As is now customary, I’m going to dim the lights at this online establishment for the next couple weeks, returning around the first of the year with some bits of retrospection business. That makes this the last song-of-the-week post for 2025. Luckily, it’s a dandy.

Florence Road is an Irish band that showed up in this space earlier in the year, with the Sundays-style single “Caterpillar.” That was followed by their much-lauded debut mixtape, Fall Back, and now they’re closing out an impressive 2025 with the new track “Storm Warnings.” In its opening moments, the song is reminiscent of R.E.M. circa Automatic for the People or a slightly less drifty Mazzy Star. Then, it builds and expands into a cacophony of layered, polished anthemic rock, as if Florence Road felt the need to craft a song big enough to rattle the whole world. It’s an epic that wraps up in three and a half minutes. That’s pop perfection.