{"id":1960517,"date":"2025-08-14T18:10:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1960517"},"modified":"2025-08-14T18:10:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:10:01","slug":"best-new-songs-of-the-week-august-14-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/best-new-songs-of-the-week-august-14-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Best New Songs of the Week (August 14, 2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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At <\/i>Paste Music, we\u2019re 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\u2019 best new songs, delivering a weekly playlist of our favorites. Check out this week\u2019s material, in alphabetical order. (You can check out an ongoing playlist of every best new songs pick of 2025 here<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n

Not even a year after Keeper of the Shepherd<\/a><\/em> made our best albums of the year list, the second single from Hannah Frances\u2019 forthcoming LP, Nested in Tangles<\/em>, is one of the most intricately disorienting songs of the year. Seriously, the things I would do to get a look at the sheet music for this one. Frances goes full avant-jazz, with gentle fingerpicking and atonal woodwinds giving way to blown-out guitars and shrieking saxophones before unraveling into a stirring, dissonant storm. Her vocals are doubled, one slightly lagging behind the other, making it sound like she\u2019s chasing herself around the song. Frances dives deep into the grit of generational trauma, examining the inheritance that\u2019s traveled through her family tree with equal parts rage and defiance. It\u2019s an overwhelming listen, slowly overtaking you before burning out in the final seconds, leaving only a crinkly fuzz that burrows into your eardrum before petering out. \u2014Cassidy Sollazzo<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"It\u2019s hard to believe it\u2019s been six years since the release of Anak Ko<\/em>. Melina Duterte put her solo project on hiatus after the pandemic, feeling like it was the perfect time for a reset. During those years, she doubled down on production, lending her talents to friends like Lucy Dacus, Troye Sivan, Chris Farren, and Palehound. Now, she\u2019s back with another single ahead of her upcoming Jay Som record, Belong<\/em>. \u201cCards On the Table\u201d is a tender electro-pop track featuring textured synths, piano, and dreamy vocals. The evolving soundscape feels effortless and vibrant, as Duterte braces herself for another let down in the lyrics: \u201cLift you up and take me down \/ Rose-tinted glasses, 60 miles \/ Windows down, I take your hand. Not everyone is meant to stick around, but at least we learn something when they leave. That\u2019s the ethos of \u201cCards On the Table,\u201d a philosophy that Duterte says makes this her favorite song off of Belong<\/em>. We concur. \u2014Camryn Teder<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Coming from someone who lived through it, \u201cWE WERE JUST HERE\u201d sounds plucked from the early-2010s, M83-summoning, alt-indie heyday. It gives me the same kind of anthemic rush as something off Oracular Spectacular<\/em> or Gossamer<\/em>. The title track from Just Mustard\u2019s third album bends optimism into a fuzzy pulse. Electric guitars are manipulated and warped to the point where they mimic synth tones, while resonant basslines add deep, ringing, and wrapping atmospherics. Katie Ball\u2019s gentle falsettos soar through the melody in a way that\u2019s oddly comforting, like I\u2019ve heard it before, even if only briefly or subconsciusly. The lyrics are at once pointed and broad, sweeping statements like \u201cEverything happens, all the time\u201d landing with unexpected weight against the track\u2019s driving, self-perpetuating momentum. Get this song on a coming-of-age movie soundtrack, stat. \u2014Cassidy Sollazzo<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Two days ago, I told Mikaela Straus that \u201cGirls\u201d is the greatest King Princess song yet\u2014and I meant it. At 26 years old, Straus is at her best yet just barely getting started. As she\u2019s been rolling out the red carpet for Girl Violence<\/em>, her wonderful third album and anticipated follow-up to the underloved Hold On Baby<\/em>, every single has been a winner (see: \u201cRIP KP\u201d<\/a> and \u201cCry Cry Cry\u201d<\/a>). But \u201cGirls\u201d is the one, the endgame for an album built on a \u201cdeeply emotional, spiritual, and spooky\u201d curiosity about women. True to the carnal imagery that haunts it, \u201cGirls\u201d is a mirage of throat-shredding soul and twinkling vocal-pop. \u201cTo let you back in,\u201d Straus sings, sauntering into the album\u2019s gist, \u201cthat would be violence. That would be chaos and that would be fighting.\u201d A promenade of pleasure awaits; \u201cBut girls bring me to my knees\u201d is a heart-pounding chorus enraptured by Straus\u2019 one-of-one rock-star posture and a swell of guitars that could fill an entire city. \u2014Matt Mitchell<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"In 2021, I saw Lucy Dacus at Brooklyn Steel, where she played a song about the beginning of a romantic spark with a friend during a New Year\u2019s Eve trip to New York City. It was one of the most vividly written songs by Dacus I\u2019d heard and stuck with me all these years, waiting for it to come out. I\u2019m so happy it wasn\u2019t kept in the vaults. While Dacus\u2019 latest LP, Forever Is a Feeling<\/a><\/em> (which was her first major label release), was the first of hers that didn\u2019t click for me, \u201cBus Back To Richmond\u201d is what I needed from the boygenius member. With pared-down acoustic instrumentations and twinkling piano, it lets Dacus\u2019 stunning voice shine, as she narrates the fateful night with such color that you feel like you\u2019re there with her. \u2014Tatiana Tenreyro<\/em><\/p>\n

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Marissa Nadler: \u201cLight Years\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"\"\"Light years aren\u2019t just a measure of distance; they\u2019re a strange liminal space, intangible, between what once burned and what remains now, cold and dim. In Marissa Nadler\u2019s \u201cLight Years,\u201d that cosmic gap is the metaphor and the mood, a slow drift through the afterglow of a love gone unreachable. Her voice, doubled into a kind of phantom chorus, moves like a satellite signal fading in and out, tracing the outlines of what\u2019s been lost. Fingerpicked acoustics and autoharp keep the tether steady while synth drones widen the frame into a starfield\u2014expansive, lonesome, impossible to cross. \u201cYou used to see light years inside her,\u201d she sings, the past tense doing most of the damage. \u201cYou used to be right there beside her.\u201d Each repetition pulls the image further away, until it\u2019s not a memory you can return to, but a glimmer receding into the deep, unbridgeable dark. An echo of an echo of an echo, beautiful and haunting and just beyond your grasp. \u2014Casey Epstein-Gross<\/em><\/p>\n

Neko Case: \u201cWinchester Mansion of Sound\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"\"\"In the myth of the Winchester Mystery House, construction could never stop\u2014because if it did, the widow inside would die. \u201cWinchester Mansion of Sound\u201d takes that superstition and makes it personal: here, music is the house, and stopping would mean losing the life and memory inside it. Neko Case builds her gorgeous elegy to her late friend Dexter Romweber (of the Flat Duo Jets) like an endless, looping architecture: bright, prismatic piano notes and spare chords opening into new rooms, each one holding a fragment of him. Her voice moves deliberately through them, sometimes steady, sometimes catching on the air, always finding another hallway. When, nearly four minutes in, she pivots into the sing-song \u201cDown down, baby, down by the roller coaster,\u201d it\u2019s not a break but an extension; the house adding another wing overnight, ensuring the sound doesn\u2019t stop so the loss doesn\u2019t turn final. If you keep playing, the music says, you keep the person alive. As Case sings: \u201cOnly music is forever.\u201d We might be mortal, but our songs are not\u2014and perhaps, in the throes of grief, that realization can make all the difference. \u2014Casey Epstein-Gross<\/em><\/p>\n

shame: \u201cSpartak\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"\"\"In a year of so many exciting upcoming albums, shame has emerged as the dark horse of 2025 with Cutthroat<\/em>, one of the best new post-punk LPs to come out of Britain. Having listened to the record many times for the past couple of months ahead of its release, \u201cSpartak\u201d is among my favorites. Continuing the Americana-inspired sound from previous single \u201cQuiet Life,\u201d<\/a> \u201cSpartak\u201d feels like Britpop filtered through an alt-country lens, with an infectious chorus. Frontman Charlie Steen\u2019s snarl is more pointed than ever, as he voices his disdain towards those who follow herd mentality and prioritize social climbing while looking down on those with individuality. \u201cWell, you tut your lips at vagrants\u2019 tricks \/ But you know you do the same as them,\u201d he sings, before giving a warning: \u201cI\u2019ll raise a glass and I\u2019ll raise it fast \/ To know that when your faults are on your chest \/ That\u2019s when you\u2019ll know \/ Your real friends.\u201d \u2014Tatiana Tenreyro<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorry: \u201cEchoes\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"\"\"On the heels of singles \u201cJetplane\u201d and \u201cWaxwing,\u201d off-kilter rock group Sorry just announced COSPLAY<\/em> and shared another teaser, \u201cEchoes.\u201d The song sashays between a hazy collage of fuzzed-out vocals and rippling guitars before unveiling a nasty fusion of searing riffs and driving drums. These juxtapositions blend seamlessly under Asha Lorenz\u2019s vocals, her lyrics reaching heights both love-struck and pleading. \u201cI ain\u2019t got no words, I think you\u2019ve shut me up. Try and light a spark for the naked angel in my heart,\u201d she sings. \u201cHoney, what did you say? I said, \u2018I love you.\u2019\u201d Inspired by a poem of a boy shouting \u201cecho\u201d into a tunnel, \u201cEchoes\u201d evolved into a tale of getting lost in the euphoria of love, a place where victims drift endlessly in a chamber of sweet nothings and ferocious emotion. \u2014Camryn Teder<\/em><\/p>\n

The Belair Lip Bombs: \u201cHey You\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"\"\"Third Man Records has been on an absolute tear. New titles from Hotline TNT<\/a> and Natalie Bergman<\/a> have contoured the summer, and a forthcoming Snooper LP is lingering. But don\u2019t sleep on the Belair Lip Bombs, a Melbourne quartet (named after a type of \u201880s skateboard wheel) making superb pop-rock. With their sophomore album, Again<\/em>, set to detonate on Halloween, teaser track \u201cHey You\u201d is immediately one of my favorite efforts of 2025 so far. It\u2019s infectious and anthemic, flirting with sketches of synth-punk beneath a bedrock of chugging Springsteen guitars and bursting harmonies. Think: The War on Drugs singing Crushing<\/em>-era Julia Jacklin songs. Vocalist (and Clamm alum) Maisie Everett sounds confident (\u201cI could feel that there was something in the air \/ Motherfucker, just say what you mean!\u201d) while Mike Bradvica\u2019s strobing guitars wrap around her colossal synths. Some things are just destined for perfection; the Belair Lip Bombs\u2019 latest comes with a gold medal pinned to it. \u2014Matt Mitchell<\/em><\/p>\n

Other Notable Songs This Week:<\/strong> Beverly Glenn-Copeland: \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d; Coach Party: \u201cDo It For Love\u201d; David Byrne: \u201cThe Avant Garde\u201d; Eliza Mclamb: \u201cEvery Year\u201d; Guerilla Toss: \u201cCEO of Personal & Pleasure\u201d; Jonny Fritz: \u201cDebbie Downers\u201d; Kara-Lis Coverdale: \u201cTurning Multitudes\u201d; Militarie Gun: \u201cB A D I D E A\u201d; Robin Kester: \u201cPerspective\u201d; skullcrusher \u201cMarch\u201d; Sudan Archives: \u201cMS. PAC-MAN\u201d; villagerrr ft. feeble little horse: \u201cRide or Die\u201d; Winter ft. Tanukichan: \u201cHide-A-Lullaby\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out a playlist of this week\u2019s best new songs below. <\/strong><\/p>\n