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, February 4, 2025.
Esther Rose – ‘New Bad’
Esther Rose has announced a new album called Want, the follow-up to 2023’s Safe to Run, arriving May 2. It’s led by the single ‘New Bad’, which comes paired with a music video directed by Anna Marie Tendler. It’s a defiant and compelling way to introduce the record. “This song leaps from the speakers. It’s part grunge, part shoegaze,” Rose remarked. “Working with Anna Marie Tendler was the collaboration I’ve always dreamed of. We sparked an easy, natural rapport out of mutual admiration for each other’s artistry. After I read her book Men Have Called Her Crazy, I sent her a note, saying that my unreleased album and her memoir were apparently spiritual twins. Luckily, she agreed.”
Waxahatchee – ‘Mud’
Nobody writes about knotty relationship dynamics like Katie Crutchfield, and the language of new Waxahatchee single echoes her Plains track ‘Hurricane’: “I might beam with empty virtue/But I’m a feather blowing in your storm garbage, weather worn,” she sings, backed by MJ Lenderman, who guests throughout her latest album Tigers Blood. ‘Mud’ may be an outtake from that LP – if only because the line “I can’t stick around” contradicts the sentiment of beloved lead single ‘Right Back To It’ – but Waxahatchee still naturally knocks it out of the park.
Macie Stewart – ‘Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New’
“This piece reminds me of a cross country train ride through different sceneries and landscapes,” Macie Stewart said of ‘Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New’, which leads her forthcoming album When the Distance Is Blue. “It’s the feeling when you’re witnessing everything pass outside your window, knowing you may never set foot there.” It certainly tickles the imagination.
Mei Semones – ‘Dumb Feeling’
Mei Semones has announced her debut album, Animaru, arrives in May. The lead single ‘Dumb Feeling’ is a knotty yet endearing blend of bossa nova and salsa.
Anika – ‘Hearsay’
Anika has announced Abyss, the follow-up to 2021’s Change, with a brooding rocker called ‘Hearsay’. “This song is about media moguls — about the power of the media, whether social, TV or beyond — we are as much under its spell as we ever were and some nasties are exploiting it for their own gains,” the Berlin-based musician explained in a statement. “Parasites feeding off the blood of the public — PJ Harvey inspired for sure.” You can definitely hear that influence.
Squid – ‘Cro-Magnon Man’
‘Cro-Magnon Man’ is the final single from Squid’s upcoming LP Cowards, which lands on Friday. It’s a twitchy, propulsive cut that imagines a timeline where meaningless objects outlive us humans, and it features vocals from guitarist Louis Borlase alongside Clarissa Connelly, Tony Njoku, and Rosa Brook.
Valerie June – ‘Joy, Joy!’
“Everyone has felt moments of darkness, depression, anxiety, stress, ailments, or pain,” Valerie June said in a statement about ‘Joy, Joy!’, the radically jubilant lead single off her upcoming record Owls, Omens, and Oracles (out April 11). “Some say it takes mud to have a lotus flower. This song reflects on the hard times we might face: to fail, to fall, to lose, to be held down, to be silenced, to be shut out yet still hold onto a purely innocent and childlike joy. I come from a heritage of ancestors who lived this truth by inventing blues music. Generations after they’ve gone, the inner joy they instilled in us radiates and lifts cultures throughout the world. From the world to home, what would a city council focused on inspiring inner joy for all of a town’s citizens look like? As the times are changing across the planet, what would it look like to collectively activate our superpowers of joy?”
girlpuppy – ‘I Just Do!’
girlpuppy, the project of Atlanta’s Becca Harvey, has a new album on the way: Sweetness is out March 28 through Captured Tracks, and it’s led by the charmingly earnest ‘I Just Do!’. “I wrote this song after spending 6 days in Los Angeles with a guy I had an all consuming crush on,” Harvey explained. “It’s just about that feeling of knowing you’re wasting your time by developing feelings for someone who is completely emotionally unavailable, but you do it anyway because it feels good. I wrote this entire song and then recorded a voice note of me singing it acapella in my bathtub (where I get lots of inspiration for songs). I brought it to Alex [Farrar] and he built the instruments around the melody I wrote and it turned out so much fun. This is definitely gonna be my favorite song to play on tour.”
Patrick Wolf – ‘Dies Irae’
Patrick Wolf has announced his first new LP in 13 years, Crying the Neck, which arrives on April 25. Lead single ‘Dies Irae’, which bases part of its string arrangement on the Medieval Gregorian chant ‘Dies Irae’ from the Latin mass, is stirring and dynamic. “I finished the lyrics as an imaginary last conversation with my mother in her art studio and out to the garden as the evening falls,” explained Wolfe, who wrote much of the record while mourning the passing of his mother from angiosarcoma cancer in 2018. “My sister Jo Apps came in the last days of mixing to sing the backing vocals, and in a way, it meant that we could both share a last dance in the kitchen with our ma together.”
Alex Orange Drink – ‘Queen Victoria’ [feat. Conor Oberst]
Alex Orange Drink, who guested on Bright Eyes’ most recent LP Five Dice, All Threes, has now enlisted Conor Oberst on ‘Queen Victoria’, the lead single off the So So Glos’ frontman’s new album Victory Lap (#23) (out May 9). “‘Queen Victoria’ is about the symbolic death of the pre-smartphone world,” Alex Zarou Levine explained. “Trying to get through to someone who’s got their ‘cell’ out. It’s about walking a dangerous path toward self destruction. My grandmother who died by suicide in 1970 appears on the single artwork, and Conor Oberst is featured on the song.”
JJULIUS – ‘Dödsdisco’
Julius Pierstorff, the musician who records as JJULIUS, has a new song out called ‘Dödsdisco’. Twinkly and smooth, the track is taken from the upcoming album Vol. 3, which features drums by Viagra Boys’ Tor Sjödén, though you’d never have guessed from the sound of this one.
Child Star – ‘Adore’
It’s not been long since Olivia Osby, one half of the duo Lowertown, put out her latest solo effort, and she’s already launched a new project named Child Star with fellow New York musician Sean Henry. ‘Adore’, though hauntingly lo-fi, is quite different from much of Osby’s output so far.
David Grubbs – ‘Queen’s Side Eye’
David Grubbs has released an expansive guitar-based instrumental titled ‘Queen’s Side Eye’. It’s the latest offering from his upcoming album Whistle From Above, which will get released on February 28 through Drag City.
Sleeper’s Bell – ‘Bad Word’
Chicago folk duo have released ‘Bad Word’, the latest single from their forthcoming debut LP Clover. It’s as achingly delicate the feeling it coasts on: “We got right back together/ Now we treat her name like a bad word/ Feeling light as a feather/ Til I think about her,” Blaine Teppema sings. In a statement, she said, “I wrote this song playing ‘Real or Not Real’ with my friend. We would sing a song and the other person had to guess if it was ‘real’ or ‘not real.’ The melody just came to me during the game and I wrote the words later.”
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