10 Finest Songs of the Week: Wolf Alice, Gwenno, disgrace, Massive Thief, and Extra
Plus Open Mike Eagle, Fashionable Nature, Geese, and a Wrap-up of the Final Two Weeks’ Different Notable New Tracks
Jul 11, 2025
Welcome to the twenty fourth Songs of the Week of 2025. We didn’t do a Songs of the Week final week due to the July 4th vacation, so this week’s checklist encompasses the final two weeks (though it’s primarily songs from this week). We’re doing issues somewhat in a different way this week and maybe for the following few weeks, as I’m in another country for the following 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.
This week Andy Von Pip and Stephen Humphries helped me resolve what ought to make the checklist. We thought of over 40 songs and narrowed it all the way down to a Prime 10.
Subject 74, The Protest Subject, is out now. It options Kathleen Hannah and Bartees Unusual on the 2 covers and may be purchased from us instantly right here.
In latest weeks we posted interviews with Gwenno (a My Firsts), Frankie Cosmos (a My Firsts), Tunde Adebimpe (a digital cowl story), Rubbish (a digital cowl story), Ezra Furman, Florry, Lael Neale, and extra.
Within the final week we reviewed some albums.
Underneath the Radar subscriptions are at the moment 50% off, as are again points. Take a look at the sale right here.
That can assist you type by the multitude of contemporary songs launched within the final two weeks, we have now picked the ten greatest the final 14 days needed to provide, adopted by some honorable mentions. Take a look at the total checklist beneath.
1. Wolf Alice: “The Couch”
British four-piece Wolf Alice are releasing a brand new album, The Clearing, on August 29 through RCA. Immediately they shared its second single, “The Couch,” through a music video. Fiona Jane Burgess directed the video.
Wolf Alice’s singer Ellie Rowsell had this to say about “The Couch” in a press launch: “It’s about not attempting so laborious to determine the whole lot out, reflecting on getting older and attempting to not agonize over issues which have or haven’t occurred in your life. It’s additionally about attempting to become familiar with the polarizing facets of 1’s life if you’re in a band. You’ve simply performed an enormous tour—and also you come residence, and you’ve got your dinner on the couch. For me, it’s summed up in how I deal with TV. I used to by no means watch the identical factor twice as a result of I believed I’ve bought a lot to find! And now I’m like, ‘It’s okay if I simply need to rewatch Peep Present for the thirteenth time.’”
Beforehand Wolf Alice shared The Clearing’s first single, “Bloom Child Bloom,” through a music video. It was #1 on our Songs of the Week checklist. Additionally they introduced some new North American tour dates for this fall, in addition to some UK and EU ones.
The Clearing is band’s fourth album and follows Blue Weekend, which was #2 on our Prime 100 Albums of 2021 checklist. The band wrote the album in Seven Sisters, North London, England and recorded it final 12 months in Los Angeles with Grammy profitable producer Greg Kurstin.
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.
2. Gwenno: “Utopia”
Welsh musician Gwenno (full identify Gwenno Saunders) launched a brand new album, Utopia, right now through Heavenly. Earlier this week she shared the album’s fourth single, title monitor “Uptopia.” Claire Marie Bailey directed the video, which was shot in Las Vegas.
Learn our new My Firsts interview with Gwenno.
Utopia is her first solo LP sung primarily within the English language, though “Y Gath” is in Welsh. Beforehand Gwenno shared the album’s first single, “Dancing On Volcanoes,” through a music video. It was one among our Songs of the Week. Then she shared its second single, “Struggle,” through a music video. It was additionally one among our Songs of the Week. Then she shared the album’s third single, “Y Gath,” which options backing vocals from fellow Welsh artists Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline and was once more one among our Songs of the Week.
The video for “Dancing On Volcanoes” was filmed in Las Vegas, the place Saunders spent two years as a teen within the lead function in Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance. She lived in an condo advanced with 40 fellow teenage performers, the place there was a pool and a fitness center, however little else to do past “drink, medicine, consuming problems,” a press launch explains.
“Then each Saturday we’d go to this techno membership known as Utopia and simply get fully spangled till Monday, once we had to return to work,” Saunders remembers, mentioning that the membership impressed the brand new album’s title.
“Within the authentic Greek, ‘utopia’ doesn’t imply the best place, it means ‘non-place,’” Saunders explains. “And that’s the purpose of the document as properly.”
After her stint in Vegas, Saunders moved again to the UK, however to not Wales, as a substitute settling in London. “I didn’t know anybody or something, I’d simply problem individuals and reply adverts in The Stage journal, and go to essentially foolish auditions,” she says. “I used to be searching for individuals to hang around with and make tunes.”
Ultimately she ended up within the Brighton-based girl-group The Pipettes, alongside Rose Elinor Dougall, releasing two albums with them. Submit-Pipettes, Saunders has launched three acclaimed solo albums—2014’s Y Dydd Olaf, 2018’s Le Kov, and 2022’s Mercury Prize-nominated Tresor—all sung primarily in both Welsh or Cornish (an virtually misplaced language that’s had a little bit of a revival lately). Saunders felt like her earlier albums dealt extra together with her childhood, whereas Utopia tackles a interval of her life the place she spoke primarily English and so she felt extra pure singing in that language this time round.
“I really feel as if I’ve written a debut document, as a result of it’s a distinct language and it’s a distinct a part of my life,” she says. “It’s about that time the place I am going out into the world by myself, which individuals typically write about first, after which get on with their lives. Nevertheless it’s taken me so lengthy to digest it—I wanted 20 years simply to make sense of issues, and I noticed the place to begin of my artistic life isn’t Wales, it’s truly North America.”
Saunders provides: “I feel the way in which I’ve managed to put in writing in English is by acknowledging that I can’t translate loads of reminiscences. I’ve discovered that concept actually necessary to discover. I feel if I’d simply stayed in Wales, and I hadn’t lived wherever else or skilled every other tradition then it could be actually completely different. I’d’ve made information in Welsh, however I left residence at 16.”
Saunders’ long run collaborator Rhys Edwards as soon as once more produced the album, which was recorded dwell together with her band in her front room. The album additionally options fellow Welsh musicians Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline.
Summing up the expertise of writing and recording the album and revisiting her previous with it, Saunders says: “I really feel compelled as a songwriter to maintain digging all of it up. The whole lot’s a diary entry for me. And in writing about all of this I’ve remembered the chaos of myself.”
Learn our interview with Gwenno on Y Dydd Olaf.
Learn our interview with Gwenno on Le Kov.
3. disgrace: “Quiet Life”
4. Massive Thief: “All Night time, All Day”
5. Open Mike Eagle: “my co‐employee clark kent’s secret black field”
6. Fashionable Nature: “Supply”
7. Geese: “Taxes”
8. Jens Lekman: “Sweet From a Stranger”
9. Scorching Chip: “Devotion”
10. Indigo De Souza: “Be Just like the Water”
Honorable Mentions:
These songs virtually made the Prime 10. Discover all of them within the Spotify playlist.
Neko Case: “Wreck”
Coach Get together: “Do Your self a Favor”
Flyte: “Alabaster” (Feat. Aimee Mann)
Ganser: “Low cost Diamonds”
Hand Habits: “Jasmine Blossoms”
Idlewild: “Keep Out of Place”
Jay Som: “Float” (Feat. Jim Adkins) and “A Million Causes Why”
Marissa Nadler: “Hatchet Man”
Soulwax: “Run Free”
Mina Tindle: “Heaven Thunder” (Feat. Sufjan Stevens)
Right here’s a useful Spotify playlist that includes the Prime 10 so as, adopted by all of the honorable mentions:
