Songs You Need In Your Life This Week
Tracks we love right now, in no particular order.
Songs You Need In Your Life: January 29, 2025

Each week, The FADER staff rounds up the songs we can't get enough of. Here they are, in no particular order. Listen on our Spotify and Apple Music playlists, or hear them all below.

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Ledbyher, “Daydreaming Made Me Blue”

I first came across “Daydreaming Made Me Blue” on Reels. Ledbyher, the London-based rapper-producer behind the song, walks through a public park somewhere outside the Shire dressed like Oliver Twist if he was styled by Balenciaga. There haven’t been many moments in 2025 where a rapper has floated as immediately as Ledbyher does here on a self-produced nu-jerk beat: “I don’t like to feed my belly, I’m rebellious / And I don’t like to chase the telly, what they tellin’ us.” She stays hungry and refuses to follow the crowd, a key statement for any notable artist. —Jordan Darville

Mereba, "Phone Me"

Everything that comes out of Mereba’s mouth sounds like ages-old wisdom. Her last single, “Counterfeit,” is years of therapized self-confidence bottled into a song. Her newest is a sage look at friendship, her sister, her “twinnem.” It’s only at the end when she sings “I hope you’re doing alright/ we had a good ride,” that you realize the song’s hidden sadness but Mereba’s grace wins out. —Steffanee Wang

Tate McRae, "Sports Car"

Tate McRae is heating up Nelly Furtado’s stale nachos and I’m eating them up. “Sports Car” with its whispered hook, bleeping beat, and Timbaland-like drums, actually sounds like the best of Pussycat Dolls and Furtado mashed together with just a liiittle bit of McRae’s je ne sais quois sprinkled it. What does it say about me that I like this? You’ll soon be asking yourself the same thing. —SW

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Ksuuvi, “Havoc

Ksuuvi’s new EP Hymns puts me in one of my favorite listening modes: completely overwhelmed with hints of claustrophobia but still bobbing my head with a screwed-up face. The rapper-producer, and affiliate of xaviersobased’s 1c, laces “Havoc” with cursed elements like Raider Klan-esque synths and a distorted Jersey club beat so haunted it might carve sigils in your ears if you listen with headphones. —JD

Lucrecia Dalt feat. David Sylvian, “cosa rara”

Colombian sound sorceress Lucrecia Dalt’s first release since her 2022 sci-fi bolero masterpiece, ¡Ay!, is a swampy single featuring legendary English singer David Sylvian. “cosa rara” is driven by languid percussion, a slinky bass, and synths that sound like the ominous howls of unseen animals as you steer a rowboat through the entrance of a dark cave. In Sylvian’s gritty vocals, Dalt finds the perfect foil for her own airy delivery — a real-life monster lying in wait at the end of the haunted lazy river ride. —Raphael Helfand

Momma, “I Want You (Fever)”

On Momma’s latest single “I Want You (Fever),” no taboo is off limits. The Brooklyn four-piece’s latest single off their forthcoming album Welcome to My Blue Sky, due in April, is a shimmering shoegazey number about leaning into desire and want at whatever cost. “Pick up and leave her / I want you (fever),” goes the hooky chorus, gently coaxing their object of affection into leaving their lover. Distortion and dissonance swirl as intoxicating as its spiel. —Cady Siregar

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Lucy Liyou, “Arrested”

The music of Lucy Liyou bears an intensity that pulls you in like a tractor beam. “Arrested,” the lead single from her newly announced album Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Voice, is a grand emotional plea to a lover — “stay” — and to the universe to lock said lover in place. The song builds toward a stadium-sized hook, lusher and poppier than anything Liyou has ever made. —RH

Mdou Moctar, “Funeral for Justice (Injustice Version)”

Tears of Injustice, the acoustic reimagining of Mdou Moctar’s 2024 LP Funeral for Justice, comes with a looser, less laser-focused redux of that album’s title track. No longer so charged with anger, the song’s sunny vibe belies the urgency in Moctar’s plea to African leaders to stand with their own peoples rather than kowtowing to French and American leaders. Stripped of flashy shredding, his pressing questions are clearer and in some ways more pointed than that of the original track. —RH

Soo Joo, "Take It Off"

Musician and model Soo Joo's latest song will resonate with anyone trapped inside their own mind. She sings about feeling "tangled and torn" with a cut-glass delivery over a cavalcade of icy digital beats. Produced by Casey MQ (oklou, Empress Of) and Rodaidh McDonald (The xx) among others, "Take It Off" feels like bursting out of those beaten down feelings and freefalling into the great unknown. —DR

SASAMI, Clairo, "In Love With A Memory"

SASAMI unleashes another spectral pop gem from her upcoming album Blood On The Silver Screen. "In Love With A Memory" adds sparkle to a janky drum machine, with Clairo joining her to lounge in the natural order of things as good times inevitably morph into bittersweet souvenirs in your mind. —David Renshaw

Lily Seabird: "Trash Mountain (1pm)"

Lily Seabird's home is a former landfill site in Burlington, VT, that she lovingly refers to as Trash Mountain. That sense of finding comfort in the grime of life forms the foundation of the singer-songwriter's latest song. Between acoustic guitar and bursts of harmonica, she paints vivid pictures: men drunk on "twisted tea" and AirForces dangling from the phone wires. Amid fears over technology and its affect on our collective psyche, Seabird makes a great argument for logging off and being with your people, instead. —DR

Songs You Need In Your Life: January 29, 2025