Best New Songs You Need to Hear This Week (October 16, 2025)

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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.)

1010benja: “Lightrope”

1010benja’s last single, “YAM,” was fucking awesome. I’ve been listening to it on repeat until about a day or two ago, stopping only because my focus has shifted to its successor: “Lightrope.” This is what I want everything to sound like. I want blistering rock riffs packed into gang vocals, flashy snares, and rap ‘n soul production. I like a busy song; “Lightrope” feels new each day, each session. The minutes it spends in my headphones get longer. 1010benja floors me because he’s doing five things well at once. Knowing it’s just him and an engineer making the racket of an entire band… I mean, what the hell, man? After Ten Total lit me up last year, I bet whatever 1010benja is eyeing next will do the same. Album, EP, singles run, nothing at all, whatever. He could play guitar while reading the phonebook and I’d be all in. —Matt Mitchell

Armand Hammer & The Alchemist: “Super Nintendo”

Leave it to Armand Hammer to make nostalgia feel radioactive. “Super Nintendo,” the closing track from their upcoming Mercy, drifts on a woozy Alchemist loop that sounds like it was ripped from a half-broken cartridge—acoustic strums and vintage synths bleeding into static. E L U C I D and billy woods trace the long arc from childhood to decay with the clarity of people who know what innocence costs. “We had fun on that Super Nintendo,” woods chants in the chorus, E L U C I D popping in right after him as they trade lines through a chorus equal parts elegy and inside joke, the memory warped but still glowing. woods’s verse slides from youthful recklessness to watching his mother fade—“Mom’s half-deaf, still sharp but starting to forget / Repeating herself, retracing our steps / Used to be up late pacing, now, she sleep like the dead”—and suddenly the beat feels funereal. It’s a song about the things that once made us feel alive and the slow realization that they’re all ghosts now, made all the more fitting by the retro 16-bit beat pulsing beneath it. —Casey Epstein-Gross

Bob Vylan: “Sick Sad World”

UK punk duo Bob Vylan made headlines after voicing their stance against Israel’s genocide against Palestinians during their Glastonbury set, leading to them having their visas revoked after the important, daring act. Turns out that besides having good politics, the duo also has good taste in TV shows. They paid tribute to MTV classic ’90s TV show Daria with “Sick Sad World,” a swirling, hypnotic track that calls out BBC for making them out to be criminals for calling for justice and points out the oppressive nature of our current political climate: “Take a life or take some innocence, the jury acquits / Nobody’s safe, these sickos even target women and kids / The bad apple leaves a sour taste, the remedy is / To cut the whole tree down, if not now then when?” The irony of the Glastonbury “scandal,” where the festival tried to censor the group, is that now all eyes are on Bob Vylan and it’s working in the duo’s favor—they rule. —Tatiana Tenreyro

Courtney Barnett: “Stay In Your Lane”

It is a great week for anyone who, like me, spent their formative years furiously scribbling “Pedestrian at Best” lyrics in the margins of composition notebooks—because after four long years, Courtney Barnett is back, voice and all. Her new single, “Stay in Your Lane,” is her first vocal release since 2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time, considering her most recent project was the instrumental record End of the Day (2023). Where those projects leaned inward, “Stay in Your Lane” kicks the door down with the same bite and swagger that first made her a generational voice over a decade ago. The track opens on a wiry riff and a rhythm section that sounds ready to combust. “Gotta get this off my chest,” Barnett drawls before landing on the song’s title phrase, part confession and part reprimand. “This never would’ve happened if I stayed in my lane, stayed the same way.” The result is a tightly wound reminder of her knack for turning unease into propulsion, and introspection into something loud enough to shake loose. Whether it’s the start of a new chapter or just a standalone release, it’s a fierce reminder of why Barnett remains one of the most vital voices in modern guitar rock—restless, self-aware, and still finding new ways to hit the nerve. –Casey Epstein-Gross

Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover: “Boars”

It isn’t easy to incorporate the word “rutabaga” into a song, but Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover manage to do it in their new song, “Boars.” The duo of folk musicians prepare to release their second collaborative project (after 2018’s Among Horses EP), What of Our Nature, on November 21, and they’ve long proven to be a compelling team. “Boars” is a good culmination of their artistic synergy, opening with a plucky, finger-picked guitar before quickly becoming an exercise in vocal precision. The lyrics are effectively unceasing, and Heynderickx and Conover sing them in tongue-twisting harmony, evoking images of “chicken wire hacks” and “stag shaped runaways.” The duo places themselves at the center of this labyrinth of nature and lets the song take shape around them. They carry with them the folk tradition of singing to what’s right in front of you, and the pair acknowledge their roles as musicians among all they observe: “I was always hipping through the catgrass living like the only little slugger who can sing.”—Caroline Nieto

Lala Lala: “Does This Go Faster?”

I’ve been following Lillie West’s work under the Lala Lala moniker since 2018, waiting for her to get her due as one of the most refreshing voices in indie. So when I got the news that she’d signed to Sub Pop and has a new single featuring and produced by Melinda Duterte (aka Jay Som), I was thrilled. “Does This Go Faster?” has a discord of sounds made up by soaring synths and saxophone, feeling like you’re being blown by the wind in different directions. “Am I in it? Does this go faster / Is this even on? / Is this what matters?,” West questions in the opening lines, as she grapples with an existential crisis. Given that West wrote it while in transit in Iceland, wondering what would come next, its sonic landscape makes you feel like you’re on that journey with West too, letting the universe do its thing and take you where you need to be instead of forcing yourself to go through the motions. — Tatiana Tenreyro

Sharp Pins: “Queen of Globes and Mirrors”

Me liking the newest Sharp Pins single? More likely than you think! I’ve been beating this drum for a minute now, and every teaser Kai Slater’s been giving us ahead of Balloon Balloon Balloon has been superb. It seems like we’re getting a new Sharp Pins track to feast on weekly now, but “Queen of Globes and Mirrors” might be my favorite one yet. It’s fascinating to me that Slater put out one of the year’s best debuts, Lifeguard’s Ripped & Torn, and is going to follow it up damn near immediately with the best Sharp Pins record to date (and I mean that, considering how good Radio DDR was a year ago). I don’t know, I guess I’m just thrilled that rock music is in such good hands right now, and I’m grateful that somebody like Slater isn’t afraid to inject some head-bobbing pop into all of that. I mean, his material gets compared to that of Cleaners From Venus and Teenage Fanclub every time he releases something. But I think we’re nearing something else: Sharp Pins is becoming its own reference. Also, I love the nod to the Rolling Stones’ Flowers in the single art. Hell yeah. —Matt Mitchell

SML: “Chicago Four”

I was going to shout out Greg Uhlmann’s effected guitar playing on “Chicago Four,” but then I realized I needed to shout out Booker Stardrum’s sweeping drums, too. And then Anna Butterss’ throbbing bassline came into view, as did Josh Johnson’s sludgy horn shots. And then arrived Jeremiah Chiu’s synth passages that play a song of their own. What I’m getting at here is: SML brings new meaning to the idea of a “collective.” Everything they do is in lockstep with each other, even when it sounds like every member is doing something impossibly different. Chicago Four” reveals an almost hypnotic loop of contrasts. It’s as much an industrial synth-pop song as it is a jazz-funk lick. The music is all over the place yet never out of chemistry. I know improvisation is essential to SML, but there’s gotta be a word for whatever exists beyond that. It’s hard to categorize whatever the hell is happening on “Chicago Four” as anything but singular. —Matt Mitchell

Sudan Archives: “A BUG’S LIFE”

Brittney Parks has a new Sudan Archives record out tomorrow, The BPM, and it’s very good. But water is also wet. The singles so far—“DEAD,” “COME AND FIND YOU,” YEA YEA YEA,” “MY TYPE,” and “MS. PAC MAN”—have revealed the clubby bent that Parks’ new ideas are throwing her towards, and “A BUG’S LIFE” is one more appetizer before the whole enchilada hits the table. Honestly I just think this song is such a prize, and I want whatever Parks was on when she wrote it. “Just hit a scam over ninety bands,” she sings. “Did the running man with like twenty grand. Brand new tits, but they grew her ass. Thirty-inch bust down to her ass. Boss bitch, but she want a better half.” The beat is a trance, as is the chopped-up “oh-oh-oh” vocal sample threaded into the drum programming. Saying that Sudan Archives is one of the best living performers is probably too obvious. But you have to know this: “A BUG’S LIFE” leaves me ecstatic. Even if I was strapped to a table while listening to it I wouldn’t be able to sit still. —Matt Mitchell

This Is Lorelei: “Name The Band”

Nate Amos has been on a winning streak. After last year’s breakthrough album as This is Lorelei, Box For Buddy, Box For Star, he and his Water From Your Eyes bandmate Rachel Brown released In A Beautiful Place this summer. Even amidst this chaos, This is Lorelei will be releasing a “new” album of re-recorded songs on December 15 called Holo Boy. The first offering is a lively, electro-rock re-tooling of “Name the Band,” and it’ll surely land for fans of songs like “I’m All F****d Up” or “Bring Back My Dog.” This new version retains the same lyrical sentiments but now pairs them with a more produced, electronic sound found in prior songs like “Dancing in the Club.” Amos often descends into a kind of talk-singing droll that expresses his nonchalance, and “Name the Band” is no different. “You can name the band whatever you want / I actually do not care,” he sings. But as always, his heart is laid bare on the song’s outro, where he repeats, “I don’t wanna mess you up like that” into oblivion. “Name the Band” is a perfect gift for longtime Lorelei supporters and Box For Buddy converts alike. —Caroline Nieto

Other Notable Songs This Week: Alex Cameron: “Short King”; Anna von Hausswolff: “Struggle With the Beast”; Cavetown: “Tarmac”; Danny Brown ft. underscores: “Copycats”; Del Water Gap: “Damn”; dexter in the news agent: “I Told Ya”; Girl Scout: “Same Kids”; Glitterer: “Stainless Steel”; ira glass: “fritz all over you”; Jenny on Holiday: “Dolphins”; Liam Kazar: “Didn’t I”; Pansy: “Walk Dangerous (Chasers)”; Sassy ft. Blood Orange: “Tell Me”; Sunn O))): “Eternity’s Pillars”; Yndling: “Time Time Time (I’m In the Palm of Your Hand)”

Check out a playlist of this week’s best new songs below.