson (guitar), Patrick Shelley (drums), and Giulio Xavier Cetto (bass). The album also features Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi (who sings on the duet “Mount Analogue”), Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory, and Zulu’s Braxton Marcellous. Cabral worked with three producers on the new album—The Turning Wheel mixing engineer Drew Vandenberg, SZA collaborator Rob Bisel, and Yves Tumor producer Psymun.
This week,Japanese Breakfast (aka Michelle Zauner) announced a new album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), and shared its first single, “Orlando in Love,” via a music video. She also announced some new tour dates. For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is due out March 21 via Dead Oceans. One song features legendary actor/musician Jeff Bridges. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the tour dates, here.
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is the follow-up to Jubilee, which was our #1 album of 2021 and landed Japanese Breakfast on the cover of our print magazine (buy a copy directly from us here or read our cover story interview here). In 2021 Zauner also put out her acclaimed debut memoir, Crying In H Mart, on Knopf. The book debuted at #2 on The New York Times’ Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers List and is being adapted into a film.
Speaking of all the success she had with her last album and memoir and how it impacted the new album, Zauner says in a press release: “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted. I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.”
Blake Mills produced For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), which was recorded at Sound City in Los Angeles, where classic albums such as After the Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac, and Nevermind were also made.
The press release describes the new single in greater detail: “On the album’s lead single ‘Orlando in Love’—a riff on John Cheever’s riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo—the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren’s call, his 69th canto (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo).”
This week, Deep Sea Diver (the band led by Jessica Dobson) announced a new album, Billboard Heart, and shared a new song from it, “Shovel,” via a music video. They have also announced some tour dates. Billboard Heart is due out February 28 via Sub Pop. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the tour dates, here.
Deep Sea Diver is singer and multi-instrumentalist Jessica Dobson, drummer Peter Mansen (also Dobson’s partner), and keyboardist Elliot Jackson. Billboard Heart is their first album for Sub Pop.
Dobson has previously also performed in The Shins and in Beck’s band. Billboard Heart also features Dobson’s former The Shins’ bandmate Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose, and Greg Leisz. Dobson produced the album with Andy D. Park (who also mixed the album), with additional production from Adam Schatz. Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone mastered the album.
Dobson and Mansen directed the “Shovel” video with cinematographer Tyler Kalberg. Dobson had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Shovel’ is one of the most angular and dualistic songs I’ve written, and I wanted to do a one-shot video that captured the grit, rawness, and intensity of the song. Simply put, it is me digging and dancing with a shovel in the middle of the night, desperately looking for beauty in dark places. Influenced by Lynch, the Cohen brothers, Nick Cave, and the sweet dance moves of Kate Bush.” By Mark Redfern
5. Doves: “Cold Dreaming”
Manchester-based trio Doves are releasing a new album, Constellations For the Lonely, on February 14 via EMI North. This week they shared its second single, “Cold Dreaming,” via a music video. Hingston Studio directed the video.
Previously Doves shared the album’s first single, “Renegade,” via a music video. “Renegade” was one of our Songs of the Week.
Constellations For the Lonely is the band’s sixth album and follows 2020’s The Universal Want, which was their first album in 11 years after an eight-year hiatus. The band launched writing and recording sessions for the new album as early as 2020.
Doves is Jimi Goodwin (lead vocals, bass) and brothers Andy Williams (drums, vocals) and Jez Williams (guitar, vocals).
The band wrote, recorded, and produced the album in Greater Manchester, North Wales, and Cheshire. Long-term collaborator Dan Austin contributed additional production. Constellations For the Lonely finds Goodwin taking a bit of a step back, with him contributing in the studio, but not touring the record. The Williams brothers will be sharing lead vocals live.
Andy Williams had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Cold Dreaming’ is a song about forgiveness. Trying to forgive and move on. As a minimum, these days, resilience is the thing that you need more than ever, certainly as a musician. Perhaps the lyrics do touch a bit on what we’ve been through.”
Doves have released five albums: 2000’s Lost Souls, 2002’s The Last Broadcast, 2005’s Some Cities, 2009’s Kingdom of Rust, and 2020’s The Universal Want.
We go way back with Doves, they were interviewed about Lost Souls in our very first print issue in 2001 and we have covered every album since. By Mark Redfern
6. Hamilton Leithauser: “Knockin’ Heart”
This week, Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen announced a new solo album, This Side of the Island, and released a new single from it, “Knockin’ Heart,” via a music video. This Side of the Islandis due out May 7 via Glassnote. Check out the album details here, as well as his upcoming tour dates, including a March residency at Cafe Carlyle in New York City. It’s his seventh annual residency there.
Leithauser co-produced the album with his wife Anna Stumpf and The National’s Aaron Dessner. Leithauser worked on the album in his home studio in New York City, The Struggle Hut, but finished it at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio in Hudson Valley, New York.
Leithauser had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Knockin’ Heart’ is sung by an estranged, stoned lover on their way home, who is dying to get a message through to someone who is probably not listening. It is ‘I will love you for life if you’ll let me.’ I wrote and recorded it one evening and put it away for over a year. I knew I liked it, and I didn’t want to mess anything up by trying to perfect it. It was the last song I played for Aaron when we got together, and the first song he helped me work on. I’d say he raised the ceiling and lowered the floor on the entire thing sonically. He actually used a funny bass technique he said he’d used on a Taylor Swift song, which I got a kick out of. I gotta say his bass sounds fantastic. Now there are three basses on it! One of mine and two of his. That is a first for me.”
Leithauser shared the album’s title track in December.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy: “Downstream” (Feat. John Anderson)
Dirty Projectors and s t a r g a z e: “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One”
Franz Ferdinand: “Hooked”
Great Grandpa: “Junior”
JJULIUS: “Brinna ut”
Manic Street Preachers: “People Ruin Paintings”
Mogwai: “Fanzine Made of Flesh”
Pale Blue Eyes: “Rituals”
Rose City Band: “Radio Song”
Sharper Pins: “I Can’t Stop”
Squid: “Building 650”
Σtella: “Adagio”
Tunng: “Snails”
Dean Wareham: “You Were the Only Ones I Had to Betray”
Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 13 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:
Bonus Cuts:
These two songs came out in mid December when we weren’t doing Songs of the Week lists, as there weren’t that many worthy new songs to write about. But we still wanted to belatedly highlight them.
