Best Songs of 2025
“Lake-Eyes”- Nico Georis
“Lake-Eyes” is the highlight of Nico Georis’s recent effort, Music Belongs to the Universe. The constant pulses of the central piano melody form ripples upon the surface of hissing tape. The ripples overlap as the piano echoes back on itself, panning back and forth. Synthesized embellishments sweep in and out of the landscape as if we’re catching a glimpse of wildlife among the trees. This song is a conversation, and we are so lucky to be able to sit and listen. - Bram Rickett
“My Least Favorite Life” - Lera Lynn
Earlier this year, I wrote about how True Detective’s much-misunderstood second season anticipated our Trumpian present in a way few other artworks have. Not long after that article hit the web, I was further proven right. Lera Lynn, whose songs form a key part of True Detective season two’s dour noir landscape, released the True Sessions EP, comprised of three stripped-down versions of the tunes she contributed to the show. Each one of them is stunning, and in their minor key starkness they speak to the crumbling world we live in now, just as they did to the (not so) alternate version of Los Angeles that aired on HBO in 2015. Lynn may no longer be the bedraggled dive bar singer that she portrayed in True Detective, but the power of her voice hasn’t waned, and in fact has deepened in the intervening years. The truth of that second season – that the United States has fully become the city of Vinci imagined by Nic Pizzolatto – imbues in these new performances. “This is my least favorite life,” she sings, hauntingly, “The one where I’m out of my mind.” We’re with you, Lera. - BE
“Plus and Minus” - David Gray (with Talia Rae)
Yes, David Gray’s still got it. The head-bobbing British songwriter who achieved global fame off the back of the catchy but unassuming “Babylon” in 1999 has maintained a steady and rich output since then, amassing a catalogue that squarely puts him in conversation with the best songwriters of his generation. “Plus and Minus,” the lead single off of Gray’s 13th LP, finds the man rejuvenated in duet with young British talent Talia Rae. Together the two sing about the anxieties of time, with Gray’s lyrics exhibiting their characteristic poetry (“You know the way the light is / Always painting someone else’s windows gold?”). This concise pop tune deploys a regular trick of Gray’s, modulation, in its dramatic pre-chorus where Gray and Rae’s voices form a moving unison. “You know this whole routine’s getting old,” one of the key refrains has it, even though for Gray that’s the opposite of the truth. - BE
“S.N.C” - Darkside
I love songs that are secretly classic rock. Darkside, a multi-national trio of polymaths from the deepest corners of their respective experimental scenes, shouldn't have anything to do with AM radio gold. But in the same way Talking Heads made mutant disco, Darkside have irradiated the DNA of Blue Oyster Cult or Sly and the Family Stone. Sampled house vocals turn “S.N.C”’s jittery chorus into one of the catchiest moments of the year, and the second half explosion into keyboard/guitar fusion that rips like Yes playing funk is nothing short of miraculous. Play it on the radio you cowards. - NS
“Scolder” - Quannnic
Those of us that grew up in an era of hard rock dominance know very well that the genre is well past its prime. Most outfits from the time are trying pitifully to recreate the magic to little success (and usually with a noticeable pivot to extreme conservative politics), and the old guard is taking the air out of the sails of any up-and-comers.
Enter Nick Quan. The shoegaze wunderkind continues to pull off incredible (and highly underrated) hard rock recordings with their own modern-day twists. Quannnic is uniquely talented at both capturing the nostalgic magnetism of the dreamy hard rock tones of a Deftones or Chevelle and pushing its boundaries just enough that it feels genuinely fresh and effortlessly enrapturing. “Scolder,” off of 2025’s Warbrained, is a prime example of this revitalized spirit in motion, an anthem of desolate longing tightly framed with a balance of pastiche writing and DAW-generation sonics that takes me right back to driving around with my dad, speakers blasting and ears ringing. - SH
“Snapping Turtle” - SG Goodman
SG Goodman’s breakout Teeth Marks alternated between heartbreak and working class rage. This year’s Planting By the Signs slowed things down and stepped into an anti-nostalgic past, a different sort of sorrow. The hypnotic guitar lines of “Snapping Turtle” starts with Goodman nearly killing a pack of teenagers who were abusing the titular reptile. She throws the poor fellow in the back of her car then her mind floats away to an old friend stuck in a do-nothing southern town. It’s a postcard, a snapshot of Goodman’s history and worried mind. Like a Raymond Carver story, it doesn’t spell everything out, but lingers in the mind for far longer than the runtime. - NS
“Stai con noi” - Spore
Italians do it* better.
*incredibly catchy pop-prog - NS
“Still Life” - Me Lost Me
It starts with bells that calm a busy mind. When we talked to Me Lost Me mastermind Jayne Dent, she spoke of having a restless spirit, incompatible with still life paintings. They were too stationary next to triptychs of holy revelations or roaring battles. But on “Still Life” she finds stillness and creates a hymn to the ending of the day, the contentment of sunset. A chorus of voices join her own strident notes, describing a painting like each minute brushstroke is a gift. And it is a gift to see a touching still life and be able to reflect its tranquilness. (Listen to our interview)
“Winona” - Deafheaven
Deafheaven has one of these on each of their albums: a song that somehow sounds like it’s channeled the entirety of human existence, all of its emotions, conflicts, and triumphs, into the span of 8-12 minutes. “Winona” is that for the band’s sixth LP, whose title Lonely People with Power speaks to our present in the way few titles in 2025 did. The sonic tapestry of the first minute and a half, with its gentle electronics and tensely quiet drumming, creates a whole montage in the mind, a stream of images that explode at that 1:30 mark with Daniel Tracy’s thudding drums and the tremolo picking that remains an integral part of the “blackgaze” aesthetic of Deafheaven. Then, everything drops out, leaving some lonely, reverb-soaked guitar notes, only for the music to come roaring back again, George Clarke’s banshee wails layered in the lush textures laid out by his bandmates. Even when this sturm und drang pauses for a gorgeous breather four minutes in, with dreamy clean guitars washing over the music like gentle ocean waves at sunset, you know that another eruption awaits on the horizon, and when it hits, the weight of it is like a slab of iron. Somehow, this music serves as the score to the end times and, as one YouTube commenter aptly put it, an encouragement “from God telling us to keep going.” - BE
“You Got Time and I Got Money” - Smerz
Voices hush and the lights dim, leaving only the projection of pixelated karaoke lyrics to illuminate the room. Your crush enters stage right, loosely gripping a microphone. You shift in your seat uncomfortably in a mix of anticipation and second-hand nerves. As they begin to sing, the two of you lock eyes. Slowly, the crowd around you fades away. Their performance is for you and only you. Your crush may not be singing this song, but this song is that feeling. An effortless tightrope walk between cheeseball and sincerity that you can’t help but watch, transfixed. When Smerz says “I wanna see you naked!” you laugh, but it’s somehow the sexiest shit you’ve ever heard in your life. It’s refreshing to hear something so simple and so hopelessly lovestruck.
As YouTube user @Fullytumblr123 states in the comments of the music video, “ROMANCE IS SO BACK”. - BR
“You Ominously End” - Arm’s Length
Of the many bands re-channeling and fusing together the sounds of midwest emo and 2000s pop-punk – Hot Mulligan come to mind, a band with one of 2025’s worst song titles – the Ontario quintet Arm’s Length stands out for being able to make a much-parodied style sound full of life yet undiscovered. When it starts, “You Ominously End” at first appears to be a different kind of genre throwback, what with its Sigh No More-esque banjo strumming. But those who (rightly) fear any revival of stomp-clap need not take off running: this opening amounts to playful subterfuge, given up when distorted guitars slam into the mix, mirroring the banjo’s chord progression. “You Ominously End” explores the push-and-pull between two friends after one attempts suicide, and though the tongue-in-cheek moments in the lyrics may seem like bad taste (“Thought if there’s one thing you’d do right / It’d be the best Irish goodbye”), Arm’s Length skillfully ride the balance between dark humor and earnest worry. “I’ve known you long enough to know when you are playing dead,” lead singer Allen Steinberg quietly sings in the outro, which has the intimacy of a private voice memo: “When I check in it’s like I’m feeling for a pulse.” Fighting death with the fury of body-gripping rock music: it’s definitely a memorable way of reminding oneself, as Arm’s Length’s sophomore LP title does, that there’s a whole world out there. - BE
“Young” - Little Simz
Little Simz may have broken big with her Mercury Prize-winning epic Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (2021) – a My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy evoking masterpiece that arrived just in time for those who prefer their My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-style albums to not be made by Hitler sympathizers – but No Thank You’s “Gorilla” (2022) and now Lotus’ “Young” demonstrate that Simz might be at her best with sparer arrangements. “Young” consists of little more than drums, bass, some occasional stabs of guitar, atop which Little Simz raps with a streetwise drawl. In her cadence she at times sounds like a Guy Ritchie ruffian: “I need to buy a booze and I need to buy a draw.” Her insouciance and joie de vivre in rapping through the mindset of a young twentysomething perfectly captures the feeling of possibility – not to mention, in this day in age, the economic uncertainty – that runs through your veins when life hasn’t ground you down yet. Little Simz has proven herself an innovator in so many ways already, which is a big reason why her voice sounds so fresh when it’s given a platform as straightforward as the sing-along ready “Young” provides. - BE