12 Greatest Songs of the Week: Wolf Alice, Nation of Language, Coach Celebration, King Gizzard, and Extra

Plus Luvcat, Tune-Yards, Coral Grief, and a Wrap-up of the Week’s Different Notable New Tracks

Might 16, 2025

By Mark Redfern (with Andy Von Pip)

Welcome to the sixteenth Songs of the Week of 2025. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humphries helped me resolve what ought to make the listing. We thought of over 25 songs and narrowed it all the way down to a Prime 12.

Subject 74, The Protest Subject, is out now. It options Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Unusual on the 2 covers and could be purchased from us instantly right here.

In current weeks we posted interviews with Supergrass (in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of their debut album), Windser, Lael Neale, Samia, Sunflower Bean, Beirut (a digital cowl story), Miki Berenyi Trio, Florist, SPELLLING, Craig Finn, Djo (a digital cowl story), and extra.

Within the final week we reviewed some albums.

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That can assist you kind via the multitude of contemporary songs launched within the final week, we’ve got picked the 12 finest the final seven days needed to provide, adopted by some honorable mentions. Take a look at the total listing beneath.

1. Wolf Alice: “Bloom Child Bloom”

Yesterday, British four-piece Wolf Alice introduced a brand new album, The Clearing, and shared its first single, “Bloom Child Bloom,” through a music video. The Clearing is due out August 29 through RCA.

At present the band additionally introduced an in depth tour of North America, the UK, and the EU.

The Clearing is the band’s fourth album and follows Blue Weekend, which was #2 on our Prime 100 Albums of 2021 listing. The band wrote the album in Seven Sisters, North London, England and recorded it final yr in Los Angeles with Grammy profitable producer Greg Kurstin.

Wolf Alice’s singer Ellie Rowsell had this to say about “Bloom Child Bloom” in a press launch: “I needed a rock music, to give attention to the efficiency factor of a rock music and sing like Axl Rose, however to be singing a music about being a lady. I’ve used the guitar as a protect prior to now, enjoying it has maybe been some solution to reject the ‘lady singer in band’ trope, however I needed to give attention to my voice as a rock instrument so it’s been releasing to place the guitar down and attain a degree the place I don’t really feel like I have to show that I’m a musician.”

Colin Solal Cardo (Charli XCX, Robyn, Christine & The Queens, Phoenix) directed the music’s video, which a press launch says “deconstructs a traditional rock efficiency by drawing on Bob Fosse and All That Jazz.” Emmy Award-winning choreographer Ryan Heffington (Euphoria, Sia, Kenzo + Margaret Qualley) choreographed the video.

The press launch says The Clearing was influenced by ’70s traditional rock and is akin to Fleetwood Mac making an album in North London in 2025.

Learn our interview with Wolf Alice on Blue Weekend. By Mark Redfern

2. Nation of Language: “Inept Apollo”

Synth-pop trio Nation of Language have signed to Sub Pop and in honor of this thrilling information this week they launched a brand new single, “Inept Apollo,” and introduced some tour dates in North America, the EU, and the UK.

The Brooklyn-based band options Ian Richard Devaney (lead vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synthesizer), and Alex MacKay (bass guitar).

“Work is a respite from ache. Whether or not it’s a paying job or simply the factor you pour your self into, having a route to maneuver in, discovering a circulate state, it could transfer focus away from the heaviness of the center. So after life’s losses, in moments of despair, we resolve time and time once more to dive headfirst into the work as finest we are able to. However the creative course of additionally tends to be when imposter syndrome rears its ugly head—after I discover my inside monologue spiraling: ‘that is one of the best coping mechanism I’ve at my disposal and I’m not even certified to be doing it.’

“Accompanying the music is a killer music video by our buddy and brother John MacKay: it’s an homage to artistic pursuits, and in some methods got here to symbolize the sensation of dwelling in a metropolis as an artist. The video appears like strolling via an outdated warehouse in Brooklyn, stuffed with follow areas and studios, every room occupied by artists striving to specific and perceive themselves and their place on the earth. Irrespective of how weird the act could seem or how a lot self-doubt or ache runs via the thoughts of the creator, the attractive factor is the striving and persevering with on, slightly than the ultimate product or any notion of ‘success.’ The facility of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.”

Nation of Language launched a brand new album, Unusual Disciple, in 2023 through [PIAS]. It was one in all our Prime 100 Albums of 2023. Unusual Disciple was the band’s third album and the follow-up to 2021’s A Approach Ahead and 2020’s Introduction, Presence.

Learn our interview with Nation of Language on A Approach Ahead.

Nation of Language additionally took half in our twentieth anniversary Covers of Covers album, the place they coated Damaged Social Scene’s “Stars and Sons.” By Mark Redfern

3. Coach Celebration: “Women!”

Coach Celebration are again. This week the Isle of Wight four-piece introduced particulars of their second album Caramel, set for launch on September 26 through Chess Membership Data. The brand new LP follows their acclaimed 2023 debut KILLJOY and sees the band take the reins on manufacturing for a uncooked, high-voltage snapshot of recent emotional life.

Throughout its 10 tracks, Caramel tackles the loneliness, rage and catharsis of present in a hyper-online, burnout-heavy world, whereas celebrating the individuals who pull us again from the brink. The band describe it as a document rooted in actual connection, sincere, pissed off, however in the end life-affirming.

To mark the album announcement, Coach Celebration launched new single “Women!,” a fiery call-to-arms with frontwoman Jess Eastwood rallying listeners with the road “the place the fuck are my women?,” the observe leans into group and collective launch, constructed round a call-and-response refrain designed to shake the room.

“It’s a mosh-inciting, reside hype music,” Eastwood says. “Alongside the traces of: for the following three minutes, whoever you’re, you’re all my women and also you’re all gonna fucking mosh. When it’s over, you may return to being whoever you normally are, however for proper now, let unfastened and have enjoyable.”

Caramel marks a step ahead for the band, Jess Eastwood (vocals, bass), Steph Norris (guitar), Joe Perry (guitar), and Man Web page (drums), who all grew up within the Isle of Wight’s tight-knit music scene. Because the launch of KILLJOY, they’ve toured with Queens of the Stone Age and Moist Leg, stormed Glastonbury and SXSW, and performed packed headline exhibits throughout the UK, US and Europe. By Andy Von Pip

4. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: “Develop Wings and Fly”

Melbourne-based psych-rock group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are releasing a brand new album, Phantom Island, on June 13 on the band’s personal p(doom) label. This week the band launched its third single, “Develop Wings and Fly,” through a music video. Hayden Somerville directed the video.

In a press launch, Somerville had this to say about directing the video: “There are such a lot of unusual and delightful methods to develop wings and fly. We had a really particular time down the coast with the band and our crew, releasing our sea creature—who someway makes me really feel a bit ailing and utterly stuffed with pleasure on the identical time.”

Final October King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard launched the album’s title observe, which was one in all our Songs of the Week. When the album was introduced in April the band launched its subsequent single, “Deadstick,” through a music video. “Deadstick” was additionally one in all our Songs of the Week.

Phantom Island follows Flight b741, a brand new album King Gizzard launched in 2024. The preliminary tracks for the brand new album had been recorded similtaneously the classes for Flight b741, however nonetheless wanted extra work. In a press launch, the band’s Stu Mackenzie says they “had been tougher to complete. Musically, they wanted a bit extra time and house and thought.”

“The songs felt like they wanted this different vitality and coloration, that we wanted to splash some totally different paint on the canvas,” Mackenzie provides.

And they also enlisted their buddy Chad Kelly, who’s a British historic keyboardist, conductor and arranger. “He brings this wealth of musical consciousness to his chameleon-like preparations,” Mackenzie says. “We come from such totally different worlds—he performs Mozart and Bach and makes use of the identical harpsichords they did, and tunes them the very same method. However he’s obsessive about microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me.”

Summing up his change of strategy to music lately, Mackenzie says: “Once I was youthful, I used to be simply fascinated about freaking individuals out, however as I grow old, I’m far more fascinated about connecting with individuals.”

In 2023 the band launched a brand new album, The Silver Twine, through KGLW. There have been two variations of The Silver Twine, an prolonged one and a model with shorter tracks. The Silver Twine adopted the elaborately titled PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Daybreak of Everlasting Night time: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Starting of Cruel Damnation, which additionally got here out in 2023. By Mark Redfern