Every week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with several tracks that catch our attention, and we then round up the best songs of each month in this segment. Here, in alphabetical order, are the best songs of February 2025.
Addison Rae – ‘High Fashion’
Addison Rae’s first new music of 2025 — the third single from her as-yet-unannounced debut, arriving on the heels of the equally great ‘Diet Pepsi’ and ‘Aquamarine’ – isn’t just an instantly intoxicating pop song, but quite an innovative take on the “I don’t need you” subgenre of pop music. The titular subject is Rae’s alternative to a lover’s cheap affection (and drugs of indeterminate value), and she proclaims her preference with a sultry sense of humour: “You know I’m not an easy fuck/ But when it comes to shoes I’ll be a slut,” she sings. The ethereal production affirms that Rae is really on a different plane, while her airy vocals don’t cloak so much as luxuriate in her conviction. It’s almost enough to disguise the trace of denial that still makes it onto the song, a moment of vulnerability that also reveals the song’s greatest trick: “I know how to make the hard things look really easy.”
Backxwash – ‘9th Heaven’
As if acknowledging that fans have been waiting a while for the follow-up to Backxwash’s trilogy of albums, the experimental rapper’s latest is built on anticipation. For most of its runtime, the track roils and swirls over a celestial instrumental and Backxwash’s simmering existential anxiety, which is enough to give the repeated “drummer coming” a foreboding air. The drumming is obviously a metaphor, but when it does come, it sounds quite unlike how you’d probably expect: programmed and breakneck, less like the sky opening up to swallow the artist whole than a gentle lift. “I feel,” Backwash declares, making the pause matter, “So motherfucking free.” It’s not hard to believe.
Cryogeyser feat. Wednesday – ‘Mountain’
We named Cryogeyser’s self-titled album one of the best albums of February, and ‘Mountain’, a collaboration with Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman that served as its final single, is also arguably its best song. It’s the only song on the record with a guest appearance, and the alluring interplay between Shawn Marom and Hartzman’s voices seems to echo off the poetry they sing. They’re entwined but not quite, distant but not quite, harmonious but not quite, especially against the hazy, glacial instrumentation. Certain lines seem to share in their experience as bandleaders – “rocking the emotion,” practicing in the mirror – and empathetic songwriters – “I’m not here to judge you/ I just wanna listen.” But the refrain elevates their experience diving into the language of nature: “It opened up a fountain inside me/ The waters, the whole world we’ve yet to see.” It remains obscured, but it’s hopeful and communal, stretching its skies over the listener.
Destroyer – ‘Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World’
Hey, look, it’s Destroyer again! ‘Bologna’, the lead single from Dan Bejar’s upcoming album, was resplendent, ‘Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World’ is on a different level, a song as gloriously theatrical as its title. The instrumental, replete with hazy synths and gritty guitars, is as memserizing as Destroyer’s best, but it’s the ceaseless “la la la” vocals that really sell the edge-of-the-world feeling. Then there’s Bejar’s relentlessly poetic delivery – to say nothing of his lyrics. “I whisper/ Hey, breeze/ Where you going?” he sings, not at all whispering. From there, every line offers something you could pore over, that could simultaneously connote nothing but drunkenness. What’s undeniable is that the song is effervescent with longing, and the subject of this longing? “Every person I meet,” but also, ultimately: “Death by illumination.” It’s up to you to connect the dots.
Jenny Hval – ‘To be a rose’
These lists are ordered alphabetically, but the latest from Destroyer and Jenny Hval – two artists you may not have thought as being musically or intellectually aligned – make for a wonderful pairing. Like ‘Hydroplaning’, the lead single off the Norwegian artist’s new album Iris Silver Mist is restless in its structure, making slight deviations without abandoning its core idea. In the first verse, the literal quickly blurs into the figurative. A stage is “obviously” falling apart and filled with cigarette smoke, which opens the door to memory: “This is every cigarette my mother ever smoked.” The record finds Hval rekindling her love for perfumes, and Hval suddenly – yet fluidly – juxtaposes the hazy opening image with the scent of a rose. ‘To be a rose’ is vaporous and delicately beautiful, muted and mutable: not deceptive so much as connective in its simplicity. “Now, imagine,” it begins, prompting you to welcome whatever memories its atmosphere stirs up in you.
Lady Gaga – ‘Abracadabra’
Lady Gaga has always been singular in her ability to marry frantic theatricality with pure pop precision; in that way, ‘Abracadabra’ is far from surprising, even as its music video arrived in the midst of the Grammy Awards ceremony. To this day, any pop artist daring to make music this brilliantly nonsensical, melodramatic, and infectious should stand out; coming from Gaga, it’s bound to border on nostalgia, and ‘Abracadabra’ indeed comes very close to sounding like a facsimile of the singer’s glorious heights. But as the appearance of multiplicity is shaping up to be a central theme on Mayhem, Gaga’s imminent new album, ‘Abracadabra’ successfully bridges former personas. However much you choose to read into it, the song no doubt does the trick.
Perfume Genius feat. Aldous Harding – ‘No Front Teeth’
“Better days/ Nothing touch me/ Light it breaks on the wings of a dove,” Aldous Harding sings celestially on ‘No Front Teeth’, the first glimpse of transcendence we’ve gotten from Perfume Genius’ forthcoming album Glory. (And this is not to discount lead single ‘It’s a Mirror’, which is also great.) The first time it sweeps in, Harding’s voice is breathlessly unaccompanied and demystified by crashing guitars that line closer to Mike Hadreas’ fervent vulnerability. Then his voice, uncannily, joins in the chorus, before being muddled in layers and processing. The song turns out to be massive, burning slowly toward the revelation that, really, everything is going to be fine. Not in an ironic or flippant way, but like those rare occasions where it actually feels spiritually illuminating. Hadreas vocalizes this realization before Harding comes in, but if you want the feeling laid out in all its, well, glory, let ‘No Front Teeth’ unfold.
Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory – ‘I Want You Here’
In my track-by-track review of Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, I tried to explain what makes ‘I Want You Here’ such a monumental closer on the indie rock star’s collaborative effort with her bandmates. Maybe I’m just drawn to songs about being at the edge of the Earth – scroll up for further evidence – but more than a month after listening to it for the first time, this one still moves me to tears. As a non-single, it may currently have just 0.1% the amount of views of Van Etten’s most popular song on YouTube (the by-now-iconic ‘Seventeen’), but I’m sure I’m not the only one, either. Van Etten’s world-defiant romanticism – the yearning that remains uncompromised and all-consuming in the face of incalculable hurt – amounts to this open-ended declaration: “It sets the stage/ A moment.” To me, it sounds but a breath away from heaven.
