Hello there, and a very warm welcome to Guitar World editors’ picks – our monthly guide to the guitar tracks that have captured the attentions of our editors over the past four weeks or so.
With the aid of our Spotify playlist below, we’ve rounded up all our favorite new releases from the month of March, and put them under the microscope to wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that have set our six-string senses a-tingling.
Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief, GuitarWorld.com
The six-string disruptors are out in force this month, and they don’t care what you think. Machine Gun Kelly – who Tim Henson hailed earlier this year for making guitar cool again – has returned with his divisive Schecter Razorblade signature for your name forever, which fuses his rap and punk-rock personas. The end result sounds like vintage-era Linkin Park – and he even tapped up a surprisingly restrained Synyster Gates for the solo, too.
But it’s YUNGBLUD who has upped the ante with Hello Heaven, Hello – a nine-minute, hard-rocking, orchestra-embellished track that the word ‘epic’ doesn’t quite do justice to. It’s like the Black Parade for Generation Z, with hints of Aerosmith and Queen thrown in for good measure, and co-guitarist Adam Warrington ripping his best Page-isms. If any song can unite all generations of rock guitar fans, this is it.
Meanwhile, on the heavier side of the mainstream, Sleep Token are readying fourth album Even In Arcadia, and its debut single, Emergence, continues the astonishing form that saw the masked metallers becoming unlikely TikTok heartthrobs.
It’s an agonizing 2:40 wait before the eight-strings land their sucker punches, but when that outro riff transfers the vocal line to high-gain guitars… Hoo boy. Only Bloodywood can compete in the genre mashup stakes, with Kismat perhaps the most effective example yet of their Indian folk-meets-metalcore savagery.
Pierre Danel of France’s Novelists, on the other hand, is pioneering his own fusion by bringing, erm, fusion into anthemic metal. His leads in Say My Name are a tour de force of technique, taste, and tone, bringing a fluidity rarely heard in the genre. It is, dare I say it, one of 2025’s best solos so far.
Although he’d face tough competition from Steven Wilson’s partner-in-crime Randy McStine, who draws on from a broad palette of evocative textures to conjure futuristic prog solos that go far beyond Gilmour. I’ve had to stick Objects Outlive Us at the end of the playlist owing to its 23-minute duration, but it’s some of the most inspiring, transcendent guitar playing I’ve heard in ages.
Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor
![feeble little horse - This Is Real [Official Audio] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ZZ5ARgm--Ok/maxresdefault.jpg)
How’s this month been for new music, you ask? Well, after all was said and done, my playlist of personal picks clocked in at over three hours. And as was the case in January and February, the highlights came from players pushing the boundaries of the instrument from every conceivable direction (though you’ll catch a bit of a slant in my write-ups, sorry). These were a few of my favorites…
Slapping one of the usual “alt” or ”indie” labels on Pittsburgh quartet feeble little horse has long felt unfair – they're one of those bands that's best approached without an angle.
Take their new single, This is Real. Loud/quiet/loud isn't necessarily a new equation, but the way the twistily catchy verses are followed by a fuzz-forward (that's not really doing justice to how diabolical the tones are) explosion in the song's chorus literally stopped me in my tracks – and I didn't even have my volume up that high.
Oh, and speaking of fuzz fury, 777, the new single from illuminati hotties (the project of Sarah Tudzin) has not one, but two, killer sing-along solos – the kind that’ll remind you why you picked the instrument up in the first place.
On a rather different note is Samantha Fish’s I’m Done Runnin’, which manages, as she always does, to avoid tried-and-true blues cliches. Nodding to her forebears while delivering a chorus in particular that sounds right at home in 2025, Fish caps things off with a solo that snakes brilliantly around the progression. It takes a confident player to play something that smooth and not foreground it in all-caps – and it speaks to Fish’s songwriting ability that she doesn’t.
Additionally, I’d love to shout out Superheaven’s Stare at the Void (I blabbered on about them for five paragraphs or so last month) and Orchid Mantis’s (speaking of artists who I literally never shut up about) beautifully ethereal new single, Spirit Circle.
Matt Parker – Features Editor
This month I’ve been thinking a lot about how, as guitarists, our first response to most musical questions is ‘guitar!’ We’re fortunate, as guitar players, to have an instrument that can cover most bases, but our default is so often to leave it lumbering along eating-up mix space with chunky chord sequences.
Two tracks from the indie sphere have therefore caught my ear for the way they use the guitar, or sometimes don’t. Broncho’s I Swear – the latest from the Oklahoman mumble rock lynchpins – envelopes you in breathy synth-like textures, but does so with a super-low-mixed, watercolor wash of acoustic that drifts over that thick-as-a-brick bass, then intersperses with short bursts of Marr-like electric.
Seattle, WA indie sleeper cells Great Grandpa have also spent a lot more time thinking about this than your average van-dwellers. Recent single Never Rest – from new album Patience, Moonbeam – is a great showcase.
Like many of their songs, it started life on Pat Goodwin’s acoustic, but in the studio they break out lines, sometimes string by string, and give them new homes on other instruments, whether it be piano, bass, strings, electric guitar, or weird synth pedals. It’s a great reminder that just because a song starts its life on acoustic, it doesn’t have to end it there.
In the metalcore world, Atlanta, GA’s The Callous Daoboys certainly have no problem gobbling up the mix with gigantic guitar lines, but their double-drop new singles Two–Headed Trout and The Demon of Unreality Limping Like A Dog, seem to pull on threads of Latin percussion and folk fiddle, synth swagger and just about anything else that Spotify has thrown across the decks at 4 am on a wet Thursday.
All of which means that when the bludgeoning riffs come melting through the speaker grille, amid the dog barks and bit-crushers, I am truly here for it…
Matt Owen – Senior Staff Writer
Since the start of 2025, my playlist has largely been dominated by three artists: Medium Build, Divorce, and Rachel Chinouriri. To see all three release new material in March, therefore, is something of a miracle, and has made the past four weeks feel like something of a lottery win.
Divorce’s new album, Drive to Goldenhammer, is a masterclass of rootsy indie rock and I can’t get enough of it. The sludgy, beefy, slide-loaded tones of Jet Show serve as a particular highlight, more so for the fact I’m in a bit of a slide guitar rabbit hole right now because of my playing commitments.
Chinouriri, meanwhile, demonstrated once again that 2025 will indeed be her year, serving up Can We Talk About Isaac? as a bruising, riff-driven chaser to follow her collaboration with sombr last month.
Conversely, Medium Build (AKA Nicholas Carpenter) opted to strip away the production for White Male Privilege and, as he so often does, lets loose on a blinding, moving commentary that is as dynamic instrumentally as it is powerful thematically.
Swimming in the opposite end of the same pool, overpass is one of the hottest names in the UK’s indie-rock guitar band circuit right now, and with the release of their new EP, Dependent, it’s clear to see why.
Overpass have mastered the art of channeling the spirit of late ’90s and early noughties arena rock, and Slow is a great ice-breaker for listeners: huge progressions, mammoth hooks, and an irresistible chorus destined for stadium speakers.
Oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention the newest cut from Joe Bonamassa, Shake This Ground – which, in true JoBo style, offers a very early contender for solo of the year. If you fancy giving some good ol’ fashioned blues rock a spin, look no further.
Janelle Borg – Staff Writer
While the first half of the month saw me fully immersed in a heady mixture of bachata, merengue, and salsa – courtesy of the Dominican Republic – the second half had me captivated by my usual hodgepodge of playlists, though this month's selections were slightly more pop-oriented than usual.
Lady Gaga's SNL performance of Killah, off her most recent album, Mayhem, can only be described as gripping – and must surely rank among the best performances on Saturday Night Live of all time.
The out-of-the-box spectacle made me want to check out the actual recorded track – a heavily Prince/Young Americans-era Bowie-inspired song with Gaga’s quintessential stamp. The guitars – played by super-producer Andrew Watt – are almost an homage to Bowie's Fame, and perhaps even Prince's Kiss and Sign o' the Times, adding a funk flavor that complements the track's electro-industrial style perfectly.
Next on the list is Jennie and Dua Lipa's Handlebars (from Jennie's Ruby, also released this month) – an R&B/pop earworm that's been living rent-free in my head for the past couple of weeks. And in honor of Bass Week, it features a killer (pun very much intended) bassline that’s equal parts slinky and effortlessly cool – very much in the vein of Dua Lipa's latest release, Radical Optimism, with hints of Childish Gambino's excellent 2016 record “Awaken, My Love!”
Moving on from established pop stars to an emerging artist with Mickey Callisto's Take It Easy.
Callisto has finally started receiving his flowers thanks to his recently televised Britain's Got Talent audition, but the independent artist has been hard at work for the past couple of years, releasing bop after bop.
Take It Easy is an ’80s-inspired disco track defined by Callisto's unmistakably Freddie Mercury-esque tone. Complementing this is a disco guitar part that transforms into a bona fide classic rock-style guitar solo... someone needs to call Brian May, pronto.
Fingerstyle acoustic guitar and a seriously groovy bassline characterize Little Simz’s latest effort, Free – perhaps a nod to her recent lawsuit against former producer Inflo (AKA Dean Cover of music collective Sault) for £1.7 million (roughly $2.19 million). Simz delivers effortless rhymes and razor-sharp delivery, uplifted by lush instrumentation – showcasing an artist who never shies away from experimentation and reinvention. In short, an artist at her most “free.”
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