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 2025 here.)
Anika: “Hearsay”
Anika’s 2021 album, Change, was one of my very favorites of that year. And that collection of environmental, pandemic-driven dread had been the Berlin musician’s first full-length release in 11 years. Fast-forward three years and I’m glad we don’t have to wait another decade for her return, as Abyss will be here in April. Anika takes her time, letting all that confounds her erupt into something you could never just blink and miss. Her new single, “Hearsay,” is righteously hypnotic, written about “the power of media, whether social, TV or beyond,” and it conjures the likes of PJ Harvey and Cate Le Bon. “Hearsay” deafens as Anika repeats the title over and over, while thuds of percussion and suppressed guitars boil into this curdling anger. You can feel it as a bassline anchors her and her band’s unrest. But “Hearsay” is not melodramatic, and it never becomes anything far-too-big. Anika’s singing is patient yet provoking, arriving without overdub and punching up with a new, vivid confidence. —Matt Mitchell
Doechii: “Nosebleeds”
I think I speak for everyone on the Paste team when I say, Doechii deserved every bit of that Grammy for Best Rap Album on Sunday night. The Tampa rapper had an absolutely star-studded year, releasing her third mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal, which we named one of the best rap projects of 2024, receiving Grammy nominations for “Best New Artist,” “Best Rap Performance” for her song “NISSAN ALTIMA,” and ultimately becoming the third woman ever to win “Best Rap Album.” Doechii even touched on this in her acceptance speech saying that the “category was introduced in 1989 and three women have won— Lauryn Hill, Cardi B, and Doechii! I put my heart and my soul into this mixtape.” I could go on about her guest verse on Tyler, the Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA, or her ferocious performance of “DENIAL IS A RIVER” on Colbert, but this is about right now, 2025, the year of Doechii. Just hours after the Grammys, Doechii dropped “Nosebleeds,” a well-deserved celebration of booming 808s and “F-you” style braggadocio. Throughout the two-minute victory lap, Doechii recounts her prolific run over the past year—how she “stepped out the swamp” and onto arena stages, and how she rode that wave all the way to a Grammy. “Nosebleeds” serves as the second-half of her acceptance speech, thanking everyone from God, to her label Top Dawg Entertainment, to her mom, SZA, and everyone that hated on her as she rose to the top. Still, I have no doubt that Doechii will continue moving up—she might have to grow a pair of wings to do it, but hey, crazier things have happened. —Gavyn Green
Free Range: “Hardly”
Singer-songwriter Sofia Jensen—better known as Free Range—will release Lost & Found, the follow-up to their acclaimed 2023 debut LP Practice, in March. Teasing the hotly anticipated release, they’ve shared its lead single, “Hardly”—and, if it gives any indication of what to expect, we’re surely in for another gut-punch of a record. In keeping with Free Range’s earlier material, “Hardly” is as raw and revealing as an open wound, but it’s heavier than the woodsy, pedal steel-laced folk of Practice. Here, Jensen sings against a droning, reverb-dampened guitar line that’s attenuated by occasional pauses of crisper strumming and soft percussion (an exquisite dichotomy I find reminiscent of Columbus-based bootgaze project villagerrr). It’s the farthest Jensen has crossed into slowcore territory, and it marks a thrilling step forward—the soundscape is as murky and coolly evocative as their lyrics, which blur the line between a dysfunctional relationship and addiction: “You hardly notice when I glance at you / But I do / Or at the shelves and bottles I was so used to / They broke me, it’s true,” they sing, their voice deep, bruised and casually heart-wrenching as ever. —Anna Pichler
hey, nothing: “33°”
You know that period between late January and Valentine’s Day; the days we’re all mindlessly wading through right now? It’s like the Twilight Zone, as our resolutions crumble and those brand new dumbbells are still waiting to be curled. With little to look forward to until Memorial Day, we’re all kind of just… existing. That’s where the latest single by hey, nothing comes in. On “33°,” Tyler Mabry and Harlow Phillips sing a dying testament to our winter slumps, telling the story of two boys walking out on a frozen lake; only to have the ice break beneath them as they plunge unseen into the frigid waters below. The Georgia-based duo eke out the tale through raspy, emo-inspired harmonies and their trademark parlor guitar strumming, only belting out on the last refrain, “Tommy’s on the ice / Momma shuts her eyes / Everything is fine / There’s no chance, it’s brеaking twice.” The song is outright tragic, using the metaphor of the icy lake as a keen comparison for the fragile and often incoherent minds of young people today. Tommy and Aiden, the two characters of “33°,” are innocent in exploring the frozen pond, yet they get dragged down all the same. Their pursuit may have been reckless, but it should have been harmless. Instead, hey, nothing paints a more somber picture, pointing out the paralyzing nature of decision making when a step in any direction only leads to more pain. —Gavyn Green
Ichiko Aoba: “SONAR”
Growing up, I was constantly swimming at the pool by our house, with chlorine matting my hair and stinging my eyes. One of my favorite games back then involved me and my little sister submerging ourselves underwater, then I’d sing a tune to her and she’d try to guess it, or vice versa. More often than not, our guesses were wrong. The water muffled our ears and turned our songs into bubbles, cutting off our means of understanding one another. I felt myself transported back to that strange, insulated feeling listening to Japanese artist Ichiko Aoba’s new track “SONAR,” all about overcoming piercing isolation in order to connect with another person. Synths glow softly like lightning bugs as Aoba sings in a voice just as gentle, accompanied by melancholic keys. The lyrics, translated from Japanese, are beautiful yet heart-wrenching: “Beyond the darkness, a glimmer of /somebody’s voice / I am here, although / I know not where, and yet / I hear it.” That search for connection—alluring, sad, potentially doomed—is so ingrained into us as people. It’s fair to say that we’re itching to hear Aoba’s new album Luminescent Creatures when it arrives on February 28 via hermine / Psychic Hotline. —Clare Martin
Panda Bear: “Ends Meet”
The next Panda Bear album is sure to be great, if lead singles “Defense” and “Ferry Lady” are any indication. Noah Lennox has been in his Van Dyke Parks era for 20 years, and new song “Ends Meet” might be my favorite taste of Sinister Grift yet. Lennox calls upon his Animal Collective bandmates Avey Tare and Geologist, along with Maria Reis and SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s Rivka Ravede for harmonies, and the final product sounds so, so lovely. “Ends Meet” has got a bit of reggae fusion in there, but it’s largely drowned out by the sunny pop that vibrated through previous single “Ferry Lady.” The song is sweetly nurtured by a pocket of baroque music that, as we’ve seen in Cindy Lee (who plays guitar on “Defense”) and Jessica Pratt’s recent work, remains timeless. The advances from Sinister Grift haven’t missed, and these songs are some of Panda Bear’s best since Person Pitch. “Just keep it in the groove, don’t let up,” Lennox declares, and “Ends Meet” sweetly paces onward. —Matt Mitchell
Roi Turbo: “Super Hands”
Roi Turbo’s last song, “Bazooka,” sounded like it was made for a disco bathed in a prism of colorful lights; their new single “Super Hands,” by comparison, is destined to be played at the perspiration-drenched warehouse afterparty. The pulse-racing beat bounds forward, spurred on by taut guitar and space-y effects and punctuated by the occasional metallic clang. Different eras collide here to great effect: ‘70s funk and ‘90s warehouse music wend their way around each other, twisting together to create something stylish, confident and dizzying. Benjamin and Conor McCarthy, the South African brothers behind Roi Turbo, have this to say about “Super Hands”: “‘Super Hands’ is the warehouse industrial side of Roi Turbo with its modular sequencing and hard hitting drum machines. We were keen to experiment and mix warehouse dance with guitars and live percussion. We’ve always loved that progressive ‘90s sound and had fun trying to make it fit into the Turbo world.” —Clare Martin
SACRED PAWS: “Turn Me Down”
Rejection has never sounded quite as jubilant as it does on SACRED PAWS’ “Turn Me Down,” which weaves vitality and melancholy together into a purely cathartic release. After a five-year break, the Glasgow/London duo have returned with a track that feels like someone spun African highlife guitars in a cotton candy machine and sprinkled them over a post-punk percussion parade. Ray Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers master the art of emotional sleight-of-hand, wrapping raw vulnerability in a technicolor sonic jumpsuit while their bouncy guitars skip and hop like children playing double-dutch with power lines, harmonies soaring overhead. The chorus (“Do you even feel the pain?”) might be asking the tough questions, but the instrumentation throws a party around them. On this second taste of their upcoming album Jump Into Life, SACRED PAWS prove that, sometimes, the best way to handle heartache is to dress it up in handclaps and dance arm-in-arm with it right out the door. —Casey Epstein-Gross
Sleeper’s Bell: “Bad Word”
“Lord…I beg you to press / Your heel against my throat—not enough to ruin me, / But just so—just so I can see your face.” These lines are excerpted from “Catastrophe is Next to Godliness,” a poem by Franny Choi about the deliriously blissful, even life-giving feeling of hovering over the brink of ruin. Blaine Teppema, one half of Chicago folk duo Sleeper’s Bell, found inspiration in the poem when she wrote “Bad Word,” the last single released in support of her band’s debut full-length, Clover. Backed by guitarist Evan Green’s brittle strumming, Teppema sinks her teeth into a throbbing heartache, indulging in the pain’s sweet aftertaste: “Looking back at the heartache / God, what a lovely pain / Made me feel like I was new,” she exhales on the opening verse, her breathy voice as delicate as a moth’s wing. Like the paradoxical sensation she sings of, “Bad Word” is pleasurably painful, or painfully pleasurable—the musical equivalent of a soothing blanket that starts to overheat and suffocate, or the cleansing taste of salty tears rolled down your cheeks and onto your tongue. If you’re battling lovesickness as Valentine’s Day approaches, this is the song to sink into. —Anna Pichler
YHWH Nailgun: “Sickle Walk”
In “Sickle Walk,” the latest sonic assault from Brooklyn’s YHWH Nailgun, the band serves up a sonic goulash that tastes like someone dropped their iPhone in a blender with a handful of vintage drum machines and David Byrne’s anxiety medication and pressed a button. The single, heralding their debut record 45 Pounds, manages to construct something bizarrely danceable from the skeleton of no-wave, creating rhythms that feel like they were excavated from the ruins of a post-apocalyptic disco. Frontman Zack Borzone delivers his lines like a sleep-deprived street prophet who just discovered his refrigerator has gained sentience, while the band conjures a backdrop that sounds like industrial machinery learning to dance. In just under four minutes, the experimental rock quartet builds a world that feels both wholly alien and unnervingly familiar—like finding your childhood teddy bear rebuilt as a cyborg. It’s gloriously unsettling, and I’m here for every twisted second of it. —Casey Epstein-Gross
Other Notable Songs This Week: Child Star: “Adore”; Daughter of Swords: “Talk to You”; Deep Sea Diver ft. Madison Cunningham: “Let Me Go”; Destroyer: “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World”; Esther Rose: “New Bad”; Femi Kuti: “After 24 Years”; girlpuppy: “I Just Do!”; joan: “magic”; Larry June, 2 Chainz & The Alchemist: “I Been”; Lucius: “Gold Rush”; Maz: “Kiss Kiss Boom”; Mei Semones: “Dumb Feeling”; My Beautiful Boyfriend: “It’s Like You Said”; OHYUNG: “Dancing on the Soft Knife”; Punchlove: “(sublimate)”; Rocket: “Take Your Aim”; Saba & No ID: “Woes of the World”; The Bird Calls: “Melody Trail”; The Ophelias: “Cumulonimbus”; Waxahatchee: “Mud”
Check out a playlist of this week’s best new songs below.