10 Finest Songs of the Week: Shiny Eyes, Cate Le Bon, Tame Impala, Wednesday, and Extra
Plus Flock of Dimes, Nation of Language, The Divine Comedy, and a Wrap-up of the Week’s Different Notable New Tracks
Jul 25, 2025
Welcome to the twenty sixth Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip helped me determine what ought to make the listing. We thought-about over 40 songs and narrowed it all the way down to a Prime 10.
Just like the final two weeks, we’re doing issues just a little in another way this week, as I’m in another country for a month visiting household. So it’s a extra stripped down Songs of the Week, with much less textual content and embeds. However all of the songs are nonetheless within the Spotify playlist.
Challenge 74, The Protest Challenge, is out now. It options Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Unusual on the 2 covers and may be purchased from us instantly right here.
In current weeks we posted interviews with Gwenno (a My Firsts), Frankie Cosmos (a My Firsts), Tunde Adebimpe (a digital cowl story), and extra.
Within the final week we reviewed some albums.
Beneath the Radar subscriptions are presently 50% off, as are again points. Try the sale right here.
That will help you kind by the multitude of recent songs launched within the final week, we now have picked the ten finest the final 7 days needed to provide, adopted by some honorable mentions. Try the complete listing under.
1. Shiny Eyes: “1st World Blues”
This week, Shiny Eyes shared a brand new track, “1st World Blues,” that’s influenced by ska music and is a takedown of late stage capitalism, with references to Reaganomics and enormous chain shops reminiscent of Sizzling Matter and Previous Navy. It’s accompanied by a lyric video (which performs extra like an everyday music video.
Shiny Eyes is Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nathaniel Wolcott. The band collectively had this to say concerning the track in a press launch: “‘1st World Blues’ is an homage to ska in all its waves. From Desmond Decker to Tim Armstrong, we’re simply glad so as to add our monitor to the bin. The video is impressed by NYC 90s hip hop, which like ska, has an extended custom of unifying folks and utilizing celebratory music to convey subversive political themes. To be performed loud. Home windows down. Summertime.”
Shiny Eyes launched a brand new album, 5 Cube, All Threes, final yr by way of Lifeless Oceans. It was the band’s tenth studio album and adopted Down within the Weeds, The place the World As soon as Was, which got here out in 2020 by way of Lifeless Oceans. Learn our interview with Shiny Eyes on the album.
2. Cate Le Bon: “Is It Value It (Comfortable Birthday)?”
Cate Le Bon is releasing a brand new album, Michelangelo Dying, on September 26 by way of Mexican Summer time. This week she shared its second single, “Is It Value It (Comfortable Birthday)?,” by way of a music video. Fellow Welsh musician H. Hawkline directed the video.
Le Bon beforehand shared Michelangelo Dying’s lead single “Heaven Is No Feeling.” It was one among our Songs of the Week.
Michelangelo Dying is Le Bon’s seventh full-length and the follow-up to Pompeii, which landed on our Prime 100 Albums of 2022 listing.
Le Bon produced Michelangelo Dying with collaborator Samur Khouja.
Le Bon, who has labored as a producer with St. Vincent, Wilco, and others, mentioned in a earlier press launch: “There’s this concept that you might do all the pieces your self, however the worth of getting somebody you fully belief, as I do Samur, be your co-pilot lets you get fully misplaced figuring out you’ll get pulled again in on the proper second. We’ve got come to quietly transfer as one within the studio.”
Learn our interview along with her about her 2022 album Pompeii right here.
3. Tame Impala: “Finish of Summer time”
Tame Impala (aka Kevin Parker) returned immediately with a brand new track, the seven-minute dance monitor “Finish of Summer time,” which channels Underworld in sections. It’s Tame Impala’s first launch for his new label, Columbia Information, and comes accompanied by a music video directed by Julian Klincewicz.
There’s no quote from Parker on “Finish of Summer time” however a press launch hypes up the track this fashion: “The track marks a brand new daybreak for Tame Impala, as Parker as soon as once more expands the parameters of the challenge additional into realms unexplored. Drawing from the deep, wealthy historical past of dance music, ‘Finish of Summer time’ recasts Tame Impala as a sort of future primitive rave act. The monitor harkens again to the acid home summer season of ’89, to free events of the mid-’90s, to bush doofs in outback paddocks—to an imagined historical past, transmuted into one thing concurrently current and everlasting, nonetheless unmistakably Tame Impala. The fun of spontaneous studio experimentation that has marked Tame Impala recordings because the starting is extra evident than ever, Parker’s mastery of his craft imprinting the monitor with an array of brain-bending, subtly manipulative sparkle.”
It’s been 5 years since Tame Impala’s final album, 2020’s The Sluggish Rush. In that point Parker has stored busy with collaborations, producing different artists, and one-off singles.
Learn our 2015 cowl story article on Tame Impala’s Currents and our bonus digital interview with Parker.
4. Wednesday: “Choose Up That Knife”
Wednesday are releasing a brand new album, Bleeds, on September nineteenth by way of Lifeless Oceans. This week they shared its third single, “Choose Up That Knife.”
The band’s singer and songwriter Karly Hatzman had this to say concerning the track in a press launch: “‘Choose Up That Knife’ is a track that revolves round emotions of helplessness, when each minor inconvenience hurts double trigger you’re near giving up. It’s additionally about when our pedal metal participant Xandy threw up within the moshpit throughout the Dying Grips set at Primavera Sound in 2023.”
Beforehand the band launched the album’s first single, “Elderberry Wine,” which they carried out on The Late Present with Stephen Colbert, making their TV debut. “Elderberry Wine” was one among our Songs of the Week. When the album was introduced they shared its second single, “Wound Up Right here (By Holdin On),” additionally one among our Songs of the Week.
Bleeds follows the band’s critically acclaimed Rat Noticed God in 2023.
The North Carolina-based band options Xandy Chelmis (lap metal, pedal metal), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), Jake “MJ” Lenderman (guitar), and frontwoman Karly Hartzman.
Hartzman had this to say concerning the new album in a earlier press launch: “Bleeds is the non secular successor to Rat Noticed God, and I feel the quintessential ‘Wednesday Creek Rock’ album. That is what Wednesday songs are alleged to sound like. We’ve devoted a number of our lives to figuring this out—and I really feel like we did.”
Wednesday can be on tour in assist of Bleeds this fall, starting in late September. The tour is cut up between a west coast leg aided by Friendship and an east coast run with assist from Daffo.
Learn our 2022 interview with Wednesday.
Learn our evaluate of Rat Noticed God.
5. Flock of Dimes: “Lengthy After Midnight”
6. Nation of Language: “Beneath the Water”
7. The Divine Comedy: “The Final Time I Noticed the Previous Man”
8. Folks Bitch Trio: “Lodge TV”
9. Yumi Zouma: “Cross My Coronary heart and Hope to Die”
10. The Cords: “Fabulist”
Honorable Mentions:
These songs nearly made the Prime 10. Discover all of them within the Spotify playlist.
CMAT: “EURO-COUNTRY”
Confidence Man and JADE: “gossip”
Ada Lea: “midnight magic”
She’s in Events: “Similar Previous Story”
SPRINTS: “Beg”
Right here’s a helpful Spotify playlist that includes the Prime 10 so as, adopted by all of the honorable mentions:
