Addison by Addison Rae

TikTok’er turned popstar was always an inevitable pipeline but the seriousness (or the lack of) with which Louisiana dancer Addison Rae has approached her debut, Addison, is remarkable in the sense that no one saw it coming.

After the failure to start with her debut EP, AR – a handful of pop bops that ignited only ridicule – it turned out this was the best thing that could've happened for Rae. In going away, honing her craft, and eventually having a glut of tracks leaked, these discoveries made Rae finally feel...cool? With this, the stage was set. While the rollout offered up a large chunk of Addison's tracklist, each one taking a different life form from the electro-tinged album thesis “Fame Is A Gun", where she embraces that lust for the limelight to the more introspective “Headphones”, her debut offered up a side of Rae that remarkably fits well.

Produced by the pairing of Swedish newcomers Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, Addison’s execution in the form of promo materials, roll out, preceding tour, and total embracing of the burgeoning pop star life meant Rae finally found a formula that utilised her undying love for pop music history (see, Madonna), with her equally undying love for being famous. Breathy vocals, a fun-loving, all-or-nothing vibe, a production kaleidoscope that keeps a throughline for consistency but revels in exploring facets from sultry smooth (“Diet Pepsi”) to early-hours dancefloor soundtracks (“Aquamarine”). It seems that the TikTok-popstar pipeline, while inevitable, actually can prove to be hiding its diamonds. STEVEN LOFTIN

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49

West End Girl by Lily Allen

Lily Allen's take on confessional pop tripled-down on anything Taylor Swift could ever manage this decade. A startlingly compelling account of the breakdown of Allen and Stranger Things-actor David Harbour's rocky relationship, West End Girl was her best record in 15 years, kicking off a strong second-act for the storied career of Allen. It not only proved Allen’s talent for capturing a specific, modern-feeling malaise with wit and melody – wholly confident in her voice – but in the process created one of the year's perfect, poignant pop moments. JENNA STEVENS

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48

U R Here by HONESTY

While the Partisan Records-signed Leeds’ collective HONESTY have a penchant for experimentation, their debut U R HERE is a club record in the best way, full of unexpected turns throughout. The band wanted the album to feel like how music-listening is for so many people now: playlist-driven with multiple genre shifts. And while that’s true — the band experiments with a variety of electronic and rock textures, from grungey industrial to transcendent minimal techno — U R HERE is a record that never feels disjointed, recalling the melodics of Depeche Mode, the stomp and crunch of Nine Inch Nails, the playful electronica of Sylvan Esso, and the avant garde experimentation of Radiohead. MICHAEL HOFFMAN

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47

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You by Ethel Cain

Ethel Cain’s devoted fans were fed not once but twice this year, most recently by the critically lauded Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Relying on Cain’s signature and characterful darkness, the album serves as a prequel to 2022's Preacher’s Daughter and follows the tragic love story of the singer and her sorrowful teenage muse, Willoughby Tucker.

Throughout the ten tracks Cain sways effortlessly through states of lust, loss, and identity projection – the sound is the epitome of teenage fantasy if that fantasy were drowning, and choked by ethereal reverb. The slowcore folk and fifteen-minute-long epics continue to ask graciously of a listener to sit in the discomfort of what is unfolding, a rare treat in the mix of this year’s releases. But it’s not without moments of lightness; the project’s ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ delivers incredibly on all the fronts of a truly great pop song, but with the kind of lyrical and melodic depth we have begun to expect from America’s anti-sweetheart. EMMELINE ARMITAGE

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46

A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever by Kara-Lis Coverdale

Most artists who return to piano after years of electronic experimentation either go sentimental or retreat into tasteful minimalism but Kara-Lis Coverdale does neither. Part of the power A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever – her second album in 2025 – is just how unshowy the whole thing is: nine piano pieces and no safety net. It’s the sort of sparse premise that falls apart instantly if the writing isn’t immaculate but these pieces put themselves together as if it’s all a big accident. They feel less composed than candidly stolen from her private collection. Coverdale corrals space: you can almost hear the room negotiating with her on songs like “Vortex”, being edged into silence and repeatedly disturbed by dissonant interruptions.

She writes like someone who understands exactly how a church organ behaves when you push it too far, but also like someone who’s stared at the decay tail of a single sample for an unhealthy amount of time. The result is music that feels simple only until you try to explain it, and then suddenly you’re waving your hands around like a maniac trying to describe a colour no one else can see. The truth is there’s a sea of atmospheric ambient piano albums out there. So how has this one bubbled to the surface? It’s the duality of its choice to soothe and harass. It’s an album you could study/relax to but also lose your mind in its complexities. MAX GAYLER

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45

Self-Titled by Sharon Van Ettten and The Attachment Theory

The product of a 2022 jam session with her bandmates Jorge Balbi, Devra Hoff, and Teeny Lieberson, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory saw the 44-year-old singer/songwriter step out of her comfort zone and into a transformative and collaborative new direction..

With each member feeding in their own ideas, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory never felt like just one thing. There’s swaggering desert rock in “I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)”, moody Siouxsie Sioux-goth pop in “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)”, and the cooly ethereal “Fading Beauty”. Even “Live Forever”, with that repeated question, explodes into an almost sci-fi epic. The ease the band have in each other’s presence is infectious, with Balbi’s propulsive drumming driving the record and allowing Hoff’s agile basslines to bring their own mood.

“I want you here / Even if it hurts / I want you here / Even when it gets worse”, she sings on the album’s glorious closer – her voice soaring just as high as the synths. On any other Sharon Van Etten record, this might sound like sad acceptance of her lot – that love and pain come hand in hand. But here, with this band, it sounded like she'd found the strength to be present. CHRIS TAYLOR

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44

Who Let the Dogs Out by Lambrini Girls

The best nights out start with a £3.49 bottle of Lambrini. It makes you wiser, bolder, gobbier. And on Who Let the Dogs Out, Lambrini Girls have necked the whole thing. Their bark breaks new ground, proper girl punk elbowing its way out from the 6-music-dad post-punk that all sounds the same these days.

The Brighton duo bring a whip-smart whiplash, hopping from ACAB anthems ("Bad Apple") to sincere rumination on eating disorders ("Nothing Tastes As Good As It Feels"). "Cuntology 101" is a highlight, a cheerleading chant for the gay, angry sluts: "Healing your inner child is cunty / Getting therapised is cunty / Having autistic meltdowns, cunty".

These ideas are nothing new, but came at the perfect time to cheekily clap back at 2025’s rising bigotry. The album is finished up in under half an hour, but it's enough time to charge up their gritty guitars and on-the-nose British accents; Who Let the Dogs Out is a snappy reminder of music’s power to rally and rile.

In a year where far-right protests and unsafe spaces became normal, Lambrini Girls gigs cleared mosh pits of cishet men and invited the freaks to the front, and earned them collaborations with Peaches and David Shrigley. That’s what makes me feel like a true patriot. MIA SMITH

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43

no scope by crushed

The story of crushed’s quietly meteoric rise is almost too perfect to be true. At the helm of a late night radio show during college, Texas native Bre Morell discovered a CD by the band Weekend on her desk. Regular radio plays, a few station outings to Weekend shows and a graduation later, their guitarist Shaun Durkan discovered a band named Temple Of Angels while scouting for new music for his own radio show. Fronting that band was Bre Morell.

After initially sharing music from each artist’s projects, the duo connected over a love of the sounds of 90s alternative radio. Imbued with inspiration from The Sundays, Cocteau Twins and Massive Attack, the pair formed crushed online and wrote the bulk of their incredible debut EP extra life remotely, signing to tastemaker label Ghostly International. With such a distinct sound that references such a memorable era of music, how would the duo push things forward for their debut album?

The answer is no scope, one of 2025’s finest debuts. Retaining production duties on the album, the band also appointed Jorge Elbrecht - who had previously worked the boards on records from Japanese Breakfast and Weyes Blood - to sift through and refine dozens of demos to define the evolution of crushed. Opening with "exo", no scope immediately presents a band refusing to rest on its laurels; the electronic textures that existed within their previous work were now fully integrated within the album’s sound, framed by unconventional songcraft filled deft touches and left turns that exude unpredictability without ever feeling exclusionary. Both Morell and Durkan’s vocal contributions give different dimensions to no scope; Morell’s full-bodied tone injecting true vulnerability on tracks such as "heartcontainer" and a quiet self-assuredness on "licorice", with Durkan floating over the rolling drum breaks and loose guitar strums of "cwtch" with an emotional heft that belies the softness of his delivery.

Energetically, no scope is the sound of a band that are brimming full of ideas and breaking free from any preconceived notions of nostalgia; just twelve tracks of lush, diverse electronic alt-pop that feels like just the start of a duo really hitting their full stride. MITCH STEVENS

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42

Iris Silver Mist by Jenny Hval

Oslo-based musician, artist, and author Jenny Hval has the kind of work ethic that makes most of us look rather lazy by comparison. Iris Silver Mist is her twelfth album in fourteen years – nine bearing her own name, plus three with fellow Norwegian Håvard Volden in the duos Lost Girls and Nude on Sand – a track record made all the more formidable by the fact that she simply never misses.

Combining spoken word and field recordings with her own distinctive brand of transgressive pop music, Iris Silver Mist is another spine-tingling document of her craft. Named after a luxury French perfume, it’s generously stacked with ideas and narrative propulsion, weaving olfactory sidebars with philosophical musings on the nature of performance, as first encountered through I Want to Be a Machine, a multisensory, hybrid theatre piece that premiered last year.

The often delicate approach of Iris Silver Mist dovetails nicely with the themes of impermanence and in-between-worlds-ness that are braided here with more grounded observations of stages, backstages, and other, more subliminal spaces. There’s a vaporous quality to the strings that recalls Hval’s on-stage use of rice cookers and scented steam, while at the same time calling to her lifetime’s lingering spectres, heavy with portent, thin as a veil. The result is an album that’s as elliptical as it is strangely compelling, and unlike any other we heard all year. ALAN PEDDER

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41

NEVER ENOUGH by Turnstile

They say it takes a village, blah, blah, blah, but Turnstile are the standalone, undisputed pillars of the hardcore resurgence that sparked in 2021 thanks to this very band’s last album Glow On. The record rose so rapidly that many assumed it would fall just as fast, and we’d be left looking like idiots, holding a pan with a proverbial flash in it.

Four years later, nothing could be further from the truth: Their staying power is proving to be as reliable as the assertion that tomorrow will deliver us a day that ends with a Y. If you’re a kid who is into hardcore these days, you might as well say you’re a fan of Turnstile – that’s how interchangeable and symbiotic the words have become. Admittedly, there was a collective sigh of relief when Never Enough came out in early June due to a critical lineup change – guitarist Meg Mills came into the picture, while founding guitarist Brady Ebert bowed out. But just like a meteor that came this close to missing the planet, Turnstile survived. Hyperbole, you say? This is a band that now has its own line of Converse shoes, whose latest album was advertised on billboards and, earlier this month, landed five Grammy nominations – the first-ever band to do so across rock, alternative and metal categories in the same year. Yes, it’s silly that none of those awards are for achievements in hardcore, much less punk, but the cultural footprint that Turnstile is making would make Bigfoot blush. KURT ORZECK

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40

THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED by THE ARMED

Detroit hardcore, punk, and properly freewheelin’ agitators The Armed decided 2025 was the year to run full pelt back into the chaos they’d been trailing behind them since first establishing their wicked and wanton ways in 2009. They emerged from the wreck and ruin more alive than ever, with The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed in tow.

While there is little sign of them slowing down, there is a sense that they’re aware that the more they unfurl and reveal, the more enticing things become. After their previous two efforts, particularly 2023’s Perfect Saviors, exposed more of the anonymous collective than had been previously seen, and now they're combining the best of their past and present to make a new future soundtracked by sticky hooks still slathered in aggression and distortion.

The Future does what The Armed have always done best, and that is to set their sights on a target and unleash internal fury to raze it all to scorched earth. This time around, they’re gunning for society and the hands that refuse to feed with cuts such as “Local Millionaire”, “I Steal What I Want”, and “Purity Drag”. Perhaps the most enlightening is the penultimate track, “Heathen", that softly brings things to a close before the final barrage of “A More Perfect Design”, which shows The Armed’s keen eye for surprise and astonishment still remains in full effect. STEVEN LOFTIN

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39

Bloodless by Samia

Released in April, Samia Finnerty's Bloodless has maintained its early lead as one of the year’s finest. This is, indeed, an album that only gets better with every listen — a new wordplay recognised, a background guitar lick sounds shinier than it did before, a little vocal trick is uncovered. Thus, it has aged over the subsequent months gracefully and meaningfully. This record is freeing, expansive, dryly witty, and heartbreaking. Who else can sneak in the line “Trying to feel hugs from heaven / Jack off to someone who’s pregnant” on a track that might otherwise make you cry? Standout “North Poles” — the very track where she pulls off this raunchy insertion — is perhaps the best song about friendship I’ve heard in a long while, the kind that makes you feel like your cup runneth over and want to scream-sing with your chosen loved ones and. “Carousel” is another guttural high-point, akin to other Samia favourites like “Pool” but perhaps more matured and refined.

Samia is usually recognised for her ability to give voice to the coming-of-age experience and on Bloodless, she cements her claim to that title. As she’s spoken about in interviews, Bloodless is, in fact, an album about coming to terms with oneself like never before, and it while it bears the youthful, yearnful hallmarks of her first two records, it also shows off the kind of writing you can only do once you’ve really lived that little bit longer and seen that much more. LAURA DAVID

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38

viagr aboys by Viagra Boys

Viagra Boys' singer Sebastian Murphy has been harnessing his chronically online absurdity to the point where one-liners and meme refrains are now a stream of consciousness, and on the Swedish punk band's fourth record Viagr Aboys these tirades dig their heels in and infest the tracklist; lyrics burst with meta-modernity, and are only tentatively aware of time signatures at large. You’ll hear about Chandler Bing dying in a hot-tubbing accident (likely a lampoon of fascism, somehow), and at some point you’ll be shedding silent tears at the necessity of love.

Listening to Viagr Aboys is equivalent to being on a moving sidewalk at the airport with a rocket-powered wheelchair; there are G-forces propelling this tracklist astronauts could not withstand. There are no mid-tempo, mid-tracklist experiments, as creativity is done on the fly, seemingly as the police are closing in.

Its delicacy is inverse to the rest of the record’s brashness – or maybe confidence. It takes a sweltering amount of either to pull out all the stops, except for just one, and they could only do it once. You can only tell a joke a single good time, and in their case, breaking the planes of absurdity is a one-way ticket before your audience checks out. Hiding in wait for that chance takes something no one would ever levy at Viagra Boys for having; it takes real discipline. Nothing more punk than that. NOAH BARKER

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37

All Our Knives Are Always Sharp by Tony Njoku

There are moments when Tony Njoku’s All Our Knives Are Always Sharp plays like a funeral march; at others it echoes of a truly primal lust for life. After years spent shapeshifting between electronic production, avant-pop and the introspective, piano-led world of his Bloom series, the Nigeria-born and London-raised Njoku stepped into 2025 with a provocative confidence. This album feels like the moment everything crystallised: his voice, his politics, his experimental instincts, and his refusal to fit neatly into any single musical lineage.

Where Njoku’s previous work explored vulnerability through restraint, All Our Knives Are Always Sharp expands outward with cinematic scale and a collaborative spirit that feels unusually alive. Contributions from Tricky, Ghostpoet, GAIKA, Space Afrika and others sharpen Njoku’s vision and become as integral to the diversity of sound as Njoku’s contemporary take on neo-classical music. Placing his falsetto and piano motifs inside a wider constellation of Black British artistry, the result is a record that bends contemporary classical, ambient, spoken word and club-adjacent textures into something startlingly cohesive.

The significance of this album comes in the way it reimagines what a modern composer can sound like. Much like Björk or serpentwithfeet, Njoku’s work sits at the crossroads of the personal and the political, using fluid classical forms not as a template but as a material to reshape, disrupt and reclaim. The music is lush, confrontational and intricate but always deeply human. MAX GAYLER

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36

Lotus by Little Simz

Little Simz announcing the dispute over allegedly unpaid loans against longtime friend and producer Inflo and releasing an album at the same time was certainly the most chaotic rollout of 2025, one which could have seen a catastrophe of personal drama cascade through her craft. Instead, Lotus was an affirmation representative of her talent: the best revenge is just being better.

Lotus came after the defiant run of Grey Area, SIMBI, and No Thank You, all produced by Inflo. A slew of instant classics welcomed a fourth and Lotus toes the line between disparate emotions, ripping apart betrayal, mourning loss, and celebrating Simz as the revenant messiah of Conscious Rap.

Understand where Lotus falls for Simz, and you can rebuild it note for note; it’s Grey Area (Simz Version), redone on different terms to expunge herself from its past connections. Its highs are higher, its lows are non-existent, and it has the government mandated Obongjayar feature, or it wouldn’t be a Simz project. She infuses the record with breathless anger, some of it excruciatingly centred around her anger and betrayal toward her past friends, yet this turmoil is never the focal point of her message. There is no narrative to spin or extract for the tabloids except the most bare, most vital piece. Forget the headlines, Little Simz is the greatest rapper alive. What else is there to talk about? NOAH BARKER

Listen on Soundcloud

35

Private Music by Deftones

Speaking completely frankly, Deftones don’t have to ever record or release an album ever again. Thirty years since their first album Adrenaline, the Sacramento five-piece have consolidated their place in not only the pantheon of heavy music greats, but in mainstream music as a whole. Their catalogue of hits even preceding the 2010s is enough to fill festival headline sets and stream tens of millions year on year, which makes the fire still burning inside them on their tenth album private music even more special.

Riding the wave of a seismic cultural reclamation from Gen Z, Private Music sees Deftones riding a chariot on their victory lap; reshaping and reframing their own sound - not for what they think others want to hear, but more for what suits them and their own tastes. The results are something special. The band’s love of sound design and sonic atmosphere comes to the fore; with each instrument and sound acting as a brushstroke within a wider impressionist landscape of boundary pushing rock music in 2025. There’s plenty here for fans who are faithful to the band’s classic sound (whatever that means at this point); vocalist Chino Moreno’s barbed snarl makes an appearance on "ecdysis", while his flow on "cXz" satiates the thirst left from 2000’s "Back To School (Mini Maggit)' before "cut hands’" jagged final riff recalls the closing moments of 2010’s "Diamond Eyes".

While Deftones have never shied away from anthemic songwriting, private music seems to have been written with the band’s global leap to arena stages in mind. Tracks like "infinite source" shake off the relentless weight of the album’s harder cuts, providing a euphoric catharsis away from songs like album opener "my mind is a mountain" or the bounding "milk of the madonna". Often credited as being the forefathers of the new era of shoegaze-inspired heavier bands, private music proves that Deftones are beyond classification while simultaneously laying the gauntlet down to all pretenders of that throne. Ten albums, arena tours, festival headline slots and an encyclopaedia of genre defining hits later, Deftones didn’t need to make Private Music, but were so glad they did. MITCH STEVENS

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34

Midnight Sun by Zara Larsson

It’s felt like an eternity, but Zara Larsson seems to have finally found her winning combination. In a year that began in the trailing wake of brat summer, and the world deep in the throes of a dark and dirty dance floor, Larsson’s emergence into a more proactively club-facing approach in Midnight Sun was right on the money.

For starters, much of this year’s pop outings focused on a nostalgic through line. From Doja Cat’s 80s indulging Vie, to Taylor Swift’s attempts to return to her maximalist pop days with The Life of a Showgirl, Larsson, picking up the pace in her own lane, discovered a penchant for the thunderously and rapturously maximal that Swift could only dream of. Relishing in the glow of her euro-pop DNA, Midnight Sun embodied the titular imagery and aesthetic with great aplomb and gave Larsson a well-deserved critical lauding. To boot, clocking in at just over 30-minutes, and 10 songs, the fat trimmed and a concise, focused approach was perfect for an audience craving instant gratification.

Admitting in her cover story with BEST FIT back in September that “I feel people re-discover me every couple of years,” this re-birth of hers feels defining, a revamped Larsson that caught the eyes and ears of popheads all over. Offering up Larsson as a wholehearted artist, her emotional complexities – and the eternal give and take (mostly take) that comes with trying to be a household pop name – coming through the beat-driven project, she’s come a long way since first rising with the evergreen summer anthem “Lush Life” in 2015, which is the most remarkable aspect of Midnight Sun – she’s arrived to where she needs to be and the rest will follow. STEVEN LOFTIN

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33

Off the Record by Makaya McCraven

There are two ways to increase your chances of exclusion from lists like these. One is to drop in December, when most lists are already sealed and delivered (although, it is worth noting that this will actually increase your likelihood of a decent slot the following year); the other is to release your album in a peculiar way, perhaps as a collection of loosies or, in the case of Chicago jazz impresario and bandleader Makaya McCraven, four EPs at once. Off The Record, though, is too good to save for next year.

What serves as a weakness for end of year nominations however is this album’s strength. These are four distinct pocket universes. With snippets of music spanning an entire decade of globe-trotting live performance edited and occasionally overdubbed, each EP are defined by the diversity of their collaborators, from the consummate Connecticut guitarist Jeff Parker - who provides the tracks of Hidden Out! with a taut, wandering quality – to Sons Of Kemet’s tuba-powerhouse Theon Cross, who lights an earthen fire beneath the album’s third disc.

Only in certain worlds is improvisation a flex. In dentistry? Ill-advised. In disaster preparedness? Not so much. But – as the 'YoYoYo Intro" begins – this music is born of “[making] some stuff up here, right on the spot”. In jazz, improvisation has long been the foundation, but McCraven takes things a step further than the greats of the Blue Note era, weaving in the sampling techniques of rap to further chop and stich these live recordings into tight songs, taking Teo Macero’s Bitches Brew innovations on the road, and requiring a multitudinal range of talents.

The music of Off The Record isn’t cosmically minded like the Davis classic. Instead these recordings often feel as they are: a taut group of world class players huddled together on a couple square metres of hardboard, working in lockstep. But it’s the diversity of the music which keep the tracks hot, flitting between the noodling, neo-psychedelia of a track like ‘Imafan’ to the Prince Paul-esque jazz-rap of "Boom Bapped".

The album’s fourth salvo perhaps serves as its most complete statement and boldest flex; recorded only at the beginning of this year in front of a small Brooklyn crowd and thus serving as McCraven’s most recent testament of his talents. The four songs of The People’s Mixtape span a similar scope to the record whole, from the glitchy arrhythmia of "Choo Choo" to "Lake Shore Drive Five’s" winding, twinkling bow-out. Spontaneous composition; lingering power. LIAM INSCOE-JONES

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32

Something to Consume by Die Spitz

“Something to bind, someone to find, a darkness that takes us all.” Die Spitz’s Something to Consume arrived with a force, immediately solidifying them as one of the most exciting new rock groups of the decade. The Austin quad (Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Eleanor Livingston, and Kate Halter) made their debut on instinct, leaning into an intensity and unpredictability that let them swing from metal to punk to grunge and back again. They rotate songwriting, singing, drumming, and guitaring amongst themselves, each permutation kicking the album into a new register. Livingston tilts toward early Cobain on “Down on It,” rivaled by Schrobilgen’s screeching ferocity on “Red40.” De St. Aubin adds a Hope Sandoval haze to tracks like “Punisher” and “Voir Dire,” lending the record an eerie undercurrent that refuses to settle.

The album takes on frustration in all its forms: anger, grief, obsession, disdain. The lyrics ping between indictments of genocides (“They got a two-state deal after blowin' everyone away”), sharp fixations (“Don’t judge me, I need her to survive”), and attempts at finding clarity inside daily overwhelm (“Been trying so hard not to give a shit about the state that we're in”). Their live sets pushed that tension even further. Opening for Amyl and the Sniffers and Viagra Boys, they’ve scaled walls, dove into crowds, and tested how far their songs could bend before snapping. The record captures that same energy: the attempt to stay upright in a world that feels like it’s collapsing. Tracks like “RIDING WITH MY GIRLS” serve as a reminder that amid the noise, friendships offer the steadiest reprieve: “But now everything, everything is gonna be okay / 'Cause I'm riding with my girls, aye, aye.” CASSIDY SOLLAZO

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31

Luminescent Creatures by Ichiko Aoba

Released in the first year of the pandemic, Ichiko Aoba’s breakthrough album Windswept Adan spun a surreal, ambitious tale of a girl exiled to an island of odd little creatures who communicate through seashells. Sorry for the 5-year-on spoiler if you haven’t heard it, but the girl dies in the end, reincarnated into other lifeforms, and that, we might have thought, was that.

Not so! Luminescent Creatures arrived in February as a sequel to the story – but not in the conventional sense, since there is no real plot to speak of this time round. Instead, the ambient folk artist maps out a loosely connected universe of sensation that adds something new to the story. Mostly set in the waters surrounding the island, there’s an ecological undercurrent to Aoba’s vignettes of life among the coral reefs and whale migration paths of Japan’s southernmost archipelago, but that’s exactly where it stays. There are no resolutions here, just a chance to sit in our own miraculous smallness and marvel at it. Aoba isn’t singing to demand we save the seas, just that we consider them, remember we are fatedly linked, and make our own choices.

As a composer, Aoba’s strength lies in creating whole worlds of melody and harmony that feel intricate as miniatures but illuminating, too, on a much grander scale. On the songs that lean more towards chamber folk than strictly ambient, she uses luminous woodwinds, currents of strings, and micro-shimmering percussion to add storytelling textures, while Tomoyuki Asakawa’s harp lends songs like “Coloratura” and “Luciférine” an almost cosmic prettiness. Aoba’s clever sound design is apparent as well in the album’s closing moments, where a sudden drop in frequency aims to emulate the feeling of whale song as it passes through a swimmer’s body. We humans might think that we invented folk but whales have their own, much older version, and Aoba sings along.

In the end, the appeal of Luminescent Creatures is not just that it’s exquisitely beautiful escapism – and goodness knows we needed plenty of that this year – but that there’s playfulness at almost every turn. For me, that’s what makes it so moreish, hinting at new secrets with every heavenly spin. ALAN PEDDER

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30

Planting By The Signs by S.G. Goodman

So much of the queer perspective in music is shaped by big, attention-grabbing cities that it does feel refreshing when an artist like S.G. Goodman comes along. Born, raised, and remaining in rural Kentucky, hers is an authentically Southern voice blessed with an earthy range of expression that makes her rootsy folk-rock songs feel not just written, like anyone could do, but grown from the dirt itself.

In a world dominated by technocrats who’ve probably never touched grass, Goodman’s third album Planting By The Signs arrived in early summer as an antidote to algorithmic hell. There’s a cosmic timing to everything we experience, these songs seem to say, if we can learn to relinquish manufactured urgency and tend our lives with care.

Writing from the American south often carries such a strong sense of place, and that’s also true of Goodman’s songs. She writes great characters too, which I’m sure has everything to do with the fact that songwriting, for her, is synonymous with telling the truth. Even when she covers someone else’s song – in this case “Nature’s Child”, a duet with fellow Kentuckian Bonnie “Prince” Billy – it still feels fully hers. In a year where it feels like so much wool was yanked away from our collective gaze, Goodman shone through with her love of the old ways and a new way to receive them. ALAN PEDDER

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29

Jonatan by Yung Lean

“Jonatan and Yung Lean have never met”, the Swedish artist once stated in an interview with Noisey almost a decade ago, now lost to the internet archives. The two people are the same yet entirely splintered: Yung Lean, the blazed, baby-faced rapper dropping acid at 7/11, both embodying and fluent in memes; Jonatan, the boy who paid the price for uncharted fame too young too fast, resulting in time spent in a psychiatric care unit. Under the alias jonatan leandoer96, he found an outlet for his creative impulses which didn’t align with the Yung Lean iron maiden, but the personal, far more Daniel Johnston-like strangeness which has taken fascinating forms as he has navigated maturity and sobriety.

Jonatan is the fifth studio album as Yung Lean; the two strangers meet for the first time. It teems with radical ideas – an artist who has never courted popularity but has always held our fascination. The exalted “Horses” is the albums crowing moment, steeped in proto-punk and no-wave influences which have always made his vocals – abrasive and impassioned – far more arresting than the impersonal tones of his rap music. Oneohtrix Point Never builds dark, towering cathedrals around him on the hymnal “Terminator Symphony”, and the child-like balladry of “I’m Your Dirt, I’m Your Love” is a refinement of his wedding singer charms on 2023’s Sugar World. The album feels like a reconciliation of two boys forcibly parted, and a baptism where the trespasses of his teenage years are washed away. “Teenage Symphonies 4 God (God Will Only)” is an anthem for an extraordinary, misspent youth and some of his finest songwriting in his career: “When you get what you want, is it really what you want? Is it still what you dreamed of or something that would haunt? I write symphonies for us, teenage symphonies for God”. SOPHIE LEIGH WALKER

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28

New Threats From the Soul by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band

Is masculinity in crisis? As magazine profiles, literary analysis and American politics would suggest, men are back, baby, even if we’re deeply disturbed, lonely, and looking in the wrong direction for solutions. For a year where masculinity has at times turned violent and radical, I’m happy the whims of the music industry uplifted a bunch of regular men — Cameron Winter, MJ Lenderman and Joe Keery are just some guys you might see at your local gas station. Along with them comes Ryan Davis with his lilting, warbling voice and astonishing second record, New Threats From the Soul, a progressive Americana journey that’s about as earnest and charming as a songwriter could get.

Davis and his Roadhouse Band certainly emulate an in-flux manhood; he writes narratives about winners and losers, and he’s more than happy to play the latter. His one-liners that pile into complex, mutating stories are charming and arresting in equal measure; what other album this year has someone begging to “crank the motherfucking Für Elise” at one moment, then stuck at an open mic where Jesus Christ is trying out new material the next? “I thought I could make a better life with bubblegum and driftwood,” Davis yelps on the whistling, finger-snapping title track, a cry to be heard rather than a cry for help. “I learned that time is not my friend or my foe, more like one of the guys from work,” he shrugs.

The plodding synths of “Mutilation Falls” makes way for crooning about Spanish moss, Bloody Marys, “Eve and her pervert friend” — it’s a searingly nostalgic track where Davis slumps over, puts his chin on his fists, and drags a finger in the reflective water. But as it nears ten minutes, a looping buzz surrounds Davis’ recognition of earthly solitude. “Lightning found me here,” he repeats, emphasising a different word each time. “Lightning found me here. Lighting found me here. Me! Here!” Yes, even you! SAM FRANZINI

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27

EUSEXUA by FKA twigs

This time last year, FKA twigs was just days away from trending on TikTok for naming Hackney as the “best neighbourhood” in London and The Cause as her pick for “best dancing”. Ready to shift gears after a sad stint at the box office, on the eve of London Fashion Week, the avant-pop girl had ushered a razor-edged reinvention at the rave venue. Christened “EUSEXUA”, the alternative gathering was the hottest ticket in techno town for every club kid in Rick Owens. Keeping in mind a spirited shift towards Afrobeats-inspired antics on 2022’s CAPRISONGS, twigs showed no signs of slowing down for her grand return. Completing a two-week music and movement residency at Sotheby’s, she took her rave to the road with subsequent hostings at LA’s Tunnel and New York’s Fantasy.

In late-January came her long-awaited third studio LP, sprung from a ferocious summer infatuation for Prague techno and trance whilst working on The Crow. Title and temper in harmony with warehouse promotions, twigs’ EUSEXUA is, in many respects, the older sister of 2015’s M3LL155X, particularly its volatile voguing cut “Glass & Patron”. Owing to the fierce cyber contributions of Welsh producer and DJ Koreless, the entire product glitches and gashes, like a giant swing of the sword twigs loves to perform with. It expresses a total emotional spectrum-spanning manifesto. For, Eusexua is a state of being. Soul stirrer “Striptease” and the album’s title track with Eartheater wails are ethereal entities of their own. To feel Eusexua is to kiss someone under strobe lights for hours on end, on “24hr Dog”, twigs softly coerces total submission of self and ego. Hidden beneath the robotic bed of “Drums of Death” is a declaration, with the help of trans artist Tintin, to: “Crash the system, diva doll / Serve cunt, serve violence”.

Twigs' caption-ready rules of the record manifested across multiple bass thumping, crowd pumping headline tour stops and festival slots, including a last-minute replacement for Doechii at All Points East. Come rain or shine, her four-season rollout practiced what she preached, promising multidimensional possibility within the confines of a low-lit concert hall or the aspect ratio of a YouTube video premiere. The release of comedown counterpart EUSEXUA Afterglow confirms her prowess as an innovator in the realm of sci-fi electronica and sees her operating in recent weeks on an entirely new frequency. DOUGLAS JARDIM

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26

SAYA by Saya Gray

To describe a set of lyrics as “confessional” tends to strip them bare, evoking the warmth and naturalism of acoustic accompaniment—as if we can get closer to the truth by being able to more clearly decode the writer’s heartache. Yet, Japanese-Canadian songwriter Saya Gray has never quite fit within the confines of that type of simplicity, taking intricate folk missives and stretching them out into a full-on sprawl of beats, loops and layered harmonies. Fittingly, it mimics the sound of a heart unraveling and a brain scattering to rewind it, with each new sound introduced to capture the constant overflow.

Following the release of 2019’s 19 Masters and 2022 and 2023’s back-to-back respective EP releases of QWERTY and QWERTY II—and following a difficult breakup of her own—Gray fled Toronto for Japan. Following the path of so many writers before her, she made the trip into a solo cross-country voyage to find herself and mine for inspiration. The resulting work, SAYA, draws all the aforementioned signature moves out of her writing further, filled to the brim with hooks falling over themselves to construct an expansive portrait of the relationship’s aftermath.

It delivers the earworm art pop of opener “...THUS IS WHY ( I DON’T SPRING FOR LOVE) ” just as effortlessly as it marries twang with anachronistic glitchiness on “10 WAYS ( TO LOSE A CROWN )” or “EXHAUST THE TOPIC”, the latter of which comes to a crescendo with a towering guitar solo, breaking up the spareness with an electric sob. As we sometimes strain to categorise in our post-genre world of indie music, Gray has unleashed an album both strikingly original and strange upon that world. It provides a pathway for how our fickle emotions can fuel the work of artists operating in the folk tradition—not only through language, but through sound. ELISE SOUTAR

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25

REPULSOR by Shlohmo

Since his beginnings in the hallowed LA beat scene around the early 2010s, producer Henry Laufer, known professionally as Shlohmo, has been a quietly subversive and influential voice on music at large. His initial off-kilter, glitch-laden sounds slowly transformed into something a lot more full-bodied, carving a path for an emotionally dense yet refreshingly unconventional sonic palette which eventually caught the attention of the likes of BANKS, Jeremih, Joji, Post Malone and many more.Shlohmo also contributed a spark to what seemed like one of the more unlikely reunions of recent years in the form of SALEM’s Fires In Heaven, with him helping to guide the Michigan’s comeback record to new sonic heights and continuing to cement their place as modern greats.

It’d been five long years since Shlohmo’s last solo output, so when his third album REPULSOR was announced alongside a new SALEM collaboration, "Chore Boy", it wasn’t certain what version of Shlohmo audiences would receive. The answer was something that couldn’t have been predicted. Gothic digital walls of sound cascade with a gargantuan sludge-metal inspired guitar tone on tracks like "Forever while synapse-shorting hyperactive electronics ("Eggtooth") and Shlohmo’s first true “hands-on-the-air” dancefloor moment on "Lola’s Theme" provide two out of many instances of just how diverse the producer’s arsenal has become in those five years. While REPULSOR’s sonic diversity exhibits the first real instance of you hearing Shlohmo at his most human, trying things out in real time, it’s also his first album that not only features his own vocals, but those of his creative community. SALEM’s John Holland contributes menacingly textured, off-the-cuff meditations on the aforementioned "Chore Boy", with Baltimore crooner Corbin providing yearning refrains to "Antivenom".

Began in the depths of Covid-based house arrest, REPULSOR more than accurately conveys the desperate malaise of the time with a genuinely hopeful vision for the future; an admission of how beyond hope the world is, but a compulsion to persevere regardless. MITCH STEVENS

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24

Bleeds by Wednesday

To call Bleeds a breakup album would do Wednesday frontwoman Karly Hartzman a disservice. Bleeds is a redemption, an exhale, and an anthology, swaddled in Southern gothic imagery and small-town charm. In the third track, Hartzman professes, “I wound up here by holding on,” which builds into a guttural yell. This process of experiencing movement and great change in stillness is a throughline on Bleeds: in Hartzman’s romantic relationship with bandmate MJ Lenderman, the lakes, dive bars, and dead-ends of Appalachia, and the characters and traditions that live there beside her.

In a personal essay published by Vulture in October, Hartzman described the moment that the house in Haw Creek, North Carolina she shared with Lenderman — her “favorite place on earth,” their cat, and their porch — could no longer stabilize their changing lives. She recorded seventh track “The Way Love Goes,” a love song for Lenderman, a month after they chose to break up at a bar in Kyoto. “Spoiled by your knowing / Newer and much sweeter / Many much more patient / With much more than I can give,” she sings gently over his guitar. An undeniable heaviness hangs onto Hartzman’s syllables.

To distract herself, Hartzman focuses on sharing anecdotes from childhood in Greensboro. She tells of the townies, the misfits, and the old friends she’s fallen out of touch with. Each detail is colorful, sometimes morbid, and sometimes humorous. In fifth track, “Phish Pepsi,” Hartzman recalls a memory from her middle school years over jam band-style banjo, ironically. The scene is uncanny, warmed by gulps of saccharine malt liquor and puffs from a makeshift bong.

Hartzman’s approach to storytelling is utterly one-of-a-kind. In “Townies,” we meet the drug dealer who sent her nude photos around town, who died before she could confront him. “Pick Up That Knife” introduces us to the guy with the Afrin addiction who was “baptized to freedom and born in bondage.” The last track is a reprise of their 2021 track “Gary’s,” recalling the man who lives across the street from Hartzman — his bat, his pickup truck, and his decades-old set of dentures.

Fourth track “Elderberry Wine” is, arguably, the crown jewel of Bleeds. The lead single — deemed by many the “song of summer 2025” — is as beautiful as it is complex, like most big loves tend to be. In the song’s chorus, Hartzman coos, “Cause the champagne tastes like elderberry wine / And the pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine.” Elderberry wine can be poisonous in large amounts and pickled eggs will become sour if they aren’t attended to. In Bleeds, Karly Hartzman learns that by sipping the elderberry wine in moderation, by holding on, she will be okay. By taking a moment to listen, we can be okay too. KATE RATNER

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23

Cryogeyser by Cryogeyser

This year’s most lovesick/struck album was released on Valentine’s Day. It’s on the nose but then Cryogeyser, a trio from LA, likes to be on the nose. There’s a song called “Cupid”. There are sweet, gooey harmonies piled onto sweeter, gooier admissions like “dizzy for yaaaa!” But you don’t need to be head over heels with The One in order to ‘get’ Cryogeyser – a record that oozes uncomplicated, practice-room charm while being so emotionally available and well put-together that you’ll quickly click with it. Certainly with Shawn Marom’s POV, which is concerned with repurposing rather than romanticising the highs and lows of being in love in your early twenties. Crucially, she’s viewing the ecstasy and turmoil as a wiser, more patient 30 year old. There’s a distance to it all, and it makes these songs feel not necessarily safe, but more comfortable than if she was still in the eye of the storm. The sharp edges watered down by the years.

That’s not to say this is a safe or predictable record, of course. Unlike a lot of heard-it-before prefix-gaze music we’ve been inundated with over the last few years, Cryogeyser succeeds in being many things because it doesn’t try to be cool or follow the crowd. Its energy is cry-sing in the shower like no-one’s watching but sometimes rage-room breakdown and other times more you couldn’t afford me if you wanted to. It bungees from overjoyed to nostalgically morose, blissfully carefree to blisteringly angry. It’s Blue Rev but also Dido. Siamese Dream and Massive Attack, too. And there’s this one bit during “Stargirl” that’s my favourite 30 seconds of music released this year. The whole song winds up to this bridge climax: the guitars sway drunkenly on their feet, it feels like the room is spinning, and eventually everything just explodes. 300 fuzzed-beyond-belief guitars pound you from every direction. And you surrender happily. HAYDEN MERRICK

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22

Perverts by Ethel Cain

An uncompromising exploration of the divine and the damaged under an ambiguous heading that can be read either as an almost expletive expression of spiritual damnation and physical degradation, or as a verb indicating more general deviation from norms (as in “perverting the course of justice”) rather than specifically moral or sexual deviancy, the second release from Hayden Anhedönia encompasses ideas and emotions deeper and darker even than those on the debut, Preacher’s Daughter. That first album depicted the story of one whose hopes and body were crushed and abused, the few questionable shards of light (“I’m doing what I want / And damn, I’m doing it well / For me”, in “American Teenager”) thrown into a totally enveloping, indeed devouring, darkness.

Perverts is a record of extraordinary musical breadth, from the gently ambient to the discordantly industrial, depicting the beautiful and the damned in sonics of remarkable, controlled complexity; truly, the filth and the fury slouching towards some hope of redemption in a context far from the world of a wholesome U.S. girl. Yet, it is in many respects a haunted extension of Preacher’s Daughter, each record presenting a critique of judgements as they are oppressively delivered by the judgemental. Now, in isolation, Perverts’ persona is free (represented by the variety of the songs’ lengths, styles and structures, alongside more sepulchral atmospherics) of others’ impositions, physical, emotional and institutional, and can accordingly engage with the worst on her own terms, at times almost viscerally. Some critics referred to the album as depicting a Dantesque descent into a type of Hell, but perhaps it is rather a presentation of a highly personalised Purgatorial experience, leading back ultimately (as the opening track has it) to being “nearer my [and most definitely not the] God”. RAY HONEYBOURNE

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21

Constant Noise by Benefits

The year was polluted by a summer of flag-raising, escalating racist and xenophobic protests, and the far right pushing division for propulsion. The hopelessness in witnessing these movements gaining ground yet remaining unchecked by our political leaders was flipped into a call-to-action for Teesside duo Benefits, who redirected their discontent into a time capsule of Britain in 2025.

It’s a year - and an increasingly disillusioned society - that needed the untethered catharsis of Kingsley Hall and Robbie Major’s second album Constant Noise. If you went to a Benefits show in 2025, you saw people viscerally connect with the record’s lyrics through lived experience and empathy. Hall’s spoken-word poetry sears through tense reflections on living in an economically-neglected region (“We don’t exist, we don’t resist / We are just statistic” on “Divide”), frustrations of damaging North East working class stereotypes (“satellite town has-beens,” “Feet up, pound shop, debts and fear / stinking of football and beer” on “Land of The Tyrants”), and navigating dynamics of social media in a climate of misinformation (“I can’t remember my motive, do I really care? / Or do I just enjoy the fight?” on album opener “Constant Noise”). Enjoyably niche North Easter-eggs pop up throughout, seeing Gazza and his fishing rod lore referenced on “Divide”.

Constant Noise’s biting electronic underswell exploits the recent growing division and holds a mirror up to remind us what’s actually, truly, real. Released in March via Invada Records (BEAK>, Billy Nomates), the record is a continuation of the collaborative ethos of the band, with appearances from Peter Doherty of The Libertines, Middlesbrough rapper Shakk and Neil Cooper of Therapy?

Hall believes that all music is political, and in insisting on resistance, Benefits are kicking against the pricks on behalf of us all. OLIVIA SWASH

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20

Let God Sort Em Out by Clipse

The first Clipse album in sixteen years was always going to be an event. But the now Grammy-nominated Let God Sort ‘Em Out exceeded all expectations. Proving that with time also comes a fine finessing that can’t be purchased, Pusha T and Malice equally take charge, but that’s not before expunging some deeply familial pain with opener “The Birds Don’t Sing”. It’s this choice to lead with something packed to the hilt with heartfelt outpouring that puts the weight of this return in perspective – this is an album that’s been a decade-plus in the making, and they want to leave nothing unsaid.

Featuring the likes of Kendrick Lamar, high off a generational whoopin’ of Drake last year and this year's Super Bowl performance, as well Tyler, the Creator, especially so early on for a quick one-two, gives a cultural weight to the return, but it’s the cuts where it’s just the brothers doing what they do best that stand out. Leading single “Ace Trumpts” ensured to satiate the drug-rap kingpins as still being top of the game as their ballerines pirouette in snow globes, but the real gem of the album is “M.T.B.T.T.F”. The nefarious beat ticks over as they pull out sensational imagery such as “White slave master souls in my safe”, and “I’m talkin’ ’96 HOV with the base” (referring to Jay-Z’s own generational whoopin’ of Nas and its frankly titanic low-end). There’s a close runner-up in Hardest Line on “Chains & Whips” as Pusha T frankly explains: “I will close your heaven for the hell of it.”

In totality, Let God Sort ‘Em Out is a project that features the best of Clipse with a sleek, mature tint. It’s increasingly rare for an act to be two decades deep into their career and be putting out their best work yet, but few have worked as hard and as dedicated as the brothers Clipse, and the rewards are being reaped. This year also saw their return to the live forum, including a sold-out three-night run in London, which felt more akin to a victory lap than a reintroduction. Never mind God, Clipse are more than happy to sort us out. STEVEN LOFTIN

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19

Pain to Power by Maruja

Going by the success that Maruja have been fostering since the release of their debut Pain To Power back in September, it’s fair to say that there’s a thirst for a visceral type of energy. You know, that heart-racing, world-righting, encapsulating stuff that helps you realise and de-catastrophise, which is an understandable enough need given these trying (note: EXHAUSTING) times we seem to consistently find ourselves in. Maruja’s signal-firing brand of post-rock comes to fruition with a subconscious connection between its four members. Utilising Joe Carroll’s sax to bring an elemental fluidity to the sung and oft-rapped political anger vocalist Harry Wilkinson totes, while the rage that broils steadily and sweetly in its rhythm section from drummer Jacob Hayes and bassist Matt Buonaccorsi powers the machine, Maruja have firmly established themselves this year. But the real key ingredient to Maruja, however, is the time taken.

It’s the pot-boiling approach. While you can indeed crank the hob up, instead, they opt to let physics take its time by not rushing through proceedings. Instead of trying to cram all of that feral confusion and frustration into two-three minute blitz tracks, they let the emotions simmer, particularly on the 10-minute busting “Born to Die”, proving that emotional complexity is more understood – and yearned for – than most realise. While Pain did an excellent job of bottling their prowess, it has to be seen to be believed. Capping off a year that’s seen their stages grow larger and continue selling out, the brute force orchestrated through a series of eloquent moves and commanding presence is what has truly captured the throngs that are migrating to Maruja’s stylings. They enchant with a ferocity that continues building, with each gathering of like-minded souls, Maruja seem to be powering up. If Pain To Power was the beginning, the generation they’re feeding with their energy looks set to be charged for a very long time indeed. STEVEN LOFTIN

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18

Like a Ribbon by John Glacier

There's been a shift in “cool”, and a welcome one. A new wave of cool musicians, from Jane Remover and Underscores through to MIKE and Little Simz value sincerity and authenticity over the ironic detachment which has plagued the term for years. They care deeply, over pretending not to. The coolest of them all save the unbothered attitude for the opinions of others. They follow every weird impulse, unshaken by what was on trend five minutes ago, or what they might be expected to make.

John Glacier is this brand of cool - quite happy to be the hottest in the game, on her own terms, in her own game. Like a Ribbon follows few expectations for a major rap debut, or indeed a hyped indie release. Big producers like Flume and Evilgiane morph to fit her vision, no sound more weighty than her deadpan vocal. She flits from stark brags to refined poetry, sculpted and icy in their form and delivery. Lines jump out like quiet epiphanies, their brevity never a barrier to vividness. She's unshowy, not telegraphing technique even when she constructs whole verses with double meanings and playful connecting thoughts.

Like her words, the beats are alive with specificity, detail, and a sense of place. That's part of what connects her to a lineage of UK electronic producers like Burial and Space Africa as well as much as art rap figures like M.I.A. But rather than attempting to speak for a time or place in its totality, it offers a perspective wholly her own.

Months later, now that the ice has melted, the range and nuance on Like A Ribbon is visible through the tough exterior. The catharsis of ‘Dancing in the Rain’ is distinct from the defiance of ‘Don't Cover Me’. The constant is its maker, unwavering in belief and appeal. And what makes it stick is what many spend years chasing - memorable melodies, addictive soundplay and even a couple of great choruses. How cool. SKYE BUTCHARD

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17

Big city life by Smerz

Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt will invite you to the party, but don’t expect them to hold your hand and show you around. Big city life, their second album, is a droll ode to nightlife that finds curiosity in the banal and excitement in the familiar. The Norwegian duo’s dreamy, off-kilter soundscapes are sparse and simple, hypnotizing and skeletal — it’ll let you do the imagining.

Its centerpiece, “Feisty”, reads like a parody of a pop song, filtered through AI, a disaffected stroll through a club’s anxieties, freedoms and romantic rivalry. “Makeup on my mind, these shoes so far down,” the girls sing obliquely, like they’re scrolling their phone in the recording studio. The song is less of a party-starter and more of a recording of the night’s sights and sounds, drunken half-thoughts and mumbled plans. It feels like they’re seconds away from turning to you and asking, “So, who do you know here?”

Big city life is peppered with left-field production choices, melodies left out in the cold to linger, and beguiling turns of phrase; not a language barrier but a language enhancer. It chronicles untouchable, liberating moments, those times you felt “brilliant and fun,” followed by the tipsy hangxiety of walking home alone in the cold, empty streets. When they dryly repeat “laugh, laugh, laugh” on the title track, you’re unsure whether it’s a taunt, tease, or command. But as with any awkward interaction where you’re hanging with the cool girls, you’re just happy they’re talking to you at all. SAM FRANZINI

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16

Caroline 2 by Caroline

It’s been an exciting few years for “guitar music,” and British post-rock group caroline have been a major part of this renaissance. Their second project, caroline 2, is an album that pushes the boundaries of what rock can do in the age of electronic music, somehow making acoustic twang sound all at once like hyperpop and that strange thing called “Midwest Emo.” Saxophones, wind instruments, and acoustic guitars are produced to feel as glitchy as anything coming out of a MIDI keyboard, creating sonic surprises that can’t help but delight.

Comparisons here to the grunge of the late 90s and early 00s are warranted — the group has, in fact, opened for The Microphones, who they bare a strong resemblance to — and welcome. caroline 2 pulls the chaotic ethos of the folksy, grungy underground sound of that time to the modern era. One even wonders if this might be the current generation’s Neutral Milk Hotel, the kind of thing you’ll hang on to from first dates with male manipulator types and end up loving for years.

The record does, of course, benefit from a wonderful contribution from Caroline Polachek on “Tell me I never knew that,” perhaps strengthening whatever threads of hyperpop were there in the first place. The feature is the perfect illustration of what makes this genre-straddling record so good writ large: on paper, it seems like it won’t work (aside from the obvious caroline / Caroline wordplay), and yet it does. LAURA DAVID

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15

Fancy That by PinkPantheress

On New Years’ Day, Victoria Walker – a.k.a. PinkPantheress – tweeted photos of herself at home in her makeshift studio setup. “oh we are soooo back #2025”, the people’s princess of bedroom pop proclaimed. It made for a surprising announcement, considering she’d been in hiatus mode for a couple of months to focus on her physical health and overall well-being. Her 2023 LP Heaven knows was a critical darling that year, poignant and polished, the abrupt cancellation of her 2024 tour in aid of the album made for pretty disappointing news. Escaping the pit of public humiliation, though, Pink pulled herself together, returned to her sample-heavy roots, and put out a passion project that is brief, but unmistakably brilliant.

Nine-track mixtape Fancy That pays sweet homage to a multitude of first-class British dance tunes, and it does so in spades through the most infectious of earworm reimaginings. It goes without saying that this was the definitive record of everyone’s fleeting summer shenanigans. The coy greeting of Underworld-intro “Illegal”, alone, is now an iconic piece of pop culture history for the chronically online: “My name is Pink and I’m really glad to meet you” *cue vigorous handshake*. Fuelled by a childhood nostalgia for Groove Armada, Fatboy Slim, and Basement Jaxx, Fancy That is the funhouse that funk built, PinkPantheress style. Alluring as ever, Pink lulls the listener into a false sense of security with the showcase of a more mature modus operandi. Case in point, sleeper hit “Tonight”, co-produced by Count Baldor and aksel arvid. One second an orchestral string arrangement, the next a dirty, driving bassline, “You want sex with me? Uh-huh / Come talk to me, come on”, she sings with pep in her 2-step.

Co-signed by everyone from Usher’s son to NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, PinkPantheress’ recovery serves as a major milestone for the former stage-shy starlet clinging onto purses for dear life. Now she is more than comfortable performing stylised choreography: on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; at a sold-out O2 Academy Brixton; shoulder to shoulder with sampled artist Just Jack. A popular single from the start, The Dare imprint “Stateside”, where she croons over an American boy, foreshadowed a vastly growing transatlantic appeal. Two remix standouts on follow-up Fancy Some More?, flipped and switched by Zara Larsson and Bladee, respectively, are the perfect send-offs to an outstanding era. DOUGLAS JARDIM

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14

The Passionate Ones by Nourished by Time

When I caught Marcus Brown at Øya festival in Oslo last summer, he was on the edge of stardom, and going through it. Completely his creation and made on a self-described budget of $0, the Maryland musician's last record, Erotic Probiotic 2, had become a word-of-mouth hit in the underground. An intense world tour and signing to XL followed, moving him out of his parent's house where he made his breakout album. Soon, he was flying between New York and London to promote or create, somewhere between living the dream and fearing it.

The anxious energy of that moment could be felt as he walked onto a packed basement stage at midnight. He first looked unsure, then unable to hide a smirk realising people halfway across the world had showed up. In those early days, success can be fragile and transient. He channeled all of it into performance, his voice unrestrained, hands hitting his midi keyboard hard enough that you could hear the plastic clacking a few rows back.

Brown bares his soul on stage and on record. The scrappy and minimal approach to production acts not as a limitation but a way to create as little distance between us and the feeling he's experiencing. With an actual budget and team to support him on The Passionate Ones, he's lost none of that spirit. You are as close to him on record as there in basement venues, where you could see the sweat flying off his head.

The album is a modern take on the American dream, deadened by late-stage capitalism. It searches for love and self-acceptance while wading through the toil of daily existence. When the world seems to actively suppress agency and connection, how do you find the will to still connect?

Brown conveys this with odd and endlessly creative approaches to pop songwriting. He somehow lands each gutsy choice, like nailing a quadruple axel in the freezer aisle of a supermarket. The record becomes an inspiring document of self actualisation, all while exploring doubt, and an awareness that what he's chasing comes with its own demons and falsehoods.

There has never been an easy time to work as a musician, but the devaluing of art as a mode of human expression feels baked into the current model, on streaming platforms and in the emptiness of the AI boom. The Passionate Ones underlines the miracle of making it work. Its many joyful and inventive moments show the control regained by building something new anyway. SKYE BUTCHARD

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13

Vendrán Suaves Lluvias by Silvana Estrada

Mexican singer/songwriter Silvana Estrada did not intend to spend 3 years working on a follow-up to her international breakthrough, Marchita, but a series of terrible setbacks forced her to stall. Rocked by health problems and the shocking murder of her best friend, for the first time in her life music felt futile and joyless. But with patience – and a dose of wisdom from ranchera singer Chavela Vargas – she eventually found a path out of the woods.

Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, which translates to “soft rains will come”, may not be as direct as Marchita but, crucially, it’s all her own vision. Having taken charge as producer, determined to have fun with the recordings, Estrada’s handsome melodies make room for the gladness of being alive, as well as cathartic outpourings of anger and sorrow. Her poetic words remain as potent as ever in any case, and if the vocals have the feel of demos, well, that’s because they are, kept and cherished for their naked, first-take truth. ALAN PEDDER

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GOLLIWOG by billy woods

After the success of woods' eighth studio album Maps in 2023, it seemed a near impossible feat that his next body of work would eclipse that legacy and yet GOLLIWOG, with its unapologetically abrasive sound and masterful deployment of samples, does exactly that.

One half of rap duo Armand Hammer, woods teamed up with his also frequent collaborators on this project, including production elites The Alchemist, DJ Haram, and Kenny Segal. The result is ingeniously dark in tone; the album moves both ominously and yet unflinchingly through a soundscape of contemporary horror and lyrical quips, to create a tapestry of the black experience that is at once politically astute and musically inspired.

Singles from the album included "Misery" and "BLK ZMBY (feat. Steel Tipped Dove)", but the real skill of the record is in its total and complete wholeness – the new shadows that woods casts on pressing subject matters through this eighteen-track epic cement him as one of the twenty-first-century’s true rap greats. EMMELINE ARMITAGE

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DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS by Bad Bunny

The cover art of Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (DTMF) features a pair of white Monobloc chairs amid a forest of banana plants. Before the music begins, Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio captures the attention of Latin Americans in the diaspora, his beloved island, and immigrant communities worldwide. His audience can listen to this record and envision their elders sitting in those chairs, exchanging “chisme” and retellings of childhood stories after dark. In DTMF, Ocasio’s moments of celebration and grief are equally palpable — a true testament to the Boricua experience.

DTMF was released on January 5, 2025, just two weeks before Donald Trump was sworn into the U.S. Presidential office and 157 years, almost to the date, after the founding of the Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico. Relatedly, the record grapples with centuries of sociopolitical tension — Spanish colonization, the U.S. acquisition of PR as a territory, and the resilience of Puerto Rican lineage, art, and culture.

In the ever-changing landscape of contemporary reggaeton, dembow, and musica urbana, Ocasio uses DTMF to return to his roots. First track “NUEVAYoL,” a love letter to Puerto Rican life in New York City, samples 1975 salsa anthem “Un Verano en Nueva York” by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico. “Si te quieres divertir / Con encanto y con primor / Solo tienes que vivir / Un verano en Nueva York,” they sing, over bouncy trumpet, saxophone, and a percussion section hand-tailored for dancing. Ocasio lets the salsa music breathe, chiming in with playful rapped verses and ad-libs.

After visiting “El Bronx” and Washington Heights, the record travels back to Puerto Rico. Ocasio avoids name-dropping in his features, instead inviting collaborations with his favorite smaller Puerto Rican acts: Chuwi, Omar Courtz, Los Pleneros de la Cresta, Dei V, and RaiNao. In “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR,” Ocasio invites a girl he meets in Miami to experience Puerto Rico the authentic way. “Voy a llevarte pa PR, mami / Pa que vea cómo es que se perrea,” he sings, layered over a snappy electronic sound. It’s sexy and exciting, but at its core, Ocasio rejects the way tourists carelessly experience his home.

Even if not overtly political, Ocasio’s national identity remains paramount in DTMF. In “TURiSTA,” a stripped-down breakup song, he compares his lost love to a tourist. He sings, “En mi vida fuiste turista / Tú solo viste lo mejor de mí y no lo que yo sufría” over delicate guitar strumming. This process of rejecting a romantic partner for their vulnerability is similar to unconscious tourism — lounging on the beach and photographing sunsets while neglecting history and ignoring truth.

The titular second-to-last track “DtMF” unlocks the purpose of Ocasio’s art: doing a service to those who came before him. Dedicated to his late grandmother, “DtMF” memorializes the elders who once sat in the white Monobloc chairs. This heartfelt conclusion taps into the Afro-Rican plena sound, sharing colorful oral histories with the help of panderetas and maracas. In the chorus, Ocasio admits, “Debí tirar más fotos de cuando te tuve / Debí darte más besos y abrazos las veces que pude” — a sentiment commonly shared by those who have lost relatives.

DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS showcases Ocasio at his most vulnerable, his most creative, and above all, his most proud. He expects us to listen, to dance, to sing, to cry, and to think. This record is addicting and absolutely loveable — a comforting embrace from Vega Baja to the world. KATE RATNER

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hooke’s law by keiyaA

Experimental soul and R&B artist keiyaA made her long-awaited return in November with hooke’s law, her first album for XL Recordings following the label’s reissue of her largely self-produced debut Forever, Ya Girl, easily among the year’s best albums when it originally dropped in 2020.

Five years later she’s smashed it again. It may be named after the principle of physics that explains the behaviour of springs, but hooke’s law is not as tidy as all that. There’s resilience here, yes, but little in the way of neat resolutions. Instead, keiyaA invites us to get tangled up with her in conflicts and knotty, emotional messes, delivered with a jazz-trained ear for the avant-garde. Forfeiting the relative calm of her debut, hooke’s law writhes with electronic clatter, conveying a simmering fury at injustice and at a world that’s too complacent by half at confronting its evils. At 19 tracks long, keiyaA’s ambition is presented at full stretch, and one that we may never fully rebound from. ALAN PEDDER

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You Are The Morning by jasmine.4.t

The unstoppable rise of Jasmine Cruickshank has been a joy to watch throughout 2025, from the January release of You Are The Morning through to the conclusion of her Tranarchy World Tour just a week or so ago. In a world that seems hellbent on traumatising trans communities with grim legislation and the threat of violence at every turn, her choice to centre trans love, trans joy, and chosen families within her songs offered a sanctuary of sorts, extending an open arm to anyone who needs it and pushing fear out to the margins.

Recorded in LA and featuring all three members of Boygenius, who collectively produced the record, You Are the Morning is flooded with a gentle, loving light. Even at its saddest and most broken, it radiates a sense of hard-earned self-knowing that welcomes in the similarly stranded and those already finding their way back. As a narrator, Cruickshank is both trustworthy and brave. When she sings about losing her mind mid-supermarket shop (“Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation”), we’re right there with her, observing from a future in which her PTSD is thankfully healed. And when she sings about taking her first dose of oestrogen at the start of her transition (“Woman”), her tender affirmations hit crushingly, beautifully hard.

Influenced by Adrienne Lenker and Elliott Smith, Cruickshank is a skilled guitarist and her melodies are sticky as hell. Album highlight “Elephant” has barely left my mind all year. But her success has not been without its painful moments. Her best friend, Yulia Trot, who inspired many of the songs on You Are the Morning, was imprisoned late last year as one of the Filton 24 – a group being held for allegedly damaging Israeli weapons intended for use in the Gaza genocide – and has spent the year isolated from her community and in dangerously poor mental health.

“Of all the things that I have lived through, nothing has felt as big as losing her,” Cruickshank wrote in September, having tirelessly used her platform all year to raise awareness of Yulia and the others’ plight. A deluxe edition of the album came out shortly after, with five additional songs all relating in some way to her friend. ALAN PEDDER

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choke enough by oklou

Marylou Mayniel has been on the scene for a decade now, but it’s really this year’s Choke Enough that’s given the French musician better known as Oklou a step up to the next level. Of course, the record is Mayniel true full-length debut, but her contributions to electropop have rung far and wide in the years she’s been active. In some ways, this project felt more like a coronation than an arrival.

Choke Enough is a bit of a who’s-who of electronica, featuring contributions from A.G. Cook, Underscores, Bladee, Casey MQ, and Danny L Harle. It satisfyingly weaves together conventional trance and house styles with Y2K, powerhouse pop, indie, hyperpop, and more. It’s creatively curious and ambitious, and it’s a damn delight to listen to. “harvest sky” is an instant dancefloor classic, while “blade bird” brings serious emotional range and depth to the table.

What’s perhaps most striking about the record is its success with subtlety. Nothing here is overbearing. The synths never overwhelm, and the flourishes never feel over the top. Oklou makes dance music feel poised, expressive, moving, and almost acoustic. When to the maxxed-out glitch that has dominated the scene for the last few years, this feels like the start of a new course.

And the shift was a welcome one. To say this album has been beloved almost feels like an understatement. Rather, it’s become something of an instant classic, a mission statement for electropop and electronica in indie that will make waves for many years to come. LAURA DAVID

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Glory by Perfume Genius

Growing older is rarely what was promised. Swathes of coming-of-age films and a hundred Motown hits tell it differently: just buckle in, weather the storm of your arduous adolescence and your trying twenties, and a more certain future awaits. That has been, to a point, the story of the Perfume Genius’ music to date as well. Beginning with the small, haunting abuse stories of Put UR Back N 2 It and growing into the dazzling Too Bright and the propulsive, embodied dance of Ugly Season, Mike Hadreas’ catalogue has sketched a loose arc of trauma, reclamation and liberation, each time headed, inevitably, towards blossoming pastures anew. That was, until Glory.

Seeking to address a dearth of stories of queer middle-age, on his seventh album Hadreas yanks at the fabric of Hollywood redemption arcs and unspools some of the hard-earned victories detailed on his previous records, returning to old battles and allowing mud to seep back into the waters. Written in the wake of a period of COVID-induced depression, on Glory Hadreas doesn’t bring it all crashing down, but rather prods at our naïve expectations of life’s middle age, asking on the blistering opener "It’s A Mirror", "what do I get out of being established? / I still run and hide when a man's at the door”. Everything is different and yet the tone adolescence set for our lives remains, stubbornly, unchanged.

The album is appropriately unpredictable. Its tracklist jolts between moments of doubt ("Dion"), knotty sexual deviance ("Hanging Out") and, as on exquisite ballad "Me & Angel", open-hearted expressions of marital love. Hadreas and husband/bandmate Alan Wyffels decamped to California in recent years but seem to have absorbed little of the coastline’s sunnier sounds, instead setting their stall among the same back allies which birthed everyone from Pavement to Phoebe Bridgers. Sonically, Glory is Hadreas’ murkiest to date. Gone are the shimmering synths of "On The Floor", replaced instead by the thrashing, Bay State-thump of "No Front Teeth" and the lashing, guitar-maelstrom of "In A Row".

That song, which depicts Hadreas hogtied and stuffed into the trunk of a car, best captures the album’s twin, deviant impulses: caught between doubt and devotion; between beauty and violence. Hadreas’ voice - often pitched as if at the point of tears – is one reliable source of the former, so of course he and long-time producer Blake Mills occasionally wreck it, warped by machinery, all to unsettle any notion of firm footing.

But there is plenty of unadorned beauty on Glory too, from ‘Me & Angel’ to the exquisite "Full On"; one of the great Perfume Genius tunes and a song in which Hadreas expresses his love for shattered masculinity, running across the field to rescue a fallen quarterback over fluttering strings. The brutality and the beauty, that’s the stuff life is made of, in middle-age and always. Not all music admits it, but Perfume Genius continues to be one of its most dazzling mirrors. LIAM INSCOE-JONES

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Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams

Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, Hayley Williams’ first project following her departure from Atlantic (independently released/distributed by Secretly) is looser and more confessional in tone than previous solo and Paramore-connected work. In a year filled with pop milestones, Ego Death stands out for its engaging balance between self-reflective melancholy (“Glum”), fuck-it optimism (“Ice in My OJ”), and probing social commentary (the title track).

Williams has long demonstrated her ability to craft and deliver a hook, but here she seems to be at the top of her game. On “Kill Me”, she addresses the karmic patterns that get passed down through generations. “Disappearing Man” rebrands mid-’90s alt-rock à la Alanis Morissette, speaking to loneliness, disembodiment, and the conditioning we all endure. “Negative Self-Talk” focuses on the way we carry the weight of the past and how that manifests destructively in current relationships. While each song probes weighty issues, Williams never loses sight of her pop focus, balancing philosophic leanings and unflagging accessibility.

The theatric “Mirtazapine” crosses grungy soundscapes that would get a thumbs-up from PJ Harvey and hooks that would appeal to peak Liz Phair and/or Soccer Mommy. The mercurial “Hard” rebrands soft-loud dynamics. Williams’ verses occur as diaristic confessions, her choruses crashing into charged manifestos – thorny naivete meets cynicism (“Nothing is a given”), the desire to trust someone meets hyper-vigilance (“My ribs are metal cages”), persistence meets a negative bias (“Always ready for the piano to fall”). While Williams has never shied away from authentic revelations, here she seems uninhibited. Additionally, she fits her existential queries effortlessly into pop contexts.

While cynicism is part of Ego Death..., so are Williams’ fundamental beliefs in love and life. A lingering innocence informs the set, infusing many of the songs with subtle buoyancy. “I Won’t Quit on You” suggests that even someone who is “stranded on Mars” or lives in “chaos-ridden inner space” can meet the one. The idealism of “Parachute” would resonate with Precipice-era Indigo de Souza, even as Williams accepts that, particularly in terms of potential partners, she needs to be discerning. Closer “Showbiz” underscores that things are not necessarily as they seem; we are not our personas.

With Ego Death..., Williams revels in creative independence, takes a look at her romantic ambivalences, and searches for truth in a relativistic age. Her voice is multifaceted, her melodies as crystalline as ever. Ego Death is the sound of someone landing in her own life, conducting an honest self-inventory while also having a bit of fun. We, in turn, are invited to cop to our own shortcomings and, perhaps, take ourselves less seriously. JOHN AMEN

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I Love My Computer by Ninajirachi

“I wanna fuck my computer, 'cause no one in the world knows me better,” is the hypnotic, blood-shot mantra which runs through the hardwiring of Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer – a valentine to a girlhood experienced before a screen as a mirror. The 26-year-old Australian artist evokes the euphoria of 2010s EDM when the internet was a wonderland of untapped possibilities; the promise was still intact, nothing hurt and everything felt massive.

With the reckless abandon of a pre-teen with a cracked version of FL studio, I Love My Computer calls upon neo-trance, dubstep, tech-house and the internet-spawned microgenres born from the digital boom. Horrifyingly, this record could almost be described as an act of retrofuturism. But rather than creating a nostalgic simulacrum of these sounds, there is an intimacy and emotional weight which can only be glimpsed through the rearview mirror. Ninajirachi makes the case, both implicitly and explicitly, that computer music is startlingly human – not only because it is an extension of ourselves, but because it’s ourselves represented in excelsis.

“iPod Touch” is a gleaming soap bubble recalling the hyper-textural sounds of PC Music. It captures the thrill of owning your first piece of tech which connected you to a bigger world and everything it represented: self-invention, possibility, escape, connection. “It sounds like / iPod little crack in the screen, FL studio so late I fell asleep on the keys / With it looping through the speakers bleeding into my dreams,” – recollections which, though person, will still feel ultra vivid to those whose teens were intertwined with the internet.

I Love My Computer can unravel like a fairytale of self-discovery (“Fell into the screen like a star / As a girl found a world there and gave it my heart”), the story soon curdles. “Infohazard”, a dislocating freefall of a trance track, recalls when she witnessed the beheading of a man online when she was a teenager. Even in its glazed simplicity, it gestures toward the lawlessness of the internet which children numbly accepted. Perhaps even more sinister is the mind-melting dubstep love letter “CSIRAC”, where a voice – barely perceptible in the deluge of sound – whispers, “You are the girl, the one I want / I would never do anything to bring you harm.” She leads us into these unnerving corners of the internet, the weird chatrooms, catfishes and strangers, without problematising them. They simply are, and these truths are the brushstrokes that complete the portrait of the chronically online teenager.

Irony is the lingua franca of being online, but the conceit of I Love My Computer is its sincerity. “Delete” captures the “modern, mega, digital, meta, matin’ ritual” of posting and deleting thirst traps. It sparkles with the thrill of it - finding the shortest skirt in her drawer and deliberately choosing a song her crush likes - while barely concealing the sickening, familiar hum of anxiety that lies beneath. “My heart’s alight, it’s because I’m so obsessed with you / In bed, I get undressed for you,” she sings. But who is the object of her affection? Could it be the person on the other side, or does she light up only for the glow of the screen in her hand – and who are we to tell the difference? SOPHIE LEIGH WALKER

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black british music by Jim Legxacy

If artists like Skepta, Stormzy, and Kano are responsible for shining a light on what life is like for a young black man when stepping outside, Jim Legxacy is responsible for revealing what thoughts are flying through their mind behind closed doors. On black british music, the Lewisham-raised 25 year old created a mould only he fit into with biographical lyricism that spoke to the young black experience in a way that put emotional vulnerability front and centre.

A dramatisation of adolescence, Legxacy remained true to his sonic journaling on the record: this is still the young black British experience but rather than the delicate complacency of being young and hungry, black british music explores the excitement of success despite its caveats. Songs like “i just banged a snus in canada water” elaborate on the nostalgia of success and the loneliness of it all, while songs like “sun” lean back a bit more, looking back with a grimace and appreciating the come up. He even dabbles in noughties pop punk melodies and midwest emo cries on “‘06 wayne rooney”. MAX GAYLER

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Getting Killed by Geese

Geese ride a car with a bomb, become the car, become the highway heading somewhere only god knows. “I have no idea where I’m going / Here I come”, is the hellbent promise of Cameron Winter which fuels the reckless, careening but ever-forward motion of Getting Killed – a kiss of life for American band music.

Their fourth album marked Geese as a band of peculiar inheritance. They formed when its members were in high school, an extraordinary accident of talent whose red-blooded rock packed out the sweaty basements of Brooklyn. Their potential was raw and obvious; their instincts sharp, their sound inimitable. But it would take the solo album of vocalist Cameron Winter, birthed one bitter December with all the fanfare of an ugly child, to entirely alter the course of the band’s proposition.

Speaking to BEST FIT last year, Winter described Heavy Metal as an “inconvenience” and a “pain in the ass” – and merely something that had arisen because it was fun and easy to do in his room. “That time in my life is a bit of a blur,” he told me. “I couldn’t tell you what I was addicted to or not addicted to, but I will say Wellbutrin has been a fucking gift from God in my life. You’re probably only getting another Geese album because of Wellbutrin, so thank your lucky stars.”

And for the album’s brilliance – and, inextricably, its emotion – we can in part thank Heavy Metal. And for the rest, we can thank the way this band are not merely an extension of Winter but a working unit; a stampede of wild horses who remain unbroken and exhilaratingly free. Produced with Kenneth Blume, the esteemed hip-hop producer formerly known as Kenny Beats who has carved a new reputation for facilitating a rock band’s left-turn (see: IDLES’ Tangk) – for Geese, he lets them totally pull the steering wheel.

There were always spasms of madness that ran through Geese since the very beginning, but when “Taxes” dropped in July it felt like an overdue unravelling. Riding the knife’s edge between defiance and despair, Winter belts, “Doctor, doctor! Heal yourself” followed by a depleted final act of resignation: “And I will bring my own heart from now on.” In the band’s GQ profile, Winter’s father said: “For being 23 he has fallen madly in love a great many times and has consequently had his heart broken in enough ways to sustain him for another five or six albums’ worth of lyrics, probably.”

He coughs up pearls such as “And if my loneliness should stay / Well, some are holiest that way” on “Horses”, and the band soundtrack the abjection that corrupts us in the end. “Au Pays du Cocaine”, the album’s ragged lullaby, the heart’s defeat has never been worn with such honour. Winter’s voice shrinks to declare he’s alright (far more faltering than his first, determined assurance) – and the knife twists, as he offers a final, wasted plea, “You can change and still choose me.” Getting Killed offers doom an incredible sense of grace. SOPHIE LEIGH WALKER

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2

LUX by Rosalia

“Thou art a Man: God is no more / Thy own Humanity learn to adore / For that is My spirit of life,” wrote William Blake in The Everlasting Gospel. A little more than 200 years later, Rosalía Vila Tobella put out LUX, a set of songs that laid out her own unique take on divinity and in the process managed to set a new bar for ambitious, writerly music.

Real trailblazers understand that a redefinition of any art comes from pulling from places other fear to tread and LUX's weighty throughline took from the likes of Hildegard von Bingen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6qFCYRQKVA) – the 12th-century nun sometimes named as the first composer in music history, and a favourite of Julia Holter – and numerous hagiographies to explore the concept of the feminine and of transgression in sainthood. The result is an undeniably beautiful record and a career high for Rosalía – hitting some emotive peaks that rank among the best you’ll hear this decade. Intelligent and studied application of the principles of songwriting, music history and the club experience underpin the record, which levels up everything 33-year-old Catalonian has done so far, finally bringing her sound into the stratosphere of pop’s greats: Scott Walker, Bowie, Kate Bush, Madonna, as well as Björk – whose presence on “Berghain” feels less of a co-sign and more a hallowed baton caress; two artists revelling in their own Venn diagram.

A lot has already been written about Lux being a difficult listen – anti-commercial, a leftfield move – and how Rosalía was subverting some sort of expectation to lean into, or at least evolve more incrementally from the sound of MOTOMANI. But in reality it's far from challenging even if did prove confusing to listeners raised on more centrist, agnostic and predictable sounds. In many ways, Lux is Rosalía’s very own Vespertine; just as Björk’s fourth solo was a defining statement for late 20th century art pop, Lux can proudly bear the same for the early 21st. PAUL BRIDGEWATER

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ICONOCLASTS by Anna von Hausswolff

How can one ever ignore the unrivalled ambition this behemoth has in its heart? Swedish composer Anna von Hausswolff’s Iconoclasts, inarguably the biggest neoclassical darkwave release of the year, lends ethereal hues to the pop canvas and renders stories of heartbreak, mania, forgiveness and rebirth with them. Born from the melange of personal-to-international turmoil, the Year0001-released record is inherently grounded in human emotion that’s enacted on all varying circumstances. Of course that’s what almost every modern song stands on; it’s nothing new. But her intricate yet accessible illustration of it rewards a singular impression, one that leaves you eager to relisten, discern and adore every sound, for lack of a better word, on this magnificent craft.

In a decade obsessed with lyrical authenticity and integrity, von Hausswolff at times subverts both by belting intentionally brutal and morally challenging lines (“People are dying while I’m playing dead”, “Making up stories, fucking with evil / I’m fucking everything up in my life”) or having tracks with no words at all. While she’s no stranger to instrumentals (2020’s All Thoughts Fly merely consists of pipe organ compositions), her insistence on them punctures the status quo and puts forth the sheer emotive power of neoclassical instrumentation. On “Stardust”, a rock opus where she lets feverish drums precede her singing for nearly a minute and a half, she states it bluntly enough: “I’m breaking up with language / In search of something bigger than this.”

Here also lies the first spring of von Hausswolff’s foray into pop, supported by real-life iconoclasts Iggy Pop and Ethel Cain themselves. It may produce Iconoclasts’s catchiest earworms, but her approach is no less unconventional. “The Whole Woman”’s languid percussion is contrasted with a swarm of hasty, almost breathless major-key guitars and strings. Iggy Pop’s abrupt entrance is at once confounding, fascinating and purposeful, marking the album’s first declaration of the will to change, no matter how drastic or challenging it might be. On “Aging Young Women”, the woodwinds levitate until the pipe organ’s jarring arrival, perhaps to signal the pang of the realisation that our belief system can be betrayed by the injustices practised under the name of institution.

All themes explored on Iconoclasts, of mental rupture and gendered discrimination, of a world set aflame and in anguish, can perhaps be summed up in the cosmic 11-minute title track. A marvellous odyssey that encapsulates all of von Hausswolff’s musical capabilities, it offers a glimpse of a new framework for living in today’s grim society. In the final verse, she sees a rainbow reflected on the glasses of a dead, faceless man. “Can I protect you, Godly creation,” she croons to that rainbow. “And denounce everything I call mine?” There can always be something to make out of doom; whatever it may be, we should grasp it as a source of hope. For von Hausswolff, that hope is procured and transposed to these messianic arrangements, an impassioned, rapturous, spellbinding symphony of everyday life. TANATAT KHUTTAPAN

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