Welcome to Songs You Need to Know, our weekly rundown of the best music right now. The Rolling Stone Philippines team is constantly sharing things to listen to, and each week, we compile a ragtag playlist of songs that we believe every music fan today needs to know. Whether it’s the hottest new single or an old track that captures the state of the present, our hope is that you discover something for your musical canon.
This week’s songs come straight from the deeper corners of electronica and pop music. Voice Actor and Squu flickers at the edge of the club, where synthetic pulses mimic human nervous systems. Across the Pacific, Doechii and SZA keep it clipped and deliberate on “girl, get up.,” brushing off industry chatter with cool focus and sharp timing. Bacolod’s Novocrane pushes Filipino indie rock through distortion, autotune, and last-second chaos. DJ Danz brings things back to the street with “Atchup Boulevard,” a budots track meant for movement, repetition, and loose confidence. Put together, these tracks show music moving fast and thinking sideways.
A cool, stripped-back send-off to haters
2025 was a big year for Doechii, whose 2024 album Alligator Bites Never Heal proved to be a sleeper hit. Following the viral success of the Gotye-sampling “Anxiety,” the American rapper closed off 2025 with “girl, get up.” featuring SZA.
Produced by Jay Versace, the track borrows its beat from Baby and Clipse’s “What Happened To That Boy,” but manages to render it moody and meditative. “I be in the back levitatin’ / doing meditation / leave me, girl, get up,” SZA sings between Doechii’s verses, which address industry plant accusations and the music industry’s misogynistic tendency to compare female artists. The track ends with one more run of the chorus, at once a cool and calm adieu to the haters and a welcoming of abundance for the new year. —Pie Gonzaga
Informative trip-hop all the way from the Arabic homeland
“Shmaali” is rooted in Arabic musical tradition while moving fluidly through trip-hop textures. Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan approaches political and emotional turmoil into a lesson of her home country. Her voice stays measured, almost conversational, letting the details do the work. The song unfolds with steady grooves and melodic fragments that hint at North African and Middle Eastern instrumentation, making “Shmaali” compelling in its sonic balance.
Hamdan’s vocals sit calmly above the mix, carrying grief, resolve, and observation in equal parts. “Shmaali” feels designed for motion, for listening while moving through cities shaped by history, where memory and present reality overlap without explanation. —Elijah Pareño
Pinoy indie rock goes 100 gecs
One of the newer artists to float around my algorithm recently is Filipino four-piece rock outfit Novocrane. “Moshpit,” released in November 2025, is a surprising departure from other releases thus far, but it promises a range in sound for the band. While their three other singles are imbued with slamming drums and fuzzy guitars, “Moshpit” is different, deploying overdriven synths and autotune that safely put the track in the glitch pop category. Yet Novocrane doesn’t exactly ditch the rock elements, and in the last 25 seconds, the track satisfyingly goes full headbanger mode. —Pie Gonzaga
Ambient washes of dance music hidden underneath
In “Rattle,” a track by experimental electronic music producer Voice Actor and Welsh producer Squu, sounds twitch, shimmer, and misfire, then lock into brief moments of clarity before dissolving back into haze. Squu’s pads stretch wide and glossy, smearing color across the track while Voice Actor’s processed voice cuts through with a clipped, almost instructional authority. It sounds ceremonial and mechanical at the same time.
“Rattle” drifts on arpeggios that barely resolve over its four-minute runtime, held together by soft pulses that suggest dance music without committing to it. The track lives in that in-between space where ambient music flirts with house music’s groovy rhythms. This is club music imagined through a fogged screen, all sensation filtered, delayed, and slightly warped. —Elijah Pareño
You’re cool if you dance along to budots
Pulled from music showcase Sounds Nais’ latest mixtape, “Atchup Boulevard” by Davao-based producer DJ Danz draws from the slang word “atchup” meaning cool and slightly reckless. . The trademark budots beat hits immediately: Percussion snaps, bouncy bass lines, and a groove stays loose. DJ Danz understands that budots thrives on repetition and momentum, with “Atchup Boulevard” being perfect for a midnight stroll down the busy part of town. This track isn’t on Spotify, so go listen to it on Bandcamp. —Elijah Pareño
A glitchy pop cut that goes beyond Jersey club
After releasing their third album Revengeseekerz earlier last year, American musician Jane Remover dropped the EP ♡ (or Heart) in December 2025, imparting on their fans a wide-ranging set of pop tracks that dip their toes in other genres.
The first half of “Music Baby” is anchored on a muted Jersey club beat, and for Remover’s contemporaries, this groove could easily be a crutch. But “Music Baby” is a strong experimental pop track, shimmering with glitchy textures and Remover’s breezy vocals. From the falsettos to the catchy chorus, a repeating “Like B-O-Y / B-A-B-Y-B-O-Y,” Remover in this track proves what makes a pop song pop, and cements their Gen Z cult star status. —Pie Gonzaga
