The Best Songs of 2025 (So Far) (2025)

As the seasons started to change, the music-business machinery began creaking back into action. The new Lady Gaga album and Chappell Roan single brought that superstar buzz, and the summer tour calendar continues to fill up.

Notably, these past few weeks saw the very welcome return of several remarkable women from different generations (Fiona Apple, Haim, Annie Lennox) following extended breaks. Together with a number of strong releases introducing album projects on the way, it made for an encouraging March—and a lot to look forward to in the near future.

Here are the best songs of 2025 so far.

Any new music from the magnificent Fiona Apple is a huge deal. Granted, this addition to her catalog is an odd one: It’s not a song that she wrote but a track she was recruited to sing for the Irish stalwarts the Waterboys’ bonkers new project, a 25-song meditation on the outsize life of Dennis Hopper. Mike Scott gave Apple powerful lyrics to deliver, speaking for the women in Hopper’s chaotic, abusive relationships, and (as always) her performance is mesmerizing—vulnerable, furious, resolutely complex.

Speaking of voices that we haven’t heard in a while, it’s been five years since the Haim sisters’ excellent Women in Music Pt. III. The first taste of the upcoming fourth album from Danielle, Este, and Alana is a slightly understated reentry, representing their more R&B/electronic approach rather than their more rock-based, guitar-forward work. It’s sneakily alluring, bewildered but hopeful, built around an easily relatable sentiment—“I think I’m in love, but I can’t stand fucking relationships.”

And it’s been even longer—a full seven years—since we’ve gotten any new recordings from the mighty Annie Lennox. Having met and bonded with Grammy-winning Americana powerhouse Allison Russell as part of the team backing Joni Mitchell for her comeback performances, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer agreed to cut an updated version of this desperate prayer for peace. “There’s no God of fire and blood,” pleads Lennox. “If there’s a God, then God is love.”

The power that music holds in evoking the past is a recurrent theme for country pacesetter Eric Church; it’s at the heart of such signature songs as “Springsteen” and “Record Year.” But if the premise of “Hands of Time”—that music can heal whatever ails ya—isn’t surprising, the sound certainly is. With punchy horns, gospel-inflected background vocals, a ticking clock as a rhythmic element, it’s maybe even a bit overstuffed, but it’s an exciting setup for next month’s album Evangeline vs. the Machine.

The all-star bluegrass trio I’m with Her—Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan—won a 2020 Grammy for Best American Roots Song. They’ve released a few scattered songs since (including a benefit cover of “Espresso”) but now return with a new LP in May. The striking first single, “Ancient Light,” is hardly a traditional folk song; it features an airy arrangement with an odd time signature that leads into some CSN harmonies, followed by a virtuosic instrumental break—impressively ambitious and surprising.

At this point, the most famous member of indie/dad-rock standard-bearers the National is Aaron Dessner for his platinum-coated production work for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Gracie Abrams (with occasional assistance from his brother Bryce). But lead singer Matt Berninger’s rumbling baritone is still the band’s most identifiable feature, and on this first single from his upcoming second solo album, he doesn’t stray far from the group’s driving, rocked-up side (as opposed to its droning, atmospheric side). It’s muscular and satisfying, unapologetic in playing to his strengths.

Handing over the keys to an outside producer—hotshot Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen)—for the first time since its 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire, Americana icon MMJ comes up with a shimmering sound that splits the difference between its extremes of triple-guitar freak-out and reverb-drenched atmospherics. Built around a jazzy piano sample, “Time Waited” is a mid-tempo meditation on love’s ticking clock; it’s “about how flexible time is, how we can bend and warp time, especially if we are following our hearts,” according to lead singer/guitarist Jim James.

UK soul collective Sault moves in mysterious ways. It has released 11 albums in the past five years, always with no announcement or promotion; it played its first live shows only last year; and other than producer InFlo and his magnificent vocalist wife, Cleo Sol, you can find the band members only by digging in the credits. True to form, it snuck out a new EP, Acts of Faith, over the Christmas holidays (though it had briefly been available as a single digital file last summer), and once again it’s a glorious, expansive, spiritual journey reminiscent of jazzy R&B like Roy Ayers or ’70s-era Marvin Gaye. It’s all sequenced to run together for 32 minutes, so start at the top with “I Look for You,” but then just let it ride.

Isbell isn’t just one of today’s finest songwriters; he’s also an onstage powerhouse backed by his firecracker band the 400 Unit. So his forthcoming solo acoustic album, Foxes in the Snow, and the accompanying tour will make for a vastly different experience. Judging from the imagistic first single (and the album’s opening track), though, the rewards will be great; “Bury Me” is intimate, tough but vulnerable, more southern folk than straight country. “I ain’t no cowboy, but I can ride / I ain’t no outlaw, but I been inside” Isbell sings, and it sounds like a voice from American centuries past.

This trio released their 2022 debut when they were still teenagers in their native Chicago, with a jittery sound that recalled Gang of Four and Pavement. With two of the three Horsegirls now studying at NYU, “Switch Over,” their third single ahead of the upcoming album Phonetics On and On (yeah, sounds like NYU students to me), is more pulsing and propulsive. Produced by Welsh experimentalist Cate Le Bon (who recently worked on Wilco’s Cousin), the song is hooky but laconic, a next step forward for a band with a long road ahead.

Born in England, raised in Oklahoma, Bartees Strange has been building a following for his off-kilter indie rock over the past few years, touring with folks like the National and Japanese Breakfast. His upcoming album, Horror—coproduced by the omnipresent Jack Antonoff—confronts the fears and anxieties that have come with seeing both success and frustration in his career. “Wants Needs” takes these feelings head-on (“I get scared of erasure ’cos it / Just seems to happen, don’t it?”) over a screaming and thunderous groove that sounds kinda like a more interesting Foo Fighters song.

He’s a big deal in the UK (number-one albums, Brit Awards) who hasn’t quite clicked yet in the States. And with his big, heartland-rock sound—complete with anthemic choruses and, yes, saxophone solos—the Bruce Springsteen comparisons are almost mandatory. “Arm’s Length,” from the People Watching album, dials back the Boss-isms, going instead for something more rhythmic and spacious, built around a snaky little guitar line and an earworm hook. (“Do you have to know me, know me / Inside out?”) Maybe this time Fender can make his big move in the U.S. … and, okay, I guess it does sound a little like “I’m on Fire.”