AVQ&A: What's your personal song of the summer?

This year, with no clear frontrunner in sight, we had to take matters into our own hands.

By A.V. Club Staff  |  August 2, 2025 | 8:00am
Left to right: Japanese Breakfast, "Mega Circuit" art (Photo: Pak Bae); Wet Leg (Album art: Domino Recording Company); PinkPantheress (Screenshot: YouTube)
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AVQ&A: What's your personal song of the summer?
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August has already begun, and yet, we still don’t have a universal or easily identifiable Song Of The Summer 2025. In response to this sad state of affairs, Staff Writer Emma Keates asks: What’s your personal song of the summer?

MJ Lenderman, "Dancing In The Club"

At a show in Austin back in February, I experienced something that happens to me less and less these days, when a song I hadn’t heard before is performed and hits me like a bolt of lightning. “Dancing In The Club,” I’d later learn, is actually a cover of a track by This Is Lorelei (Nate Amos of the outfit Water From Your Eyes). But on that evening, Lenderman & co.’s version laid me out, with the frontman starting, melancholic and gentle, with “Lost your love today in a lonely summer breeze / I was dreaming all my dreams / Yeah, I’m my own worst enemy” and then, as the band beautifully builds, telling a metaphorical tale about playing cards with striking likes like “I fucked up my guitar while I was fucking up my heart.” It’s been in heavy rotation since then and has a sad-sack warmth that feels just right on a summer night. [Tim Lowery]

PinkPantheress, "Stateside"

PinkPantheress has been praised for years as a promising Gen Z pop talent, but it wasn’t until this summer that her music really clicked for me. But boy did her album Fancy That click for me, and its second single “Stateside” has been a near-daily listen for the past three months. Like a spiritual sequel to Estelle’s “American Boy,” “Stateside” is an exemplary pop song, full of different little ear baubles that keep the song feeling both fresh and addictive. It’s actually the synth bassline, part pep band and part midi ringtone, that I find stuck in my head most often; the way Pink’s delivery of “But you’re nice, so I’ll stay / Nevеr met a British girl, you say?” skates on top of it scratches my brain in just the right way. [Drew Gillis]

Japanese Breakfast, "Mega Circuit"

So many artists are going country these days, but none of those turns have stirred me quite like Japanese Breakfast’s in “Mega Circuit.” It’s subtle, but the song’s twangier-than-normal instrumentation (which sounds a bit like Alex G’s “Headlights,” another song of the summer contender for yours truly) perfectly complements Michelle Zauner’s lyrics about muddy ATVs and jaded young men. That guitar part is also just obscenely catchy and hasn’t left my brain since I first heard it earlier this year. “Mega Circuit” isn’t a particularly sunny or optimistic song—art about “incel eunuchs” rarely is—but really, what could be more appropriate for summer 2025? [Emma Keates]

Creepy Nuts, "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born"

While I found my way into the world of oddball Japanese hip-hoppers Creepy Nuts through “Otonoke,” which gave the first season of Dan Da Dan its kinetic earworm of an opening, I can’t stop listening to another song from the same album: “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born.” With even goofier instrumentation than “Otonoke,” this song (which also served as an anime theme, though for a show I’ve never even heard of) opens the duo’s album Legion with what I can only describe as “Ludacris speed-rapping over the ‘Spooky, Scary Skeletons’ xylophones.” I know, I know—need I say more? It’s a song that sounds like it’s from a band whose shows open with David S. Pumpkins, and you’re just not getting that in your standard rotation of summer hits. [Jacob Oller]

Bad Bunny and Los Pleneros De La Cresta, "CAFé CON RON"

I’ve been “imbibing” this Debí Tirar Más Fotos track since its release in January, but it still holds up as my personal pick for the song that best captures summer’s vibe this year. The call-and-response chorus of this plena-inspired collaboration sets a clear demarcation between the workday and the rest of the day—coffee to fuel the morning, rum for the evening—beckoning listeners away from their labor and join the parranda. Its throwback vibe reminds me of a time when “summer” went hand in hand with “break” (so, childhood), but its rousing sound is also a great way to set the tone for a night out in the present. [Danette Chavez]

Rachel Chinouriri, "Can We Talk About Isaac?"

It’s difficult to choose just one from my summer rotation, but I’ll give the top spot to “Can We Talk About Isaac?” by Rachel Chinouriri. I’m not usually a “play the same song on repeat” person, but this one is enough of an earworm that I’ve been listening to it over and over since it came out. I love the production, Chinouriri’s voice, and her clever lyrics that perfectly capture having a crush. I’ve felt the exact feeling behind “Now I’ve gotta call somebody to tell somebody ’bout you,” and the line “If we’re gonna cry, can we do it in silence/But if we’re gonna talk, can we talk about Isaac?” is really funny. Chinouriri has been one to watch in the pop space for a while, but this track deserves to be a summer smash. (My runner-ups include “Last Girls At The Party” by The Beaches, “Fair Game” by Samia, “(I Can See) The Future” by Leith Ross, and all of Virgin by Lorde.) [Mary Kate Carr]

Wet Leg, "catch these fists"

For me, a “song of the summer” has to have two key components: vibes and aesthetics. Wet Leg’s “catch these fists” delivers on both fronts. Much has been made of frontwoman Rhian Teasdale’s new look, and much of that commentary is misogynistic, gross, and unnecessary, but from a purely thematic standpoint, a slightly otherworldly, muscular woman with hairy armpits is a perfect visual complement to a song about punching pushy dudes. The “fed up with this shit” vibes are perfect for the hot summer months, when simply dressing appropriately for the weather can garner unwanted attention. Plus, that addictive opening guitar line will get stuck in your head for days. [Jen Lennon]

 
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