THE TWELVE GROOVES OF CHRISTMAS: SONGS (Best New Music of 2025)
The 12 Grooves of Christmas. 2025’s Best Songs
No geese or golden rings… just grooves.
This year has tested our humanity in many ways, but it has also brought us together through some brilliant music. We’ve done our best to whittle down the cream of the crop, in The Groove’s Christmas countdown, marking the greatest tracks to be released this year.
Read the countdown below for our top 12 songs of 2025.
12. Seeing Stars - Turnstile
This year, Turnstile emerged from the throes of hardcore punk and opened their music up to wider genre influences, which earned them a hugely successful album and upgraded-capacity warehouse and arena tour. ‘Seeing Stars’ is the most commercially accessible song off 2025 record ‘Never Enough’, and likely the gateway drug for many new fans. It builds at just the right pace, before erupting into a guitar solo that’s a delicious blend of rock, indie and disco.
11. let’s go swimming — palace
‘Let’s Go Swimming’ is a delightfully heady tribute to simple, pure joys. There’s an innocence to this song that’s effortlessly enjoyable to indulge in. Off their April ‘Greyhound’ EP, Palace said they wanted their new music ‘to feel hopeful, and… optimistic and vibrant. Its lengthy instrumental opens up to the underwater world, capturing the lush, free-flowing sound of an evening swim. Feel yourself invited, then immersed, in the cool waters of a glistening lake at the end of a balmy summer.
10. BACK TO FRIENDS — sombr
Sombr’s year started with homemade TikTok snippets, and has ended with the New Yorker nominated for a ‘Best New Artist’ Grammy, also recently making his UK TV debut. The first single from debut album ‘I Barely Know Her’, ‘Back To Friends’ was written and produced by Shane Boose alone. Beachboy vocal harmonies meet heavy piano chords and finely plucked electric guitar, telling the tale of teen heartbreak – creating a sound as dramatic and all-consuming as it feels.
9. EAGLE IN MY NEST — DEL WATER GAP
The closing track on Del Water Gap’s November album ‘Chasing The Chimera’, ‘Eagle In My Nest’ is an emotional tribute to parenthood, painting the bonded experience of pregnancy at the most graphic end of intimacy: ‘A tiny naked guest / the blood we shared was warm’. Softened with strings that build to a beautiful chorus, S. Holden Jaffe’s lyrics are an eternal pessimist's steps towards optimism. This album is deeply confessional, and its symphonic finale is a truly life-affirming ending.
8. Play It Out — Wolf Alice
‘Play It Out’ is an aching whisper on Wolf Alice’s stomping August album, ‘The Clearing’. Ellie Rowsell questions her self-worth if she’s not a mother, ‘on a man’, or full of youth: ‘I will rule the world, rock the cradle with a babeless hand / Just watch me build castles in the hourglass sand.’ The melody wraps up in a twinkling La La Land piano that mimics a shoebox nursery rhyme, a lightness to juxtapose a song that’s heavy with desire, loss and the weight of a question staring down every woman — yet hardly ever the subject of a song.
7. Where Is My Husband? — RAYE
RAYE’s timeless glamour and contemporary lyrics have put her on the path to unnegotiable stardom – with six sold out night at the O2 beckoning next year, despite her admittance that there is not yet a second album in physical format. ‘Where Is My Husband’ is a big band pop song, sounding both unmistakably RAYE and unlike anything else on the radio. And let’s just appreciate that bridge: the pace, the diction, the shoutout from Grandma – what more could you ask for?
6. Rein ME In — Sam Fender Ft. Olivia Dean
‘Rein Me In’ sweeps in a wistful, regretting nostalgia from the opening lines, one of the most personal, and best, tracks from February album ‘People Watching’. Sam Fender drags you into his memories and squeezes his pain into your hand as the song builds to an increasingly desperate plea. It’s also the first of two appearances for Olivia Dean on our countdown, whose verse and harmonies on this song infuse it with a lighter tone, and by offering an ‘out’, lift it towards hope in its final chorus.
5. Enough — Little Simz ft. Yukimi
‘Woman’ walked so ‘Enough’ could run. The eighth track off the brilliant ‘Lotus’ record, ‘Enough’ is impossibly funky and ridiculously confident. Ultimately, it’s the bass and glockenspiel/toy piano that carry this song, but Little Simz’ icy deliveries uplift and take down with precision, depending which end of the firing line you’re on. ‘I’m not the one to test / I can’t take disrespect’ she warns, and boy, do you believe her. Bolstered by the kitsy bridge from Yukimi, the charisma that oozes from this song is hard to deny.
4. Man I Need — Olivia Dean
Pretty much everyone fell in love with ‘Man I Need’ when it was released as a single in August... and Olivia Dean as a result. Part of the song’s appeal is its refreshing embrace of self-sufficiency and intrinsic self-worth in the search for love. But there’s also something addictively gorgeous about those full-bodied piano chords; the perfect backdrop for Dean’s whimsical, airy vocals to dance above. This is the song that introduced the world to a star in the making, and offered it some much-needed hope and optimism in return.
3. die happy — holly humberstone
Holly Humberstone introduced her new music era with this beautifully tragic, transcendent song that encapsulates a specific kind of obsessive, all-encompassing romance. Humberstone’s voice is a blend of pureness and gravel, a harmonious match for the track’s ‘neo-goth’ style, lining up love and death side by side. Wispy vocals and heavy bass complement these light and dark themes wonderfully, and the result is the exquisitely dramatic ‘Die Happy’, a track which carts you off to a heavenly daydream and is a delight to get lost in at max volume.
2. Jesus Is A Woman — James Smith
Name a better bassline to come out of 2025… we’ll wait. James Smith pulled the groove equivalent of a rabbit out the hat with August single ‘Jesus Is A Woman’ – a song that doesn’t get old no matter how many times it’s played. Listen to it while getting ready for a night out, when your commute needs some energy, or really just… whenever. With a music video saluting the drag community and an irresistibly catchy falsetto chorus, this is the perfect feelgood track for celebrating femininity of all kinds.
1. bloom baby bloom — wolf alice
‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ is Wolf Alice stepping into the spotlight, on their own terms. On the practice of self-acceptance, it sums up the ethos of album ‘The Clearing’ where it finds its home, while shining in its own right as a single. Ellie Rowsell flips from angelic to snarling on a beat, freely expressing her ridiculous vocal capabilities: just listen to how much there is going on in the second verse. The lyrics tell the story of someone undervalued and disrespected, before pounding drums collapse into the soaring chorus — where we find a band projecting unassailable confidence.