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 Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
Superchunk – ‘Bruised Lung’ [feat. Rosali]
Superchunk are back with their first song of 2025, a collaboration with their Merge labelmate Rosali Middleman. “I got a bruised lung,” goes the refrain, but it sounds absolutely invigorating. Mac McCaughan described it as “a song about being disoriented and sleepless and not being able to explain why. Like a hangover but not from drinking. (You look normal on the outside.) Rosali came into the studio to add some woozy shredding and great harmonies.”
Foxwarren – ‘Listen2me’
The Andy Shauf-fronted band Foxwarren is back with news of their sophomore album, 2, which they announced with the mesmerizing ‘Listen2me’. “I know I’m not some movie star/ Reciting some big script/ But if you open your mind/ I might be able to tell you something,” Shauf sings. Better lean in and listen.
MJ Lenderman – ‘Dancing in the Club’ (This Is Lorelei Cover)
This Is Lorelei has shared MJ Lenderman’s version of ‘Dancing in the Club’ for the upcoming deluxe edition of Box for Buddy, Box for Star. It’s really a match made in heaven. “Box For Buddy was by far the album I listened to most in 2024,” Lenderman said. “I had a great time re-recording ‘Dancing In The Club’ with Nate back in December.” Nate Amos added, “I really loved working on the MJ version of ‘Dancing in the Club’—Jake [Lenderman] is chill AF and mad talented. More so than any other song I’ve written this one was dreamt up for others to sing, so it was pretty freaky watching it fall into place with someone like Jake handling lead vocals.”
Samia – ‘Hole in a Frame’ and ‘Pants’
Samia’s new album Bloodless comes out in a month, and today, she’s shared two more singles from it, the hazy, affecting ‘Hole in a Frame’ and the climactic ‘Pants’. “I paired these tracks because they capture opposite instincts,” Samia explained. “‘Hole in a Frame’ is about a fascination with disappearing and the power of absence. ‘Pants’ is about accepting a non-refundable self, social contexts and all. They move from a comfort in the possibilities of emptiness to the reality of existence.”
Perfume Genius – ‘Clean Heart’
Ahead of the release of his new album Glory on Friday, Perfume Genius has unveiled a gorgeously triumphant track called ‘Clean Heart’. It follows ‘It’s a Mirror’ and the Aldous Harding-assisted ‘No Front Teeth’, which made our best songs of January and February, respectively.
Model/Actriz – ‘Doves’
Model/Actriz have put out another single from their second LP Pirouette, the cavernous and ultimately liberating ‘Doves’. “’Doves’ was the first song on Pirouette to have fully completed lyrics,” singer Cole Haden explained. “Initially, its story wasn’t entirely clear to me, but it ultimately became the gateway to the rest of the album’s writing. Within the song, I sing from an empty cathedral, but on a broader level, it explores how a place that once felt like a sanctuary can, over time, become a cage. Ultimately, the challenge then lies in finding the courage to step beyond it. The song is about trusting that the effort to break free is worth it.”
Sea Lemon – ‘Stay’
Sea Lemon, aka Seattle songwriter Natalie Lew, has announced her debut album, Diving for a Prize, with the lead single ‘Stay’, which is both gauzy and groovy. “‘Stay’ was the first track I actively wrote for my record, and is a little vignette of a man I saw in a local thrift store,” Lew explained. “This older guy, probably in his 70s or 80s, was acting as a security guard at this thrift store near my house, but he was basically asleep on the couch the entire time I was there. I couldn’t stop thinking about him after I left, and wrote ‘Stay’ as a reaction to seeing this guy who I felt deserved to take a break. The song became a short story about him, and about how important I feel it can be to have someone in your life willing to telling you to take a step back and just relax.”
PUP – ‘Get Dumber’ [feat. Jeff Rosenstock]
PUP have teamed upwith Jeff Rosenstock for their latest Who Will Look After the Dogs? single, the blistering ‘Get Dumber’. “I wrote “Get Dumber” in Jeff’s basement,” Stefan Babcock commented. “I was house sitting for him while he was on tour. I recorded the first demo for it on his guitar using his mics and his computer. Maybe because the ghost of Jeff was in the room with me, I always imagined our voices on this song together, so I was very happy when he agreed to sing on it.” He added, “We recorded the vocals together, in the same room, facing each other. What that means is, we both had to nail it at the same time because we couldn’t really cut between takes. On the first take, he forgot a line in the second verse and said ‘ahhhhhh, lyrics’ instead. I couldn’t finish the take because I was laughing too hard. Anyway, he practiced singing the correct lyrics but then
we decided those lyrics kinda sucked and he should just stick to ‘ahhhh lyrics’ because it’s funny and the song is called ‘Get Dumber’. We nailed it on the second take.”
Horse Jumper of Love – ‘The Idiot’ and ‘The Car Knows the Way’
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot was one of the inspirations Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos talked about in our interview about last year’s Disaster Trick. “I did actually end up writing a song that was a B-side for that recording session called ‘The Idiot’, so it did slip into my subconscious,” he shared. Today, we get to hear that spectral song, along with another B-side called ‘The Car Knows the Way’. In a press release, Giannopoulos said of ‘The Idiot’: “The song is about stumbling back into your ‘real’ life after tapping out for some time. When you’re in a mentally unavailable state and then you get your shit together, you expect people to have waited for you and to be available themselves when you’re ‘back.’ The first time in your life it happens to you and you realize people have not waited can be hard to face.” He added, “‘The Car Knows the Way’ is about letting the car bring you to where you need to go.”
James Krivchenia – ‘Bracelets for Unicorns’ [feat. Sam Wilkes and Joshua Abrams
Big Thief drummer has shared ‘Bracelets for Unicorns’, another intriguing and wonderfully titled cut from his forthcoming album Performing Belief. It features both Sam Wilkes and Joshua Abrams, with whom he recorded most of the LP.
Gold Dust – ‘An Early Translation of a Later Work’ [feat. J Mascis]
Gold Dust started four years ago as the solo outlet of Massachusetts musician Stephen Pierce, but now it’s expanded into a full band featuring Potty Mouth, Nanny, and the Van Pelt. Today, they’ve announced a new LP In the Shade of the Living Light, whose lead single ‘An Early Translation of a Later Work’ features an incredible electric sitar solo from J Mascis. “An early translation can be groundbreaking, beautiful, and flawed,” Pierce reflected. “A later translation can be defanged of its urgency, but more accurate to the literal text. Neither is necessarily better than the other – it depends on perspective.” He added, “What is any of this but an attempt to translate hazy grey amorphous experience into something tangible, something we can hold and understand? We’re all trying to make sense of a lot of things – things we may not get answers to in this lifetime or at all. Sitting with unknowing, or sitting with the multitude of translations of the same text (as a metaphor for the self, naturally): that’s a life’s work.”
Maria Somerville – ‘Stonefly’
Maria Somerville has unveiled ‘Stonefly’, an atmospheric waltz that will appear on the Irish musician’s upcoming LP Luster. The track arrives with a music video directed by Daniel Swan.
Purelink – ‘Rookie’ [feat. Loraine James] and ‘Kite Scene’
Purelink – the ambient techno trio of Tommy Paslaski (aka Concave Reflection), Ben Paulson (aka kindtree), and Akeem Asani (aka Millia) – have announced a new album called Faith. They’ve shared two tracks to mark the news, the entrancing Loraine James collab ‘Rookie’ and ‘Kite Scene’, which is even more diffuse.
CMAT – ‘Running/Planning’
CMAT has announced a new LP, EURO-COUNTRY, which will be released on August 29 via AWAL. About the relatable lead single, the Irish singer-songwriter said: “‘Running/Planning’ is about having to chase your own tail to be good enough to exist. It’s an abstracted view of societal pressure on women – specifically through a relationship lens: You start dating someone, you get engaged, you get married, you have kids etc etc etc… everything has to follow this linear pattern. (That’s the reason for the repetitive chorus!). And the minute you don’t follow that path, your mam starts giving out to you. That narrow path that everyone is supposed to be on… the minute you get outside of that, it gets incredibly stressful. And I don’t know anyone who is like, ‘Yeah, love this!”
Ain’t – ‘Pirouette’
Ain’t have nothing to do with the new Model/Actriz album, but their first single of 2025 is called ‘Pirouette’. “I wrote ‘Pirouette’ during a period of changes: A relationship had recently ended, I was dating someone who seemed pretty disinterested, and I was moving between precarious flat shares,” George Ellerby said of the dynamic track. “All through this, it felt the band was anticipating and going through change too. It was during a point when the full lineup of Ain’t was coming together.” The guitarist-vocalist added: “When I started writing ‘Pirouette’, Ain’t was just Ed, Jeevan and I; by the time it got to the practice room, Joe, Hanna, and Chapman had joined. It was the sum of all of this that inspired the song’s lyrics. I felt like I was sitting on the threshold of something new and was practically screaming out for it, but I also had parts of the past still clinging to me. Pirouette details the drudgery of break ups and the lethargy that can come with dating, but I feel it’s preoccupied with a sense of something overwhelmingly hopeful and exhilarating falling into place.”
Laura Jane Grace in the Trauma Tropes – ‘Mine Me Mine’
Laura Jane Grace’s recently launched band Laura Jane Grace in the Trauma Tropes – featuring her wife Paris Campbell Grace on vocals, Jacopo Fokas on bass, and Orestis Lagadinos on drums – have announced a new album, Adventure Club. They’ve also shared the snappy ‘Mine Me Mine’, which follows last month’s ‘Your God (God’s D*ck)’/
Harmony – ‘Where Strangers Go’
Harmony, formerly of Girlpool, has released a new song, ‘Where Strangers Go’, which is sparser than anything on her 2024 debut Gossip. According to Tividad, it’s “about the infinitely changing nature of life and trying to make peace with it,” which all of us strangers can relate to.
Allison Russell – ‘Superlover’ [feat. Annie Lennox]
Allison Russell has teamed up with Annie Lennox for a new single, ‘Superlover’, which also features Wendy & Lisa and Russell’s Rainbow Coalition band. Russell shared, “This song is a prayer. This song is a protection spell. This song is a plea. This song is a belief. This song is a question. Are you a Superlover?”
Sparklmami – ‘Touch’
Sparklmami, the moniker of Ariella Granados, has dropped a new song called ‘Touch’. The delightfully slinky, alluring track was recorded with Chicago group Les Sons Du Cosmo.
Clothing – ‘Destituir’
Clothing, aka Santi Ropa, has unveiled ‘Destituir’, the final single ahead of the release of their debut album La Muerte en Realidad no Existe on Friday. Ropa described The Wall-invoking track as “a self empowerment song about devouring the world,” adding: “Look into the mirror and accept yourself, look at the wounds in your body, a reminder that you weren’t meant to be unscathed.”
Wilby – ‘Pleaser’ and ‘Spin’
Maria Crawford, who records as Wilby, has made her label debut with two new songs, the driving ‘Pleaser’ and more reflective ‘Spin’, out now via Hit the North Records. “‘Pleaser’ is a reflection on the fine line between love and submission, comfortability and control, and how sometimes the desire to please can cloud the safeness of a relationship,” Crawford explained. “With ‘Spin’, I’ve always been someone who gravitates toward the harder path and struggles to truly celebrate my wins. This song is a reflection of that inner conflict—the part of me that feels like things only have value if they’re hard, even when I’ve worked so hard to get to a place of accomplishment.”
Soot Sprite – ‘Days After Days’
Exeter trio Soot Sprite have released ‘Days After Days’, the second single from their upcoming full-length Wield Your Hope Like a Weapon. It’s less memorably titled than ‘All My Friends Are Depressed’, but just as good – and focusing on the good, in fact. “It’s about facing the endless horrors of the world and remembering to pay attention to the good,” the group’s Elise Cook expounded. “People on the ground, activism, and remembering that we shouldn’t be hardened by everything we witness or we can lose empathy. And it feels like without empathy we’ll never be able to achieve class consciousness, and lose our sense of community.”
