Every week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with several tracks that catch our attention, then round up the best songs of each month in this segment. Here, in alphabetical order, are the best songs of April 2025.
caroline – ‘Tell me I never knew that’ [feat. Caroline Polachek]
caroline exploded back into view with ‘Total euphoria’, which made our list of the best songs of March. Then came an even sweeter surprise: Caroline Polachek features on ‘Tell me I never knew that’, the second single from the UK band’s sophomore album, caroline 2. caroline’s experimental music often teeters on the edge of abstraction, a pattern that’s mirrored not only in the song’s lyrics but its treatment of Polachek’s deconstructed pop melodies. “Maybe I don’t wanna be anyone/ And I don’t wanna be somebody else,” she sings, contemplating not the nature so much as the desire for a static identity. Then Casper Hughes’ vocals soar, impossibly reminiscent of Jonsi, to set the focus on layers of feeling and embodiment. It might as well be coming from a different world, but it hits too close to home.
Florry – ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’
What a way to rev things up. Listening to ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’, the first song on Florry’s upcoming album Sounds Like…, it’s hard not to start paying attention; the single stretches out to seven minutes, but just when things start feeling a little loose, that guitar riff grips you back in. Vocalist Francie Medosch embodies a character on the verge of a breakdown, the only plausible response to seeing your life play out onscreen: “If I wasn’t feeling so empty baby/ I’d give that movie five out of five.” The narrator tries to write a movie, then a song, but it’s only while watching one not based on their life that the revelation strikes: “I saw myself in everyone, how’d they make a movie like that?” Whatever it is, Florry possess the same kind of gift.
Hotline TNT – ‘Julia’s War’
Raspberry Moon marks the first time Will Andersen has recorded a Hotline TNT album with a full band – guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, and drummer Mike Ralston. The lead single ‘Julia’s War’ arrived as proof of that sense of togetherness, owning a “na na na” chorus and pushing Andersen’s vocals to the front of the mix; not so that you can make more of the lyrics, which remain rather cryptic, but as if to nudge you to sing – not just hum (get it?) – along. When it’s this catchy, even the most introverted shoegaze fan won’t have to try so hard to come out of their shell.
Lana Del Rey – ‘Henry, come on’
I mean, come on. The perfectly fingerpicked guitar – delicate, but not too raw. The lilting melody. The string arrangements. Ultraviolence, but with an extra dose of clarity and defiance. Lana Del Rey has seen this sad story play out a dozen times, and though she has yet to settle on (or at least reveal) the title of her upcoming album, there’s no trepidation in her lyrics, just hard acceptance. “Some people come and they’re gone/ They just fly away/ Take your ass to the house/ Don’t even bother explaining/ There’s no working it out/ No way.” Maybe you can’t chase a ghost when it’s gone. But ‘Henry, come on’ does a damn good job at summoning it. How can that not get to you?
Lorde – ‘What Was That’
“What was that?” is another way of asking, How’d the years whip by so fast? The lead single from Lorde’s new album Virgin is her first in four years, but really, it takes us back to the Melodrama era, and lyrically even further back: “Since I was 17, I gave you everything,” she sings. A gut-punch, but not nearly as important as the following line: “Now we wake from a dream, baby, what was that?” Jim-E Stack and Dan Nigro’s is punchy but curiously muted, as if the realizations Lorde wakes to are just now settling in. “Can’t see myself yet,” she sighs at the beginning of the song, before the memories start kicking in. If the rest of the album materializes that vision, we’ll be left with way more than hard-hitting nostalgia.
Pulp – ‘Spike Island’
‘Spike Island’ begins, rather innocently, by tracing back the kernels of inspiration: “It’s a guess/ No idea/ It’s a feeling/ Not a voice/ In my head/ Just a feeling.” Jarvis Cocker delights in drawing out the word feeling, letting it lead him towards earnest self-reflection around his time in the spotlight: “I was conforming to a cosmic design, I was playing to type.” As the first glimpse into Pulp’s first album in 24 years, it couldn’t be more fitting. But this being Pulp, Cocker’s stream of consciousness renders the song knottier the more anthemic it becomes. An aside – “And by the way, Spike Island” – becomes the refrain, a complicating reference to a 1990 one-off gig by the Stone Roses that achieved legendary status despite being plagued by technical issues and bad organization. Cocker latches onto not the aspect of fame but the phrase one of the DJs on the line shouted out: “Spike Island, come alive!” The irony, it seems, is that you can’t command a feeling; if you’re lucky, though, you can simply revel.
Stereolab – ‘Aerial Troubles’
Certain universal anxieties just hang in the air. You could be dancing to the delightfully off-kilter groove of Stereolab’s ‘Aerial Troubles’, for example, and not realize those troubles pertain to “the fear of death” or “an insatiable state of consumption.” The rhythm seems to get going as soon as the group realizes the fact that “the numbing’s not working anymore” is a good thing, actually; critique works, but it’s more about playing with the thin line between reality and a surreal future. Stereolab have always been good at that, yet they always suggest it’s going to be a little different this time. Judging from the song’s outro and the single that followed, it is.
Wet Leg – ‘catch these fists’
If you’ve heard but one song by Wet Leg, you’d expect the first single from their second album to be boisterous and a little tongue-in-cheek. In pretty much every way, ‘catch these fists’ is a natural return for Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers. But the duo’s self-assuredness is audibly on a different level; or maybe it’s that their snarky threats feel a little less jokey over the song’s filthy, razor-sharp riff. The singer-guitarists don’t use the newfound confidence of success to scream louder or polish up their sound; they only murmur lines like “He don’t get puss, he get the boot” with greater conviction. Meanwhile, the song gets stuck in your head. Hats off to them.
