The 25 Best Albums of 2025

After a long career of crafting some of the most innovative and compelling pop music of the 21st century, Panda Bear has nothing left to prove. So on his eighth solo record, Sinister Grift, he just decided to go full Beach Boys—and, again, made some of the most excellent music of the year. Not to mention, the music is still extremely intricate—the layered harmonies on “Anywhere but Here” are gorgeous beyond comprehension, while the groovy “Ends Meet” has new clicks and clacks to discover on every listen. He taps Cindy Lee for some psychedelic guitar on album closer “Defense” (a dream collab for any ’60s pop scholar obsessed with the story of Brian Wilson pulling his car over out of sheer astonishment the first time he heard “Be My Baby” on the radio) and his old Animal Collective bandmates for some assists on noises and samples throughout the record. That all said, I’m still stuck on the opener, “Praise,” a rush of California pop so perfect that I can’t help but keep hitting replay.

Is there any band more consistent than PUP these days? Since the mid-2010s, the Toronto rockers have been totally reliable in offering up gang vocals, abject nihilism, and self-deprecation in spades—and their fifth LP is no different. Still equipped with their signature sense of humor (there’s a song on the album about meeting up with an ex at an Olive Garden called, you guessed it, “Olive Garden”), PUP uses the record to get introspective and self-aware. All of the usual emotions are there—regret, anger, desperation—but frontman Stefan Babcock has just gotten a little wiser. Even the album’s title, which was written after Babcock ended a long-term relationship, is a tongue-in-cheek yet all-too-real logistical hurdle that comes with adult breakups. When it comes up in the depression anthem “Hallways,” it’s downright devastating: “I’m losing the will to keep draggin’ on / But I can’t die yet, ’cause who will look after the dog?” 

Maybe as a result of all that growing up, the album leans more mid-tempo than PUP’s previous work, but it’s there that they find one of their greatest earworms to date in “Needed to Hear It.” On the track, Babcock recounts a cycle of arguments that keeps enabling the same behavior over and over again. The root cause of it all? “I was only telling you that because I know you needed to hear it,” he admits on the shout-along chorus. What “that” is doesn’t matter—it doesn’t get more grown up than confronting your own avoidant tendencies.

They Are Gutting a Body of Water has long been the perfect underground heroes for this moment. They’re a whirring shoegaze band that deploys electronic instrumentation and production, and that approach has birthed classics such as 2019’s Destiny XL and the fuzzed-out single “jadakiss.” (Seemingly no direct connection to the beloved Yonkers MC, but both the song and the artist go pretty hard.) On this year’s Lotto, however, TAGABOW largely stripped away the electronics and opted for a live-on-tape aesthetic. The result is something raw and whirring, with louder, crunchier riffs that somehow feel more nimble. The songs can be pulverizing (nowhere more so than on opener “the chase”) or plainly beautiful (“baeside k” and “rl stine” will wash you in a sea of fuzz). Mostly, it’s TAGABOW proving that when they cut the circuitry, the signal only hits harder.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype With Mallory Rubin. Plus, Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype With Mallory Rubin. Plus, Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype. Plus, Doug Dulgarian Joins.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,’ and Doug Dulgarian Joins

The Watch

The Watch

• Oct. 17 • 1 hr 4 min

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype With Mallory Rubin. Plus, Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype With Mallory Rubin. Plus, Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype. Plus, Doug Dulgarian Joins.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,’ and Doug Dulgarian Joins

The Watch

The Watch

• Oct. 17 • 1 hr 4 min

TV

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype With Mallory Rubin. Plus, Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype With Mallory Rubin. Plus, Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Hype. Plus, Doug Dulgarian Joins.

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,’ and Doug Dulgarian Joins

The Watch

The Watch

• Oct. 17 • 1 hr 4 min

If you’re a fan of music reminiscent of a 16-bit video game title screen, Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer (which has song titles like “iPod Touch” and a typed-out cat emoticon) probably appeals to you on an aesthetic level. But, despite the mentions of Pikachu and GarageBand, the Australian DJ’s debut album isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. For starters, the sound isn’t totally what you’d expect would come out of that room full of vintage tech on the album cover. The beats are glitchy and indebted to electroclash and hyperpop, yes—but they’re also soaring, immersive, and big. It’s the perfect sound for Nina Wilson’s exhilarating and genuinely insightful songs about growing up online. On “Delete” she sets the politics (and low-key embarrassment) of posting a thirst trap—“I chose a song you like in case you saw it,” she admits—to whirring synths and a sugar-rush drop that mimics the feeling of seeing that sought-after like hit your notifications. On the stunning “Infohazard,” she’s haunted by the fucked-up violence she was exposed to on the internet at far too young of an age, and she communicates that lingering unease via echoes and ringing keys. Her references, both musically and culturally, capture the real-world emotions created in the language of the internet. Perhaps she sums it up most succinctly on “Fuck My Computer,” which is about exactly what it sounds like: “No one in the world knows me better.”

For someone who first broke out two decades ago with a barrage of abstract, inscrutable lyrics, Aesop Rock sure knows how to tell a remarkably simple and effective story. When someone is praised for their extensive vocabulary, it’s easy to forget they’re at their peak when they’re spinning tales even kids can enjoy. For my money, the most relatable he’s ever sounded came on 2016’s The Impossible Kid, a record where he told funny but evocative parables of the juice shop employee with detachable dreads and his Little League coach playing whack-a-gopher mid-game.

They’re prime examples of a storyteller who’s ditched the purple prose for emotional truths—who’s matured enough to let the intimate details stand on their own. These kinds of moments abound on Aes’s new album, Black Hole Superette. Conversations about his dog, a mutt with blue eyes? Those are here, sitting alongside slant rhymes about “40 thieves” and “Jordan 3s.” Bragging about his home garden? Just know his bok choy looks like Sideshow Bob. A whimsical story about an escape-artist hamster? A rapidly multiplying snail population in his aquarium that teaches him to live and let live? Increasingly thicc fruits by which he marks the passing of time? Look, Aesop Rock understands there are metaphors everywhere you look. They’re all beautifully mundane and inspiring to varying degrees, but my favorite story on this record comes on “John Something.” It’s a half-remembered incident about a guest artist who spoke to Aes’s college class nearly 30 years ago. He can’t really remember his name—maybe it was indeed John, or maybe it was James—or anything the guy was there to talk about. All he recalls is how “John” gushed about the documentary When We Were Kings—how it moved him, and how it later became one of Aes’s favorites. The details don’t matter. Nor does the complexity of the art. All that sticks is the feelings it leaves behind.

Few albums introduce themselves as fiercely as the latest from rapper Brian Ennals and producer Infinity Knives. “For four generations, your boots up on they neck / October 7 happened, the fuck did you expect?” Ennals raps at the start of “The Iron Wall,” the opener to this year’s great A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears. In short order, he’s calling Donald Trump a rapist, Joe Biden a Nazi, and Barack Obama a devil. It’s perhaps, as Anthony Fantano called it, a little reverse-edgelord-y, but it’s an effective example of the old Se7en maxim: You can’t just tap people on the shoulder anymore—you gotta hit them with a sledgehammer. Once Ennals and Knives get your attention, though, they make good use of it.

A City is backdropped by moody, noisy production and filled with Modest Mouse references, self-medicating cocaine use, and pure aggression that’ll be a good litmus test for how you view the world. (“The bitch that got Emmett Till killed just died, and I prayed that it was painful as fuck,” goes the opening to another track. When Ennals later calls himself “Mike Tyson and Mao in a blender,” you’re inclined to believe him.) As with their last team-up, 2022’s excellent King Cobra, it’s all dark and at times very dirge-like. But the moment I keep returning to is the most upbeat song—tempo-wise, at least. “Everyone I Love Is Depressed” is roller-rink disco that deploys the “Tom’s Diner” cadence—typically not the template for a track with a chorus like “Don’t kill yourself / ’Cause we love you too much.” But the beauty is in the juxtaposition. At a time in history when it can feel like you’re constantly running around with your hair on fire, it can be cathartic to listen to. One hopes that making it was cathartic for its authors, too. At the very least, they’ll remind you directly that they are not fucking around.

A decade before the red-pill manosphere epidemic influenced an election and inspired overly didactic Netflix content, the worst thing you had to worry about was your kid getting into brostep. The hypermasculine, IDGAF dubstep offshoot was defined by cracked copies of FruityLoops, excessive molly use, and enough glow sticks to overtake the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There were plenty of flash-in-the-pan star DJ/producers, from Flux Pavilion to Rusko to Bassnectar, but the official mascot for the genre will forever be the former emo singer with the dirty-kitchen-mop haircut: Skrillex. 

He is also possibly the only brostep survivor with anything resembling a mainstream career post–Obama administration. The man born Sonny Moore has spent the past decade or so racking up production credits for the likes of Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, Ed Sheeran, Juice WRLD, and Beyoncé, reinventing himself as a stealth hitmaker and an auteur who could credibly collaborate with more critic-approved electronic artists like Fred again.. and Four Tet. All of which made the return of the scary saw-bass monster this year downright exhilarating.

Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! <3 is a legitimately thrilling collection of songs (34 of them, to be exact), filled with bass drops that fall like Acme anvils. It’s a prodigal son coming home and showing what his absence has wrought—Fuck U Skrillex is more aggro than the pop or hip-hop dalliances of his twin 2023 records, and it’s full of features from old friends (Joker, Boys Noize) and Skrillex’s spiritual progeny (Dylan Brady of 100 gecs shows up on a few tracks; it makes too much sense). It’s hard to recommend many songs individually—they’re mostly instrumental and mixed together like a DJ set, so few stretch beyond two minutes—but taken as a whole, it’s a return-to-mecca experience for anyone who ever downloaded the “Pro Nails” remix or had an emotional experience while listening to “Levels.” There’s even an obligatory “Damn, son, where’d you find this?” vocal tag midway through Fuck U Skrillex, but maybe the most important spoken words come in the opening seconds of the relatively tranquil “KORABU.” The voiceover says, “Reject society, return to nature,” and amid the wobble and chaos, you think: This sounds like salvation.

caroline’s second album is this year’s most sweeping experience, equal parts grand and intimate, arresting in its wistfulness—but it’s not without humor. For starters, the second song on the album is called “Song two,” an apt title, yes, but it also brings to mind Blur’s famous (infamous?) jock jam of the same name, with which caroline’s song shares no other similarities. (Though, on the other hand, the London ensemble was no doubt inspired by Blur’s lo-fi sensibility.) Same goes for “Coldplay cover”—decidedly not a Coldplay cover, but as the outro strums and whispers on, it’s not far-fetched for something like “Fix You” or “The Scientist” to come to mind. When Caroline Polachek was tapped to collaborate with caroline (the band) on caroline 2 (the album), you could practically feel all involved smirking at you, until the song (“Tell me I never knew that”) starts, and you realize that Polachek’s ethereal timbre intertwines seamlessly with caroline’s (again, the band) plaintive melodies. OK, maybe that all initially read like humor, but in practice kind of just … made perfect sense. 

It’s all representative of caroline’s unique sound—caroline 2 is constantly deconstructing and reconstructing, often via multiple instruments going in completely different directions all at once, taking you places you can’t totally get a grasp on … until it all clicks into place and you realize you might actually just be listening to the most beautiful sounds on the planet. Every buzz and string and vocal (be they hushed or Auto-Tuned) plays like it’s following a stream of consciousness before they all crescendo together in a clearly very intentional way. And maybe both are true. caroline 2 explores how the contradictions of the world coexist—the profound and the mundane, the epiphany and the bit—and ultimately create a symphony.

The second album from the artist born Marcus Brown (following 2023’s exquisite—exquisitely named—Erotic Probiotic 2) is rough around the edges, for sure. His voice is often buried in the mix, while the instrumentals sometimes feel like drafts. But there’s a lot to deeply feel throughout The Passionate Ones. Take the single “9 2 5,” an ode to a service-industry worker just trying to make it through the day set to a melancholy piano melody and pulsating kick drum. “He won’t let the dreamer die,” Brown sings throughout. It’s fitting for someone who’s bagged groceries and worked construction gigs trying to make his dreams a reality. This is music teeming with empathy, sung by a burgeoning bedroom music superstar, channeling Frankie Knuckles and André 3000 in equal measure. It’s guaranteed to drag you out to the dance floor—just don’t be surprised if you find yourself crying while you’re on it.

A mainstay of our annual year-end lists, billy woods delivered perhaps his most harrowing album yet in Golliwog. And yet for an album as haunted as this one—ghosts and vampires both make appearances—the most frightening lines may also be the funniest: “I had my community sick / When they unraveled, I time-traveled and still picked Darko Miličić.” Like I said: harrowing.

Britpop was already back en vogue this year thanks to the Oasis reunion tour. But Pulp’s comeback album (their first since Noel and Liam Gallagher were still three records away from their storied breakup) might have actually been more transportative. More is decidedly modern—the lads enlisted prolific producer James Ford, whose recent discography includes Geese’s 3D Country and Fontaines D.C.’s Romance—but as soon as album opener and lead single “Spike Island” grooves into focus, you’d never know that it’s been over 20 years since Pulp’s last release. (It also can’t be stressed enough how much Jarvis Cocker sounds exactly the same.) 

The only thing that might give away the time passed is that Cocker’s lyrics, as descriptive and perceptive as ever, are often focused on growing older. (“I am not aging / I am just ripening,” as he puts it on “Grown Ups.”) He still gets his quips in—you can tell he had a lot of fun with the wordplay on “My Sex”—but then time suddenly catches up to him and he’ll drop an incredibly affecting turn of phrase as he takes stock of the world around him. “Ain’t it time we started living?” he closes out the quaint “Farmers Market” before making a slight correction: “Ain’t it time we started feeling?” Later, a startling revelation hits him on “Background Noise”: “Over years, love turns into background noise / Like this ringing in my ears … You only notice when it disappears.” The gliding, psychedelic sonic palette feels like a piece with the sounds that made Pulp a fixture of the ’90s, only this time they’re used to relay a new perspective that feels wiser even as it expresses confusion toward the modern world. In that way, the album’s title contains some truth in advertising—after so much time away, this is what more Pulp sounds like.

Open Mike Eagle has long been something of an indie rap everyman, so it’s fitting that he would find Clark Kent really fucking annoying. On a single from his 10th LP, the L.A.-by-way-of-Chicago MC plays the role of a Daily Planet reporter really fed up with why no one can figure out that their muscle-bound new colleague who looks like Superman—who disappears every time Superman is around—may actually be Superman. “I don’t know why y’all / Why y’all be trying to act like y’all don’t know who that is?” he says mid-song, and he’s right. They’re all supposed to be journalists after all. Do better!

If you’ve been listening to Mike’s music for a while (and if you haven’t, what’s stopping you?), this kind of perspective is to be expected. The man who once wrote a song called “Relatable” proves time and time again on his new album that he’s as adept at capturing the minutiae of human existence as anyone who’s penned a lyric. There are plenty of standouts on Neighborhood Gods Unlimited—the slinking “contraband (the plug has bags of me),” the hilariously titled “sorry i got huge (also not a euphemism)”—but the moment I keep returning to is “ok but im the phone screen,” a story about Mike dropping his phone in the road, discovering it got run over, and realizing how much of his music (and life!) was housed on that thing. Like much of his music, it’s a personal loss made to feel universal. So while OME may not be Superman, he’s certainly got a reporter’s eye for details. And in this house, that makes a rap superhero.

“My name is Pink and I’m really glad to meet you,” PinkPantheress aptly opens her new mixtape, Fancy That. “You’re recommended to me by some people.” It’s a funnily vague way of introducing herself to what the song later reveals to be a weed dealer, but it could double as a tongue-in-cheek impression of any number of Pitchfork readers who approached her music with caution after hearing that a “TikTok musician” was actually doing something interesting. But while anyone in the know can attest that she’s long moved on from any pejorative connotation that “TikTok musician” may carry—she’s obviously a scholar of Y2K, from her samples of Panic! At the Disco and Jessica Simpson to her wardrobe that often looks like it was purchased with Kohl’s Cash circa 2007—her music is undeniably modern. 

On Fancy That, PinkPantheress takes the minimalist, looping beats that made her a TikTok staple and thoughtfully broadens her inspirations. There’s the EDM-lite “Girl Like Me,” which doesn’t sound unlike early-2010s relics Cobra Starship and Far East Movement (complimentary). She borrows from early-2000s house duo Basement Jaxx on the bubblegum “Stars,” and enlists burgeoning pop powerhouse the Dare for the cool jam “Stateside.” The result is an unmistakably 2025 portrait informed by the offbeat pop sounds of past and present—and anyone who still needs to be convinced probably wouldn’t get it anyway.

“We all make a choice, and I’ve never been afraid of dying,” Katie and Allison Crutchfield wrote together as P.S. Eliot back in 2009. “But it’s fine, because I’m already hardly alive.” The band technically only existed for two albums, but the twin sisters always existed in each other’s music. “Allison’s only calling me when her life’s falling apart / So I pour it tall and talk to myself in my head alone,” Katie sang on the early Waxahatchee cut “Noccalula” in 2012. “Sit at home on Saturday night … Just Katie and me / And whatever we are drinking,” Allison responded on the Swearin’ banger “Big Change” in 2018. And so the Crutchfield Extended Universe was born—a prolonged call-and-response between siblings who were very much heading down their own paths but always remained in conversation with each other. It only seemed logical that those paths would cross again someday, outside of the odd appearance in each other’s liner notes. 

The official reunion finally came this year when the Crutchfields dropped an album as Snocaps, 14 years after that last P.S. Eliot record. Somewhere along the way, they also picked up MJ Lenderman—the most auspicious pupil from their coaching tree—who plays fuzzy instruments on the record to support the sisters’ poignant tales of fate and free will. Devotees to the CEU listened closely to how Snocaps highlights the differences between the two twins (most prominently in their voices—Allison’s is bouncier and Katie’s is huskier) and how they ultimately complement each other. On the hypnotic “Hide,” Katie proclaims “I came of age, I love my cage / I hide,” repeating that last word as Allison’s voice enters in such a hushed tone you might as well be listening to your own thoughts: “You lie to yourself, walk down a dark street / I think about you, you think about me.” Their partnership shines in the record’s sequencing as well—like how Katie’s kiss-off to nostalgia (“Cherry Hard Candy”) gives way to Allison’s twinkling recount of an intimidating crush (“Avalanche”). Their stories are distinct but connected, continuing those long-distance conversations they sustained over years of solo projects. The result is somewhere between the Americana revival of recent Waxahatchee records and the soft-punk of peak Swearin’, complete with the poetically confrontational lyrics that have long been the Crutchfields’ signature. If it sounds like they never left, it’s because they never really did.

Ever since Waxahatchee revved up her Ford pickup for 2020’s Saint Cloud, a wave of Americana folk has swept through indie rock. From “Elderberry Wine” to Geese, the current wave of indie stars have all taken their stabs at alt-country, and the genre was brought into the emo world this year on Home Is Where’s third record. The Florida natives were no stranger to the folksy sound—their breakthrough release, 2021’s I Became Birds, often leaned acoustic—but on Hunting Season they embrace full-band country without losing sight of their emo roots. What makes it all work is Bea MacDonald’s voice—hear her nearly yodel on “black metal mormon,” only to then channel that raspy howl that originally put Home Is Where on the map on songs like “migration patterns” and “bike week.” Paired with the band’s heart-wrenching storytelling, the result is a moving and thoughtful mix of emo and country—and while those two genres are linked more often than you’d think, the blend sounds truly innovative on Hunting Season.

I won’t pretend to be totally tapped into the Ethel Cain Cinematic Universe, but here’s my best shot: The 2020s’ preeminent Southern Goth released two albums this year—the abrasively ambient Perverts and the still sprawling but more approachable Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Perverts, which was described as a “project” or “recording” rather than an album, exists outside of the canon established on Hayden Anhedönia’s first album, 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter. Set five years before the events of that debut, Willoughby Tucker serves as a prequel to Preacher’s Daughter, chronicling Anhedönia’s Ethel Cain character’s teenage romance with the album’s title character. 
Maybe that sounds like ingenious worldbuilding or just unnecessarily convoluted, but either way, Anhedönia’s stories of death, decay, and heartbreak transcend their placement on a timeline. For all the fuss about her dense, uncommercial music, Anhedönia’s songs are deceptively simple, pop-minded tracks that invite you to get lost in their synths and echoes. (Close enough, welcome back Twin Peaks: The Return Roadhouse performances.) Yes, album closer “Waco, Texas” is a 15-minute shoegaze epic, but as it soars and stings in its cutting conclusions (“I’ve been picking names for our children / You’ve been wondering how you’re gonna feed them / Love is not enough in this world”), the fanfare feels completely earned. She imagines an escape from pain (“Nettles”) and compares herself to a free-spirited woman with equal parts jealousy and sympathy (“Fuck Me Eyes”) in some of her most relatable singles yet. All signs point toward Anhedönia growing into one of the most compelling songwriters of her generation—putting ample thought into her music as a cohesive body of work, but also penning tales strong enough to stand on their own.

What would Deafheaven’s career look like without Sunbather? The black metal album for people who couldn’t care less about black metal, the band’s 2013 sophomore record burst through like a flower in a wasteland—pop melodies drenched in distortion and buried beneath frontman George Clarke’s throat-tearing screams. It changed their trajectory, earning AOTY praise from practically every outlet worth a damn and making them the best known band in a genre previously best known for Norwegian weirdos.

But perhaps because of the attention Sunbather got, each of Deafheaven’s subsequent albums has felt like a reaction to what came before: 2015’s New Bermuda shored up their metal bona fides, 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love evoked shoegaze melancholy, and for their most abrupt lane change, 2022’s Infinite Granite saw Clarke dropping his trademark screams for something more subdued and accessible. (It was fine; tellingly, its best moments came in the back half of its closing track, which crescendos with Clarke and Co. tearing open the sky anew.)In that light, it’s hard not to read this year’s Lonely People With Power as an intentional shift from their weakest-received record to date. Clarke is back to screaming, while the songs climax in moments of pulverizing beauty dialed up to maximum overdrive. But there are other moments that will bowl you over—I’m partial to bassist Chris Johnson’s work on “The Garden Route” and drummer Daniel Tracy’s breakneck speed on, well, everything. Lonely People is possibly their best album since their breakthrough 12 years ago—or it’s possible that whatever Deafheaven record you’re currently listening to is bound to consume you like a tidal wave. All I know is that it’s impossible to listen to a song like the seven-minute “Winona”—which cycles through gorgeous riffs, hypnotizing percussion, and, yes, cathartic screams—and not want to bathe in its light.

The obvious point of comparison is the final A Tribe Called Quest album, 2016’s We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service. But while ATCQ’s first album after the passing of Phife Dawg felt like a collection designed to meet one anxious moment, De La Soul’s maiden voyage without Trugoy the Dove feels like an antidote to another. Cabin in the Sky is not a particularly mournful record for most of its runtime, even if it is nostalgic—songs like “Just How It Is (Sometimes)” capture the playful spirit of the group’s youth, while others like the DJ Premier–produced “Sunny Storms” harken back to the mid-career highlights of the AOI records. But in its final few moments, Cabin shifts toward the celestial. That comes first in the penultimate title track, where Posdnuos grapples with the irony of losing friends too soon and witnessing his own dad celebrate his 90th birthday, and then immediately afterward on the closer, “Don’t Push Me.” That song—an old sketch of a song by Plug Two positioned as a transmission from the titular cabins—is joyous and heartbreaking at once. It lands as a final benediction—one last, luminous message from a group that’s experienced so much loss, but still has the superpower to make the past feel alive.

I know what you’re thinking: another critically acclaimed, Americana-inspired folksy turn from a beloved indie rock artist? Look, I get it—alt-country may be an easy way to the heart of a dad rock–curious indie-head raised on Lucinda Williams and Wilco. But Alex Giannascoli’s major label debut, Headlights, isn’t a trend-chasing fluke. Building on the heartfelt acoustic ditties he delved into on 2022’s great God Save the Animals, Headlights is endearingly earnest and lovely—and far from contrived. 

On songs like the bittersweet “June Guitar,” the intimate “Real Thing,” and the poignant “Oranges,” the emotions of Headlights are rich and nearly overwhelming. Dealing with themes of changing environments and looking back on lessons learned, Giannascoli tosses off tokens of wisdom like “I went out looking for the real thing / Didn’t notice it was hanging by the door” that read like the musings of someone much older but play perfectly in the context of the record’s simple yet stunning guitar arrangements and melodies. By combining the storytelling of Americana’s yesteryear with the idiosyncratic turns of phrase that helped establish Alex G as a singular voice in indie rock, Headlights proves itself to be a thoughtful and worthy entry into the new era of alt-country.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a musician who basked in as much critical adoration as Dijon in 2025. Not only is his sophomore album, Baby, one the best and most acclaimed of the year, but he also had high-profile contributions to the new Bon Iver and Justin Bieber albums, plus a small (though indelible) role in Best Picture favorite One Battle After Another. (He’s the “Mexican hairless” guy.) But the praise is well-earned—Baby sounds like sketches of Prince songs, remade for a post–Frank Ocean landscape. That’s most apparent in standouts like the bouncing “HIGHER!” or the gorgeous, sparse “Rewind.” These will go down as some of the defining sounds of the year, but you get the sense that they’re just a starting point—as though the future belongs to him as much as the present does.

Earlier this year, Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman said Bleeds represents what the band is “supposed to sound like.” Sure, it’s a flavor of alt-country that everyone in the indie rock world is chasing these days, but it really is a perfect fit for Wednesday, who’s been toying with the country sound since before it was cool. The influence was certainly apparent on their last record, the great Rat Saw God, which blended the twang of their home state of North Carolina with the noise rock that put them on the map. But Bleeds does feel like Wednesday’s official transformation into the folk-rock ensemble they were destined to be. 

The LP also finds Hartzman completely assured as a singer and storyteller. Her words cut deep as they seem to address the elephant in the room (that she and Wednesday guitarist MJ Lenderman broke up during the making of Bleeds): “I oversold myself on the night we met / I’m not as entertaining as you might’ve thought I was then,” she croons on the melancholy lullaby “The Way Love Goes.” But she’s also just as funny and evocative in describing her cast of backwoods characters: “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / Two things I now wish I had never seen,” goes her recollection of a truly cursed double feature on “Phish Pepsi.” Wednesday hasn’t completely left thrashy bangers behind—“Wasp” goes hard—but as she sings of screen doors, bar fights, and literal townies, it’s clear that the alt-country genre is the perfect backdrop for Hartzman and Co.’s penchant for the profound by way of true-blue Americana.

Clipse albums have, at their best, always opened with a tongue-in-cheek mea culpa to the duo’s parents. Both the intro from Lord Willin’ and “Momma I’m So Sorry” from Hell Hath No Fury found the Brothers Thornton giddily recounting their early love for drug dealing while also half-apologizing to Mom and Dad for all the problems it caused. But at the outset of Let God Sort Em Out, their first record in a decade and a half and the best major-label rap release of 2025, Pusha T and Malice take a different tone. “See, mine made sure he had every base covered / So imagine his pain findin' base in the cupboard,” Malice raps on “The Birds Don’t Sing” about their late father, who passed just months after the pair’s mother. The song is a bit of a reset before Push and Malice dive back into what they do best: deliver hard-hitting cocaine punchlines over the best Pharrell production you’ve ever heard. Even some Travis Scott subterfuge wasn’t enough to derail the Bezos of the nasals. Fifteen years after the Clipse split, the stakes are heavier, the grief is real—but nobody makes the slippery thrill of sin sound this immaculate.

The Winter Brings Snow: Why the Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion

The Winter Brings Snow: Why the Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion

The Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion 

Clipse Comeback Not Usual Old-Man Rap Reunion

By Lex Pryor • July 8 • 7 min read

The Winter Brings Snow: Why the Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion

The Winter Brings Snow: Why the Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion

The Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion 

Clipse Comeback Not Usual Old-Man Rap Reunion

By Lex Pryor • July 8 • 7 min read

Music

The Winter Brings Snow: Why the Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion

The Winter Brings Snow: Why the Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion

The Clipse Comeback Isn’t Your Typical Old-Man Rap Reunion 

Clipse Comeback Not Usual Old-Man Rap Reunion

By Lex Pryor • July 8 • 7 min read

The closest you or I will ever get to a night at the club with FKA Twigs is by listening to her third record, Eusexua, which doubles as a tour through the British techno scene by alt-pop’s preeminent purveyor of cool. Working with buzzy U.K. electronic musicians like Koreless and Two Shell, Twigs was clearly fascinated by propulsive, hypnotic beats when making the album—and, as usual, combined that with her experimental inclinations. Like on the standout “Room of Fools,” which builds on a rush that seems impossible to let up, until the instrumental drops as her voice rings out. Or on “Striptease,” where she tags in 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady for a darkly erotic banger that culminates in a sinister, glitchy bridge. It all leads toward the ultimate comedown in the album closer “Wanderlust,” a meditative ballad with a touch of Auto-Tune in what is fundamentally Twigs’s version of a stripped-down track. “If I don’t wake up Monday morning / I’ll make it up to you, babe,” she croons, as the album’s high gives way to a morning-after wave of long-simmering emotions. In Twigs’s hands, the reckoning that comes after is just an essential part of a good night out.

Rosalía has long established herself as pop’s foremost genre-bender, finding ways to incorporate just about every sound under the sun into her repertoire. On her fourth LP, Lux, however, she actually made it past the sun. Seeking universality and armed with 13 languages—with no help from AI, thank you very much—the Catalan visionary set her sights on the divine and came back with her most fascinating record to date.

For as many genres as Rosalía’s toyed with in her discography, the primarily classical Lux still arrived as an unexpected innovation. And don’t even think for a second that it’s a gimmick—she teamed up with a multitude of musicians, composers, and arrangers, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra, to bring the sound of heaven to life as she drew inspiration from the lives of female saints. Just the spare string intro to “Reliquia” is enough to move one to tears, and it’s immediately clear how much heart was put into this endeavor. The orchestrations swell and transcend throughout, from the exquisite crescendo of “Mio Cristo Piange Diamante” to the bounces and booms of “La Perla.” It’s all anchored by Rosalía’s voice, doing some of the most impressively acrobatic singing of her career as she quite literally pleads to the skies: “My Christ cries diamonds,” she proclaims in Italian on the epic “Mio Cristo” as her voice sharpens. “I carry you always.” Her voice is so weighty, trembling with emotion, that as the album comes to a close, all you can do is wait for the heavens to answer her.

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is a Masterpiece

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is a Masterpiece

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• Nov. 11 • 35 min

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is a Masterpiece

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is a Masterpiece

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Dissect

• Nov. 11 • 35 min

Music

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is a Masterpiece

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is a Masterpiece

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Dissect

• Nov. 11 • 35 min

“I have no idea where I’m going, here I come,” Geese frontman Cameron Winter bellows at the close of his band’s breakthrough LP, Getting Killed. It could double as an encapsulation of Geese’s past year, which kicked off with Winter’s stripped-down solo LP, Heavy Metal, being released to rapturous acclaim. Since then, they’ve become the band du jour—the kind that can draw (allegedly) Bono, Chappell Roan, and PTA to a show in a 1,200-cap room—even if, on paper, it seems like none of this should work. (Winter’s voice can be best described as “anxious muppet”—yes, that’s a compliment—and Getting Killed features both a trombone and a Ukrainian choir.) Of course, it’s a testament to the songs on the album: the infectious groove of “Husbands,” the shaggy ’70s-style riffs of “100 Horses,” the melancholy afterglow of “Au Pays du Cocaine.” On the latter, Winter wails “You can be free and still come home.” He may not know where he’s headed, but he’s exactly where he needs to be.

Our Favorite Music of 2025

Our Favorite Music of 2025

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Dissect

• Dec. 9 • 1 hr 46 min

Our Favorite Music of 2025

Our Favorite Music of 2025

Dissect

Dissect

• Dec. 9 • 1 hr 46 min

Music

Our Favorite Music of 2025

Our Favorite Music of 2025

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Dissect

• Dec. 9 • 1 hr 46 min