sombr (left) and Laufey (right) write love songs that express messy blends of nostalgia, weirdness and cool. But unlike the greatest love songs that borrow from sacred music — I’m thinking of Aretha Franklin‘s “Dr. The love songs of 2025, at least at the level of the hit single, tend to be far more unsettled, with artists mostly resisting the big ballad in favor of messy blends of nostalgia, weirdness and cool. Sombr is certainly a heartthrob — and yet there’s something about the mix of fury and ghostliness in his songs that makes me not want to call them love songs. Like sombr, Laufey (or the character she inhabits in her songs) spends a lot of time in her head.