The best new rock songs you need to hear right now

We’re terribly old-fashioned, so it still feels a little odd when a musician describes themselves as “a digital creator” rather than, well, a musician, but it’s clearly doing Lucie Sue no harm as the French multi-instrumentalist-turned-rock-ace has triumphed in our latest Tracks Of The Week contest, just like she did with her previous single. So congratulations to her.

And congratulations to Orianthi and Buckcherry, who both scored well, but not enough to topple Lucie from her digital perch.

Our latest eight are below. Please vote for your favourite before leaving to go somewhere else.

Ewan Currie – Big Pine Key

The Sheepdogs frontman returns to serenade us with Florida sunshine, sunglasses and tall palm tree vibes on Big Pine Key – a beautifully smooth piece of laidback, sunkissed yet introspective holiday atmosphere, fresh off his new solo album Strange Vacation. “I was driving down the highway in the Florida Keys when I saw a sign for ‘Big Pine Key’,” Currie says, of the song’s origins. “I spontaneously started singing, and the song just flowed out. It became a summery kind of groove and really set the tone for the whole record.”

---

Joe Bonamassa – Drive By The Exit Sign

He’s about to head out on tour in Europe with Black Country Communion (followed by Rory Gallagher tribute nights in Cork) but first of all Joe’s got a new single to showcase, and it’s a bit of a banger. One of his grooviest, sassiest tracks yet – built on a juicy little hook that’ll have you reaching for a guitar, whether or not you play – Drive By The Exit Sign mixes his blues vocabulary with southern-sizzled slide lines and a rock’n’roll feel that slips down very easily.

---

Turnstile – Look Out For Me

A lot happens on the Baltimore hardcore mavericks’ new track, but somehow it all sort of makes sense. Charged with a refreshing sense of adventure, Look Out For Me grows from killer opening chords into a riffy headbanger, peppered with juddering electronics and dropping into a dreamy middle-eight section, before traversing through softer flavours of new-wave, alt pop and electronica and leaving you hanging – wondering what comes next. Colourful, commanding big swings that add up to something genuinely interesting.

---

The Dead Deads – Prove It

Back in 2021 we described The Dead Deads as “the 21st century rock’n’roll band you’ve been waiting for”, so we’re delighted to welcome them into 2025 with a new single. They haven’t strayed too path from the path they were already on (think Weezer or The Breeders, but with extra crunch), nor have they lost their way when it comes to songwriting, for Prove It arrives with a chorus bigger than a battleship. Excellent stuff.

---

Robert Randolph – Big Women

“When we say ‘big,’ we’re talking about strength, confidence, and lived experience,” pedal-steel star Randolph explains, of the inspiration behind this unctuous, swaggering soul-blues’n’roll taste of his next album, Preacher Kids (his first one with legendary Memphis label Sun Records, i.e. home Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash etc etc). “Big women have that energy you recognize right away. It’s next-level.” Not a new ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, then. Pretty damn good though.

---

Jerry Cantrell – I Want Blood

The Alice In Chains guitarist plays live with Duff McKagan and Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin on this darkly arty new video for the title track of his latest album (director Bill Yukich is known for Beyonce’s Lemonade and Shinedown’s ATTENTION ATTENTION, among many others), a gritty, hooky banger, wreathed in smoke and existential shadows. “’I Want Blood’ explores our struggle against time,” Yukich says, “a force we can’t escape and the only thing we truly possess… until we don’t.”

---

Jakko M. Jakszyk – Son Of Glen

If you’ve not read the King Crimson singer/guitarist’s absorbing 2024 memoir, Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair?, it’s well worth picking up a copy. If you want a flavour of the storytelling there, in song form, Son Of Glen is a good place to start. Centred on a fantasy of Jakszyk’s father (a man he never knew, and only learned the identity of three years ago) guiding him from afar, it’s a rich, progressive epic with a delicate touch and emotional weight that takes you into Jakszyk’s journey with him. The album of the same name comes out next month.

---

Dinosaur Pile-Up – Big Dogs

The returning heavy alt-rockers’ new single is billed accurately as: “a big dumb song about the fact that when you’re rich and famous people give you everything for free – but when you’re hustling down at the bottom nobody gives your broke ass anything! And that doesn’t make any sense!!” Imagine Slayer jamming in a punk club with Fountains Of Wayne and you’re in the right ballpark. Find more on their forthcoming album, I’ve Felt Better, which comes out in August.

Polly is deputy editor at Classic Rock magazine, where she writes and commissions regular pieces and longer reads (including new band coverage), and has interviewed rock’s biggest and newest names. She also contributes to Louder, Prog and Metal Hammer and talks about songs on the 20 Minute Club podcast. Elsewhere she’s had work published in The Musician, delicious. magazine and others, and written biographies for various album campaigns. In a previous life as a women’s magazine junior she interviewed Tracey Emin and Lily James – and wangled Rival Sons into the arts pages. In her spare time she writes fiction and cooks.