2025 Album Roundup
It’s that time of the year again!!! It has been another full year of hunting down as many new albums as possible, and what a successful hunt it was. Overall I listened to 336 albums from a massive range of genres, so I hope there will be a little something for everyone.
So without further ado, welcome to the 2025 Girl, Who Asked Awards Show!
Allow me to introduce this year’s categories.
- Uncut Gems for Uncut Princesses
- Dog Penis
- Undoers
- Party Favors
- Fear Fuel for Hoes who Love Being Scared
- For Girls who are Cowboys
- Album of the Year
Uncut Gems for Uncut Princesses
This is an "honorable mentions" section of sorts. I evaluate albums as one full cohesive piece of music. I love seeing how artists construct a full experience, the way that a well assembled tracklist with well placed interludes can become so much more than the sum of its parts. But sometimes looking at the forest causes you to miss some really beautiful trees. This category is for those messy forests with beautiful trees, albums that, though they could have used a bit more polish, gave me some of my favorite individual songs of 2025.
Geese - Getting Killed
Tracks 11
Runtime 46 minutes
Favorite Songs Cobra, Husbands, Au Pays du Cocaine, Bow Down, Taxes
Every year all of the most pretentious insufferable parts of me combine forces to point at one widely critically acclaimed album and say “um akshually that album is bad” and this year they chose this album. I’ve spent a long time trying to decide if it’s actually a bad album or if I’m just irritating and a hipster. I’ve come to the conclusion that, while I am absolutely both of those things, it does have some pretty glaring flaws. Of the band’s many assets, the most forward at all time is lead singer Cameron winter’s voice. It has a strange timbre, he has a tendency to stretch notes and hold them for as long as possible and was definitely my main hurdle in getting into Geese. This has the unfortunate impact of making the bad songs on this album borderline unlistenable for me. Excessive vamping, joke sections that start out only mildly funny and quickly wear themselves out through repetition (THERES A BOMB IN MY CAR), songs that lose their form to chaos but stay that way for far too long, clearly they’re honing the unconventionalities of their sound but when it doesn’t land it really falls face first.
The worst part for me is the way this crippled the album structure. My least favorite tracks are the first, the last, and 100 horses which falls dead in the middle of the album. I’m an albums girl to my core and I hate skipping songs, but I truly cannot sit through those tracks, so I often end up listening to this album as two 4-song EPs which doesn’t give nearly the same satisfaction as a full album. This was jarring and tough to get used to, especially considering how well put together their previous album 3D Country was.
But ever since its release, I have been helpless to stop myself from returning to the songs on this album over and over again. Cameron Winter has a way of making the simplest sounding lyrics bury their way into your brain and tear you to pieces. “You should be shame’s only daughter” “you can be free and still come home” “I will break my own heart from now on” “I’ve got half a mind to just pay for the lobotomy and tell ‘em get rid of the bad times and get rid of the good times too I’ve got no more thinking to do” I could go on and on and on about every lyric I’ve cried over this year but it wouldn’t come close to everything the rest of the band is doing to make sure these lyrics hit full force.
Drummer Max Bassin and bassist Dominic DiGessu keep every song’s backbone catchy but never conventional (though at many points I wish the bass guitar was louder in the mix) and keep building canvas after canvas for who I would argue is the true heart and soul of this album: guitarist Emily Green. For every second of all the hours of this year I spent with a geese song stuck in my head, the part I was humming was Green’s melody. If Bassin and DiGessu are the bones and Winter is the voice, Emily Green is everything else, blood flesh hair clothes she makes these songs everything that they are. Her ability to write riffs that perfectly foil and ground Winters’ rhythmically dancing vocals while giving plenty of space for DiGessu and Bassin to show every inch of their skill is hypnotizing and endlessly entertaining.
Overall, while the album as a whole didn’t really land for me, it is mesmerizing hearing four musicians of this caliber and talent able to share a stage and work so well together, and it would be irresponsible to let my urge to be a hater get in the way of more people enjoying everything Geese has to offer.
Maruja - Pain to Power
Tracks 8
Runtime 50 minutes
Favorite Songs Bloodsport, Look Down On Us, Zaytoun, Reconcile
Before this album came out I was entirely unable to shut up about Maruja. Their two EPs Knocknarea and Connola’s Well, floored me time and time again and, despite a massive backlog of albums I wanted to check out this year, I could not stop myself from coming back to them. Hearing that they planned to release their first album this year, it instantly became my most anticipated album of the year. But after hearing it for the first time I put it down after only one listen, dissappointed and with no intention to return.
This record pushes their jazzy atmospheric soundscape style to the background in favor of the vocals. The lyrics were my first issue, they put on bigger shoes than they are able to fill. Deeply critical of the wealthy and the suffering they perpetuate, deeply critical of the atrocities Israel is inflicting on the people of Palestine, they set themselves a high bar but simply don't have enough to say to meet it. General statements that "It's our differences that make us beautiful" and "it's empowering to think that all the hateful people out there, if they were only shown more love, they wouldn't be so spiteful" are all they have to offer. Combined with the fact that these lyrics are delivered with a much more rap-rock nu-metal flow, they seem to be angling hard toward Rage Against The Machine comparisons, but they shy away from saying anything actually inflammatory like "Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses" or "Those who died are justified by wearing the badge they're the chosen whites", instead opting for more general statements about how important love is.
But coming back to this album later in the year I realized my problems with the tame timid nature of the lyrics are mostly because they weren't written for people like me. Being Transgender and a regular of the Punk scene in New York, I am surrounded by the most vocal left wing demographic there is. Solidarity is in the air I exist in, it is on the tip of almost every tongue I speak to. Seeing Maruja live I realized that's not their crowd. The pit was full of relatively cishet looking white guys, real average Joes. A friend pointed out that, while those "baby's first resistance" lyrics seem shallow to us, it could really be someone's first interaction with resistance.
From that point that Nu-Metal style began to grow on me. Maruja's brilliant instrumentals are still absolutely on full display. The depth they can produce with only drums, saxophone, and a bass guitar is truly stunning, and the way they make these massive buildups to a cathartic drop keeps me coming back again and again. It's not an album I often listen to in full, and I am a little pissed off that my least favorite song on the album is the one that shares my name, but there are some brilliant moments on here and I think with some fine tuning, the next Maruja album could be an all time great.
Dog penis
A few months ago, frustrated at my habit of talking about niche artists I like as if everyone in the room knows what I’m talking about, my wife told me “you’re always saying some shit like ‘hey have you listened to the new Dog Penis album?’” The term “Dog Penis”, as shorthand for “a band with a silly name that Saoirse won’t stop talking about,” spread like wildfire among my friends, and I doubt I will hear the end of it for long time. So this category is dedicated to my wife, my friends, and the albums I would not and could not shut up about.
Ho99o9 - Tomorrow We Escape
Tracks 11
Runtime 36 minutes
Favorite Songs I Miss Home, Target Practice, Ok I'm Reloaded, Psychic Jumper, Immortal, Godflesh
In 2016, when I was most into industrial Hip Hop, infamous trio Death Grips released Bottomless Pit. Fusing their heavy noisy sound with Bad Brains era hardcore punk stylings was instantly addictive to me, and ever since I have been searching with very little success to find something that scratchs that same itch. Tomorrow We Escape is all of this and so so so much more. Keeping the industrial punch and dialing the Hip Hop, digital hardcore, and Metal influence up to 11, Ho99o9 delivers so much range and creativity with their sound. It's absolutely glorious to see a group that has for so long lived in the shadow of "oh this kinda sounds like death grips" build something so explosive and so unique.
Racing Mount Pleasant - Racing Mount Pleasant
Tracks 13
Runtime 58 minutes
Favorite Songs Emily, Seminary, You, You Pt. 2, Racing Mount Pleasant, Call it Easy, Outlast
It has been nearly a full year of me being unable to shut up about Michigan post-rock octet Racing Mount Pleasant. As of writing this, the only article on this blog that is not about a newly released album is my review of Racing Mount Pleasant's first album, Grip Your Fist, I'm Heaven Bound (released under the band name Kingfisher on some platforms). The only excuse I have for doing that is that the album was just that good. This of course gave be extremely high expectations for their new album, and oh my god did it blow me clear out of the water.
I have heard a saxophone do many things. I have heard them sing I have heard them cry, they can tell jokes, laugh, even scream. But before this album, I had never heard a saxophone sob. And it is gut wrenching. Becoming almost like additional vocalists, tenor saxophonist Samuel Uribe Botero and alto saxophonist Connor Hoyt add such unbelievable color to what is already a very beautifully rounded display composition. Woven between lead vocalist Sam DuBose and two backup vocal lines, three guitars, piano, flutes, violin, trumpet, bass, and drums, this album is not just detailed and vibrant, it's also so delicate. The gossamer softness feels like it could snap at any second with any movement too loud, but it keeps growing, stretching bigger and bigger, adding overdriven electric guitar lines, vocals on the verge of screaming, and still it holds. Perfectly balanced, a masterpeice of composition.
Viagra Boys - viagr aboys
Tracks 11
Runtime 37 minutes
Favorite Songs Man Made of Meat, Uno II, Dirty Boys, You N33d Me, River King
I think one of the huge problems with the “guy talk singing over a bass driven riff” genre of music is a lot of the time these bands forget to make the music enjoyable to listen to. And sometimes that’s the point. Sometimes with the right vision cohesion and intentionality that abrasive hostile style can produce some really beautiful art, but fall even slightly short and you’ve made something that is neither good nor fun to listen to. The alternative isn’t easy either. Going for silly vocals delivered in silly ways, even with the rest of the band doing something brilliant, can easily sink a band headfirst in the mud. Viagra Boys, is fully immersed in that mud, but they are swimming, not just staying afloat. I’m talking backstroke, breaststroke, synchronized swimming, wielding filth like liquid gold. Sebastian Murphy’s lyrics are deranged and delivered full force. “I’m subscribed to your mom’s only fans, I spend five bucks a month to get pictures of her flappy giblets” is a personal favorite, but given the lines that follow it it doesn’t stand out for long.
I won’t pretend to know much about the finishing touches of music production, but this album sounds absolutely amazing, it’s easily some of the best mixing on any album I’ve heard this year. It’s like biting into a potato chip and you can just tell countless hours have gone into determining the exact crisp to crunch to snap ratio. Everything is so punchy and clear. It's an absolute treat to listen to, at its loudest and at its softest. It's art punk perfection and it is worth every second.
Greet Death - Die In Love
Tracks 9
Runtime 44 minutes
Favorite Songs Same But Different Now, Country Girl, Red Rocket, Emptiness is Everywhere, Motherfucker, Love Me When You Leave
As far as band names go, Greet Death is one of the less ridiculous ones. In fact I would go as far as to say that it’s one of the coolest band names I’ve heard this year. It’s in this category because at a party I asked someone “do you know the song Red Rocket by Greet Death?” My friends pounced immediately, cackling that I had finally made a literal Dog Penis recommendation.
But I do not even slightly regret how much I talked about this album. Its blend of indie rock post-punk and a shoegaze touch that ranges from dream pop to full on walls of sound is so well balanced. The mixing has some of the best midrange balance of any album I've heard in a long time. It wields a really impressive amount of weight with an incredible amount of deftness and clarity, always playing with but never crushing its more delicate parts.
Their dual vocalist approach adds such a brilliant dynamic to the album. Logan Gaval uses his wide almost ghostly voice to lead some of the more atmospheric emo tracks, delivering lines like "In this dark-lit basement apartment the sun will never shine, where love has come to die" with such a spacious hopeless depression that it feels like it could swallow you. Harper Boyhtari, who transitioned since the last Greet Death album, counters with a more direct style, her voice coming through crystal clear and with a lightness that floats just above everything else. They're a perfect pair, Gaval drowning in acceptance, and Boyhtari with a new lease on life, trying to crawl her way out but still in the pit with Gaval. The same, but different now.
Undoers
There are some albums that don’t just tear you limb from limb, they pull at each cell of your body, threatening to undo you entirely. These are the albums I spent the most time trying not to cry on the subway to.
Champion Trees - A Duck's Water Off My Back
Tracks 9
Runtime 29 minutes
Favorite Songs I Wear a Shirt That Says Australia, Richard 2, I Want to Sound Like a Ghost, Higher Taste, Not a Numbers Guy, Unleonard, Gentle Apple Balanced
In a year with so much buzz about post rock and chamber pop outfits Black Country, New Road and Racing Mount Pleasant, it is criminal that no one is talking about Champion Trees. Stripped down and a touch folkier, at first listen most of the songs on this album sound like little more than vocals and guitar. But as you dig, more and more layers appear. Little woodwind melodies, second guitar countermelodies, impossibly soft basslines, there is so much depth in something so simple sounding, and the result is one of the most beautifully textured singer songwriter albums I’ve ever heard.
But I think what truly dissolves me about this album is lead singer Francis Christie’s voice. It’s clear and gentle, but there’s a little waver in it, grief just barely held back. It shows in his lyrics too, in these clever little turns of phrase that hold so much melancholy. “I wear a shirt that says ‘Australia’, so people know I’m not from there”, “I want to sound like a ghost, I want to sound like a bear got caught in the cave system of my throat”, “I was Unleonard, you were Unjanis, I was undressing, you were unflattered. And a wrong clock ticked away the night on the wall. I think on it now and I don't miss it at all” I could type out every lyric I love on this album but I would end up transcribing the whole thing.
Ellie MacPhee - All I Want is a Trampoline
Tracks 12
Runtime 30 minutes
Favorite Songs Let's Just Start, Angel, Try Again, Loretta, Stumblin', One Last Waltz
Ellie MacPhee’s first Album was everything I wanted it to be and so much more. If it only had all the wonderful things that earned her a spot on last year’s roundup as one half of Where’s Connie it would have been amazing. If this album was only Ellie’s brilliant lyricism, her close clear voice, and the most beautiful guitar riff you’ve ever heard, it probably still would have shown up on this list. But her sound evolves so far on this record. She’s added more voices, more piano, more percussion, more violin, some electric guitar, even going into a full indie rock sound on the song Try Again. And it works so well. Even with these style adjustments it’s all so uniquely her. That friendly vulnerability doesn’t just hold strong
This album is undoing not from sadness but from time itself. It exists in the past and future. Stumblin’ through life, looking forward and thinking about how you never really finish growing up, the present only appears to throw you back or forward, running into an ex lover and trying to make mundane small talk with someone you once bared everything to. Its reflective and refractive, showing you everyone you have been, and everyone you could be.
La Dispute - No One Was Driving The Car
Tracks 14
Runtime 65 minutes
Favorite Songs Man with Hands and Ankles Bound, Environmental Catastrophe Film, Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth / The Un - Sound, Landlord Calls the Sheriff In, Steve, I Dreamt of a Room with All My Friends I Could Not Get In, End Times Sermon
It’s tough to say anything about this album that I haven’t already said. It is one of the best vocal performances I’ve ever heard. It is quite possibly the best emo album ever made. It is, in a word, brutal. It doesn’t sugarcoat, it doesn’t pull punches, it is relentlessly violent in a slow insidious way. It is the thousand tiny needleprick traumas of childhood and how they turn to hammerfalls with age. How hate for yourself and the world around you loses its energy and rots into a ball that you have to keep carrying inside you, inexorable as a tumor. But most painful of all, it fucking rips. The guitar riffs, the composition, the lyrics the music chooses to emphasize, the way lead singer Jordan Dreyer’s voice breaks under their weight, it’s addicting. I can’t stop coming back to this album. I don’t know whether it was my biggest comfort or my worst implement of self harm. I don’t think I want to.
Party Favors
Some albums are simply irresistible. They tap your feet, nod your head, move you back and forth no matter where you are.
Wet Leg - Moisturizer
Tracks 12
Runtime 38 minutes
Favorite Songs CPR, davina mccall, mangetout, pillow talk, pokemon, 11:21
I have already written at great length about how much I love this album. The way it uses a punky sound to make tracks even more danceable, the way it focuses on all the best parts of being queer and in love, the way it pulls from so many different places to make something truly singular. July was the happiest part of my year, and every memory I have from that month is tied to this album. It feels like sunshine, like seawater, like my friends’ laughter.
I know it’s shameless to quote my own writing, but I don’t know a way to say it better. “Moisturizer is the album in the headphones of the coolest girl you know, it’s coming through the cracks in the door to your older sister’s room. It feels like being drunk and loud with your friends, the friends you feel untouchable with. It feels like driving in the summer with the windows down next to someone who just might be the love of your life.”
Joey Valence & Brae - HYPERYOUTH
Tracks 14
Runtime 44 minutes
Favorite Songs BUST DOWN, IS THIS LOVE, SEE YOU DANCE, PARTY'S OVER, WASSUP, THE PARTY SONG
I could talk for a long time about how much I love each individual piece of this album, but I think what moves me the most about this album is how every fiber of its existence is devoted to fun before everything else. The lyrics are clever and catchy and genuinely funny, the production is colorful and flavorful and bursting with energy, the way the album is assembled keeps the genre changes feeling natural but never predictable, but all of those pieces just drip with whimsy. Through every second of this album you can so vividly see two guys hanging out, going back and forth on ableton, coming up with lyrics out loud, just having the best time possible, only writing down what makes you laugh hardest. I mean how else do you get lyrics like “Sydney Sweeney called me and I hanged up” “your boyfriend calls me gay but he wants to kiss me” “I’m half amazing and half Asian, I’m so good you can say I’m amasian” “so much swag, call me a [long bleep]”. The bleep on that is clearly supposed to be “swaggot” and from my research I’m like 98% sure Joey Valence can’t say that, but honestly? That just makes me love this album more.
Admittedly for me a lot of that “two dudes chilling” vision comes from their TikTok presence. One video, labeled with the text “normalize using the most out of pocket samples” shows Joey sitting in a desk chair in a bedroom, holding the camera, Brae in another chair close behind him. Joey lip syncs a lyric that would eventually make it onto this album, “went for some Chinese food and the fortune cookie told me I was goated”. This is of course followed by the single loudest gong sound effect I have ever heard in my life, entirely drowning out the next lyric, and Brae just doubles over cackling. Theres something so magic in that. It’s more than how hilarious that sample is, it’s more than how infectious Brae’s uncontrollable laughter is, it is a single distilled drop of pure joy, of something you make just to make your best friend laugh. This album is the full beautiful bottle of joy, one whole Liter of the purest most contagious happiness soundwaves can carry.
Ninajirachi - I Love My Computer
Tracks 12
Runtime 40 minutes
Favorite Songs iPod Touch, F**k My Computer, CSIRAC, Delete, Infohazard, Sing Good
I think out of every review I wrote this year, the one I wrote for this album for the August Album Of The Month, is the one I am proudest of. There’s so much to love about this album that it practically wrote itself. I Love My Computer is stunning, it’s electric, it goes crazy in dj sets, it’s one of the most moving coming of age love stories I have ever experienced, and it is the single best edm record I have ever heard.
Flipturn - Burnout Days
Tracks 12
Runtime 44 minutes
Favorite Songs Juno, Rodeo Clown, Inner Wave, Moon Rocks, If It Is, Burnout Days
I will always have a soft spot for poppy indie rock and that spot has always been softest for flipturn. 2022 saw the release of their album Shadowglow, an instant classic and a jump start revival of that delicious flavor of indie rock from the late 20-teens. Earworms like Sad Disco and gut wrenching ballads like Space Cowboy placed them among tumblr indie canon right up there with the Backseat Lovers, Turnover, Hippo Campus, and Mac DeMarco. It was a lovely reminder of how much I loved that genre, but somewhere in the synth and saxophone fueled sadness of 2024 I forgot that love again. Thankfully Flipturn is back with yet another brilliant reminder. Trimmed down, focused, and polished, Burnout Days is everything Shadowglow was and so much more. The mixing is crystal clear, the drum and percussion work from Devon VonBalson is some of the most interesting I have ever heard on an indie album, the songwriting has so much range, and Dillon Basse’s vocals remain bright and deliciously smooth.
Albums like this are why I love writing about music. It was a regular choice to put on when I was relaxing after work or needed something to cheer me up, and until I listened back through it when making the final choices for this article I never realized how much of it stuck with me. 12 straight tracks of “oh I love this song”, 12 straight tracks of singing along to more lyrics than I knew I remembered, 12 beautiful tracks coming together to form the vivid feeling of a summer afternoon, right down to the wind through the leaves and the grass between your fingers.
Fear Fuel for Hoes who Love Being Scared
Some albums throw you onto your feet and then immediately off them. This is for the albums that hit unimaginably hard, the heavy, brutal, terrifying albums that grip your chest and refuse to let go. For the girls who binge watched saw clips on YouTube a little bit too young.
aya - hexed!
Tracks 10
Runtime 34 minutes
Favorite Songs I am the pipe I hit myself with, off to the ESSO, the names of Faggot Chav boys, peach, droplets, Time at the Bar
Trans women are often said to have some sort of spiritual powers. We have long been the high preistesses, the late night oracles, the seers bearing witness. We don't get temples anymore, but you can still find those of us who have seen the light in the clubs of Bushwick, or standing outside with a cigarette. Thats what hexed feels like: communion with something beyond fueled by the club's beating pulse and writhing flesh.
A lot of artists have tried capturing that feeling. FKA Twigs released Eusexua as her attempt, zeroing in on that delightful feeling of losing all sense of time to a torrent of sweat. But she's a pop star. More tapped in than the rest, and certainly closer than someone like Charli XCX was able to get, but a pop star nonetheless, and a pop star lives without consequence. A pop star arrives in a limo and has a car to take them home when the sun rises.
For the rest of us, especially the queerest of us, there is no safety to this. We are on the subway at 3am in long black coats in 90 degree weather to hide from prying eyes, we are walking home with women we just met because no one will protect us but us, we are out late on weeknights with work in the morning because this is the only thing that matters. And the only ones who understand are those who have also seen the light.
And aya, who as of releasing this album is two years sober, is the one who has depicted that feeling best. Communing with something higher is terrifying, and you can succeed, but you still have to wake up eventually. You can't lose yourself if you have to much to lose, and if you can't take yourself apart and rebuild, you walk through life blind. It either destroys you or you leave.
Hexed is a harsh noise album. Hexed is a club album. Hexed is a three month bender. Hexed is withdrawl. Hexed is twisting bodies. Hexed is a waking nightmare. Hexed is the closest to god you can get.
Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo - In the Earth Again
Tracks 11
Runtime 36 minutes
Favorite Songs Demon Time, Never Say Die!, Behold a Pale Horse, The Magic of the World, The Matador, Radioactive Dreams
What do you get when you mix an ambient country finger-style guitarist with a sludge metal band? I ask because after listening to this record countless times I still have no idea. It’s apocalyptic, grungy, desolate, atmospheric, it cultivates a vibe so unlike anything I’ve ever heard in an album. The closest thing I’ve felt to it is my time playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It’s a filthy damp crawl for survival through the Baker family house in the swamps of Louisiana, a family that has each been somehow warped into sickening creatures. It’s tense and terrifying among the blood and the mold, but there’s also something calming about it. The old houses you creep through feel familiar despite the rot, the derelict walls winding into the nostalgia. Hostile slow metal tracks weave into even slower Eddie Vedder-meets-Tom Waits vocal tracks, moving the danger and hostility around, but never quite lifting the tension. It is a truly unique soundscape.
If you enjoy the softer parts of this album I highly recommend Hayden Pedigo’s solo work.
Ditz - Never Exhale
Tracks 10
Runtime 38 minutes
Favorite Songs Taxi Man, Four, God on a Speed Dial, Smells Like Something Died in Here, The Body as a Structure
Take Lightning Bolt and Gilla Band style noise rock, give it a little first album Arctic Monkeys dance punk twist, and you get Ditz. As sharp and scary as it is infectiously catchy, I think every time I have gotten an “audio too loud” warning this year it has been when I was listening to this album. The texture and weight brought by bassist Caleb Remnant (which is such a sick last name by the way oh my god) is almost unnaturally heavy. There’s a depth to this album that I’m surprised my headphones are even able to produce. There’s highlight for me though, is lead singer Cal Francis. Her delivery, spoken or screaming, is such a visceral centerpiece to an album that already feels so violently human. As a longtime fan of hoe scaring music, this is some of the most fun I’ve had being scared in a long time.
BAMBARA - Birthmarks
Tracks 10
Runtime 37 minutes
Favorite Songs Hiss, Letters From Sing Sing, Face Of Love, Pray To Me, Because You Asked, Loretta
Fusing dream pop, goth rock, and that particular Nick Cave flair, BAMBARA’s Birthmarks is one of the most fully enveloping albums I have ever heard. It drips film noir, sleazy, sultry, melancholy, dreamy, and hissing like an old radio. Building tracks mostly from drum and bass guitar respectively, Blaze Bateh and William Brookshire are able to build massive rooms of sound that threaten to crash down on to you at any second, but keep pulling you back in again and again. Sheet metal crashes, dark synth tones, and grinding noise make almost apocalyptic horror movie sounds.
But despite all this fear and oppression the atmosphere builds, I keep coming back again and again. These songs are effortlessly catchy. The drum and basslines shuffle and walk through space with a razor’s edge sense of control. You feel protected in the city Birthmarks builds, not because you’re with someone safe, but because you’re with someone dangerous. And Reid Bateh does such a brilliant job of being that person. His half spoken vocals slide and rattle in and out of key with a catholic alcoholic flair, somehow feeling both far above and crushed deep under the weight of the music.
The story itself is also so beautifully told, of the characters Jack Saint, Loretta, Elena, and Mae, of prophetic dreams, snakes, and love after death. It’s a story told out of order and it gives you so much to analyze and dive into. And mostly being told the story through the mouth of jack saint does so much for that eerie tone. Every woman in the story becomes a kind of deity, depicted with halos, worshipped by Jack, both more and less than human. It’s a story that wallows in sin. It feels lecherous, dirty, religious. For a record I haven’t heard a single person talk about this year it has so much to offer.
For Girls who are Cowboys
I went through a sort of country music psychosis this year. I got very into singing classic country songs at karaoke, my country playlist was a frequent commute pick (I’m not usually a playlist type of girl), and there was a point in the year where every time I pulled the guitar off my wall it was the only thing I would play. There must have been something in the air because it seems like the music world followed suit. This, the only genre specific category on this list, is for the albums with that particular Folk twist, the ones that make a girl who’s only ever lived in the city wanna grow her stubble out a bit, smoke hand rolled cigarettes, and sleep out under stars the city lights only dream of imitating.
Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars
Tracks 6
Runtime 41 minutes
Favorite Songs God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, Untitled Cowboy, Highway, Ativan
The more you zoom out, the slower things get. That jet liner moving 550 miles per hour crawls across the sky, and with no trees and no buildings around you that mountain in the distance never seems to get any closer. No matter how long you’ve been walking. That’s what this album sounds like. Every note every syllable every cymbal hiss hangs in the air. I’ve heard so many shoegaze albums aim for size with massive walls of sound, and I’ve heard many successfully hit that mark, but I’ve never felt this insignificant. And there’s a sort of comfort in that, a deep breath reminder that whatever will be will be, and the world keeps turning.
Don’t get me wrong though this album is fucking devastating. I think if I made a list of the top 10 saddest songs ever written at least 7 would be country songs and one of those songs would be Untitled Cowboy, from this album. Its funeral slowness, the way it uses empty space, the sliding drawling guitar, everything about this song is ruthlessly captivating. And the finishing blow is dealt by vocalist Blake Skipper. He hangs on every word, saying so much with so little. Hearing the chorus for the first time sent my week into a death spiral. “Don’t you know I feel like all that time we wasted sitting with each other would’ve been a whole lot better spent alone?” No flowers. No garnish. One simple brutal question to tear 24 years of memory apart.
Country mixed with slowcore and shoegaze sounds like a strange combination at first, but in Shallowater’s hands they are made for eachother.
Dutch Interior - Moneyball
Tracks 10
Runtime 44 minutes
Favorite Songs Canada, Wood Knot, Science Fiction, Sweet Time, Life (So Crazy), Beekeeping
Moneyball is an album for the cowboy on her late night walk home. Laid back and featherlight Dutch Interior has made their indie rock country sound so tight and so effortless at the same time. The half-whisper vocals, the slight film grain in the production, everything feels softer when this album is playing, draped in cloudy layers of wool. It’s moody and atmospheric, as if lit by warm sodium vapor street lamps, but it never pulls you into that undoing death spiral, it keeps itself firmly in a hazy melancholy. The slower sadder songs are mixed in with almost silly classic country sounding tracks, like Sweet Time, which can truly only be described as a bluesy, foot-tapping little ditty. Or Horse, a gentle Hank Williams Jr style track about settling down with the woman you love and buyin her a horse.
It never feels insensitive though. So many times I’ve heard albums that build a beautiful mood and shoot themselves in the foot with the song equivalent of the photographer going “now let’s do a silly one!” But that same gentle touch that’s applied to the sadder tracks on this album, Dutch Interior applies to everything. Those potentially goofy songs are delivered with a smile but no less sincerity than any other song. I think that’s what completes the late night walk home feeling for me. The smiles of your friends you just left behind for fresh air still linger in your mind, sometimes creeping their way back onto your face as you turn the day over in your hands.
Natalia Lafourcade - Cancionera
Tracks 14
Runtime 76 minutes
Favorite Songs Cancionera, Como Quisiera Quererte, Amor Clandestino, El Coconita, Luna Creciente
As many different genres as I try to listen to, the music that appears on my radar sadly tends to be overwhelmingly American, British, or Australian. Anything outside of that is a massive blind spot for me, and knowing the massive amount of beautiful music I am missing out on plagues me. So I was beyond delighted when Natalia Lafourcade’s music came across my desk. This album, Cancionera, is a full hour and 16 minutes of Latin American folk music drawing inspiration from Bolero, Son Jarocho, Tango, Rumba, and so much more. It is easily the longest album on this list, and every second is breathtaking. Each song was recorded in one take, on tape, with no digital editing, and the warmth this album radiates is unlike anything else released in the past decade.
Lafourcade has one of the most beautiful singing voices I have ever heard, and as the titular Cancionera she carries us through so much stylistic variety with so much grace. Her control is clearly studied and masterfully trained, but never feels rigid or academic. And the featured singers foil her voice so beautifully. El David Aguilar’s harmony in Como Quisiera Quererte is so full of color, and Israel Fernández’s higher vocal range on Amor Clandestino is the perfect pair for the lower register Lafourcade uses on that track.
Cancionera is the best reminder I have ever received to step out of my comfort zone, and no other album I heard this year feels even close to the way it feels.
Album Of The Year
One above all else.
Deafheaven - Lonely People with power
Tracks 12
Runtime 62 minutes
Favorite Songs Doberman, Heathen, Amethyst, Revelator, Body Behavior, The Marvelous Orange Tree
I’ve spent a long time interrogating why Deafheaven’s music affects me the way it does, mostly because I’m not a huge fan of scream vocals. I have been a fan of their 2013 album Sunbather since long before this album came out but the vocals took a backseat for me, especially given that they sit far quieter in the mix. I was there for Deafheaven’s specialty: their composition and instrumentation. At that point to me vocalist George Clarke was mere seasoning, a bit of spice added to their massive wall of sound.
Strangely, what changed my opinion was Infinite Granite. In 2021 Deafheaven surprised their fans by releasing an album entirely removed from their Black Metal influences. 2021’s Infinite Granite is a shoegaze dream pop record; softer, dreamier than everything else they’ve released. It’s still undeniably Deafheaven, the catharsis they are able to build with their composition sends shivers down your spine, Daniel Tracy’s drum work is effortlessly in the pocket, dynamic and crisp never letting a single second feel stale. But the guitars ring like bells. Guitarists Shiv Mehra and Kerry McCoy use their heavy reverb and echo effects knowledge to make these soaring twinkling melody lines that absolutely bleed with emotion. Clarke’s voice, so used to screaming, is light and delicate, almost gentle. It takes a bashful center stage, vulnerable in a new way, with a soft romance like a soldier learning to care for a puppy. And what begins as a tentative test of gentleness builds itself into armor. Mehra and McCoy bring back their walls of sound over the twinkling riffs, and, for one of my all time favorite album finales, right at the end of the song Mombasa, Clarke returns to his scream vocals. You can feel something click for the band.
To put it gently, Lonely People with Power is one of the best albums I have ever experienced. It’s catchy, it has enough power to level a city, it goes fucking crazy, it is entirely undoing, it makes you want to dance, I have lost count of how many times I’ve cried to it. Lonely People With Power is their magnum opus, all the best pieces of every other project they have ever made all rolled into one glorious hour. Mehra and McCoy use their newly honed melodic skills from infinite granite to create some of the single best riffs I have ever heard, riffs that still feel like mainlining every emotion at once even after almost 10 months straight of listening to them. Tracy’s drumming is the best it has ever been, matching and mirroring his guitarists’ blinding speed and energy note for note, flourish for flourish. And Clarke gives the single most stunning vocal performance of any artist this year. That single point of catharsis infinite granite builds up to over 50 minutes is alive and screaming here in full concentration for every second. He brings in little sprinkles of those clean vocals and even some spoken word sections. Every single track on this album is a masterpiece.
Beyond just the individual pieces, it’s easily the best structured album I’ve heard this year. Those who have heard me ramble about music know that I am a huge slut for a good interlude. Putting specific tracks on an album that are only meant to be enjoyed in the context of the album and exist entirely to add more detail to the themes of the album is a huge statement against the single song TikTok snippet music culture that streaming services have cultivated. The three interludes on this album, each called Incidental, are all beautifully crafted ambient and spoken word pieces, introducing not just the song that follows but the next act of the album, and adding breath to make sure Deafheaven’s overwhelming sound never gets fatiguing.
Interlude, 5 songs, interlude, 2 songs, interlude, 2 songs is a sort of unconventional way to divide an album, but it really works magic for the pacing. The first 5 start with two hard hitting mid tempo bangers and transition into my favorite single track on the album (and I think the best song released this year), Amethyst, an emotionally devastating crystalline death waltz. It’s such a beautiful end to the first act and the second interlude comes as a welcome breath after Amethyst’s weight. Atmospheric, lonely, and almost hymnal, Boy Harsher’s Jae Matthews delivers a humming digital rumination that, even as it distorts and screams and thrashes, appears as a sort of epiphany. Not the kind that heals, the kind where you realize just how much you have been holding on to. And then the album erupts, bursting into Revelator and Body Behavior, two lighting charged high energy speed demons. That transition never fails to send chills down my spine. The final interlude features Paul Banks of Interpol, recounting a melancholy memory of a woman, the strange questions she asked, and the way she said "baby". And the way she said "baby". It brings us perfectly into the final act, Winona and The Marvelous Orange Tree, all of the power Deafheaven is able to conjure, with none of the speed. Two devastating ballads forming one brutal conclusion. Reaching an ending, not a solution. Moving on nonetheless.
Lonely People With Power is the accumulation of everything Deafheaven has ever made, the best parts of all of their work refined into one perfect masterpeice. If you listen to one new album from 2025, please let it be this one.