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 Thursday, March 20, 2025.
Debby Friday – ‘1/17’
Debby Friday is back with a new song, the sultry and euphoric ‘1/17’, which the Toronto artist co-produced with Darcy Baylis. The accompanying video was directed by Friday and frequent collaborator Kevan Funk. “It’s based on an amalgamation of two experiences that I had,” Friday commented. “The first was when I won the Polaris Prize at Massey Hall, which felt like a peak moment in my career. The second was when, nine months later, I played a festival show to absolutely no one in the audience. I’ve spent the past year detaching myself from the highs and lows of this business and trying to see everything as a sign. Of what? I don’t know. But I’m sure in the end, it’ll all mean something.”
Shanti Celeste – ‘Thinking About You’
Shanti Celeste has announced a new album, Romance, which arrives May 16 and finds the Chilean DJ singing lead across the album for the first time. The meditative yet propulsive lead single ‘Thinking About You’ was written in tribute to a late friend. “I’m thinking about you more than ever,” she sings over and over again. In a statement, Celeste shared, “He was my first boyfriend but also a really good friend. He was a really important person in my life.”
Sex Week – ‘Coat’
Sex Week, the Brooklyn duo of actor and musician Pearl Amanda Dickson and songwriter and producer Richard Orofino, are back with ‘Coat’, which builds on the world they established with their self-titled debut EP. The song seems to sink into oblivion while twisting around their ominous yet delicate voices, keeping them just above the surface.
Bnny – ‘Good Stuff (Edit)’ [feat. Wild Pink]
Bnny have teamed up with Wild Pink’s John Ross for a reworking of the One Million Love Songs highlight ‘Goood Stuff’. Adding a gritty quality to the ethereal track, the new version is taken from the record’s upcoming deluxe edition. “‘Good Stuff’ is one my favorite songs I’ve heard in a while, so I was really excited to work with Jess on an alternate version,” Ross said in a statement. “I’ve listened to it on repeat so many times. It’s such a dreamy song and I thought some heavy baritone guitars could be a different approach for it and I’m really excited about how it turned out.”
Johanna Warren – ‘Nectar’
Johanna Warren has returned with a playfully hypnotic new song, ‘Nectar’, which will appear on the upcoming EP The Night of the Wind. The project, which is based on a book of the same name that Warren illustrated and wrote at the age of three, is billed as “a collaboration 33 years in the making between Johanna Warren and her three-year-old self.” “In some ways this feels like the most terrifyingly vulnerable thing I’ve ever made,” Warren reflected. “The music isn’t about dazzling anyone with sophisticated language or technical acrobatics. It’s about reclaiming something pure and profoundly silly.”
Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari – ‘Procession of the Equinox’
Angel Bat Dawid has announced a new album made in collaboration with the multidisciplinary artist and musician Naima Nefertari, Journey to Nabta Playa, which arrives on May 2 via Spiritmuse. It’s led by the foreboding ‘Procession of the Equinox’, which is inspired in part by Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly. “They say the people could fly,” Hamilton wrote. “Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic. And they would walk up on the air like climbin’ up on a gate. And they flew like blackbirds over the fields. Black, shiny wings flappin’ against the blue up there.”
Nell Smith – ‘Billions of People’
Bella Union has shared ‘Billions of People’, the latest offering from Nell Smith’s posthumous debut solo album Anxious. The driving single was written in September 2022 with Canadian band Shred Kelly in Fernie BC, reflecting on her visit to the UK on tour with The Flaming Lips earlier that year. Shred Kelly commented: “We met every week to work on songwriting together and, if I remember correctly, Nell brought the chorus of ‘Billions of People’ to the session. About 30 minutes in, she got a message from someone who she had a connection with who was leaving town and she said she was going to bike down to the bridge to say goodbye and be back in a few minutes. She wasn’t sure when she’d see them again. That fuelled the inspiration for the verses of the song that we wrote that day, and the rest of the song came together pretty effortlessly.”
Eric Church – ‘Hands of Time’
Eric Church has announced a new album, Evangeline Vs. the Machine, which arrives on May 2. Today, he’s shared the single ‘Hands of Time’, which was co-written with Scooter Carusoe and includes shout-outs to Bob Seger, Tom Petty, Meat Loaf, and Kris Kristofferson, among others.
Couch Prints – ‘Hall Lights’
New York duo Couch Prints have announced Pitbull 2, the follow-up to 2023’s Waterfall: Rebirth. It comes out in May, and the alluring lead single ‘Hall Lights’ is out now. “It’s the soundtrack to a friendship splintering into the unknown — one foot anchored in a memory, the other stumbling ahead,” they shared.
Jolie Laide – ‘Holly’
Jolie Laide have put out ‘Holly’, an interesting new single from their upcoming LP Creatures. “‘Holly’ is a song about two strangers meeting at the edge of a dense forest and a sunbaked clearing,” the band explained. “They begin a conversation as one asks the other, a girl named Holly ‘Where’d you get that long brown hair’ alluding to the long lock of braided hair in her hands — clearly not her own. The other stranger goes on to share what has transpired in his life; rambling through the post-apocalyptic wasteland they both inhabit.”
Georgia Harmer – ‘Little Light’
Georgia Harmer has unveiled a beautifully serene and understated song called ‘Can We Be Still’. In a statement, she described it as “an homage to a very peaceful place out in the country where I lived for a few months, and a new love taking root. It’s a very hopeful song, about being led to inner solace, and feeling like the blinds are being opened to let the light in a little bit more than they’d ever really been. It’s a song about tranquility and reverence, for the place I was in, physically and emotionally, and trying to take in the beauty that surrounded me and let it seep inward enough to make me feel like I could be part of it.”
