The 80 Best Albums of 2025

60. Turnstile – Never Enough (Roadrunner)

Are Turnstile authentically hardcore? That seems to be the raging debate on music fan forums and Reddit threads. There are the purists who bleat “blasphemy!” when the band are labeled hardcore, while others protest that Turnstile is expanding the parameters of an often unimaginatively rigid genre. 

I say, who cares? Turnstile released a beast of an album in 2025. I had never even heard of them until this year, and suddenly they are all over the place, promoting their Jekyll and Hyde collection, Never Enough. The album, which builds on the concept of their previous collection, Glow On, is daringly distinctive, one minute swimming in incandescent dream pop melodies and rousing power pop, and the next pounding onto shore with gusts of hardcore glory. Here’s the catch: The band captures seemingly polarized moods with equal flair, forging a refreshingly Taoistic approach to music. 

Even the more machismo elements of the hardcore aspect of their sound are tempered by singer Brendan Yate’s Sting-adjacent vocals, dynamic production values and experimental elements such as synth, organ and piano flourishes and judicious use of horns. These additions give compelling depth to intensely introspective songs which might otherwise become mired in generic sonics. After all, hardcore is not known to be the most elastic musical style. Maybe Turnstile and a handful of like-minded bands like Scowl have generated a new genre that could be called pop-hardcore or, more catchily, pop-core. 

With a movie to accompany the album and the band earning new Grammy nods to pile onto their previous nominations, and boasting the first-ever Tiny Desk stage dive, even, Turnstile are literally turning up the style and making hardcore palatable for the masses, without diluting the frantic energy of the genre. – Alison Ross

59. Florence Adooni – A.O.E.I.U. (An Ordinary Exercise in Unity) (Philophon)

The ordinary is nothing short of extraordinary on Florence Adooni’s rapturous international debut, A.O.E.I.U. (An Ordinary Exercise in Unity). Music for Adooni is intertwined with everyday being, grounded, inclusive. Accordingly, A.O.E.I.U. rejuvenates. Originally from Ghana, Adooni makes music that runs the gamut from jazz to highlife to the warmer side of EDM, exulting all the way through.

In the ten-minute title track, she waxes philosophical on the unity of all things in the cosmos; on “Vocalize My Luv”,  she leads punchy synths (and labelmate Jimi Tenor on sax) to the dancefloor for one of the catchiest songs of the year. Velvety mid-tempo bops, playful funk, and a whole breadth of wondrous feelings come together under Adooni’s charismatic leadership and with the help of a skillful ensemble recorded between Kumasi and Berlin.

Adooni has been working with Philophon for years, collaborating with Jimi Tenor, Guy One, and fellow Frafra musicians Alogote Oho and His Sounds of Joy. A.O.E.I.U. proves that she is more than capable of blazing her own trail, too. – Adriane Pontecorvo

58. The Waterboys – Life, Death and Dennis Hopper (Sun)

Concept albums were once considered a throwback to progressive rock, but Mike Scott and The Waterboys were daring enough to resurrect the genre for their ode to the Easy Rider director. Easily one of the more collaborative records in the band’s oeuvre, Scott was happily surprised to find that his bandmates composed instrumentals that permitted him to write words over. Like many artists writing about other subjects, Scott could just as easily have been describing his own background on “I Don’t How I Made It”. “Blues for Terry Southern” shifts the focus onto the pedal steel guitars, waxing across the microphones like a knife to butter. 

Interspersed with spoken word interludes a la “Memories of Monterey”, Scott’s Glasgow inflections dot the audio as Donovan’s once did on Goodfellas standout “Atlantis”. Guitarist Bruce Springsteen guests on “Ten Years Gone”, contextualising the madness with clear, cohesive direction. “Hopper’s on Top (Genius)” has a bouncy chorus, peppered with jangly drums and oscillating basslines. Life, Death and Dennis Hopper isn’t necessarily the most accessible record in the band’s career, but by this point, the group are entitled to play whatever it is they want to. Where they go next is anyone’s guess, but it wouldn’t hurt to write a subsequent rock opera. – Eoghan Lyng

57. Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend (Island)

Sabrina Carpenter does not represent a new concept of pop stardom. Instead, she turns celebrity itself into a performance, using traditional hallmarks of fame as launch points for new cultural conversations. Carpenter’s seventh album, 2025’s Man’s Best Friend, is a quirky juggernaut produced by Jack Antonoff and co-written by Amy Allen. Antonoff also worked on Carpenter’s previous record, 2024’s Short n’ Sweet, adding his signature off-beat chord progressions and bubbly production to “Please Please Please”. Man’s Best Friend expands on that concept sonically, with sharp 1980s synths on “House Tour” and sentimental strings on “We Almost Broke Up Again”.

Barry Keogan, who guest-starred in the “Please Please Please” music video, allegedly inspired Man’s Best Friend. In “Manchild”, Carpenter scolds him: “Never heard of self-care / Half your brain just ain’t there.” However, the singer entices listeners by admitting that, at least partially, the joke is also on her. The title Man’s Best Friend satirizes both a possessive boyfriend and the well-meaning girlfriend who falls for his charms. Carpenter’s glittery pop music is a robust defense mechanism; public backlash against R-rated lyrics is the least of her worries. – Matthew Dwyer

56. Milo J – La Vida Era Más Corta (Sony)

Perhaps the only unsurprising thing about his new album is his voice: a clean, direct, meslima-free, grounded baritone which sounds almost weightless. Here, Milo J’s timbre finally gets room to breathe. Divided into two discs, this project leaves no room for remixes or collages. Genres such as tango, chacarera, and Argentine folk are presented in their purest form. There’s no heritage-baiting or pop accessibility-chasing here. 

In a way, what Milo J does in La Vida Era Más Corta compares to what Rosalía did in El Mal Querer(the Spanish singer’s stunning flamenco album released in 2018): it’s a display of youth inserting itself in an ancient landscape with more pride in its history than anxiety to modernize it. Thus far, among the most well-shaped Spanish-language albums of 2025, La Vida Era Más Corta arrives at a moment when Latin pop stars with global exposure are embracing their roots with more pride than ever, and Milo J does that for Argentina gorgeously and sincerely. – Ana Clara Ribeiro

55. Flora Hibberd – Swirl (22TWENTY)

One of the most pleasant, out-of-left-field releases in recent memory, the latest album from the UK-born, Paris-based songwriter Flora Hibberd is an immaculate gem of cosmopolitan indie-pop, drawing from a wealth of influences and recalling everything from Jacques Brel to Nick Drake to the Pretenders. Kicking off the album is the art pop of “Auto Icon”, where Hibberd, a translator of art history texts, incorporates her interest in words and lost signals. “There you go again,” she sings. “Attaching meaning / Thumbing the archives / Of this feeling.” In the chorus, she sings, “Radio memory / Pouring into the stormcloud brain / And I drink it in.”

There’s a distinct elegance to Hibberd’s vocals – she’s not a belter. Still, her singing exudes graceful sophistication, whether it’s with the acoustic guitar-anchored folk of “Every Incident Has Left Its Mark”, the lush country landscape of “Canopy”, or the hip-swinging psych-rock of “Jesse”. The finest moment, however, is arguably “Code”, a loping, catchy single that mixes wobbly synths with twangy guitar leads and warm, analog production that sounds like Cate Le Bon producing late-period Beatles. Swirl is about as good as modern indie-pop gets; an unmitigated masterpiece. – Chris Ingalls

54. The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie (Anti-)

The Beths’ fourth record is a wholly successful tour through various types of indie rock. Power-pop gems like the title track and “Roundabout” sit next to more contemplative songs like the autobiographical “Mosquitoes” and the clearly Cure-inspired “Metal”. The beautiful “Mother, Pray for Me” effectively fills five minutes on a single, simple guitar riff and vocalist Elizabeth Stokes’ melody and lyrics. “Til My Heart Stops” and “Best Laid Plans” feature layers of vocals and more complex arrangements.

Even a straightforward rocker like “No Joy” features a wholly unexpected chorus of flutes where a bridge would usually sit. Regardless of the level of complexity, though, each track brings catchy, memorable hooks that firmly burrow into the listener’s brain, ready to reemerge at any moment. – Chris Conaton

53. Moonrisers – Harsh & Exciting (Easy Eye Sound)

Moonrisers’ debut album, Harsh & Exciting, is a stirring invocation that finds Libby DeCamp and Adam Schreiber using instrumentation as their primary storytelling tool. Relying on DeCamp’s 1930s Slingerland May Bell parlor guitar and Schreiber’s century-old calfskin drum kit, Moonrisers craft a hypnotizing experience.

The contributions of bluegrass musicians Tim O’Brien and Chris Scruggs add subtle layers of mandolin, pedal steel, and banjo, enhancing the album’s musical complexity. Consequently, Moonrisers effectively fuse various musical influences without adhering to traditional conventions or a single genre. This genre-blurring approach combines tradition and innovation to evoke emotional responses and vivid imagery musically. – Elisabeth Woronzoff

52. TOKiMONSTA – Eternal Reverie (Young Art)

“Lucky U” typifies the overall soundscape of TOKiMONSTA’s Eternal Reverie: lushly synthesized house and pop hybrids that have the flourish and sheen of contemporary electronic music while subtly harkening back to dance music’s forebearers. Lune Rouge and 2020’s Oasis Nocturno contain mostly uncluttered, conventionally structured pop songs. These albums skirted any studio indulgence that didn’t bolster the guest vocals. 

Eternal Reverie keeps the same format – pop songs with guest vocalists – but differs in decisions, blending TOKiMONSTA’s penchant for pop jams with the eccentric touch of her early beats. If there’s any disappointment to be felt, it’s from wanting more of a good thing. There are no duds on Eternal Reverie. – Kyle Cochrun

51. Mdou Moctar – Tears of Injustice (Matador)

Tears of Injustice is a companion piece to Funeral for Justice, in which Mdou Moctar and his band perform stripped-down arrangements of each of the plugged-in pieces they released on the latter. In that sense, the two records run in direct parallel, with Tears of Injustice reiterating Moctar’s unwavering commitment to justice and human rights. Tonally, though, the switch from electric to mostly acoustic makes a tremendous difference.

The record is a cause for mourning, for melancholy. It allows for lamentation, recognizing that sustaining resistance is more than fighting with fire. Tears of Injustice finds Mdou Moctar following in the footsteps of performers like Abdallah Oumbadougou and Tinariwen. These are the blues, and Moctar can play them with the same nimble care with which he shreds. – Adriane Pontecorvo

50. Valerie June – Owls, Omens, and Oracles (Concord)

Valerie June’s Owls, Omens, and Oracles channels Black feminist theory through sound, spirit, and lyrics to create a vital musical experience. June offers a critical and artistic understanding of care and joy as essential forces for resistance. The album reveals a clear connection to writer and thinker bell hooks, specifically her works All About Love: New Visions (1999) and Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery (1994). A central link between June‘s music and hooks’ theory is their shared belief that love, care, and joy are more than feelings: they are radical acts. While June’s album is deeply introspective, her vision of love is also expansive. – Elisabeth Woronzoff

49. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (Roadrunner)

After 2021’s Infinite Granite focused almost entirely on Deafheaven’s shoegaze side, it was an open question what the band’s follow-up would sound like. Lonely People With Power mostly returns to Deafheaven’s core “black metal meets shoegaze” sound, but with some subtle twists. Vocalist George Clarke brings back his table saw-like screams, singing very sparingly. Songs like “Doberman” and “Magnolia” find the band at their metal best, with the guitars alternating between riffing and melodies while Clarke and drummer Daniel Tracy handle the rhythms.

“The Garden Route” is a full shoegaze track overlaid with Clarke’s screams, while “Amethyst” builds gradually and very effectively. “Revelator” is unusually thrashy, and “Body Behavior” is unusually rocking. The one-two closing punch of “Winona” and “The Marvelous Orange Tree” shows how effective Deafheaven’s basic sound can still be. Lonely People is a dense record, but it rewards close listening. – Chris Conaton

48. Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker (Daughters of Cain)

It’s hard not to be disappointed that Hayden Anhedonia doesn’t want to be a pop star. It was made abundantly clear with the menacing drone of January’s Perverts, a statement so defensive and subsuming that it seemed possible she’d prefer to see her star extinguished than deal with the prying eyes of obsessive fandom. 

However, Perverts ended up being somewhat of a fakeout, a vengeful flood of the world she’d created and the pesky little creatures that had shown up in it. In its wake rose Willoughby, a narrative prequel to her surprise smash debut, poised to redefine what the Ethel Cain project is actually about: walking the line between tenderness and vulgarity, folk storytelling for a crass and tacky world.

Graciously, Hayden allows herself some earworm melodies again, but keeps the BPM to a drunken dirge lest anyone get any ideas. She opens the door with “Nettles” and “Fuck Me Eyes”, then traps you with 15-minute character studies that you can’t look away from. She has her cake and eats it too. The relief of Willoughby is the potential of Ethel Cain realized on new terms: rich stories of violence sung through gauze, a siren calling over doomed waters. – Nick Malone

47. Sports Team – Boys These Days (Bright Antenna)

Sports Team are a smart group that incorporate bits and pieces of past music they love into their modern pop sound and dryly funny lyrical point of view. Sport Team’s 2025 album, Boys These Days, makes it clear that the six members of Sports Team must collectively own an impressive CD collection of the best and brightest Britpop bands from 1985 through 1995, along with a healthy selection of groups from earlier eras.

Opening track “I’m in Love (Subaru)” sets the pace, evoking Prefab Sprout if they’d borrowed Wham!’s “Careless Whisper” sax player. “I’m in Love (Subaru)” leads straight into the sweeping title track, in which somebody way younger than this reviewer chides guys younger than him with ridiculous “when I was your age” cliches. The lyrical vibe of the entire album is summed up in “Boys These Days”.

Boys These Days feels like a concept album, telling a story of navigating one’s way through their 20s in the 21st century. On the other hand, it could be a fun collection of witty pop-rock tunes that sound current while incorporating clever retro elements. Either way, Boys These Days is a blast. – Rich Wilhelm

46. Jade – THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY! (RCA)

Going into solo pop stardom, Jade Thirlwall didn’t have good omens lighting her path. Her former Little Mix bandmate Jesy Nelson bet it all on a Nicki Minaj-assisted P. Diddy rewrite called “Boyz” in 2021, a flop that ended her solo prospects. Leigh-Anne Pinnock netted a few chart entries that basically have been forgotten by time, while Perrie Edwards scored normie hits with the exact kind of sounds you’d expect from a Little Mix soloist.

Thirlwall was last out the gate, but what few expected was just what a game-changer of an album she had on her hand. That’s Showbiz Baby! feels more like a Greatest Hits project than a pop debut, running through a cavalcade of styles with braggadocious finesse. Lead single and album opener “Angel of My Dreams” is a bold, tempo-switching dance-pop number that reflects on her torrid relationship with fame and the music industry, a theme that runs through tracks like the slithering electro pulse of “It Girl”.

Yet for such a bold album title, That’s Showbiz Baby! is truly more interested in the mechanisms of the heart, as tracks like the Robyn-esque “Self Saboteur” and the breezy Tove Lo co-write “Lip Service” speak of misfires, missed opportunities, and regrets. With dynamite production by the likes of Cirkut, MNEK, and Raye, Thirlwall turns her bad heartbreaks into delectable confections, resulting in one of the year’s most unexpected and supremely delightful pop surprises. – Evan Sawdey

45. Molly Tuttle – So Long Little Miss Sunshine (Nonesuch)

Molly Tuttle’s two albums with Golden Highway, her band of skilled bluegrass players, earned her Grammy nominations and recognition outside of the bluegrass world. Tuttle, restless, apparently decided that was enough, so she broke up the band and recorded the pop-country-oriented So Long Little Miss Sunshine using Nashville session players. Yet the sparkling results speak for themselves.

Tuttle’s songwriting really shines across these 12 tracks. There are bright love songs (featuring her romantic partner, Ketch Secor, on fiddle and backing vocals), upbeat rockers (“Old Me [New Wig]”), and one fierce topical takedown (“Everything Burns”). The single, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark”, feels maybe a little too poppy at first, but damn if it doesn’t get lodged in your head. Tuttle also successfully revisits some of her songwriting staples. The murder ballad “Rosalee” has a real kick, as does the self-affirming closer, “Story of My So-Called Life”.

Through it all, Tuttle often emphasizes her bluegrass guitar style, tethering So Long Little Miss Sunshine firmly to her past while simultaneously looking forward to her future. – Chris Conaton

44. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory – Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory (Jagjaguwar)

I’m guessing that few people in 2024 were saying, “What Sharon Van Etten needs is a good dose of early 1980s goth ala New Order and the Cure,” but how little we knew back then. It wasn’t a complete shock: “Comeback Kid” and her classic coming-of-age anthem “Seventeen” flirted with moody synth pop, but it took the democratization of a newly full-fledged band to go “all in” on this move toward atmospheric post-punk. 

Like all of the best albums from that genre, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory’s self-titled is filled with immediate moments, be it Devra Hoff’s sticky, thumping bass line of “Something Ain’t Right”, or the shout-along chorus of “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)”. Sharon Van Etten’s voice still can convey a quiet, drawn-out ache, like in the mournful chorus of “Idiot Box”. The closer, “I Want You Here”, is a weary anthem of friendship and devotion, even as things in this world will likely get worse than better in the coming years. 

We could all use another Sharon Van Etten solo album, but if this is her artistic detour, bring on the sophomore release from the Attachment Theory. – Sean McCarthy

43. Viagra Boys – Viagr aboys (Shrimptech Enterprises)

Viagra Boys might just be one of the most consistently brilliant bands to emerge over the last ten years. Exploring everything from hyper-masculinity, populist politics to conspiracy theory rabbit holes through on-the-nose black humour and an ever-expanding musical palette, the band have created a unique niche for themselves.

Fourth full-length release, Viagr aboys, may have a legitimate claim to being their best album to date. From exhilarating, pounding post-punk to stuttering psychedelic rock to blissed-out widescreen electro-ballads, it’s certainly their most musically diverse offering. Singer Sebastian Murphy still sounds like the most relatable misfit in rock as he finds beauty in the downright ugly, mooching around in a world of pharmaceutical drugs, questionable sexual practices, and canine companions.

However, unlike previous records, there isn’t one singular theme running through the album. Instead, singer Sebastian Murphy skewers obsessions with fad diets (“Pyramid of Health”), American culture (“Man Made of Meat”), and rallying against officious types high on their own sense of authority (“Store Policy”). Often laugh-out-loud funny, Murphy also has that rare gift  of making the most irreverent-sounding lyrics feel heartbreakingly sincere, such as on the gorgeous ‘Medicine for Horses.’ It’s another superb album from a band at the top of their game. – Paul Carr

42. Kronos Quartet and Mary Kouyoumdjian – WITNESS (Phenotypic)

As a first-generation Armenian-American whose family was directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, composer, documentarian, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Mary Kouyoumdjian is eminently qualified to use her skills to create an artistic portrait of the horrors of violent conflict. Likewise, the legendary Kronos Quartet have used their considerable compositional and performing brilliance to a variety of genres and subject matter. So, it’s practically inevitable that their new collaboration, WITNESS, is a stunning and profoundly moving tribute to the victims of war and genocide.

Kouyoumdjian splices together recordings of survivors of the Armenian Genocide and the Lebanese Civil War and pairs them with the Kronos Quartet’s stringed harmonies to provide an audio landscape that wisely adds the human element of these atrocities. – Chris Ingalls

41. Courting – Lust for Life, Or: How to Thread the Needle and Come Out the Other Side to Tell the Story (Lower Third)

Liverpool quartet Courting return with their third album in three years. Lust for Life, Or: How to Thread the Needle and Come Out the Other Side to Tell the Story, covers a lot of ground in just over 25 minutes. Most of these songs are the same strong pop-rock that is their wheelhouse, but the more unusual choices are fascinating. Courting pack a lot of superb material into such a short running time. Every one of Lust for Life‘s eight tracks is engaging, and most are unique. Their slightly off-kilter take on guitar rock is rewarding, and the way the album’s end matches up with its beginning is very successful. – Chris Conaton