BEST MUSIC OF 2025

LOTTO is tagabow’s best record. Equally heavy and funny. I love listening to “sour diesel” when the train doors open. It sounds like the birds are circling.  

When a band so thoroughly takes hold of the entire world’s critical mass of oat milk enjoyers like this, so called “free thinkers” feel the urge to fight back. I have noticed this with Geese. Hell, I met Ezra Klein last week and he told me he’s heard more than enough about them. You might be scared to drink the kool aid. Scared that if you like it you’re just like everybody else. Well, I filmed the show they played at the lot radio the day after this album came out and it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Being in the center of Brooklyn, watching these kids who dreamed of being the best rock band in the world for 7 years and no one gave a fuck play for thousands of people in their home town — solely because they followed their impulses and spat in the faces of everyone who told them not to — just fuckin felt good. So, yeah, you and Ezra Klein can talk your shit on the kool-aid. But what if I’m the free thinker. Because from where I’m sippin, Getting Killed tastes pretty fucking good.

When I first listened to Camille Keller’s loose stream of singles that became the latter half of Lack of G-LIP, I felt like I was listening to alternate reality music. Described by somebody on Rate Your Music as “NTS-core,” his music is confident, slick, a little cerebral, but approached from a unique angle that seems to effectuate grandiosity by stripping away almost all musical elements that are generally associated with grandiosity. This is fashionable and sarcastic music that somehow manages to avoid disaffection. The Brussels-based musician recently played Baby’s All Right; when he finally went on at around 1:30 AM, I turned to my friend and said “Okay, I need to lock in now”.

While writing choke enough, Oklou set out to write dance music with a “no drums policy”. The resulting album is beautiful and strange, evoking the feeling of quietness no matter how loud you crank the volume — it feels like it could just play just as easily in a nap dream as it could in a club. Here are some other things it feels like to me: going on the computer as a child in the basement computer room and feeling a little anxious but also so exhilarated; falling half-asleep on my friend’s couch while hearing people talk in the other room and waking up just as it starts to get dark; walking back to my cousin’s apartment in Montreal in the snow; yellow streetlights; staying out really late when I was a teenager; those fruit-colored plastic iMacs from the 90s.  I found a YouTube video a few days ago with 138 views of a guy doing a drum cover of endless. I really like it; it’s not better than the original, just different. It’s funny for a cover to fly so blatantly in the face of the ethos of the original. But this is one of the special things about quietness: it usually forces you, in some way or another, to fill in some of the space yourself. 

One of the best parts of my Georgia  (the U.S. state) upbringing was my commute to school. We’d snake down this long, winding two-lane road, impossibly dark on winter mornings, with the car only starting to warm up as we pulled in. My mom dreaded that drive because deer constantly burst from the trees on either side, darting into traffic. She’d lament, “They’re the ones who really belong here. We took away their home… they must be so confused.”  It isn’t only his name; Deer park’s Terra Infirma pulls me back to those twilight mornings. It evokes strange, stilted memories you’d still kill to experience just one more time. It’s the project I reached for more than anything else this year. Tracks like “Overshot” channel the atmosphere and rainy day-gloom of The Cure’s Faith, and the record is colored with collaborations from Perfectly Imperfect favorites like Ivy Knight, jackzebra, and Chanel Beads. The instrumental closing tracks feel like the moment the party ends and you’re not quite ready to step back into the cold. The future is bright, car headlights transfixed on Deer park. 

The best new pop star combines 90s and 00s Madonna reference with the starry-eyed wash of chillwave and melancholy, borderline avant-garde lyrics. Basically no other pop star this year had a vision as strong and coherent.

My introduction to Mackeeper was through a Porches' show at Baby's All Right on June 7th, 2025. I only remember the exact date because that same day NYC music scene legend Billy Jones passed away. This show kind of acted as an impromptu memorial. Half of the room was grieving, and there other was just excited to see Porches. I was a bit dizzied and wasn't feeling particularly social. However, before the show I was catching up with some Philly homies and they were really gassing up the opener (Mackeeper) so I made sure to catch the set and I'm glad I did. I truly can't stop listening to the two singles ("Oh Canada" and "Pieces of You") - super catchy and full of atmosphere - and I'm looking forward to hearing the full record. I feel like Billy would agree...never miss the opener.

Nobody's cooking up sentimental and energetic indietronica like Tommy Fleece. Most of the tracks are self-produced frenetic buzzy pop songs with timeless hooks and noisy passages to break it up. This album also opens up with two tracks produced by the electrohouse mastermind, brightviolet, who's behind quite a few of MGNA Crrrta's newest heaters. If you think electronic music is lacking intimacy or any real traces of being handmade, this is an album you gotta check out. Not to mention its my favorite album artwork in recent memory by a longshot. 

Nourished By Time “When The War Is Over” is one of my fav songs of the year. Makes me want to cry but in a “girl who is going to be okay” way.

There's a lot of talk about the golden era of millennial optimism right now and worldpeace DMT might be the first piece of contemporary art to truly capture that feeling without being straight up nostalgia bait. I've described this project in a bunch of ways to a bunch of different people, but to me - "fried zoomer animal collective" feels like it checks the right boxes. Fried isn't an insult btw, being fried is the most beautiful compliment. This project is fuckin' fun, and extremely catchy. Probably my favorite album art of the year too.

Driven by an inexplicably pounding bass and rooted in what’s naturally occurring, the production of this album is organic. Sounds of cow bells ignite the high-ends, catching fire to spastic and guttural vocals, bestowing the album with an animalistic presence. Taking shape, the lyrics seem to grapple with the effect one may have on the world, and how you might begin to deal with those consequences. The clean composition is an antithesis to the wet and sticky mess of emotions. This album is red incarnate, raw, and sick, begging to be seen. 

At the peak of his powers Kanye was Napoleon, marshaling armies of collaborators to conquer swaths of emotional terrain. He blocked out the sky with the scale of his hunger for sex, love, power, and approval. It was an imperial run of tightly controlled myth-making and tactical vulnerability. The clarity of his vision channeled a generation’s scrambled selfhood into monumental records that raised the romantic stakes of our lives. We worshipped him for it.  Cut to: divorce; Bipolar disorder; porn addiction; Wyoming; the presidential run; Nick Fuentes; the evil dentist; “can I have the nitrus today?” Ye in 2025 bears little resemblance to the monarch he was. He’s a jester figure, dressed in rags, dancing for change outside the palace gates. He mocks his old domain with crude antics and slurs. The townspeople hurry past, averting our eyes from the sad spectacle. But at home, in secret, we still listen to the threadbare, half-finished music he puts out, and we recognize shreds of the old genius. Obviously he’s no longer an aspirational protagonist. He’s a lost soul rooting around in the muck, grabbing third rails and following them into the psychosexual bowels of a culture that can’t quite leave him behind. Sometimes that leads to tedious provocations like “Heil Hitler.” But then there’s “Cousins.” Cobbled together from a Double Virgo riff and a Dave Blunts melody (only Ye, all-time sample wizard, could connect the dots between those spiky misanthropes), it tells a raw, uncomfortable tale. A young Ye blows his cousin in a fit of youthful experimentation, tries to keep it a secret, and abuses nitrous decades later to hide the shame. The song evokes the feeling of a stranger handing me a home-made doll, scrawled with crazy symbols and embroidered with scraps of fabric from the trash. It might not look pretty and it definitely smells weird. But in its grubby little way, “Cousins” continues the project of Ye’s career: confronting the overwhelming power of his desires, losing the battle over and over, and forcing us to face the paler version of that struggle within ourselves.

This year I had the privilege of going to see MJ Lenderman and This is Lorelei at Levon Helms Studio/Barn venue. Going in, I was a big MJ fan and had seen him live before but had only heard a few of This is Lorelei’s songs, but not a whole lot, mostly from ‘Box For Buddy, Box For Star’. When Nate and the gang took the stage to open, I was immediately blown away by everything. The sound, the vibe, the performance, was all superb and I left feeling like WTF where has this dude been my whole life. Well, apparently, he’s been very much around, and I just missed the boat. I spent the next few months listening to ‘Box For Buddy, Box For Star’ over and over again in obsession. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one with this type of experience, because Holo Boy, This isLorelei’s new release is less of a new album and more of a re-recorded greatest hits and a walk down memory lane to get new fans like myself up to speed on just how prolific Nate’s songwriting has been over the years, and it doesn’t disappoint. Since its release a few weeks ago it's been playing nonstop in my headphones. I’m very happy to have been brought up to speed on ‘My Friend 2’, ‘Name the Band’, ‘Money Right Now’ and all the other poppy/indie tracks that I’m sad to have waited this long to hear. I’m glad Nate’s getting his flowers, I’m glad I finally caught onto the rocket ship of This is Lorelei mid-takeoff, and I already can’t wait to hear what’s next.

Brian Piñeyro’s music is something of a high wire act. It straddles the line between the physical and the cerebral, between pulse and atmosphere, between earth and air. No other record in his catalog captures this tension better than Mas Amable, the album I listened to more than any other in 2021. Heard in one uninterrupted sitting, those songs unfold like the germination, bloom, and death of a beautiful aural flower. Let your attention stray once and you’ll miss something crucial in their development. i was put on this earth, DJ Python’s first release on XL Recordings, is a microcosm of his recorded output, showcasing his talents as a solo auteur, an open-hearted collaborator, a purveyor of mood, and a master of groove. But it’s more than just a career summary. Python has never made something as lithe and weightless as “Marry Me Maia,” the gossamer opening track where Piñeyro lends his voice for the first time on a solo song. The collabs—“Dai Buki” w/ Organ Tapes & Jawnino and “Besos Robados” w/ Isabella Lovestory—are built on a set of minimal, downtempo beats that give the guests plenty of room to flex their muscles. There’s a distinct headiness to the first four tracks on the EP until Piñeyro closes things on a high note with the danceable, almost whimsical “Elio’s Lived Behind My House Forever.” 

It’s a damn shame every music publication insists on dropping their year-end lists on December 1st. That’s writing off an entire month! And a lot can happen in a month. Case in point: Brooklyn emo act Holidays in United States released their second album, This Is My Second Rodeo, on December 13 (followed by a release party featuring Reading, Zachshots, Dallas Cowboys — “Jingleball” for someone like me).  If you somehow missed their debut self-titled album (which I did cover in our best of 2024 list), it’s time to get with the program and check both records out. This Is My Second Rodeo hits all the classic emo hallmarks: cheeky referential song titles, gorgeous riffs, group shouts, and so much heart. Personal highlights include “Hit the G Chord Like a Boss,” “RIP J. Mascis,” and the closing track, “Sorry Ladies… I’m Retired.”

The most reserved I’ve heard them - yet still at their biggest and most inventive. It’s what I imagine Arcade Fire (at their peak)’s attempt at Soundcloud rap would sound like (I think that’s cool). That pretty little bell synth breathes new life into their unique and anthemic songwriting. It feels like a slight shift in their sound while maintaining what makes them so special and hopeful and inspiring. Shane is still on a generational run of gorgeously lyrical work that’s frightening and exciting me. Though I don’t subscribe to the c*caine reference! It’s one of the toughest, most hype songs of the year. I smell a new album in 2026. I pray my sniff is true! 

The concept of nostalgia core is heavily discussed in recent music. Is it too on the nose? Is it not necessary? Well, who knows.. I’m just a girl. You know who else is just a girl? Audrey Hobert. ‘Who’s The Clown’ has an insanely nostalgic feeling for me. It doesn't necessarily sound similar to music in my youth - rather it transports me back to a feeling I had listening to music in the early 2010’s. Audrey Hebart has a really bright future ahead of her, simply for her songwriting alone. What a fun debut album. Can’t wait to see what she does next. 

So so good - makes me feel like happily kicking things over

Dean Blunt and Elias Rønnenfelt enchantingly interlace themselves, re-inventing warmth and nostalgia, marrying the fluidity of the track’s composition with the grit of its ballad. Tears on His Rings and Chains is painfully honest and disturbingly beautiful, akin to slow dancing in a cedar cabin on fire, blissfully unaware. 

When I was 16 I was listening to new Alex G. When I was 21 I was listening to new Alex G. When I was 27 I was listening to new Alex G. And now at 31, I’m listening to new Alex G. It’s rare to have artists that grab you as a teenager be able to grow and expand alongside you and your taste. This isn’t to say he’s doing the same old thing, or that I’m listening to the same music I did when I was young. Alex G is one of those rare artists that seems to reinvent himself and grow on every album while still staying glued to the essence of what has made him special to fans over a decade. ‘Headlights’ isn't an exception to this. It’s poignant, strange, beautiful, and makes me proud of my teenage self for hitching to the right wagon. He’s grown up alongside us, or us alongside him, or all of us at the same time. “Storming in Full of sin Full of love We were children” Either way I can’t wait to be 40 listening to new Alex G.

It’s all too easy to categorize Joanne Robertson as a descendant of Grouper or Julee Cruise or Elizabeth Fraser thanks to the reverb, the spectral vocals and the wash of hazy pink and red on the album cover. That’s all well and good, but Robertson’s songs, often the result of spontaneity and improvisation, seem to ask for a different reference point.  A more apt figure might be the late Mark Hollis. When Hollis was recording Talk Talk’s masterpiece Laughing Stock, he only deemed the songs on the album to be complete when the session musicians he had brought in expressed something true about their character through their playing, accessing their “purest, most truthful essence.” Blurrr’s nine songs each carry that same purity that Hollis was chasing with the compositions on Laughing Stock. There’s a real sense of risk in tracks like “Why Me” and “Peaceful”, where we can hear Robertson exploring, in real time, how far she can go with her voice and her guitar. She takes things to the edge: her voice frays; her fingers come close to giving out. But she always manages to stick the landing, keeping her grasp on the song at hand. It’s music that feels alive and true. 

Dealerz is footwork and Elliott Smith and pop-punk and classic Copenhagen all at the same time — a downtrodden earworm that's mysterious and totally open at the same time.

ear was all of our favorite band this year. it’s rare we get such an evolution in the music that fills our quiet days. when “alice” by bassvictim comes on in the club and you see everyone light up - that’s what it was like when ear came on during cozy hangs with the most special people you’ve ever met.

I have the impulse, when writing about Lorde’s music, to also write about her audience. It might be because so many of her fans grew into their own personhood alongside her and her work — early high school soundtracked by Pure Heroine, Melodrama as they entered young adulthood — and think of it largely, even primarily, as a conduit to see their own experiences reflected back at them. There are lots of zeitgeist-y words for this kind of thing, parasocialism, projection, so on, although it’s hardly necessary to pathologize the experience of coming to understand yourself through art. (It’s worth mentioning too that this happens to Lorde not because her audience is stupid or immature but because she is just remarkably good at making the personal feel universal and vice versa; when you listen to Supercut it's easy to wonder, for a second, if anyone else has ever written anything about a breakup at all.) The problem arises when the artist in question suddenly makes work that isn’t about us anymore, upon which our own experiences can’t be easily projected. A vague sense of betrayal has cloaked Lorde’s fandom over the past few years, ever since her last album, Solar Power, failed to reflect the pandemic-era nihilism and abjection they were all desperate to metabolize through music-as-therapy. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that seeing a reflection of something you own in a mirror doesn’t mean you own the mirror, and seeing a reflection of yourself in a mirror doesn’t make the mirror You.  I thought about this a lot while listening to Virgin for the first time. It’s an album about gender, about bodies, about sex, about pain: all things that everyone has, but no two people have in quite the same way. It leans industrial, full of screeches and halting drones and harsh shrieks like metal dragged across a concrete floor. There are moments of real ugliness, real vulgarity; Virgin knows that desire can make you hard to look at and even harder to identify with. She writes about watching Pamela Anderson’s sex tape and someone tasting her underwear. The longtime mascot of universal girlhood says that sometimes she feels like a man. I find myself happy, in some undeniably “parasocial“ way, at the idea that Lorde may have escaped the pressure to produce communal experience, to hammer herself into a mirror. Then I listen to the song Favourite Daughter, which is about an artist who seeks validation and fame in a sublimated effort to get closer to their traumatized mother. “You had a brother, I look like him / you told us as kids / he died of a broken heart”, Lorde sings. My mother’s brother died before I was born under (seemingly) similar circumstances; I’ve always said that everything I’ve ever written has been part of an attempt to understand her. I’d never heard a song about that experience before. Go figure. 

“I know, why don’t you shoot me in the head?” I’ve seen Zachshots a couple of times now, and this is the song that gets everyone, even the most surly and aloof, singing along with a smile. It’s not just really really really great; it’s a top contender for song of the year (CHARMING and ADDICTIVE). I’d expect no less from Zach and Annika, who are involved with some of my favorite music projects coming out of NYC… if this is the bar, the Zachshots album can’t come soon enough. 

Memory’s a blessing in a safe mind.” A fitting opening line for the early creative chemistry between Cooper B. Handy and Augustus Muller, laying the groundwork for what would become Safe Mind. One of my favorite songs last year “6’ Pole” kicked off a fun and defining 2025 debut album. Cooper has always been a lyrical genius and this debut only deepens his reputation. This album has some hopeful sonic nostalgia from the 2010s era without feeling referential. One of the best choruses ever: “Standing on air Are you standing too close to the light? That you forget how to care And when you need it the most in your life Keep on standing on air”

Safe Mind’s Cutting The Stone is a crazy good debut.

Post rock meets the Wild Wild West in an album that leaves you no choice but to pick yourself up by the cowboy bootstraps and keep on truckin’: this is the long haul. This album is as vast as highways are as long and the guitar tones are as real as southern hospitality. Shallowater gives no real urgency to get anywhere in this album, nor is there any indication that it will. Gods Gonna Give You a Million Dollars is the perfect ellipses on a sad-country-alt rock packed year. It’s always yee-haw and never yee-how are you feeling.

"Smile Please" is one of my favorite songs of all time (cmon…that frusciante guitar loop??? unreal), so of course I'm going to glaze this album. It's hard to compare to Elias' 2024 drop Heavy Glory - among this decade's best - but lucre is fucking great too. You get these guys in a room together it's going to be special. My favorite tracks are 4 and 5 (yeah, the tracks are just #s) but for the best listening experience just rip through all 16 minutes in one sitting - you won't regret it.

Amazing is all that can be said about this - so rich so good so real

Kills Birds put out an incredible EP called Crave... it’s so aggressive. Kind of hard to pick a favorite song off of it between “Pyre” and “Behind”. 

Some memories adhere more than others: the day my younger sibling was born, breaking my wrist at North Point Mall as a kid, getting a banana split afterward and not being able to pick up the spoon because my wrist was broken, though I didn’t realize it yet, and the first time I heard Broken Social Scene. In my head, all of these memories surface with the same clarity, but I find myself constantly chasing the feeling of that last one—the moment you know something is really going to matter to you, and that it will stand the test of time. When I put on Music From Clocks for the first time, taking the bus to work back in August, it felt just as immediate and significant (funny enough, Christopher did a beautiful cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Almost Crimes” with Quiet Light). I distinctly remember the end of the first track, “Halloween,” as it jolts from something understated and pretty into a precipitous swell. It feels like a flex, like he’s saying, bet you weren’t expecting this. Same goes for the kickass electronic interludes throughout the record. “Kino” folktronica. Probably the album I sent around the most this year.

perfect single

Jim E. Brown is a 19 year old from Didsbury, Manchester, who suffers from many degenerative conditions and alcoholism. He is also obese, according to the standard of the BMI. There is some scant evidence that none of this is true, and that Brown is the creation of someone from Philadelphia named Max Margulies. But I choose to ignore it. Brown makes music, and while some of it is quite shit, a lot of it is actually quite good. Really good. I Urinated on a Butterfly—a 67-minute, twenty-six-song opus, and the latest release in Brown’s prodigious catalog—arrived this past September 11th (one day after Brown’s—and, coincidentally, my own—birthday). Before I ever heard Brown’s music, the Instagram algorithm fed me his succinct, generally useless food-review Reels, where he’ll take an enormous bite of, say, a fried chicken sandwich and then tell the camera something like: “Yeah it’s quite nice it’s just like chicken flesh on bread.”  Doesn’t seem all that interesting. So why is Brown suddenly everywhere? Why do videos of him eating junk food and inarticulately talking about it garner tens of thousands of likes? It’s no secret that we were in the midst of another British Invasion in 2025. Oasis finally conquered America. Fakemink and Esdeekid became the coolest rappers in the world. Olivia Dean and RAYE ascended to global pop stardom. But all that glamour aside, there’s a particular fascination with—and voyeurism toward—English daily life that Americans possess. Brown provides us with excellent fodder. He’s a master at capturing the quotidian drudgery of the average (albeit imagined) Mancunian: he stands in the queue at Greggs, he sits on a wet bench in St. Peter’s Square and looks at pigeons eating rubbish, he observes an injured duck in Alexandra Park, he drinks a pint at a pub called Ye Olde Cock.  There’s one thing in Brown’s music that rises out of all that slice-of-life material: a misery, a dread, a crippling unhappiness. And it’s all delivered with a directness that is, somewhat unsettlingly, very reminiscent of Purple Mountains-era David Berman. Lyrical topics on the album include but are not limited to: rampant consumption of huge quantities of alcohol (“Fatty Liver”), a total disregard for the state of his physical condition (“The Liquid From My Brain Is Leaking Out My Nose”), an obsession with the pettiness of social media (“I Dreamed That You Liked My Instagram Post”), and an abhorrence of sex (“Post Coital Dysphoria”).  Where does it come from? I was talking to my friend, Anthony, and he perceptively pointed out that Brown is something of a pallbearer for Indie Sleaze. When the party finally dies, Brown is who remains. When everyone else has matured, Brown still hangs on, insisting that he’s younger than he is, living like there’s no tomorrow—or, rather, like he hopes there isn’t one.  Brown’s songwriting is most deeply indebted to Northern England’s dour post punk (he can stand toe-to-toe with The Smiths—Mark E. and Robert). But there’s a playful, 21st-century lo-fi warble that runs through nearly every song on this record, and—as evidenced by his cover of “Toxic” and the song “I Vomited On Britney’s Autobiography”—he mines the same sort of Y2K aesthetics that Sleazer nostalgists have been cribbing since the end of the pandemic.  It’s not that Brown has sacrificed his body to give us his art—it is bodily sacrifice itself that spurs the creation of his music. He has lived the life of a glutton, downing pints and pies and sausage rolls, but his taste for rich food is not indulged in the name of seeking out pleasure. In the true Epicurean sense, it is only done to minimize pain. “I stretched my jaw too wide, like I always do,” Brown sings on album highlight “I Opened My Mouth Too Wide Today (And It Hurts).” He continues: “Trying to fill the void inside with shit foods.”  Brown often insists that he’s incapable of receiving love. But anyone who bares their soul so fearlessly is bound to get some in return. He’s certainly earned my affection, whether he likes it or not. 

In a year defined by mesmerizing breakout albums from Copenhagen-based avant-pop songwriters (Fine, Erika de Casier, Elias Rønnenfelt, et al.), scene veterans Smerz unexpectedly emerged as torchbearers for the city. Not only did they deliver an endlessly strange, playful, and inventive sophomore album in Big City Life, they also gave the scene what feels like its first true classic: the instantly timeless “You Got Time and I Got Money.” Quietly, two cheeky Norwegian art-school grads wrote the ultimate deconstructed slow jam: so romantic yet candid, elegant yet off-kilter, goofy but utterly sincere.  You Got Time and I Got Money feels like losing your voice duetting “Bittersweet Symphony” in a Chinatown karaoke bar, slow dancing with your high-school sweetheart for the last time on prom night, or falling hard for someone who still kind of needs to get their life together, often all at once. I saw Smerz perform twice this year, and both nights, they closed their set with “You Got Time and I Got Money”. It feels like the type of song you can sing along to for the rest of your life.

if Absolutely by Dijon is perfect (it is), then Baby must be something more, crackling all the way from the deliriously sweet 'Baby!' into the experimentally sharp 'FIRE!'. and in person, Dijon transcends into some of the best live-sampling-screaming-half-crescent-of-goats-on-stage you can buy tickets to: Justin Vernon, Nick Hakim, Zack Villere, Amber Coffman and even Mk.Gee. 

This album is really fun and they have a knack for these wacky hauntological almost-kitsch syncopated refrains (“Do-do, you connect all the dots? / Do-do-do, you collect all my thoughts?”). If you remove it from its aesthetic trappings, this is a very optimistic and approachable album. I was in a coma for the last three years so I have no cultural context for any sort of “aesthetic subculture” Riviera might be representative of but this was the first album I listened to after I woke up and I really like it :) 

I get the impression that Greg Freeman is one of those guys who doesn’t small talk. Hanging at the bar, probably drinking an unassuming beer/shot combo, he’ll just get right into it – maybe tell you a story about a local who went colorblind after a street fight, or mention how in 1816 a volcanic eruption in Indonesia led to crop failures in swaths of New England (known as “The Year Without a Summer”).  The Vermont-based musician has a clear eye for those types of small, potent stories that can be refracted into larger allegories about waking life. On Burnover, the musician mines histories like the aforementioned 19th century meteorological happening to craft his wayward alternative country ballads. With his warbly croon and asskicking Americana riffs, Freeman proves that weird, wonky tunes about niche subject matter can not only be pungent but truly universal. 

Long before she starts singing on Aurora, I'm drenched in Quiet Light's signature dreamscape: texas, old voice recordings, the shmear of an old digital camera. I'm often returning to "I Love You Because You’re In Love With The World" – a beautiful album and a perfect sentiment. 

In October of this year, I counted Blake Ortiz-Goldberg of the musical act Blaketheman1000 a casual friend. He was going to be in the city for October, so we went to Balthazar and then walked to the Chelsea Piers, talking about God and stuff, and he wound up showing me his unfinished mixtape. My throat was caught with his ingenuity. I love lyricists who aren’t overly concerned with planting poetry everywhere, because then it becomes it naturally. He showed me the song from the end of the mixtape that was to become For Those With Eyes to See, “Me & Mary,” which has this one line, “Remember, Mary / Everything back then felt impossible, and now / Everything feels impossible,” which IMHO you can count among the ranks of the Beach Boys one that first asserts that Carl Wilson may not always love her and then follows that so long as there are stars above her, he will. That sort of special phraseology is what Blake’s lyricism is about: desolation and heartbreak and want, all wrapped up in the digestible package of referential stuff like Raimundo jeans and Bushwick handpokes and white Latinas. That stuff is devastating. It just is. Sometimes with a Blake song you have to go searching for the sad stuff, and sometimes, maybe during a Coldplay cover, you’re just crying accidentally. Anyway, not to make everything about me, but I heard those “Me & Mary” lyrics from his iPhone speaker as we were looking out at those cement mushrooms that give me submechanophobia and I knew we would go on to talk about the God stuff as good friends, and we have. Also, everything literally is about me because I’m on the freaking cover crying tears.

I was told to get to Frost Children’s release party early to avoid the “shitshow”, a task I failed at. If I had succeeded, I might’ve missed seeing a line three blocks long of eager, Hot Topic inspired teenagers, some of which drove from hours away for a chance to hear their favorite EDM duo’s new tracks.  Angel said this year that EDM is the new folk music. It's a bold claim, and yet it’s impossible to attend a frost children concert as I did without seeing, amidst the sweat-drenched fog, America’s disaffected youth having the time of their fucking lives. It made me really happy to see kids whose lives are supposed to be being ruined by technology as we speak see it harnessed by Angel and Lulu for good, and something tells me the Frost Children themselves would be just as happy to dap up a fratted out Calvin Harris fan as they would a rave baby. SISTER is the only album I’ve listened to this year in the gym, in my feels, and in the function (Dirty girl my fav track). If there’s a piece of sidewalk in your city you happen to like, stake your claim now — it will soon become the line for a Frost Children concert. 

With a track like “Talisman,” it’s no wonder Bay Area singer-songwriter Trinity Ace has shared the stage (and a spot on this list) with some of our favorites this year, like Elias Rønnenfelt and Greg Freeman. The song is long and winding, yet no moment overstays its welcome. It’s perfect-for-the-road music, carried by cleverly spun lyrics that unfurl like an epic: she’s on the hero’s journey. A peak 2025 memory was driving through Georgia with this as my soundtrack. And that chorus! Undeniable.

jane remover is blazing past all the people who were holding them back – their ex, old friends, their fans: I'm not even sure who and I'm afraid to guess. Revengeseekerz is electric and angsty in the best way: glass shattering so loud you can almost see their arm whipping around.

Richard Orofino (also of Sex Week) teams up with Melody English on “Formula 1,” my personal favorite single of the year. It has a sort of baroque intensity—eerie and gripping. It pushes and pulls in equal measure, with production so lush it practically punches you in the stomach. One of my musical highlights this year was seeing him perform it in near-total darkness at the Montez space, shades on. Pure star power, “aura” if you will… I’ve been calling this “Dungeon Music.” 

John Maus is not only a musician, but a larger-than-life force—a Viking-sized enigma who destroys himself in order to articulate his truth. And when he delivers himself back into the public eye every few years, it is never an attempt to remain relevant or hip. It is always in service of necessary purpose.   “Later Than You Think” is no exception, and feels like the most spiritual album in Maus’ twenty-year career. It is a companion for reflection, for reckoning, for coming to terms with the self. Even the track titles alone feel confrontational and devotional: “Because We Built It,” “Disappears,” “Reconstruct Your Life.”  The album’s title refers to the quote: “It’s later than you think, hasten therefore to do the work of God.” That urgency permeates the record. Maus’ lyrics feel timeless — his meaning speaks across all of time. Though Maus is known for retro-futurist synth-pop sounds, the emotions he channels are those that have existed since the beginning of mankind and will be felt until the last human stands alone on Earth. His words feel biblical. I like to imagine someone roaming the land in A.D. 30, screaming the lyrics to “Believer” from “We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (2011),” guided by the same call toward epic transcendence.  “Turn us into something light.” An angelic light shines down on John and lifts him upward into the night sky as he disappears — an image I carried with me while directing the “Disappears” music video, and one that aligns perfectly with the glowing light on the “Later Than You Think” album cover. John is saved by a higher power each day only to begin again the next day, constantly giving himself over to the music and to those around him — doing the work of God through total exposure, always appearing and being seen. Maus’ level of commitment sees no bounds. He is an ON or OFF switch — and there is a rare beauty in that. He can only be genuine. During the “Disappears” shoot his wife, Kika, politely asked if John could not hit himself in the head for the next take. I said “of course” and told John, “we’ve got plenty of takes of you hitting yourself in the head and it looks great. In the next take, don’t worry, you don’t need to hit yourself anymore.” John looks at me and says, “OK.” I call “action.” John immediately hits himself in the head. ON or OFF.  In the end, with “Adorabo,” this album becomes more than music. John uplifts the soul, the reverb echoing and ricocheting off the stone walls of an ancient cathedral. He blesses us. All that will listen.  P.S. The best party song on the album is “Tonight.” Is there a better way to live in the power of now than repeating the word “tonight” seventy-three times over a bouncy, uptempo rhythm?

The cover of Poor Image’s self-titled debut features an escalator. They also recommended escalators in their Perfectly Imperfect feature. I’ve always said escalators are my greatest fear (hyperbolic, obviously, and excluding the really scary stuff). Still, for Poor Image, I’m willing to step on, letting it carry me toward the next good thing, the next sound, which they deliver on their self-titled debut album. That sound is built on slide guitars and melodies that range from quietly beautiful to unsettling, freckled with characteristics of Americana. The scope is wide here: take the wispy, nostalgic outro of “Shuffle,” the tenderness of “Planting Weeds,” the uneasy spoken-word turn of “Museum Feet.” It all works, and it works well.

Light shines through shutters across Operelly's music: small moments of trick and flourish sweep their voice into the clouds as cogs and critters tick underneath. Handwriting Practice No. 1 is as windy as it is warm: bay area at its finest.

The best concert I saw this year was a BOGO double feature by the Boston shitkickers Haywire. On a Friday evening in Tribeca, the band played inside a wrestling ring at David Zwirner’s 52 Walker location as part of a Raymond Pettibon exhibition. The black turtleneck crowd wasn’t ready for the mayhem, and I saw more than one attendee get fully wrecked while accidentally standing too close to the pit — a brutal initiation to a hardcore show if there ever was one. Just a few hours later, the band brought generators and fireworks over to the Williamsburg Bridge for an impromptu ripper that miraculously wasn’t shut down by the cops, as the crowd was too thick and blocked the narrow pathways. Trains wooshed past inches from the sweaty mob and fans made their own flamethrowers using cans of hairspray.  Haywire makes good on their name and can make any show feel like DIY culture is alive and electric — and that Boston hardcore ain’t dead yet. Their energy is just as palpable on the Shirts vs. Skins EP, featuring anthems “SUMMER NIGHTS” and “LOVE SONG.” The former captures the band’s M.O. better than any purple prose ever could: “Hanging out is what we do best / Getting fucked up with my best friends.” Never thought I’d say this, but 617 forever. 

True Blue’s Maya Laner has long been your favorite pop star’s favorite pop star, regularly in the orbit of a long list of collaborators and admirers that includes Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Avalon Lurks, Grimes, Alex G, Clairo, the list goes on. It’s immediately clear why Maya’s become such an inspiration and sounding board for so many when listening to Star Witness, her long awaited full-length debut that came out this October – Maya has an uncanny ability to spin disparate influences into pitch-perfect pop songs that are immediately catchy while revealing more and more to the listener with each play. Across Star Witness, her writing and production is so intuitively fluid that it takes a while to notice how sophisticated and intricate each song is – the meter slips, the vocal melodies are precise yet completely unexpected, and her production decisions are subtly referential to some of the best past and present pop music while being firmly pointed towards the future. Mostly, the album is sweeping and radio-ready while maintaining the intimacy of feeling deeply precious to the person who made it. You can feel the love put into each song and it hugely paid off. I don’t believe in ranked best-of lists, but if I did Star Witness would be my #1.

if Absolutely by Dijon is perfect (it is), then Baby must be something more, crackling all the way from the deliriously sweet 'Baby!' into the experimentally sharp 'FIRE!'. and in person, Dijon transcends into some of the best live-sampling-screaming-half-crescent-of-goats-on-stage you can buy tickets to: Justin Vernon, Nick Hakim, Zack Villere, Amber Coffman and even Mk.Gee. 

“Forever” was one of my most played albums of 2025. As a duo, Ike and Maria are able to immediately distinguish themselves from a sea of artists pretending to be cool with one simple trick: being actually fucking cool.

A guy recently told me about “Blackout Wednesday,” the ritual of hitting your hometown bar on Thanksgiving Eve to experience the Ripley’s Believe it or not museum of exes, old friends you lost touch with, Oscar from peewee soccer (he was always chill), and your friend's wasted mom? (divorced). Bleeds puts music to that feeling. If you have a hometown - and I don’t mean some bullshit in Connecticut - this album is for you. True to small-town American life, the scenes of Bleeds take place in the car: a series of on-ramps and off-ramps, maybe a fender-bender, sideswipe, or keyed-car-made-to-look -like-a-sideswipe, along the way. So much of our lives are spent in these moments of coming and going,  and most people choose to drown out their thoughts with a manosphere or true crime podcast (opiate of the masses). Wednesday’s world is one where you get sent out for milk but take a “wrong” turn on the way, somehow finding yourself cruising your high-school ex’s block or past the old makeout parking lot, hand out the window listening to music no one would even get here, wondering what might’ve been. 

Suchhh a genius album. Feels like the party scene in a coming of age movie. Cute and fun and good for the soul. We think about the Panic! at the Disco sample every day. A record for girls. Thank god it exists.

Before I’m The Problem, Morgan Wallen’s music was best enjoyed at the lake, or on the StairMaster. This album is overwhelmingly unsuitable for neither. Wallen is Billboard’s Top Artist of 2025, determined by an amalgamation of baseball stats. He netted the highest number of placements on the Hot 100 chart, a simpler feat when you release 37 tracks. An uptick in diaristic pop à la Gracie Abrams sees artists acknowledging bad behavior in their personal lives, but Wallen is everyone’s problem. Publicly. If its predecessor One Thing at A Time was about drinking in bars, I’m The Problem is about drinking alone. OTAAT is B.C. (Before Chair), and ITP is A.D. (After Disorderly Conduct charge). His 50+ collaborators weaned him off trap beats, leaving a void for more centrist Southern star Jessie Murph to fill this year. The project is bloated with slop, and broadly lacks the witty devices that give bro country its charm. Still, Wallen shines. He sounds earnest under autotune. His paranoia and self-hatred are palpable, though all the awareness in the world won’t make him a stand-up guy. He’s also got the gift of perfect phrasing, which musicologist Nate Sloan compared to that of Frank Sinatra. Like it or not, I’m The Problem is what America listens to. I’d recommend tracks 1, 5, 11, and 23. If you care where your dollar goes, Soulseek still exists. 

banger

Overall, I’d say music was especially sexy this year. Erika de Casier’s new album, “Lifetime” is still really doing it for me. There’s so much more— it’s overwhelming how much good music is happening.

Quite a few heaters on this one. Listen front to back. Every year, I see a couple shows that make me promise myself I’ll never miss an artist again. Erika de Casier in LA was one of those nights. Her presence is understated but commanding. She fills the room without moving very much at all. & her drummer is a shredder. Lifetime is Erika’s first entirely self-produced album. It shows off her sonic worldbuilding & pushes beyond the y2k influences she’s known for. Her melodies are soft-spoken, trailing off over spacey samples and downbeat triphop grooves. “December” might be my favorite. But it’s hard to say. Maybe “Miss.” Maybe “Seasons.” Maybe “Delusional.” I guess I don’t know. Just listen to the whole thing.

Tyler tends to be liberal with the formatting requirements, so if he’s cool with it, I’d like to re-publish my list of top 2025 shows. I wanna correct a sin of omission that’s been weighing on my conscience…leaving out YHWH Nailgun @ the Perfectly Imperfect x You Missed It *unofficial* SXSW party. Great work out there this year, team. More soon.  Some special shows from 2025 that will stick with me: TAGABOW @ The Tunnels Widowdusk @ The Shed LUCY & Gods Wisdom @ The Drake Erika de Casier & Quiet Light @ El Rey Xaviersobased @ Baby's All Right Cash Only Tony's @ Market Smerz @ The Hancock YHWH Nailgun @ New Guild Worldpeace DMT & Rowan @ Everlovin Punxsutawney @ Dog House Taxidermists & Yung Lean @ Anthem