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, March 4, 2025.
Car Sear Headrest – ‘Gethsemane’
Car Seat Headrest have announced their first album in five years, The Scholars, with a cathartic, multi-part epic called ‘Gethsemane’. “Rosa studies at the medical school of Parnassus University,” the band said of the character it portrays. “After an experience bringing a medically deceased patient back to life, she begins to regain powers suppressed since childhood, of healing others by absorbing their pain. Each night, instead of dreams, she encounters the raw pain and stories of the souls she touches throughout the day. Reality blurs, and she finds herself taken deep into secret facilities buried beneath the medical school, where ancient beings that covertly reign over the college bring forth their dark plans.”
Tune-Yards – ‘Limelight’
Tune-Yards have returned with news of their first LP since 2021’s sketchy. It’s called Better Dreaming, and it comes out May 16 via 4AD. It’s led by the slinky and infectious ‘Limelight’, of which the duo’s Merrill Garbus said: “This one almost didn’t make it onto the album because it felt trite, especially given multiple genocides across the globe and the particular impact on children (the kids are not ‘alright’). But it kept coming back as people kept responding positively to it, in particular our own kid. Who am I to talk about getting free, about us all getting free? Fannie Lou Hamer said, ‘Nobody’s free until everybody’s free’ and it feels vulnerable but important to see myself as part of that ‘everybody.’”
Destroyer – ‘Cataract Time’
Destroyer’s ‘Hydroplaning Off The Edge of The World’ just made our list of the best songs of February 2025, and its predecessor ‘Bologna’ landed on the same list the previous month. If those singles weren’t dramatic enough, the new one, ‘Cataract Time’, sprawls gorgeously over eight minutes. His new album Dan’s Boogie comes out March 28. “The song is a reckoning, a dressing down, a walk in the park where you carefully record your steps and describe the park and somehow the recording and the description undoes you,” Bejar explained. “Which is why it’s important that the song be as groovy as it is. That part I didn’t see coming. There is a lightness that points to a future, even if I think it’s the heaviest thing I’ve ever written. John [Collins] outdid himself in the mix. His filigree harps changed everything. I think it is his favourite song on the record.”
Scowl – ‘Tonight (I’m Afraid)’
Santa Cruz band Scowl have shared another massive yet ferocious single off their upcoming album Are We All Angels. ‘Tonight (I’m Afraid)’ follows previous cuts ‘Special’, ‘Not Hell Not Heaven’, and ‘B.A.B.E.’.
Alien Boy – ‘Changes’
Portland emo outfit Alien Boy have announced a new album, You Wanna Fade?, which lands May 9 via Get Better. “Change is always hard for me, even when I know I need it,” vocalist and guitarist Sonia Weber said of the jangly yet emotive lead single ‘Changes’. “There’s more and more ghosts the older I get. This song’s for trying to acknowledge the ghosts and grieving an old life.”
Anika – ‘Walk Away’
Anika has previewed her forthcoming album Abyss with ‘Hearsay’, which is easygoing yet brutally candid, inspired by “the reckless nature of 90s /2000s Hole / Courtney Love records — of not giving a shit — telling it how it is, not scared to offend, not scared to be cancelled. We have also lost the space for healthy debate, for difference of opinion, shutting down those we don’t agree with, removing them from our social networks.” The Berlin artist added: “This song is saying all the things I want to say but am too scared to say or that society doesn’t accept me to say. It is dealing with mental health — the state of poor mental health in these fucked up, divided, isolated, social media, war, pest, rise of the right times. It is the deconstruction of the feminine — of topics considered to be private realm.”
Glare – ‘Nü Burn’
Heavy shoegaze outfit have shared ‘Nü Burn’, a gauzy and enveloping preview of their debut full-length Sunset Funeral. “‘Nü Burn’ is about how it feels like the world stops when you’re grieving,” the band explained. “‘I’ll find you in a new sun, feel a new burn’ means finding those we lost in the warmth we feel… it’s a big, explosive song and probably our heaviest. When we finished writing, it we immediately knew it’d be a single.”
Lucius feat. Madison Cunningham – ‘Impressions’
Lucius have teamed up with Madison Cunningham for ‘Impressions’, the beautifully layered latest single from their self-titled album. “We wrote ‘Impressions’ in Ethan Gruska’s home studio in Los Angeles,” the duo recalled. “Together with Madi, we were exchanging ideas and feelings about the changes in our lives and how to reckon with them — the choice as to what to keep with you, and what to let go of, as we grow and evolve, and the questioning of yourself when you’re living a life you don’t recognize anymore.”
Mei Semones – ‘I can do what I want’
Mei Semones has released a dynamically compelling new song, ‘I can do what I want’, taken from her first LP, Animaru. “‘I can do what I want’ is one of the most high-energy songs on the album, as well as one of the most challenging songs to play,” Semones explained. “Lyrically the song is centered around doing what I want and what is best for me, and I hope it empowers other people to do what they want & prioritize what is best for them too.”
Suzanne Vega – ‘Speakers’ Corner’
Suzanne Vega has announced that Flying With Angels, her first new studio album in eleven years, will arrive on May 2. “That’s something you don’t want in democracy: the shutting down of the Speakers’ Corner where people get a say,”Vega said in a statement about its lead single. “This is a moment in time when people are saying a lot, but sometimes they’re not making sense or not telling the truth. People should be accountable for what they say. They can’t just lie. One would think that that would be self-evident.”
Graham Hunt – ‘I Just Need Enough’
Wisconsin-based musician Graham Hunt has signed to Run for Cover, marking the announcement with the lovely new song ‘I Just Need Enough’. “A friend and I were out walking and we ran into an old high school teacher of his,” Hunt he shared. “He asked if I wanted a guitar, he didn’t play it and he thought someone should. He said every day is another bite out of the shit sandwich. This was the first riff I wrote on it. It’s a song about love but it’s not a love song.”
I’m With Her – ‘Ancient Light’
It’s been seven years since I’m With Her — the folk trio of Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins – released their debut LP, See You Around. Yet ‘Ancient Light’, the first single and opening track of their just-announced full-length Wild and Clear and Blue Wild And Clear and Blue – out May 9 – sounds warmly familiar. “We started playing around with this riff in a Silverlake bungalow in October of 2022,” the band recalled. “We were still at the beginning of writing this album, and as these images of joyful melancholy floated towards us, we found ourselves reaching for them in a free-flowing way that felt wholly new to us, yet completely natural. This song is a journey, and (producer) Josh Kaufman encouraged us to open the song up and let it breathe. ‘Ancient Light’ sets the tone for the entire album, communing with our past and future selves.”
Sedona feat. Claud – ‘She’s So Pretty’
Los Angeles singer-songwriter Sedona has linked up with Claud for the angsty new tune ‘She’s So Pretty’. “‘She’s So Pretty’ is about learning to let go of old stories, knowing your worth, and putting yourself first,” Sedona said of the track, which appears on her debut record, Getting Into Heaven – out May 23.
Dean Johnson – ‘Blue Moon’
Dean Johnson has unveiled a new song, ‘Blue Moon’, which marks the Seattle musician’s signing to Saddle Creek. The breezy tune arrives as the 20th installment of the labels Document series. About it, Johnston said: “Did you ever lie in bed listening for a sound down the street? A whistle, a coo, the approach of someone’s feet? This song is ultimately an ode to bedroom windows; to climbing out of them late at night.”
