Best of 2025 roadtrip playlist

99 new songs + notes. Happy Independence Day.

Statue of Liberty, June 2025. Photo: Will Hermes

I hope this finds you well. Things are pretty fucked in America right now. But I’ve been travelling lately, and I’m finding a lot of beauty, a lot of reasons for hope. I’ll write more on that in the coming weeks. For now, I’ll share some music that’s been soundtracking my time on the interstates and lifting my spirits.

NB: I launched this Substack a year ago this week — I wanted an outlet to write more widely, make playlists, and mess with formats. I hoped it would connect with folks who like my books and magazine work, and newcomers too.

So big thanks to all of you for reading, and particularly those who support this newsletter with a paid subscription — you’re the only reason I can keep it going.

To celebrate this first birthday, along with my country’s 249th, I’ve compiled a mid-year Best of 2025 playlist in multiple formats, plus notes + addenda. 99 songs; no filler. Suitable for roadtrips, workouts, couchlocks. Links at bottom of post.

Enjoy, and be careful with those fireworks.

Ryan Davis “Monte Carlo/No Limits” — His latest record, New Threats From The Soul, is out at the end of the month, and it’s goddamn brilliant, a bumper crop of words and chords and ideas, with punchlines (my god, the punchlines) to burn. That’s Freakwater’s Catherine Irwin on harmony here, I believe (the excellent Myriam Gedron and Will Oldham also lend a hand on the LP). Bonus points for the sly Dylan reference.

Barry Can’t Swim “All My Friends” “Different” “Kimpton” — Another ace LP, this one due later this month, by a Scottish DJ (Joshua Spence Mainnie) working in the vein of Fatboy Slim. He chips vocal samples into club jam mosaics that sparkle with sweat beads and melodic hooks.

Cass McCombs “Princess” “Peace” — Like Davis, who he’s toured with, McCombs is a wordy white dude whose Dylan studies have been fully digested and personalized. He had me here at “Ella Fitzgerald/ thizz and whippets/ You were our priestess/ You were dressed all in black/ Singing ‘Angel from Montgomery.’” My wife said he lost her at “lime rickeys and tuna fish” — though she was all in for the epic about Lola Montez and her spider dance. And I co-sign anyone who puts the word “peace” in a song title. This one made me think of Sharon Van Etten’s great “Peace Signs.”

Blondshell “23’s a Baby” — Sabrina Mae Teitelbaum is 2025’s other Sabrina, far less celebrated but way more interesting. This song channels classic ‘60s girl group glory through decades of proto-punk / riot grrrl truthspeak to arrive back to the original Shangri-Las article, magnificently magnified. Bonus points for the wry video, shot in Central Park NYC.

Tyler Childers “Oneida” “Nose on the Grindstone” I saw Childers headline Madison Square Garden last year — the crest of wild career arc — and “Nose on the Grindstone,” a then-unreleased solo acoustic number and longrunning fan favorite, was the knockout. The studio version, an early taste of his forthcoming LP, is just as powerful. Above, a 2021 live version.

Daddy worked like a mule minin' Pike County coal
He messed up his back, couldn't work anymore
He said, "One of these days you'll get out of these hills
Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills

Obongjayar “Sweet Danger” “Not in Surrender” — A different kind of country music signifying from Steven Umoh, a Nigerian Brit Afrobeat star whose album Paradise Now will be in my top 5 this year for sure. That’s not counting his potent cameos on two other top-flight 2025 albums, by Little Simz and Annahstasia. It’s unclear what hotel he’s commandeering in the above video, but it doesn’t seem like anybody’s getting any rest.

Kelsey Waldon “Lost in My Idlin’” and “Falling Down” — As I wrote in Rolling Stone recently, “Idlin’” is a Hank Williams update with a tattoo-ready “wishin’ I was fucked up in some honky-tonk” chorus, and “Falling Down” is a first-person character study of hard drinking sung with a plainspoken, gut-punch lilt: “My wife is gone, and my kids are grown/And I don’t talk to them no more.”

Hailey Whitters “Shotgun Wedding Baby” — The mic drop on her great new album involves booze, like most of her best songs (see also “Loose Strings” + “Fillin’ My Cup”). A barstool 23andMe recap that begins “Eighteen don’t know shit from Shinola/Well thank God my daddy had Crown in his cola.”

Horsegirl “Where’d You Go” “Switch Over” “2468” “Julie” — This record is stacked. Indie rock by a bunch of twenty-something Chicago-to-NYC transplants who keep getting better.

Little Simz “Free” — Her album is also stacked, and this song is a virtuoso display, tending to a word that’s been beaten up badly of late.

The Statue of Liberty w/ tabula ansata, symbol of law and justice; June 2025. Photos: Will Hermes

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