Addison Rae – Headphones On
Summer is for out-of-office email bouncebacks, smashing your laptop shut at 4pm and putting it off until tomorrow. This year, no song represents the simple thrill of shrugging it off better than Addison Rae’s Headphones On. With a detached, lobotomy-chic delivery that’s drawn comparisons to Y2K-era Madonna, the TikTok star turned serious pop scholar breezes through a list of anxieties, from her parents’ relationship to the ever-present thrill of being bumped down a notch by “the new it girl”. Ultimately, our laconic heroine swaps a panic attack for slipping those headphones on and riding it all out with a song. Clocking in at exactly four minutes, there’s a straightforwardness to it all that I can’t help but appreciate. Rae will make you dance without working too hard. And that’s all I want right now. Alaina Demopoulos
Katseye – Gnarly
This song, sung by a six-woman international K-pop group, begins with an analysis of how malleable English slang is. “They could describe everything with one single word, you know? / Boba tea, gnarly / Tesla, gnarly / Fried chicken, gnarly,” one member of Katseye sings, the bass thumping every time she says the most versatile descriptive word in the language, signifying intensity, both positive and negative. It’s the early 2010s, and we’re so back. The song is as maximalist as can be, similar to Skrillex’s 2011 Bangarang or Kesha’s 2010 hit TiK ToK. The music video, in which the group assembles a grotesque sandwich, calls back to 2010’s Telephone, when Lady Gaga does the same. The song is fun and rowdy. It speeds forward, apt for TikTok (the app), where it first gained popularity with a distinctive, jerky dance. If you like Gnarly, I would suggest going in search of other songs by one of the song’s writers, Alice Longyu Gao. Rich Bitch Juice and 100 Boyfriends feature the same mix of heavy bass and saccharine, electrified vocals and instrumentation. Blake Montgomery
Jade – Plastic Box
Since squishing a NOW! compilation’s worth of ideas into three minutes on her solo single Angel of My Dreams, Jade has backed up what Little Mixologists always suspected – that she knows pop as if she has an MA in Bangers. Ahead of the release of her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby!, there’s something invitingly scrappy to the way she’s dovetailed from brash EDM to orgasmic disco, discarding cheap wigs and Jade-branded buttplugs in her wake. (To my mind, the only other pop act exploring genre this boldly is Sabrina Carpenter, who is something like a spiritual sibling to Jade as well as her stylistic opposite.) Plastic Box bottles a certain Scandinavian strain of sweet melancholy, with Jade playing the jilted lover over seductive electro-pop. Co-producers Grades and Oscar Görres, the latter of whom helmed most of Troye Sivan’s slick Something to Give Each Other, hug her voice with rosy synths and a chorus that explodes in a cloud of confetti. It’s an end of summer party that’s chicer than SSENSE – and despite Jade’s antics that made her so much fun to follow, Plastic Box proves that she’s just as magnetic when she strips them away. Owen Myers
PinkPantheress – Illegal
To me, summer feels like going at terminal velocity down a waterslide: an unstoppable blur that before you know it has spat you out in the run-out pool of autumn, dazed and blinking. PinkPantheress’s new 20-minute, 30-second mixtape Fancy That feels the same way, a rush of UK dance music history – heavy with samples of Basement Jaxx and Underworld and nods to Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada – guided by a flirt laying down the law in girlish RP. Illegal is the only time Pink’s grip loosens, thanks to a hero dose of THC that leaves her tangled in lust, paranoia and shame. Between the reality-obliterating synth strobes, her sensory production makes you feel all the freedom and frustration of being high, close breaths and screams flickering through the slipstream. Laura Snapes
forty winks – commie bf
There are plenty of songs of the summer about falling in love or partying or breaking up or going for a long, gorgeous drive, but there are hardly enough songs for summer lethargy. When the mercury hits 90 degrees, all my friends go insane, my technology stops working, and I start napping for at least one hour a day. Enter commie bf, a blunt buzzsaw of a song on which forty winks singer Cilia Catello yells that “everyone and everything makes my ears ring” right before she and her bandmates unleash a maelstrom of nasty, dementedly catchy punk-pop. This is a funny, and fun, and ferocious track – loud and unruly, but so intensely catchy that even the guitar-music-averse among us would have to admire its moxie. Catello’s sheer frustration rings through every second of the song, enough to shake you from that heatwave-induced stupor and get your ass back into gear, no matter how sweaty and malcontent you may be. Shaad D’Souza
MK – Dior (featuring Chrystal)
While pop fans fret about there not being a good enough song of the summer this year, the UK has gone ahead and anointed its choice anyway. MK’s Dior is now at No 1 in the UK charts, standard behaviour for a country whose inhabitants need only the faintest hint of a 4/4 pop-dance beat on a temperate day to crack open a tinned cocktail at 11am and go “wheeeeey” with arms stretched wide. US producer MK, AKA Marc Kinchen, has been around since the early 90s (he’s behind the still-ubiquitous Push the Feeling On) and therefore brings a level of craft to bear on his productions that puts them into a different league to all other mirrored-wall nightclub fodder. 2017’s 17 still shines like the white walls and high-tensile glass of an Ibizan villa; 2023’s Asking is as good as build-and-drop dance gets. 2025’s offering Dior is more coiled and sensual than those tracks, with a really dramatic delayed drop: silence and Chrystal’s a cappella vocal fill the space where you expect the beat, creating a simple but spine-tingling effect. The high fashion references meanwhile make it a sort of sequel to 2023’s equivalent dance-pop song of the summer, Cassö’s Prada. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Haim – Relationships
Best efforts notwithstanding, the vibes aren’t great this summer. The news is terrible, the AI ominous, the culture still in an extended hangover from last year’s Espresso buzz and Brat bumps. There is no obvious song of the summer – the charts are basically tracks from 2024 or Morgan Wallen (though you wouldn’t know it in godless New York); Charli xcx basically headlined Glastonbury; people are too busy arguing over Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover to remember her Espresso follow-up Manchild. In this muggy malaise, I’ve been stuck on Haim’s Relationships – the LA trio’s best pop song to date, a bright, deceptively airy anthem for being fucking over it. Lyrically, this lead single off the sisters’ aspirationally titled fourth album I Quit describes the messy end of some ill-defined entanglement. But its spare, intoxicating production – simple piano chords, ambling bass, synths glimmering like barlights at 9pm dusk – evokes a more general, potent summer ennui. I normally want the bpm up when it’s hot, but this summer, I’ve been circling blocks to Danielle’s dreamy falsetto, ascending with her rhetorical questions – fucking relationships, don’t they end up all the same? – and then crashing back to earth with her “when there’s no one else to blame”. Feelings? In this strung-out summer? Try me next year. Adrian Horton
The Beths – No Joy
The most joyous sounding song of this summer addresses depression, numbness and the futility of it all. No Joy, by the tuneful New Zealand quartet the Beths, provides an ideal object lesson in the thrill of mixed messages in pop. The music couldn’t feel more summery or light, fired by bouncy powerpop chords and chirpy backup vocals. The video, set in a candy-colored child’s playroom, follows suit, with lead singer/writer Elizabeth Stokes deadpanning her way through lyrics like: “All my pleasures, guilty / Clean slate looking filthy” and “I feel nothing,” all while her bandmates smile with satirically exaggerated pleasure. It’s impossible to keep a straight face while watching or listening to it, despite the fact that the numbness Stokes reports in her words reflects something sadly real. The lyrics chronicle her experience on the dulling SSRI drug she has used to deal with her depression. True as that may be for her, the song winds up giving the opposite feeling to the listener. When she sings “no joy” over and over we feel nothing but – a twist that could make this the most ironic song of this summer, as well as the most irresistible. Jim Farber
sombr – we never dated
Welcome to sombr season. Summer ‘25 seems to have given us a new star, and he’s Shane Boose – otherwise known by his melancholy moniker, sombr. A native of New York’s bustling Lower East Side, at just 19 he has effectively launched his mainstream career with a series of chart-topping singles which flaunts the artist’s emotional, guitar-propelled lyrics. Yes you read that right, the new generation has officially rediscovered actual instruments, with the teenage artist seemingly channelling alt-rock acts like Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, the latter of whom he’s cited as a major influence. Songs like We Never Dated flaunt brutally honest lyrics accented by guitar-picking led it to become an instant breakout upon its late June release, which makes it a no-brainer when it comes to Song of the Summer status. Meanwhile, he’s riding high on other explosive singles including Back to Friends, which recently was anointed as the most-streamed song on Spotify’s global charts. Rob LeDonne
Khamari – Head in a Jar
Without a factory-made earworm to invade our every waking moment, the floor has opened up to a wider selection of artists this summer and, as there always should be in my opinion, a wider selection of vibes to go with it. Songs of the summer are typically characterised by the infectious perk and sweaty overwhelm of mid-afternoon sun but there’s another seasonal feeling we all know, as the brightness starts to fade, that also deserves its space. Boston-born singer Khamari knows it too and in delicate downer Head in a Jar, he captures a brand of summery sadness that’s also rather seductive, a deliberate dive into dark feelings that’s as refreshing as an early evening breeze. It’s a song about being pushed away from the centre of someone’s life, forced to watch from a distance instead and, with a voice that has rightly earned comparisons to the mostly awol Frank Ocean, Khamari pierces right through. He’s quietly been gaining buzz since his similarly reflective 2020 EP Eldorado and this one deserves to vault him from the outside in. Benjamin Lee
Matías Aguayo – El Internet
You know you’re in the right party if someone throws down this tune. The Chilean-German firebrand Matías Aguayo returned in May with a subversive dancefloor heater that has been building in notoriety over the subsequent months. It’s sung in Spanish but translates to, Aguayo says: “walking through the city on hot summer nights looking for the perfect dancefloor”. But it’s also a mission statement, longing for “revolutions in music and dreams in community” away from homogenisation, social media likes and solely facing the DJ booth. In the track, Aguayo remembers the freewheeling days of YouTube rips where you could hear “raw, primitive and direct music” from, say, a Syrian wedding or Angolan teenagers dancing on the streets – references for El Internet’s own jittery, restless rhythm and also his live DJ sets, where he sings and dances inside a circle in the audience, inviting onlookers to move freely with him and let loose. It’s lithe, gonzo techno for sticky evenings in search of catharsis and connection. Kate Hutchinson
Tom Rasmussen – Gay Bar
Taken from London-based polymath Tom Rasmussen’s High Wire, a remixed and reimagined version of last year’s excellent Live Wire album, new song Gay Bar – not a cover of Electric Six, apols – showcases two of my favourite summer past-times; trashy storytelling and gossip. Who doesn’t love a steamy page-turner on the beach, interrupted only by the details of last night’s escapades wafting over from the gaggle of pals nearby? On Gay Bar, Rasmussen details three attempts at a night out; the first is interrupted by a pint to the face, and then completely ruined by the gay bar now being a Slug & Lettuce. Night two, meanwhile, involves going to the place where “Danielle sucked on that MP’s armpit”, but – shock horror! – it’s now a Crossfit gym full of “muscled up yuppies”. By night three, with hope dwindling, Rasmussen takes a straight friend giving off “bi vibes” to a busy gay bar. As the song’s hi-NRG dance pop ratchets up, you find yourself gripped as the story reaches its climax; will Cassandra get off with anyone? What’s Rasmussen doing in the basement? When will the decimation of queer nightlife end? It’s a real page-turner. Michael Cragg
