At Paste Music, we’re listening to so many new tunes on any given day, we barely have any time to listen to each other. Nevertheless, every week we can swing it, we take stock of the previous seven days’ best new songs, delivering a weekly playlist of our favorites. Check out this week’s material, in alphabetical order. (You can check out an ongoing playlist of every best new songs pick of 2024 here.)
Ben Kweller: “Optimystic”
In 2023, Ben Kweller’s 16-year-old son Dorian Zev died unexpectedly. In the wake of this loss, the indie rock artist found himself more compelled than ever to make music. “I didn’t care what came out of me because it was the only way I could find peace in my earth-shattering grief,” he says. The result is his new album Cover the Mirrors, which features collaborators like MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee and is set for release on May 30, 2025—what would have been Dorian’s 19th birthday. The first single off the record, “Optimystic,” finds Kweller in the throes of sorrow: “Close your heart. Back to start. Brains go / Pow! I’m not optimystic now, I’m not optimystic.” Robust, upbeat guitar occasionally turns dark and angular, crafting a particular type of catharsis that will make you want to cry and dance and tear out your hair all at once. —Clare Martin
Blue Foundation: “Close to the Knife”
While they might be most iconic for creating “hoa hoa hoa season” with their Twilight soundtrack contribution “Eyes on Fire,” Blue Foundation are so much more than that. Between its dreaminess and stunning sorrow, Danish group’s new single “Close to the Knife” sounds like Chromatics’ icy synth pop if it was defrosted just a touch. Formed by Tobias Wilner back in 2000, Blue Foundation features a rotating cast of musicians. These days Wilner and Bo Rande are the core members, and they wrote “Close to the Knife” about a doomed love that will never reach fruition. “There is no one but you / It was only us two,” Helena Gao sings despondently over fluttering, organ-like synth and tenderly strummed guitar. Break out a pane of rain-streaked glass to stare longingly out of—it’s time to do some yearning. —Clare Martin
Chanel Beads: “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms”
2024 has been quite the year for Chanel Beads’ Shane Lavers. Both his April-released album Your Day Will Come and one of its standout tracks, “Police Scanners,” made it on Paste’s year-end lists. And Lavers does not seem to plan on slowing down: this week he released a Chanel Beads take on the classic hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” (previously sung by Alan Jackson and Iris Dement, among others), turning the 1887 track into an Alex G-esque dreamscape. The track is gauzy but feels surprisingly raw, the scratch in Lavers’ voice as he finds purchase in the repeated titular line adding an unexpected vulnerability to the track. Lavers’ avant-garde pop has become a staple in the New York DIY scene over the past few years, so it’s about time the broader sphere of music criticism catches up—and, with Chanel Beads putting out tracks like “Leaning,” I doubt we’ll have to wait that much longer. —Casey Epstein-Gross
GOON: “Death Spells”
Goon’s latest single, “Death Spells,” is its first released with indie label Born Losers Records, and it does not disappoint. The track unfurls like a sonic tapestry, weaving together threads of ethereal vocals and disquieting lyrics as it builds into something momentous, grander than the sum of its parts. Kenny Becker’s soft, fuzzy vocals should feel at odds with the grim and grit of the lyrics (filled with lines like “Death spells are coming down / Don’t go outside,” and “Here’s the knife / Belly is waiting now open wide”) but the song feels utterly cohesive, creating an atmosphere thick with foreboding yet tinged with acquiescence. The instrumentation—a mix of acoustic guitar, Shane Peralta’s resonator, subtle electronics, a xylophone, and piano—gradually escalates from a hushed whisper to a dark urgency. Described as a blend of psych, folk, and alternative reminiscent of artists like Elliot Smith and Grizzly Bear, “Death Spells” is no simple funeral march; it’s a “deliberate invocation,” as the band’s press release puts it, and a testament to the Los Angeles group’s continuous evolution. —Casey Epstein-Gross
Julien Baker & TORRES: “Sugar in the Tank”
Last Friday, Julien Baker and TORRES unveiled their collaborative single “Sugar in the Tank” after previewing it on The Tonight Show. The two musicians had performed it together at a Webster Hall gig in New York two months ago, and the studio-recorded version is finally on DSPs. “Sugar in the Tank” wasn’t the only new song they unveiled, hinting at a potentially bigger project down the road, but it certainly is one of the strongest non-solo tracks that Baker has worked on. Produced by Sarah Tudzin (aka illuminati hotties), “Sugar in the Tank” is a great country song (thanks, in part, to Aisha Burns’s fiddle playing); Baker and TORRES have strong writing and singing chemistry. “I love you swimming upstream in a flash flood, wondering when I’m gonna drown / Picking up steam on the off-ramp, getting the hell out of downtown / Let you be the chain that keeps me closer to the ground” is a verse I’ve been humming since I first heard it last week. “Sugar in the Tank” is the 2024 version of Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s “Like I Used To”—two of our very best singer-songwriters colliding when we really needed it. Some collabs feel like novelties, but “Sugar in the Tank” packs the right kind of wallop. —Matt Mitchell
more eaze & claire rousay: “limelight, illegally”
Two years ago, more eaze (mari maurice) and claire rousay collaborated on the album Never Stop Texting Me and, just a few months ago, we named “stairs” the 17th-best song of the 2020s so far. In 2024, mari and rousay have been all over our year-end lists, for both albums and songs, and today, they’ve announced that there’s another collaboration on the horizon: no floor, a celebration of, as rousay puts it, “10 years of friendship” between her and mari. Inspired by the now-closed Limelight bar in San Antonio, “limelight, illegally” is this gorgeous collision of ambient drones and aching pedal steel. If you collage the pacing of rousay’s “head” with the Westernized bursts of mari’s “waltz (in memorium old ways of living),” you might get something that sounds like “limelight, illegally.” mari and rousay are calling “limelight, illegally” (and no floor) “pastoral melancholia” and a “lush tour into their own version of Americana,” and “limelight, illegally” is a celebratory, elaborate enmeshment of ostinato guitar, cowboy sounds, bending strings and electronic glitches. You can hear the habitats; you can feel each pair of lungs contracting. —Matt Mitchell
Office Culture: “Compromise”
In October, Office Culture put out an under-the-radar double album called Enough, which was the culmination of years-long sessions for the Brooklyn band. Their new single, the trip-hop-inspired “Compromise,” continues the record’s lifespan. It was the, as bandleader Winston Cook-Wilson puts it, “track that kicked off the Enough era of music-making,” but it didn’t quite make sense in the final puzzle. I’m glad we have the song now, because it’s a terrific lullaby of collagy, impossibly hypnotic pop beats and ambient, synthy drones. The blending is subtle, done in a way that measures the ache but doesn’t wallow in it. “Compromise” sounds like a party that’s dying down, like you’re stumbling in and out of each room’s romances. —Matt Mitchell
TOLEDO: “When He Comes Around”
While I continue to wait patiently for TOLEDO to drop the follow-up to their debut album How It Ends the band—Daniel Alvarez and Jordan Dunn-Pilz—have remained consistently busy and consistently aces. Earlier this year, they dropped an EP called Popped Heart and, recently, they covered Jordana’s “I Wanna” for Grand Jury’s 10-year anniversary. This week, they came back with “When He Comes Around,” a power-pop tune that kicks up a fuss but doesn’t make one. It’s a really lovely, hummable gem with a smear of pedal steel belly-aching inside it—my favorite. TOLEDO are some of the best living rock ‘n’ roll decorators, as they turn melodies vibrant just by playing them perfectly. —Matt Mitchell
The Velveteers: “On and On”
The Velveteers’ debut album, Nightmare Daydream, was one of my favorites in 2021 and, now, the Boulder, Colorado trio (vocalist Demi Demitro and drummers Baby Pottersmith and Johnny Fig) are roaring back with a sophomore effort: A Million Knives, due out 2/14 via Easy Eye Sound. It is my opinion that Demitro is one of the most exciting frontpeople in rock ‘n’ roll, and “On and On” is her head-throbbing, gnarly chariot of poison-tongued, anti-misogynistic retribution. It’s got a bite of distortion similar to St. Vincent circa 10, 15 years ago, the melody has splashes of Lady Gaga-pop and it’s about “kissing off predatory men in the music scene,” according to Demitro. “On and On” is wounded yet empowered, the melody is boundless, massive and unforgettably sharp. —Matt Mitchell
The Weather Station: “Body Moves”
Around this time next month, the Weather Station will release their new album, Humanhood. Tamara Lindeman has been slowly previewing the project with great teasers, including “Neon Signs” and “Window.” Single #3, “Body Moves,” is unmistakably pretty and woven “out of dreams” and into something more abstract. Lindeman sings about how the “body fools you, the body moves you, sometimes in directions seemingly self-destructive or painful or visceral.” Likewise, “Body Moves” is a biological song splashed with jazz horns, strings and a dreamy piano that pulses and splits two selves down the middle. Lindeman’s language pulls you in: “You thought you knew what it was you loved. Then again, look at this mess.” There is something about “Body Moves” that shouts without ever raising a voice—it’s impulsive yet separate. —Matt Mitchell
Other Notable Songs This Week: Guided By Voices: “The Great Man”; Heart Armour: “White Flag”; Ichiko Aoba: “FLAG”; IDLES ft. Danny Brown: “POP POP POP”; mercury: “The Fly”; Pink Siifu ft. Kal Banx: “WHOUWITHHO+”; Witch Post: “Rust”; Zach Phillips (of Fievel is Glauque): “True Music”
Check out a playlist of this week’s best new songs below.