12 Best Songs of 2025 (So Far)

Handing over the keys to an outside producer—hotshot Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen)—for the first time since their 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire, Americana icons MMJ come up with a shimmering sound that splits the difference between their 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. They’ve released 11 albums in the past five years, always with no announcement or promotion; they played their 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, they 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 only 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 due in February, 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.”