My favorite albums of 2025

Mekons – Horror

How the hell are the Mekons still around? I don’t care to be honest, but I’m sure happy they are. The were much needed in this most hellish of years, it only took almost 50 years for us all to arrive at this point. It delivers the on the promise of folk inspired punk music. All the gang takes part. The acerbic drawl of guitarist Tom Greenhalgh upstages Jon Langford’s erudite bonhomie this time around. But as always, Sally Timms has a way of stealing the show (“A Horse has Escaped”).

In true punk fashion, the touch on imperialist legacy, the military-industrial complex, and the modern world’s puzzles, but more crucially, the songs have the. occasional uplifting sense of communal effort and good.

This is definitely counted amongst my favorite 25.

Mogwai – The Bad Fire

Scottish veterans Mogwai have been at it for three decades. And they are as good as ever on The Bad Fire. They built their reputation pn absurdist song titles and apocalyptic sonic eruptions. They have evolved pure chaos merchants to utmost consistency—a comfort in chaotic times.

For the past decade, Mogwai has begun using synthesizers alongside guitar favor finesse over marathons. The Bad Fire‘s last movement stretches them to even newer new places. There they not only channel My Bloody Valentine’s fuzz, “but also a grandisosity hat would make Bono blush, before finally sliding into psychelic sounds.

It seems they are in a happy place, making happier songs. And they cghabbel all their manic energy toward it. And it makes me happy too.

Suede – Antidepressants (Apple Music)

I still refuse to call them the London Suede. Sorry, just not going to happen.

In midst of Britpop, it was hard to imagine Suede making it through the decade, much less ending on year-end list some 30 years later.But Brett Anderson has led the survivors into the most consistent, constructive phase of their career, and Antidepressants has enough restless energy and hooks to make you believe their best days could still be ahead of them.

This may be their best effort since the heady days of Dog Man Star. The opener is explodes upon your ears in the best way with “Disintigrate”, but that’s not the album’s only trick. It also lulls you and calms with the trance-like “The Sound of Summer,” includes some real anthems.

And if this album isn’t an antidepressant itself, I’m not sure what one would look like. This one could easily find itself on the short list for my favorite of the year, if I actually did the whole strict ranking thing, so let’s say top five in a hurry.

Blondshell – If You Asked for a Picture

As friend described Blondshell after attending a show: “Lots of early 90s infou nice but by no means stale or antiquated.” And this was his first listen at all. And he called. it pretty much on. the nose. Even Pitchfork agreed: “On her second album of dreamy, ’90s-indebted alt-rock, Sabrina Teitelbaum interrogates mid-20s heartache and complex family relationships with bluntness and guarded optimism.”

I would. say Pitchfork was super stingy with their rating though (C’mon guys!). I’ve probably listened to If You Asked for a Picture as much as any other new album this year, so much so, it merited a vinyl purchase.

Throughout, her deadpan but clear voice cuts through the enveloping sound fog. And. the song “23’s a Baby,” with all the. weighty subject. matter, is as effortless as Lloyd Cole was in his prime making pure pop joy out of heartache. 

Die Spitz – Something to Consume

Austin quartet Die Spitz have emerged as one of Texas’s most exciting young acts, and this, their debut album, Something to Consume , sreves as a fine introduction. It demonstrates remarkable range while maintaining ferocious intensity. As NME said, “[it] darts between styles with brutish energy and a sense of anarchic fun. It evokes the thrill of discovering electrifying sounds as a teenager, having a full plate of punk, shoegaze, and classic rock. I remember feasting on that plate myself back in days gone by, and they help me re-capture the feeling

The tracklist demonstrates a balance and pacing that is unexpeted at his stage. It opens with. “Go Get Dressed,” and it’s a steady build into “Red40” a thrashing, cacophonous catapult. The album tackles everything from hardcore to metal to grunge with confidence.

Something to Consume is music that yells in all-caps: loud, unapologetic, and impossible to ignore. And this is their debut. I look forward to much more.

Hotline TNT – Raspberry Moon

After writing and recording the first two Hotline TNT albums almost exclusively on his own (the. last of which featured on one of these lists), Will Anderson decided it was time to go bigger. Bring on the band!

Raspberry Moon is the first Hotline TNT album made this way, The. rest of the team here. is obvious. It’s a powerful blend of power-pop and shoegaze. Amid the fuzz, however, Anderson’s vocals. still ring and sing of being in love, capturing all the ups and downs that that entails.

It’s a massive sounding album. for massive emotions, but it has melocies refrains to help clam things down. and shake them out. And it’s a massive bit of a fun listen.

Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist

Before this year, I’d never heard of Jenny Hval, but Iris Silver Mist is her ninth album. Thank goodness I found it. Here she explores absence and the power of memory (more on that below).

She begins the album by traces this acrid scent of cigarette smoke through her life—from her mother to green rooms to intimate balcony encounters, declaring, “This is every cigarette my mother ever smoked.”

Her music turns toward uncomplicated beauty—like the wind-swept grandeur of Victorian moors. It recalls an old brand of literary ’90s pop (Peter Gabriel in particular). Her the literature is Proust. Her voice drifts between a waif and full-on Björk, often landing somewhere in a sleep-talking half-dream.

And if you this this doesn’t sound like me at all, you’d normally be right, but I fell in love with this album

Militarie Gun – God Save The Gun

I’d. never heard of Militarie Gun before. their sophomore. release this year. God Save the Gun has. flashes of post-hardcore rock but pushes it into something more emotionally raw and something exciting. It pull sound from all over the place and provides raw reflections on self-destruction, while still ringing with some 90s sounds.

As Paste Magazine notes: “At face value, it’s a concept album about hitting rock bottom and the arc of that crashing, burning, rebuilding, and repeating” after the success of their debut. It. feels experimental, but still somehow familiar in that it doesn’t push. things too far in that vein.

Case in point is “B A D I D E A” which showcases a stuttering vocal cadence. Thena. shiny synth line that pops in along with some swinging surf-rock drums right before the second chorus. 

Smerz – Big city life

Norwegian duo Smerz’s second album Big city life captures the contradictory essence of urban nightlife—glitz, parties, and social mayhem alongside the isolation and melancholy. such. a life entails. The ensuing sounds evades categorization by. genre, which may prove the point even more. All the while it has downtown in the 80s. undercurrent always at hand.

Such an experience doesn’t require moving to NYC or even Oslo, but can truly be out. of place, applying. to wherever one is new and things are unfamiliar and exciting, while still being strange and a bit scary.

Snocaps – Snocaps

Katie and Allison Cruchfield reunite as. Snocaps and return with the surprise self-titled album. Both have grown since. their previous. efforts. together and. alone. (Katie has appear here before as Waxahatchee for those keeping score). the ensuing album captures the growing pains when all experience as we. age.

They do it with songs that range from full on alt-country to punk to sad elegies., befitting their present as well as their past. Allison’s musicality has always served Katie well, and it’s refreshing to hear her become fully uncorked here. A great example is “Over Our Heads”—a gigantic pop-rock song dotted not only with whipping riffs, but also with Katie’s signature lash of twang.

This family reunion. has brought us good-sounding miracles in a. world surely in need of such things..

Sudan Archives – THE BPM

My initial note on this album read, “indie-electronic-soul-r&b.” That’s still a pretty accurate. description (but I missed a little hip-hop inspiration, which is of course there).

While her jagged, violin was. the primary. note on previous albums her previous albums, it;s now now the occasional exclamation point throughout her landscape—like encountering a friend on the dance floor and exchanging shouts in a booming environment.

This is primarily a danceable record despite its roots in a folk instrumentation. Adding one to the other is multiplication by addition..

Titanic – Hagen

This year’s list may just be the most internationally influenced. once I’ve ever compiled. I mean, Canada. usually has a large representation, but rarely have so many others joined it.

Titanic, a duo of cellist and singer-songwriter Mabe Fratti and composer and multi-instrumentalist Héctor Tosta, also ranges into the experimtanl, but it doesn’t have to be standoffish or academic. HAGEN uses a whole range of noise, funk and orchestra sounds.

Most songs begin with clear-cut rhythms and crystal vocals before expanding into synth pop and distorted melodies. But despite all this it continuously returns to danceability and summability.

Water from Your Eyes – It’s a Beautiful Place

“Nights in Armor” might just be my song of the year. And that’s a hell of a way to start. It conjures waking an urban landscape at the top of your game.

And Water from Your Eyes are definitely top of their game here. It’s a Beautiful Place is crazy music cocktail that defies easy categorization. Rap-rock cadences, indie pop jangle, grunge sneer, electronics, shoegaze, and prog all have their moments. The album paints a strange picture where Stereolab, MVB, Slint, and Smog into a dazzling. cacophony coming together in a single picture. The ten songs cpllikde these into a much more ,massive sound than a two[erson lineup would ever suggest.

Despite the disparate colliding inspirations, the songthey still come together in an unmistakable signature that Water from Your Eyes scrawls across the sonic landscape..

Wednesday – Bleeds

Whatever may be going on behind the scenes amongst the insanely talented leaders of Wednesday (Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman), the fact remains that they are, for my money, the most consistent band gracing us with music now and over the last few years

Bleeds still. delivers what we have come to expect from Wednesday: fuzzy shoegaze uitars blended twangy country vocals. And bring true country. in that respect, they touch on the struggles and traumas of small-town Southern living, which really aren’t that different than anywhere else, as much as it may seem foreign to those not familiar with those landscapes.

I’d going even. further than most consistent, they are currently the best indie band in America. Just listen to. their three album run and disagree. I dare you. I’m also from Appalachia.

Wet Leg – Moisturizer

With Moisturizer, Wet Leg prove. they were no flash in the pan, quirky fun novelty act. They’ve matured from simple pop to punch you in the face rack and roll. They are music’s super sophomores.

They’ve evolved. from merely witty one-liners (though they still abound) into writing explicitly about romance, discovery, and. love. With the new brash choruses about brawling. and pop standard slow songs about falling in love, Wet Leg find their calling as hopeless romantics throwing their arms in the air (and they just don’t care): call it arms aloft in Isle of Man.

this album is consistently good from front to back. No jokes. No soap. Just radio (sorry inside joke #ifykyk).

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds

YHWH Nailgun, by their own admission, aren’t for everyone but if you have a bit an adventurous. speak. to. explore what NME. calls indie’s outer reaches, 45 Pounds is for you.

It is at once entrancing and addictive listen after listen. It defies and spits a genres, shapeshifting driven by relentless percussion. It’s crazy. So crazy that it works.

Notch another one for the decidedly experimental, defining easy genre categorization as I age. I’m not sure what that says for me or for the society around me. I dunno, I’m just going to slip. on these cans and listen.

Tunde Adebimpe – Thee Black Boltz

First, Thee Black Boltz makes me miss TVOTR, even though this assuredly is not a clone of that (though it has the inevitable hints). Instead, Tunde Adebimpe’s debut is a powerful, unplaceable work of his very own born from personal loss and political chaos. Adebimpe searches this wreckage for signs of life, working his way toward joy again.

This strikes me as not a side project but a serious artistic statement breaking free from expectation He wrestles with this different worlds, as it has become, while perhaps audaciously finding a silver lining. Thee Black Boltz is hectic, feverish, and electric. It captures an artist in survival mode, channeling the crises around him into music as urgent as he ever managed with TVOTR.

Geese – Getting Killed

Geese’s 2021 album, Projector (the last time I paid attention to them) showed some promise, but they were a bit full of themselves and inconsistent. Here, they live up up to all that.

Geese’s Getting Killed is a towering achievement—an unpredictable, eruption of guitar music that defies algorithm through human personality. This group of talented Brooklyn twenty-somethings emerged from the pandemic, linked with an underground rap producer, and created something that transcends its parts—weird non-sequiturs, jittery guitars, funk rhythms, and screams—to provide sublime musical moments.

Getting Killed sounds like nothing else right now. The rhythms are intricate, the lyrics are at times absurd and other times confrontational. But the , production is clear and bright. It uses strange amalgamations of Radiohead, The Strokes, Van Morrison, and Ukrainian choir samples, all of which run together without being pretentious. I get that Cameron Winter’s vocals aren’t for everyone, but I find declarations like “There’s a bomb in my car!” and “I’ll only pay my taxes when nailed to a crucifix” capture what it is to live in 2025 (Good riddance to all that).

Getting Killed diverts art rock through jam grooves and intentional vagueness. This is guitar music that actually caught the Internet’s attention in our fractured age. It’s proof that New York rock is alive and making a ruckus.

Los Thuthanaka – Los Thuthanaka

Who would have thunk I’d love this record so much. I never knew, until I heard it at least. There’s good reason for this as they were heretofore digital only, treasured by only a handful of folks.

Los Thuthanaka’s self-titled debut marks a breakthrough for siblings Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, transforming them from almost unknowns into architects of something genuinely unprecedented. This is dance music broken deconstructed and exploded—a declaration that sheds conventions, replacing them with sounds drawn from completely different worlds.

The album interweaves traditional indigenous Andean Aymara styles—huayño, caporales, and kullawada—with metal guitars, searing synths, and unexpected radio effects, creating what Pitchfork describes as “a sashaying take on trance-drone-noise music” that introduces sounds I’d never imagined. It’s lo-fi psychedelic noise rock, unmastered and absent from all streaming services. And it features an impressively dizzying array of instruments thrown together: electric guitars, keytars, mid-century Andean instruments like the ronroco, buried samples of Música Boliviana Popular, and Italaque drums from indigenous Aymara people.

What elevates this beyond experimental curiosity is how hard it swings.

This is an album about the mutability of sound and its deep roots. Five centuries of music history dance together through clipping chaos and crazed effects. The opening track translates from Aymara as “The Queer People-Medicines Are Here,” establishing Los Thuthanaka’s ethos—music for the head, body, and spirit. All decolonized.

The album demands something from listeners—time, patience, reorganization, reframing, reconnection. It’s shown rather than told through the ancestry of two siblings honoring their family and people’s history. Ultimately, it’s one of the oldest stories: a journey home. A bold suite of turbocharged Aymara recursions that looks back at queer traditions while looking to a loud, kinetic, and liberated future and taking you along for the ride.

Sharp Pins – Radio DDR / Balloon Balloon Balloon

Not one but two albums. by Sharp Pins make. what would. land in. my what could be in top. 40. list and the other could be. in. the running for the top. I’ll let you listen to both and guess (though it might be clear at the end).

First they hit us with Radio DDR in late winter, Then, near the end of the year they. followed with Ballon Ballon Balloon.

Starting with Radio DDR, Kai Slater, the driving force behind Sharp pins is never shy about obvious pop reference and hooks. Here they range from the Beatles and Big Star to the Kinks and Guided by Voices. He even cops a British accent on several of these songs. And this is even more true on Balloon Balloon Balloon.

Both records can be pure nostalgia trips back to 60 to 90s lo-fi pop channeling the wall of sound via The Jesus and Mary chain and Motown girl groups via the Kinks and Big Star.

It’s a rare thing indeed to have two albums by one artist on my end of year list in any form—much less having them land in the top spots, but I can’t bring myself to put either of them elsewhere. To me they two halve of a whole… Identical Irish twins so to speak, though they are separated by a whole term. Can you tell that I love them both?