21 New Songs Out Today to Listen To: Jay Som, Soulwax, and More

There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Wednedsay, July 9, 2025.


Jay Som – ‘Float’ [feat. Jim Adkins] and ‘A Million Reasons Why’

Jay Som has announced her first new album in over six years, Belong, which features Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Jim Adkins (of Jimmy Eat World), and more. Along with the announcement, she’s shared two singles, the chugging alt-rock tune ‘Float’ (featuring Adkins) and the more psychedelic and contemplative ‘A Million Reasons Why’. “This song is about desperately trying to hold on to past versions of yourself for self-preservation,” Melina Duterte said of ‘Float’. “The fear of the unknown is so overwhelming that sometimes the best solution is to sit with it instead of fighting or running from it.” Adkins added, “Melina is an absolute professional in all aspects of music creation. I am honoured she had space in her vision for me to contribute. And it was a lot of fun to work on. Great song!”

Soulwax – ‘All Systems Are Living’ and ‘Run Free’

Soulwax – the Belgian electronic music duo of brothers David and Stephen Dewaele – have announced their first LP in seven years. All Systems Are Lying is out October 17, and today’s announcement comes with the release of two new songs: the title track and ‘Run Free’. The first is eerily captivating, while the latter is more straightforwardly infectious. The pair describes the record as “a rock album made without any electric guitars,” adding, “We wanted to capture the feeling of a band playing electronic instruments—live, loud and loose. This record is the result of that experiment.”

Rocket – ‘Wide Awake’

Rocket have already shared an impressive couple of singles this year, including ‘One Million’ and ‘Crossing Fingers’, and now they’re back with ‘Wide Awake’, a vivacious track that leads their debut album R is for Rocket. The record “is about relationships, the most important part of life; relationships with your friends, your parents, your girlfriend or boyfriend, and most importantly your relationship with yourself,” according to the band. “‘Wide Awake’ is the perfect balance of all the elements of this record, after years in the making and countless versions, we’re excited to finally share it.”

Agriculture – ‘Bodhidharma’

Agriculture have announced a new album, The Spiritual Sound, arriving October 3 via The Flenser. To accompany the news, they’ve shared ‘Bodhidharma’, which is brutally dynamic. “Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, was an Indian monk who famously stared at the wall of a cave for nine years,” the band’s Dan Meyer explained. “He even cut off his eyelids in order to prevent himself from falling asleep. At one time, another monk approached him in his cave and pleaded ‘master, my head is on fire with anxiety, can you pacify my mind?’ Bodhidharma just kept staring at the wall and Huike waited outside of the cave all night until he was buried in snow up to his waist. Finally, as a gesture of desperation he cut off his arm and offered it to the great master. Huike later became Bodhidharma’s successor.”

Lip Critic – ‘Mirror Match’ and ‘Second Life’

Lip Critic have served up two warped, frenetic tracks: ‘Mirror Match’ and ‘Second Life’. The band’s Bret Kaser explained:

We were on tour near the end of 2024 and had just played our LA show. We had a two day gap before our next show in Santa Ana so we got a room at the hotel Casa Grande. That night after the drive I fell asleep watching Randy Johnson highlight reels. All the great moments from his time as a Diamondback, as well as his years on the Yankees and the Giants.

That night I had a dream I met a tall man with a body made entirely of radiant light wearing a baseball cap. He opened his arms and from them came two perpendicular rays that shot around me to form the shape of a diamond. When the tips of the rays connected I was engulfed in a thunderous sound, like that of a waterfall. It shook me so much that I woke up in a jolt. I woke to see that I had been writhing in my sleep and had completely displaced the other 3 members I had been sharing this queen bed with.

I apologized and brushed it off as another bad dream brought on by a late night binging baseball history videos on YouTube. Upon checking my phone, I saw I had received a text in the night from a number I didn’t recognize, offering us two days of unexpected studio time.

When we arrived at the studio that day, he opened the door wearing a fitted baseball cap, towering over our band with an average height of 5’8”. I instantly felt a familiarity. As he showed us around I felt a sense of having returned, like visiting your old elementary school once again for a younger siblings’ graduation. He led us to the control room which was equipped with a speaker system large enough for a room quadruple the size. He stood at one corner and I sat in a chair directly opposite. The square room shifted to a diamond by our perspectives.

He turned the speakers up and without hesitation played us through a whirlwind of different music at an unbelievable volume, and I was engulfed in a thunderous sound, like that of a waterfall. “Mirror Match” and “Second Life” were two tracks made and completed in the two days at his studio.

Softcult – ‘Naive’

Softcult are back with an ethereal, sparkling tune called ‘Naive’, which is about “the moment the scales fall from our eyes after we realize we’ve been romanticizing someone or the idea of someone,” according to the duo.

Total Wife – ‘second spring’

Total Wife, the Nashville experimental duo of Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, have announced a new record on They Are Gutting a Body of Water leader Douglas Dulgarian’s label Julia’s War. Come Back Down is set to arrive September 19, and it’s led by ‘second spring’, a song that starts out understated before fuzzing itself out in enchanting ways. “Ash started the lyrics for this song in early spring of 2020, and worked them out over the next few years before Luna wrote this song, which helped her finish them,” the band explained. “’Hard to remember, but flowers will bloom with or without you,’ is from the same poem that ‘Reveal Sky’, was written from (total wife Self-Titled LP, ‘It’s easy to forget that it’s spring, staring through grey-blue drywall’).”

Debby Friday – ‘Bet on Me’

Debby Friday’s dance-leaning sophomore album The Starrr of the Queen Of Life is imminent, and today we get to hear the hazy yet kinetic ‘Bet on Me’; the chanted vocals are a particularly delightful touch. Debby Friday co-directed the song’s accompanying video with frequent collaborator Kevan Funk.

Anand Wilder – ‘Bog People’

Former Yeasayer member Anand Wilder has announced a new album, Psychic Lessons, out August 22, with a peppy psych-pop jam called ‘Bog People’. Wilder, who worked on the new record with co-producer Jachary (L’Rain, Tasha) and Yeasayer collaborator Walter Fancourt, commented: “Walter Fancourt and I had made this sort of ’90s sounding boy band inspired beat with screechy synth bends, so I just laid three chords over it and really went for it in a ’90s alt-rock vein. And I hope the video captures some of that fisheye lens, VHS-style, ’90s fun. Directed by Patrick Drummond (Starcleaner Reunion), with some extra footage shot by my seven-year-old daughter Zazie and childhood friend Bernard Feinsod, I wanted it to look like a ’90s Beastie Boys video or something. We shot the nightclub dream sequence at the Rodeo Bar, where I DJ vinyl Third Tuesdays of every month.”

“So it’s kind of like a conversation between a know-it-all museum tour guide and a horrified museumgoer with scraps of anthropological history describing all these little details from what we think we know about this ritual sacrifice, combined with my poetic conjecture trying to get inside the minds of the people. Was it a punishment or a reward? Were the onlookers jealous or hysterical? And who is being offered up for sacrifice today.”

Ivy – ‘Fragile People’

Ivy have hared a new single from Traces of You, a new album built from demos and song fragments dating from between 1995 to 2012. Blurring the line between vulnerability and resilience, ‘Fragile People’ is as dreamy as it is affecting. The track “resonated with Dominique and I deeply in the aftermath of losing Adam,” the band’s Andy Chase explained. “This is one of the few songs that would constantly bring us to tears even as Bruce, Dominique and I were writing it.”

Modern Nature – ‘Source’

Modern Nature have released a meditative, politically-charged track called ‘Source’, lifted off their forthcoming album The Heat Warps. Frontman Jack Cooper explained that the song “was written in the aftermath of the 2024 UK riots, which were sparked by a campaign of misinformation aimed at asylum seekers. I found myself watching live streams of them unfolding on YouTube, despairing at what I was seeing but oddly gripped. These communities are like the one I grew up in. It’s easy to condemn them and of course their actions were appalling, yet amongst all that hate, you could see people desperate for community and collectivism. I wanted to write something about how I saw it and it turned into this strangely uplifting song in the vein of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ or the Beta Band’s ‘Dry The Rain’. I was going to send it to Liam Gallagher but then Oasis reformed…”

Fletcher Tucker – ‘To Light a Fire’ [feat. Phil Elverum]

Fletcher Tucker has enlisted Phil Elverum for ‘To Light a Fire’, a meditative track that taps into an elemental power. “The first half of this song depicts a moment of real life high drama, where my wife and I were caught in a white-out blizzard in the Northern Sierra,” the artist explained. “We survived the night beside a giant bonfire—we did not know my wife was only a few weeks pregnant at the time. Several months later on the summer solstice our daughter was born, the second part of this song describes her birth from a mythic, ceremonial vantage”

Gwenno – ‘Utopia’

Ahead of the release of her new album Utopia this Friday, Gwenno has offered the lovely title track. According to press materials, the track “paints a picture of someone living their life against the rapidly fading colors of Las Vegas.”

Low Girl – ‘Handbrake’

Low Girl – which started as the solo project of frontwoman Sarah Cosgrove but has expanded to include her sibling Tom Cosgrove (drums), bassist/guitarist Bradley Taylor, and keyboardist Toby Morgan – have announced their debut album. Due October 22, Is It Too Late To Freak Out? is led by the gauzy single ‘Handbrake’, which features a neat flute section. “This track came about on a gloomy November evening through Bradley, myself, and a Mac,” Cosgrove recalled. “We had just finished touring with October Drift, and I had a case of the post-tour blues. Some of that angst evidently bled into the track, but lyrically ‘Handbrake’ deals with themes of guilt and desperation. I think, like many of the album tracks, I’m expressing things I was too passive to articulate in the moment.”

Fraternal Twin – ‘Evil Eye’

Fraternal Twin have returned with a languidly ominous track called ‘Evil’. It’s the New York indie band’s first new offering since 2016’s Homeworlding.

End It – ‘Life Sublime’

End It have dropped a mean-sounding, anthemic new single from their upcoming Wrong Side of Heaven called ‘Life Sublime’. It arrives with a music video directed by Noah Haycock, Aaron Patrick, and Alex Futtersak.

Restraining Order – ‘Know Not’

If you’re up for another dose of riveting hardcore punk with ‘Know Not’, the latest from Massachusetts-based band Restraining Order. It’s taken from their new album Future Fortune, which arrives September 12.

Joviale – ‘Let Me Down’

Joviale, who’s set to go on tour with Nourished By Time in November, has dropped ‘Let Me Down’, the catchy third single from their debut full-length, Mount Crystal (out September 12 via Ghostly International). “Desire can turn when pride becomes involved,” Joviale said of the song.

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