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May 16, 2025 By Mark Redfern (with Andy Von Pip)

Welcome to the 16th Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humphries helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 25 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 12.

Issue 74, The Protest Issue, is out now. It features Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Strange on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.

In recent weeks we posted interviews with Supergrass (in honor of the 30th anniversary of their debut album), Windser, Lael Neale, Samia, Sunflower Bean, Beirut (a digital cover story), Miki Berenyi Trio, Florist, SPELLLING, Craig Finn, Djo (a digital cover story), and more.

In the last week we reviewed some albums.

Under the Radar subscriptions are currently 50% off, as are back issues. Check out the sale here.

To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 12 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.

1. Wolf Alice: “Bloom Baby Bloom”

Yesterday, British four-piece Wolf Alice announced a new album, The Clearing, and shared its first single, “Bloom Baby Bloom,” via a music video. The Clearing is due out August 29 via RCA.

Today the band also announced an extensive tour of North America, the UK, and the EU.

The Clearing is the band’s fourth album and follows Blue Weekend, which was #2 on our Top 100 Albums of 2021 list. The band wrote the album in Seven Sisters, North London, England and recorded it last year in Los Angeles with Grammy winning producer Greg Kurstin.

Wolf Alice’s singer Ellie Rowsell had this to say about “Bloom Baby Bloom” in a press release: “I wanted a rock song, to focus on the performance element of a rock song and sing like Axl Rose, but to be singing a song about being a woman. I’ve used the guitar as a shield in the past, playing it has perhaps been some way to reject the ‘girl singer in band’ trope, but I wanted to focus on my voice as a rock instrument so it’s been freeing to put the guitar down and reach a point where I don’t feel like I need to prove that I’m a musician.”

Colin Solal Cardo (Charli XCX, Robyn, Christine & The Queens, Phoenix) directed the song’s video, which a press release says “deconstructs a classic rock performance by drawing on Bob Fosse and All That Jazz.” Emmy Award-winning choreographer Ryan Heffington (Euphoria, Sia, Kenzo + Margaret Qualley) choreographed the video.

The press release says The Clearing was influenced by ’70s classic rock and is akin to Fleetwood Mac making an album in North London in 2025.

Read our interview with Wolf Alice on Blue Weekend. By Mark Redfern

2. Nation of Language: “Inept Apollo”

Synth-pop trio Nation of Language have signed to Sub Pop and in honor of this exciting news this week they released a new single, “Inept Apollo,” and announced some tour dates in North America, the EU, and the UK.

The Brooklyn-based band features Ian Richard Devaney (lead vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synthesizer), and Alex MacKay (bass guitar).

“Work is a respite from pain. Whether it’s a paying job or just the thing you pour yourself into, having a direction to move in, finding a flow state, it can move focus away from the heaviness of the heart. So after life’s losses, in moments of despair, we resolve time and time again to dive headfirst into the work as best we can. But the artistic process also tends to be when imposter syndrome rears its ugly head—when I find my inner monologue spiraling: ‘this is the best coping mechanism I have at my disposal and I’m not even qualified to be doing it.’

“Accompanying the song is a killer music video by our friend and brother John MacKay: it is an homage to creative pursuits, and in some ways came to represent the feeling of living in a city as an artist. The video feels like walking through an old warehouse in Brooklyn, full of practice spaces and studios, each room occupied by artists striving to express and understand themselves and their place in the world. No matter how bizarre the act may seem or how much self-doubt or pain runs through the mind of the creator, the beautiful thing is the striving and continuing on, rather than the final product or any notion of ‘success.’ The power of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.”

Nation of Language released a new album, Strange Disciple, in 2023 via [PIAS]. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2023. Strange Disciple was the band’s third album and the follow-up to 2021’s A Way Forward and 2020’s Introduction, Presence.

Read our interview with Nation of Language on A Way Forward.

Nation of Language also took part in our 20th anniversary Covers of Covers album, where they covered Broken Social Scene’s “Stars and Sons.” By Mark Redfern

3. Coach Party: “Girls!”

Coach Party are back. This week the Isle of Wight four-piece announced details of their second album Caramel, set for release on September 26 via Chess Club Records. The new LP follows their acclaimed 2023 debut KILLJOY and sees the band take the reins on production for a raw, high-voltage snapshot of modern emotional life.

Across its 10 tracks, Caramel tackles the loneliness, rage and catharsis of existing in a hyper-online, burnout-heavy world, while celebrating the people who pull us back from the brink. The band describe it as a record rooted in real connection, honest, frustrated, but ultimately life-affirming.

To mark the album announcement, Coach Party released new single “Girls!,” a fiery call-to-arms with frontwoman Jess Eastwood rallying listeners with the line “where the fuck are my girls?,” the track leans into community and collective release, built around a call-and-response chorus designed to shake the room.

“It’s a mosh-inciting, live hype song,” Eastwood says. “Along the lines of: for the next three minutes, whoever you are, you’re all my girls and you’re all gonna fucking mosh. When it’s over, you can go back to being whoever you usually are, but for right now, let loose and have fun.”

Caramel marks a step forward for the band, Jess Eastwood (vocals, bass), Steph Norris (guitar), Joe Perry (guitar), and Guy Page (drums), who all grew up in the Isle of Wight’s tight-knit music scene. Since the release of KILLJOY, they’ve toured with Queens of the Stone Age and Wet Leg, stormed Glastonbury and SXSW, and played packed headline shows across the UK, US and Europe. By Andy Von Pip

4. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: “Grow Wings and Fly”

Melbourne-based psych-rock group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are releasing a new album, Phantom Island, on June 13 on the band’s own p(doom) label. This week the band released its third single, “Grow Wings and Fly,” via a music video. Hayden Somerville directed the video.

In a press release, Somerville had this to say about directing the video: “There are so many strange and beautiful ways to grow wings and fly. We had a very special time down the coast with the band and our crew, releasing our sea creature—who somehow makes me feel a little ill and completely full of joy at the same time.”

Last October King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released the album’s title track, which was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced in April the band released its next single, “Deadstick,” via a music video. “Deadstick” was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Phantom Island follows Flight b741, a new album King Gizzard released in 2024. The initial tracks for the new album were recorded at the same time as the sessions for Flight b741, but still needed more work. In a press release, the band’s Stu Mackenzie says they “were harder to finish. Musically, they needed a little more time and space and thought.”

“The songs felt like they needed this other energy and color, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” Mackenzie adds.

And so they enlisted their friend Chad Kelly, who is a British historical keyboardist, conductor and arranger. “He brings this wealth of musical awareness to his chameleon-like arrangements,” Mackenzie says. “We come from such different worlds—he plays Mozart and Bach and uses the same harpsichords they did, and tunes them the exact same way. But he’s obsessed with microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me.”

Summing up his change of approach to music these days, Mackenzie says: “When I was younger, I was just interested in freaking people out, but as I get older, I’m much more interested in connecting with people.”

In 2023 the band released a new album, The Silver Cord, via KGLW. There were two versions of The Silver Cord, an extended one and a version with shorter tracks. The Silver Cord followed the elaborately titled PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation, which also came out in 2023. By Mark Redfern

5. Luvcat: “Lipstick”

6. Tune-Yards: “How Big is the Rainbow”

7. Coral Grief: “Rockhounds”

8. Alan Sparhawk with Trampled By Turtles: “Not Broken”

9. Jamie Lidell: “The Center”

10. The Bug Club: “Appropriate Emotions”

11. Post Animal: “Pie in the Sky”

12. Patrick Wolf: “Jupiter”

Honorable Mentions:

These songs almost made the Top 12.

Folk Bitch Trio: “Cathode Ray”

Good Looks: “I Don’t Want to Die”

Steve Queralt: “Messengers” (Feat. Verity Susman)

Elias Rønnenfelt: “Carry-On Bag”

SunYears: “Last Night on the Mountain” (Feat. Lisa Hannigan & Sam Genders)

Wavves: “Spun”

Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 12 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:

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