Best New Songs (October 2, 2025)

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: “YAM”

1010benja is still the madman he was on Ten Total last year. Incorporating influences spanning Hideo Kojima and John Frusciante, his work is engulfed in pop, trap, drill, and gospel music. His new song “YAM” is tremendous and brief, noodling in maximalist soul singing and scraping guitar licks. Put on a pair of headphones and the song turns into a ceremony. 1010benja’s voice is gummy and poppy; his harmonies are robust and passionate. The song’s cymbalism and gospel-snippet backdrop contracts while a guitar solo cruises. “Such a loveliness,” 1010benja sings, “a soft-hearted bashfulness.” Recorded in a Kansas City basement, “YAM” stands for “YOUR ASS, MINE” and that tone refracts in the music, when 1010benja’s croons tone into the muscular and his guitar playing lands there even more so. —Matt Mitchell

Casey Dienel: “The Butcher Is My Friend”

It’s time to have a conversation about Casey Dienel’s first record after quitting the business and ditching their old name, My Heart Is An Outlaw: We’re four singles in and they’ve all been starry, epic, and gorgeous. “Seventeen” and “Your Girl’s Upstairs” were vivid sprawls, but “The Butcher Is My Friend” (paired with A-side “People Can Change”) is Dienel’s straightest effort yet—and probably their best. The song sticks to you even when it flirts with total unrest. A chugging tandem of Max Jaffe’s percussion and Spencer Zahn’s bass anchors the tone while Meg Duffy’s splashy, twisting guitar howls above water. And Dienel rummages in the melody in a perfect, curious way, cresting through ideas about new love and a potent, if-not-detrimental fear of abandonment—of the self and the one you covet. “Cruise out to the spit, pelicans swan giving,” they sing. “Draw the moon so near, take a bite. It’s so soft, I could get used to this. But this heart won’t trust it.” Woodwinds and horns, courtesy of Aaron Rockers, Adam Dotson, Adam Schatz, and Jonah Parzen-Johnson, uncork in the scrim. Dienel declares, “Make a little fist, dive in,” until Schatz’s synth programming starts to sweep and blade. “Who cares who loves more?” This drip-fed rebirth of Dienel’s is a marvel to sit with. —Matt Mitchell

Chanel Beads: “The Coward Forgets His Nightmare”

Chanel Beads’ 2024 debut album Your Day Will Come was one of my favorites of last year, a record that I must’ve listened to hundreds of times until eventually wearing it down for myself. So, needless to say, I’m thrilled that we have a new Chanel Beads track, “The Coward Forgets His Nightmare,” with its release coinciding with the major milestone of the trio opening for Lorde at Madison Square Garden. Chanel Beads has gone pop before in “Unifying Thought” and “I Think I Saw,” but “The Coward Forgets His Name” is particularly jaunty and sticky-sweet, even as bandleader Shane Lavers and his bandmates Maya McGrory and Zach Paul add experimental touches that make it feel like it’s recorded at an extraterrestrial construction site. Lavers has a way of writing that feels cryptic while still being deeply personal to him and in “Coward” it’s almost as if you’re dropped into a emotional conversation with no context, as he sings, “When you’re out there running with disease in your feet / Thought the music would save you like it saved me / I pray the world will show you mercy like my daddy showed me / I thought I saw you smiling in all my memories.” —Tatiana Tenreyro

Dry Cleaning: “Hit My Head All Day”

I think Dry Cleaning is one of the best living bands. Their first two records, New Long Leg and Stumpwork, are all-timers, which means I’ve been waiting for LP3 since, roughly, October 21, 2022. Secret Love is coming in January, which is certainly too far away. But I will cope, because “Hit My Head All Day” is an instant-classic single. Ripe with Nick Buxton’s humid, glowy programming, Tom Dowse’s atonal guitar topline, and Florence Shaw’s magnetic, sensual delivery, the song is Dry Cleaning sauntering, not busting, into a new definition. The song was inspired, at the demo stage, by Sly and The Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On but it comes out far more dubby and intonated on the Cate Le Bon-produced final concoction. It’s a little bit bizarre, but most Dry Cleaning songs are, and it’s a little bit psychedelic, which feels like a new body for Shaw and her bandmates to dress up. “When I was a child, I wanted to try a horse,” Shaw murmurs. “Onions, carrots, and celery. Excuse me, what?” Buxton, Dowse, and Lewis Maynard quickly file in, robotically chanting, “I’m using up makeup, I’m using up makeup.” Eventually, Shaw reaches her conclusion: “I simply must have experiences.” Listening to “Hit My Head All Day” certainly is one and I keep having it. —Matt Mitchell

Geese: “Long Island City Here I Come”

Geese has been an unstoppable force since the release of their sophomore record, Getting Killed, last Friday. After the success of their rousing anthemic singles, “Taxes” and “100 Horses,” Geese showed off their knack for deft lyricism with album tracks like “Au Pays du Cocaine” and “Long Island City Here I Come.” The 6-minute latter pulses with gripping anxiety, mirroring an impatient foot tapping when the train gets delayed. Singer Cameron Winter calls to the spirits Joan of Arc and the biblical figure Joshua to expound his determination to go somewhere, even if he’s not quite sure where. He repeats “here I come” like a sick prayer, while the band creates a ruckus with errant percussion and the aimless pounding of piano keys. Whether they are traveling “like Charlemagne on the midnight bus,” or simply taking the 7 down to Court Street, Geese move with a vengeance, never coming up for air, and never slowing down. —Caroline Nieto

Magdalena Bay: “Second Sleep”

If you somehow missed Magdalena Bay these past two years, congratulations—you’ve just rejoined the internet. 2024 firmly belonged to the alt-pop duo: Imaginal Disk, their sophomore concept record, landed on virtually every year-end list (ours included), with “Death & Romance” topping our best songs ranking to book. There’s a lot for the group to live up to going forward—but based on “Second Sleep,” they have nothing to worry about. According to the duo, “Second Sleep” (released alongside its b-side “Star Eyes”) was written toward the end of the Imaginal Disk sessions and acts as a kind of spiritual extension of that album’s emotional arc. You can tell: the song feels like an evolution rather than a pivot, with the duo returning somewhat to their prog-rock roots, preserving the dreamy, expansive textures that underpinned Imaginal Disk all the while. Mica Tenenbaum’s voice soars, pairing effortlessly with sweeping strings to evoke something nearly otherworldly. The drum fills, orchestral swells, and subtle funk accents layer into a cinematic five-minute journey that builds relentlessly. If Imaginal Disk proved Magdalena Bay were visionaries, “Second Sleep” makes clear that the horizons they’re chasing stretch even further than we imagined. —Casey Epstein-Gross

Momma: “Cross Your Heart”

Momma’s third album, Welcome to My Blue Sky, took inspiration from the tastemakers of nineties rock, like Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage. The band’s new single, “Cross Your Heart,” continues in that line of tradition, as their signature muddy guitars and wispy vocals are channeled into a sincere plea to “cross your heart and swear to me that we can make this last.” Singers Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten trade lines in the verses, invoking images of late city nights and whispered conversations in empty parking lots. For all of the romantic strife conveyed on Welcome to My Blue Sky, “Cross Your Heart” turns over a new leaf, hurling Momma into a new age of optimism. —Caroline Nieto

Parts Work: “Trenton”

Holy fuck. If you have ever spoken to me about music for any amount of time, you likely know that I have spent over five years impatiently awaiting this very moment. At long last, Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan—who is at least top-three in my personal list of the best lyricists and vocalists of the 21st century—has finally released their first new music since 2020’s Likewise. This time, though, it’s under a new project: Parts Work (the name seemingly a reference to the Internal Family Systems model of therapy), a duo act with Thin Lips’ Kyle Pulley. Following this week’s single “Trenton,” the pair are putting out a four-song self-titled EP later this month. (I am choosing to ignore what this news portends about the likelihood of Hop Along returning to the scene, and will continue to pretend that they’ll be back any day now. But hey! At least Hop Along former member Dominic Angelella and regular collaborator Chrissy Tashjian make an appearance on this new track too.) While Quinlan’s voice is as raw, expressive, and inimitable as ever, “Trenton” is very much its own beast, the manipulated electronics and modulated backing vocals woven throughout the track making it feel immediately separate from their work with Hop Along. To be honest, I’m typically not one for this kind of hyperfolk-adjacent production, but I’d listen to Quinlan read the phonebook, so this is undoubtedly still a win for me. Or, to put it in terms of both the bridge of “Trenton” and the Trenton bridge: Frances Quinlan makes, I (happily) take. —Casey Epstein-Gross

Rochelle Jordan: “The Boy”

The new Rochelle Jordan album, Through the Wall, is the year’s most-complete pop record, and I was floored to fall upon non-single “The Boy” during my inaugural listen last weekend. Jordan is simply incomparable here, radically executing sultry club music unlike any of her peers until she’s above category. “The Boy” is a smooth, genre-blurring hit that exists not in the post-R&B or electronica tracts, but in a pantheon of its own. With Kaytranada on production, the track thumps irresistibly like its titular beau, whom Jordan calls a “fucking boomerang” that keeps her “spinning, no cap.” Repetition animates the song, as she sings “any my heart keeps telling me fine, and my heart keeps telling me now, every time I see the boy” like a tinny glitch. And then the bass drum kicks, the synths turn feral, and Jordan’s vocals multiply and circle each other. The colors streaking across “The Boy” taste so good you don’t even realize the party ended hours ago. —Matt Mitchell

Skullcrusher: “Living”

In “March,” Skullcrusher’s previous single off her upcoming sophomore album, And Your Song Is Like a Circle, Helen Ballentine questioned what she lives for; in “Living,” the singer-songwriter contemplates whether she’s actually living. With sparse guitar and piano, the track is taken over by Ballentine’s wispy voice, as she examines how those around her are moving along with their daily routines and wonders how her life fits with them. When you suffer from depression and are in the depths of it—I’m talking can’t get out of bed, no energy to brush your teeth, just rotting away when the pain feels so severe that you barely feel human—you begin to question how you can go back to truly living again. Hearing “Living,” I wondered how different those heavy moments would’ve felt for me if I had a song like this that pinpoints exactly what it’s like to be in that state and reminds you that you’re not alone in that struggle. —Tatiana Tenreyro

Other Notable Songs This Week: Agriculture: “My Garden”; Colter Wall: “1800 Miles”; crushed: “exo”; Dirt Buyer: “Betchu Won’t”; Empress Of: “Blasting Through the Speakers”; Marem Ladson: “Cavity”; Melody’s Echo Chamber: “In the Stars”; Nala Sinephro: “Grand Prix”; Remember Sports: “Across the Line”; Suzie True: “Every Dog”; Syd: “GMFU”; Tortoise: “Works and Days”; Upchuck: “New Case”; Westerman: “About Leaving”; Witch Post: “Changeling”

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