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 Wednesday, August 20, 2025.
Florence + the Machine – ‘Everybody Scream’
After announcing their new album Everybody Scream just yesterday, Florence + the Machine have unveiled the epically anthemic title track. We also now know IDLES’ Mark Bowen (who appears in the new video), Aaron Dessner, and Mitski worked with Florence Welch on the record, which is set for release on Halloween.
Scarlet Rae – ‘A World Where She Left Me Out’
Scarlet Rae, the New York-based indie artist recently signed to Bayonet, has shared an ethereal yet very poignant new single called ‘A World Where She Left Me Out’. It’s taken from the upcoming EP No Heavy Goodbyes. “This track opens the EP with a brutally honest dive into early grief,” Rae shared. “I try to capture the strange shift from being someone who craves solitude to fearing it. After a few disturbing experiences, I wrote this song to expose the irony of how people in your life who rush to comfort you may often add a heavier weight on the chaos of pain. This was the first song I wrote after my sister passed, and it ended up becoming a direct, emotionally charged conversation with her. More so, a one sided conversation — full of anger, confusion, and the resentment grief can bring when someone you love leaves you behind in a world so dark and disappointing. Towards the end of the track, as the music strips back, I bluntly speak directly to my sister in the most honest and literal way — ‘I literally don’t know what to do, it’s getting hard to be here without you.’ There is no metaphorical way to put something like that, and I think using the word ‘literally’ in a song is sorta funny and raw. The song is a dark, revealing reality of life, compassion, and betrayal.”
Flock of Dimes – ‘Afraid’
Flock of Dimes has shared ‘Afraid’, a stirring, warmly intimate preview of her forthcoming album The Life You Save. “This song is an intention, an incantation, a prayer. It says: I accept what has happened, but I refuse to let it dictate the outcome of my life. We all enter this world untainted, and our circumstances dictate the weight that we will have to carry throughout the rest of our lives. For some, this weight is far greater than it is for others. This song is a mantra for those who wish to believe that we can transcend the circumstances over which we had no control.”
Beach Bunny – ‘Year of the Optimist’
Beach Bunny have dropped a new single, ‘Year of the Optimist’, which would have fit snugly onto their last album Tunnel Vision. The track may be a refutation of toxic positivity, but the band’s brand of turbulence still has a way of uplifting you.
Carly Rae Jepsen – ‘More’
Carly Rae Jepsen has unveiled ‘More’, a previously unreleased, disco-inflected bonus track from the just-announced 10th-anniversary edition of E•mo•tion. There’s three more unreleased tracks on the album, out October 17, plus remixes of ‘Run Away With Me’ by Kyle Shearer and Rostam.
Sigrid – ‘Fort Knox’
Sigrid has announced her third studio album, There’s Always More That I Could Say, out October 24, with the uplifting ‘Fort Knox’. It follows the earlier single ‘Jellyfish’.
Rocket – ‘Act Like Your Title’
Rocket have not missed with any of the singles from their debut album, R Is for Rocket, and today we get another one, ‘Act Like Your Title’, which is anchored by one hell of a riff. According to singer/bassist Alithea Tuttle, the song “delves into familial relationships and generational traumas… It’s wishing someone would live up to the standards that are set for them but knowing that they will never ‘act like their title.’ Holding out hope that someone will change, especially family, is such a difficult concept and can feel so isolating.”
Snooper – ‘Guard Dog’
Snooper have dropped ‘Guard Dog’, another frantic, discomfiting preview of their forthcoming album Worldwide. “‘Guard Dog’ is about growth,” vocalist Blair Tramel explained. “It’s about the discomfort of feeling too comfortable and recognising when to make a change. It’s about second guessing yourself, overthinking, trust and distrust, and keeping it moving. It’s about losing and gaining perspective, having a voice, and learning how to use it. Mostly though, it’s about having fun – which is the most important thing.”
Automatic – ‘Lazy’
Automatic’s new single doesn’t sound quite lazy, but it is pretty languid by the trio’s standards. The track reflects on the early days of a relationship plagued by self-doubt and manipulation:“The thing you thought you wanted/ Was just the image of control.”
Wyldest – ‘After the Ending’
Wyldest has announced a new album, The Universe Is Loading, arriving November 14 via Hand In Hive. It’s led by the driving, blissful new single ‘After The Ending’, which the singer-songwriter described as “a post-apocalyptic pop song, about sustaining love from one existence to the next; ‘The moment, we lost it / so I’ll find you, after the ending’. It was written with space and time in mind – a scenario whereby a relationship can’t exist in the present reality, perhaps due to life circumstances, timing, or something more extreme, like separation by death – and the promise of finding each other in a different existence where they can be there together.”
WILDES – ‘Without a Heart’
WILDES – the project of Ella Walker, who, like Wyldest, is an Artist Spotlight alumnus – has also unveiled a new song from her forthcoming album All We Do Is Feel. “Of all the album tracks, this probably took the longest to reach its final form,” she said of the emotive ‘Without a Heart’. “It wasn’t an easy song to get out. I really struggled to nail the production on it and, in the end, I completely re-produced it, focusing on the intimacy and fragility of the verses and bringing in the vocoder choir to emulate that robotic coldness I was feeling when I originally wrote it. It’s mournful, inevitable, and has a finality to it for me. I knew once I’d written and produced it, a door would be closed on my heartache, and it was such a relief to finally finish it and feel free from that sort of pain. That makes it all worth it”.
