The Contenders, Vol. 25: Robyn, Rosalía, Nothing, Snocaps, more

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

In our final contenders episode of 2025, we’ve got some late additions to our running list of the year’s best songs, including Robyn’s first new release in seven years, the return of the existential shoegaze band Nothing and, of course, we’ve gotta include Rosalía.

NPR Music editor Hazel Cills joins host Robin Hilton.

Featured artists and songs:

Robyn: “Dopamine” (single)
Rosalía: “Divinize,” from 'LUX'
Snocaps: “Over Our Heads,” from ‘Snocaps’
Bassvictim: “Mr. President,” from ‘Forever’
Lola Young: “SPIDERS,” from ‘I’m Only F****** Myself’
Nothing: “cannibal world,” from ‘a short history of decay’

Weekly reset: Walking through Nara Park (the deer park) in Nara, Japan, on an autumn afternoon.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I feel like all I do on Fridays is just mark emails as read.
0:04.6	By 10.30 this morning, and I'm not making this up, by 1030 this morning, I had almost 400 emails that came just today.
0:12.9	All from labels and artists and publicists and telling me about a new release.
0:18.5	I don't think I'm ever marking emails as read.
0:23.9	I'm either reading them or they're not getting read.
0:26.1	So do you just leave them unread?
0:29.4	Do you just have an icon that's telling you, reminding you how much you failed?
0:35.1	I have 21,679 unread emails.
0:39.0	But to me, it doesn't feel like a fail, like I'm failing at anything.
0:44.1	I do the same thing that you do is like I skim the subject lines, but I'm not marking things as red because I just, the icon just like doesn't stress me out.
0:48.1	I don't know.
0:48.7	I'm like, it's not really my problem.
0:50.0	I think that artists and labels, whatever, should just randomly release their music whenever.
0:57.6	They're kind of doing that already.
0:59.6	Well, it's still too focused on Fridays because everything seems to come out on Friday.
1:06.3	That's when I get hammered with the most emails.
1:08.3	And then what ends up happening is it just ends up becoming this big, massive noise and chaos.
1:15.4	And it's just too much.
1:16.3	And then I miss almost everything.
1:25.9	It's all songs considered.
1:27.3	I'm Robin Hilton, NPR music editor, Hazel Sills, here, Hazel.
1:31.5	Thank you for having me.
	...

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