12 Finest Songs of the Week: Wolf Alice, Nation of Language, Coach Social gathering, King Gizzard, and Extra

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

Could 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 record. We thought of over 25 songs and narrowed it all the way down to a Prime 12.

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

In latest 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 will help you type via the multitude of recent songs launched within the final week, we now have picked the 12 greatest the final seven days needed to provide, adopted by some honorable mentions. Take a look at the total record 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,” by way of a music video. The Clearing is due out August 29 by way of RCA.

At present the band additionally introduced an intensive 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 record. The band wrote the album in Seven Sisters, North London, England and recorded it final yr in Los Angeles with Grammy successful producer Greg Kurstin.

Wolf Alice’s singer Ellie Rowsell had this to say about “Bloom Child Bloom” in a press launch: “I wished a rock music, to deal with the efficiency ingredient of a rock music and sing like Axl Rose, however to be singing a music about being a girl. I’ve used the guitar as a defend up to now, enjoying it has maybe been some strategy to reject the ‘woman singer in band’ trope, however I wished to deal with my voice as a rock instrument so it’s been liberating to place the guitar down and attain some extent 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 course to maneuver in, discovering a circulate state, it could actually 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 greatest we will. However the inventive course of additionally tends to be when imposter syndrome rears its ugly head—after I discover my inside monologue spiraling: ‘that is the most effective 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 good friend and brother John MacKay: it’s an homage to artistic pursuits, and in some methods got here to symbolize the sensation of residing in a metropolis as an artist. The video looks like strolling via an previous warehouse in Brooklyn, stuffed with apply areas and studios, every room occupied by artists striving to precise and perceive themselves and their place on the earth. Regardless of how weird the act could seem or how a lot self-doubt or ache runs via the thoughts of the creator, the gorgeous factor is the striving and persevering with on, relatively than the ultimate product or any notion of ‘success.’ The ability of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.”

Nation of Language launched a brand new album, Unusual Disciple, in 2023 by way of [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 Manner Ahead and 2020’s Introduction, Presence.

Learn our interview with Nation of Language on A Manner 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 Social gathering: “Ladies!”

Coach Social gathering are again. This week the Isle of Wight four-piece introduced particulars of their second album Caramel, set for launch on September 26 by way of 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 contemporary emotional life.

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

To mark the album announcement, Coach Social gathering launched new single “Ladies!,” 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 neighborhood and collective launch, constructed round a call-and-response refrain designed to shake the room.

“It’s a mosh-inciting, dwell hype music,” Eastwood says. “Alongside the traces of: for the subsequent three minutes, whoever you might be, 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 free 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 reveals 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,” by way of 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 in some way makes me really feel somewhat unwell 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,” by way of 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 concurrently the periods for Flight b741, however nonetheless wanted extra work. In a press launch, the band’s Stu Mackenzie says they “had been more durable to complete. Musically, they wanted somewhat extra time and house and thought.”

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

And they also enlisted their good friend 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 approach. However he’s obsessive about microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me.”

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

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