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Jan 17, 2025 By Mark Redfern (with Andy Von Pip)

Welcome to the second Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 10.

This week we posted an obituary for the legendary filmmaker David Lynch, whose death was announced yesterday.

Over the holiday break we posted our Top 100 Albums of 2024 list. We also put together a 10-hour Spotify playlist featuring at least one song from every album on the Top 100, as well as some honorable mentions.

Issue 73 is still out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.

In recent weeks we posted interviews with Sparks, English Teacher, Hinds, Nada Surf, Stereo MC’s, Semisonic, and more.

In the last week we reviewed some albums.

To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 10 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.

1. Bartees Strange: “Wants Needs”

Bartees Strange is releasing a new album, Horror, on February 14 via 4AD. This week he shared its fourth single, “Wants Needs.”

Strange had this to say about the song in a press release: “I realized a couple years ago that if music is really going to work out long-term, I want/need more fans. Of course—it’s a timing and numbers game—but race is a powerful component too. I don’t see a lot of people like me in the indie space making long term livings on their records. I worry people may have a hard time connecting to me because I don’t look/sound like them. That I’m fun to root for, but not actually supported. This song is about how much that worries me—fully understanding that a lot of these neurosis are of my own making.”

Strange first worked on Horror with Yves Rothman and Lawrence Rothman, before finishing it with Jack Antonoff after he worked with Antonoff’s band Bleachers.

A press release says the album is about “facing your fears and becoming feared.”

The press release adds: “Strange was raised on fear. His family told scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared.”

Strange further elaborates: “In a way I think I made this record to reach out to people who may feel afraid of things in their lives too. For me it’s love, locations, cosmic bad luck, or that feeling of doom that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I think that it’s easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feels the same. This album is just me trying to connect. I’m trying to shrink the size of the world. I’m trying to feel close—so I’m less afraid.”

Horror includes “Lie 95,” a new song that Strange released in July. When the album was announced he shared its second single, “Sober,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then he shared its third single, “Too Much,” via a music video. “Too Much” was again one of our Songs of the Week.

In November, Strange released the new holiday-themed standalone single “Xmas” that isn’t featured on Horror but did just make our Songs of the Week list.

Horror is Strange’s third album and the follow-up to 2022’s Farm to Table and 2020’s Live Forever.

Strange first garnered attention for covering a string of The National tracks, including on Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, his EP of National covers released in 2020 on Brassland, a label run by members of the band. He was born in Ipswich, England, but grew up in Mustang, a largely the white and conservative rural town outside Oklahoma City, before launching his music career in Washington, D.C. In between he also worked in the Obama administration.

Read our interview with Strange on Live Forever. By Mark Redfern

2. Miki Berenyi Trio: “8th Deadly Sin”

This week, Miki Berenyi Trio—led by the former singer/guitarist with 1990s shoegaze, dream pop, and Britpop band Lush—announced their debut album, Tripla, and shared a new song from it, “8th Deadly Sin,” via a music video. Tripla is due out April 4 via Bella Union.

Tripla includes the band’s debut single, “Vertigo,” which was released in May 2024 and was #1 on our Songs of the Week list that week.

After Lush, Berenyi was also in the band Piroshka and for the trio she is backed by two members of that band—Berenyi’s life partner KJ “Moose” McKillop (of ’90s shoegazers Moose) and guitarist Oliver Cherer. Miki Berenyi Trio (or MB3 for short) is a full on collaboration between the three members and not just a Berenyi solo project. Tripla is the Hungarian word for “triple,” named in a nod to Berenyi’s Hungarian father.

Bella Union is the label founded by Simon Raymonde, formerly of Cocteau Twins, a band previously associated with Lush. Bella Union also released the two Piroshka albums.

“8th Deadly Sin” addresses the climate crisis and “the absolute disrespect for Mother Earth,” as McKillop puts it in a press release.

Berenyi had this to add about the single: “Simon Raymonde instantly picked this out as a single and it immediately went down a storm when we played it live. I can’t pretend that I am in a position to lecture others over their green credentials but there’s a broader philosophy in the song that I can relate to—humanity hurtling toward its own destruction, which (to me) applies as much to wars and social intolerance as it does environmental issues.”

Sébastien Faits-Divers directed “8th Deadly Sin” video, which combines live footage filmed in Dijon, France with artwork by Chris Bigg.

Bigg, who did the artwork for Piroshka and contributed to all of Lush’s album artwork, also did the artwork for Tripla. The artwork incorporates photography by Martin Andersen.

Paul Gregory (of Bella Union labelmates Lanterns on the Lake) mixed the album. The album was recorded at home and the trio have also taken a DIY approach to touring. “There is something very ‘grass roots’ about what we’re doing,” says Berenyi. “There’s no point following the ‘announce the album, then tour, then record the next album’ route—we just want to wring as much enjoyment out of this as we can, and hope that it resonates somewhere!”

In 2022, Berenyi released her acclaimed memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, and the trio was partially born out of the need to perform at book events.

Berenyi did a joint interview with Australian dream pop artist Hatchie in The ’90s Issue of our print magazine, where she discussed her memoir and Lush. Buy a copy directly from us here.

Pirohska, which also features former Elastica drummer Justin Welch, released their second studio album, Love Drips and Gathers, in 2021 via Bella Union. Read our interview with them about it here.

Pirsoshka also contributed to our Covers of Covers album in honor of our 20th Anniversary, where they covered Grandaddy’s “The Crystal Lake.” Berenyi was also one of the artists on the cover of our 20th Anniversary Issue.

Read our 2015 interview with Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson of Lush on Lovelife and the final days of the band.

Read our 2015 interview with Lush on Split.

Read our 2016 interview with Lush on their reunion.

Read our 2024 interview with Berenyi on her memoir. By Mark Redfern

3. The Weather Station: “Mirror”

The Weather Station (the project of Toronto-based singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman) released a new album, Humanhood, today via Fat Possum. Earlier this week she shared its fourth and final single, “Mirror.” Philippe Léonard directed the song’s video.

In “Mirror” Lindeman sings: “You were dousing your fields in a chemical rain, you were cutting my arm to transcend your own pain / Oh but god is a mirror - everything is.”

“The confrontation is gentle, because I’ve been there too,” Lindeman explains in a press release. “But life and nature is a giant biofeedback machine. What you put out there responds. And you respond; you can’t help it. That’s what is always happening. That’s one of the many things I meant when I said ‘god is a Mirror.’”

Lindeman adds: “I wanted the song to warp and disintegrate; to come in and out of being like the imaginary scaffold that holds up a fantasy or cognitive dissonance. In the end, the band grows garbled and comes apart, giving way to a suspension of synth and string textures. I wanted it to feel like being bathed in light; maybe the light I was talking about in the song.”

Previously The Weather Station shared the album’s first single, “Neon Signs.” Lindeman co-directed the “Neon Signs” video with Jared Raab and the single made our Songs of the Week list. Then she shared its second single, “Window,” and announced some new tour dates. Lindeman co-directed the song’s video with Philippe Léonard and “Window” was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then The Weather Station shared the album’s third single, “Body Moves.” While we weren’t doing Songs of the Week posts in mid-December, when “Body Moves” was released, we included it as a bonus cut in our first Songs of the Week of 2025

Humanhood follows 2021’s Ignorance and 2022’s companion album, How Is It That I Should Look At the Stars.

Lindeman co-produced Humanhood with Marcus Paquin, recording it in the fall of 2023 at Canterbury Music Company. The main backing band on the album is drummer Kieran Adams, keyboardist Ben Boye, percussionist Philippe Melanson, reed-and-wind specialist Karen Ng, and bassist Ben Whiteley. The album also features Sam Amidon, James Elkington, and Joseph Shabason. Joseph Lorge mixed the album.

Read our 2021 interview with The Weather Station. By Mark Redfern

4. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory: “Trouble”

Sharon Van Etten is releasing a new album written and recorded with her backing band, The Attachment Theory, simply titled Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, on February 7, 2025 via Jagjaguwar. This week they shared its third single, “Trouble.” They also shared a video of the band performing the song live at the Church Studios in London. Check out both the studio and live versions of the song below.

In a press release, Van Etten had this to say about the song: “‘Trouble’ is about the idea of having to coexist with people you love who have opposing views, and not being able to share deep parts of yourself and your narrative based on someone else’s beliefs. It’s about when there’s that big part of you that someone who loves you can’t know because it’s not something they want to hear or are willing to learn about or understand, and those painful realizations when you choose to love and respect someone else’s needs over your own to salvage a relationship.”

Previously Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory shared the album’s first single, “Afterlife,” via a music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared its second single, “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like),” via a music video. It was also one of our Songs of the Week.

The Attachment Theory is Jorge Balbi (drums, machines), Devra Hoff (bass, vocals), and Teeny Lieberson (synth, piano, guitar, vocals). While they have previously backed Van Etten on some of her solo work, this was the first time that the singer/songwriter/guitarist wrote and recorded an album in full collaboration with the band.

“For the first time in my life I asked the band if we could just jam. Words that have never come out of my mouth—ever! But I loved all the sounds we were getting. I was curious—what would happen?” says Van Etten in a press release. “In an hour we wrote two songs that ended up becoming ‘I Can’t Imagine’ and ‘Southern Life.’”

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory was recorded at The Church, Eurythmics’ former studio in London, and was produced by Marta Salogni (Björk, Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Mica Levi).

“Sometimes it’s exciting, sometimes it’s scary, sometimes you feel stuck,” Van Etten says of fully collaborating with her band on the album. “It’s like every day feels a little different—just being at peace with whatever you’re feeling and whoever you are and how you relate to people in that moment. If I can just keep a sense of openness while knowing that my feelings change every day, that is all I can do right now. That and try to be the best person I can be while letting other people be who they are and not taking it personally and just being. I’m not there, but I’m trying to be there every day.”

Van Etten was on the cover of our My Favorite Movie issue.

Van Etten’s most recent album was We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, which was released in May 2022 and landed on our Top 100 Albums of 2022 list. A deluxe edition of the album was released in November 2022.

Read our review of We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong here.

Read our in-depth interview with Sharon Van Etten on 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow and check out our exclusive photo shoot with her. By Mark Redfern

5. Lucy Dacus: “Ankles”

Lucy Dacus has announced a new album, Forever Is a Feeling, and shared two new songs from it, “Ankles” (via a music video shot in Paris) and “Limerence.” She also announced some tour dates. Forever Is a Feeling is due out March 28 via Geffen.

On Wednesday night she was the musical guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she performed “Ankles” with a string section and was clad in the same dress she wore in the “Ankles” video. Watch the performance here.

Forever Is a Feeling is the follow-up to her 2021 album, Home Video, released by Matador. In 2023 she also released the record as part of boygenius, the supergroup featuring Dacus alongside Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers.

Bridgers, Baker, Blake Mills, Bartees Strange, Hozier, Madison Cunningham, Collin Pastore, Jake Finch, and Melina Duterte all contributed to the new album.

Dacus wrote most of the songs on the album between fall 2022 and summer 2024. “I got kicked in the head with emotions,” she says in a press release. “Falling in love, falling out of love…. You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.”

Of the album’s title, Dacus adds: “You can’t actually capture forever. But I think we feel forever in moments. I don’t know how much time I’ve spent in forever, but I know I’ve visited.”

The video for “Ankles” was filmed in Paris and features actress Havana Rose Liu alongside Dacus, who plays someone that has escaped from a famous painting. The album’s cover artwork is a different painting of Dacus by visual artist Will St. John.

For the new tour, Dacus has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes “to providing critical relief and long-term recovery support for individuals, families, and communities impacted by the devastating LA wildfires via the PLUS1 LA Fires Fund.”

Listen to our in-depth Under the Radar Podcast interview with Dacus on Home Video here.

Read our 2021 Protest Issue interview with Dacus.

Read our interview with Dacus and boygenius.

Read our 2018 interview with Dacus on Historian.

Read our 2016 Artist Survey interview with Lucy Dacus. By Mark Redfern

6. Florist: “Have Heaven”

This week, New York-based quartet Florist announced a new album, Jellywish, and released its lead single, “Have Heaven,” with an accompanying music video. Jellywish is due out April 4 via Double Double Whammy.

Jellywish follows the band’s self-titled album from 2022 and 2019’s Emily Alone, which was essentially a solo album from singer/guitarist/principle songwriter Emily Sprague. Florist is Sprague, Jonnie Baker, Rick Spataro, and Felix Walworth.

In a press release Sprague says the album is purposely complicated. “It’s a gentle delivery of something that is really chaotic, confusing, and multifaceted,” she explains. “It has this Technicolor that’s inspired by our world and also fantasy elements that we can use to escape our world.”

Or as the press release puts it: “On Jellywish, Florist explores life’s big questions without offering silver linings, morals, or definitive answers. Instead, the band asks perhaps the most difficult of questions: Is it possible to break free from our ingrained thought cycles and pedestrian way of life? That, Florist posits, may be the only way to be truly happy, fulfilled, and free.”

Of the new single, Sprague says: “We enter an observational fever dream about floating through liminal space between lifetimes, individual perceptions. There is reflection on our connectedness in joy and suffering through the wish for a peaceful place for our spirits to live and land. ‘Have Heaven’ establishes the world of the album to be not quite always lucid, but rather a perspective that is blended into the worlds of the magic and death realms swirling around us. The chorus is a chant that pleads for a better symbiosis between these worlds, and between our earthly forms trying to survive alongside each other, bound to the systems we must exist within.”

Animator Kohana Wilson made the song’s video. By Mark Redfern

7. Perfume Genius: “It’s a Mirror”

This week, Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) also announced a new album, Glory, and released its first single, “It’s a Mirror.” He also announced some tour dates. Glory is due out March 28 via Matador.

Hadreas had this to say about “It’s a Mirror” in a press release: “I wake up overwhelmed even when nothing is going on. I spend the rest of the day trying to regulate, which I prefer to do at home alone with my thoughts. But why? They are mostly bad. They also haven’t really changed for decades. I wrote ‘It’s a Mirror’ while stuck in one of these isolating loops, seeing that something different and maybe even beautiful is out there but not quite knowing how to venture out. I have a lot more practice keeping the door closed.”

Glory once again finds Hadreas teaming up with long-time producer Blake Mills and keyboardist/co-writer/life partner Alan Wyffels. The album also features other previous collaborators, including guitarists Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) and Greg Uhlmann, drummers Tim Carr and Jim Keltner, and bassist Pat Kelly. New Zealand singer/songwriter Aldous Harding also guests on one song.

On Glory, Hadreas says that he was more open to input from his band and collaborators. “I’m more engaged with the band and the audience,” he says. “I’m still on some wild tear, but there’s more access and it’s more collaborative, in a way that makes it better, but also scary—because it feels more vulnerable.”

Glory follows 2022’s Ugly Season and 2020’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately.

Read our interview with Perfume Genius on Set My Heart On Fire Immediately. By Mark Redfern

8. Samia: “Bovine Excision”

Samia announced a new album this week too. Bloodless is due out April 25 via Grand Jury Music and this week she released a video for its first single, “Bovine Excision.”

“I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction—this clinical pursuit of emptiness,” says Samia of the song in a press release. By Mark Redfern

9. The Pill: “Money Mullet”

Isle of Wight-based duo The Pill were back today with their fourth single, “Money Mullet,” a sharp and raucous takedown of the divisive haircut that refuses to fade into obscurity. With its scuzzy, high-octane guitars and biting humor, the track embodies the chaotic energy that has become the band’s hallmark.

Blending raw power with unapologetic wit, “Money Mullet” joins their growing collection of raucous singles where The Pill dismantle societal conventions and gender norms with relentless, tongue-in-cheek ferocity.

“Please be sure to show your hairdresser (your girlfriend) this song before embarking on another mullet,” says Lily Hutchings, guitarist and vocalist for the duo. “Our fourth single, ‘Money Mullet,’ is a hate song. Sorry, we just really don’t like them.”

Read our recent interview with The Pill. By Andy Von Pip

10. Horsegirl: “Switch Over”

New York-via-Chicago-based rock trio Horsegirl are releasing a new album, Phonetics On and On, on February 14, 2025 via Matador. This week they shared its third single, “Switch Over.” Guy Kozak directed the song’s video, which features the band watching itself perform in the same room.

Horsegirl previously shared the album’s first single, “2468,” via a music video. “2468” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then shared its second single, “Julie,” and announced some new EU and UK tour dates. While we weren’t doing Songs of the Week posts in mid-December, when “Julie” was released, we included it as a bonus cut in our first Songs of the Week of 2025.

Phonetics On and On is the band’s sophomore album and the follow-up to 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance. Horsegirl is Penelope Lowenstein (guitar, vocals), Nora Cheng (guitar, vocals), and Gigi Reece (drums). In the fall of 2022 the band relocated to NYC for Lowenstein and Reece to attend NYU. In January 2024 the trio returned to Chicago to record the album at The Loft, with Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon producing.

Read our review of Versions of Modern Performance here. By Mark Redfern

Honorable Mentions:

These songs almost made the Top 10.

bdrmm: “Infinity Peaking”

The Convenience: “I Got Exactly What I Wanted”

Frog Eyes: “I See the Same Things”

The Horrors: “More Than Life”

Hotgirl: “On the Brink”

HotWax: “One More Reason”

jasmine.4.t: “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” (Feat. Phoebe Bridgers)

My Morning Jacket: “Time Wasted”

Ela Minus: “QQQQ”

Oracle Sisters: “Blue Left Hand”

Pit Pony: “Vacancy”

Porridge Radio: “Don’t Want to Dance”

Rialto: “No One Leaves This Discotheque Alive”

Swervedriver: “Volume Control”

Vundabar: “Spades”

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts: “Big Change”

Yukimi: “Winter Is Not Dead”

Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 10 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:

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