Kyle Kohner’s Top 25 records of 2025
by Kyle Kohner
The humdrum yearly ritual of listening, overthinking, and assuming I’ll remember everything I heard has ended the way it usually does: with a list that refuses to take a clean shape. Some years it’s looked like 50 records; one year, it hit 100; others have landed somewhere in the 30s. This year felt a little more special — so special that I only had time for 25 records to write about… Sarcasm aside, I could have talked about 100 this year — 2025 was brimming with that much excellence — but these 25 projects kept resurfacing until ignoring them felt dishonest to this yearly ritual.
Clipse walked back in and sat on the throne with the loudest of gestures, acting as if they never left the seat. Maruja were loud enough to remove any doubt with a statement that was berated rather than uttered. caroline and Nourished by Time asked for patience and justified the quiet, the latter with more of a nocturnal groove. A few projects made more sense once I stopped pressing them for answers—Earl made peace feel necessary, while Squid treated chaos like a private language spoken by a cult. As the year slowed, these were the records, among many others still asking for space. That mattered more than first-week excitement. These albums stayed. Everything else passed through. So, without further ado:
25. Home Is Where- Hunting Season
Hunting Season sees Home Is Where lean into a cracked kind of Americana: weary, tender, and a little absurd, and what we have is a record that laughs so it doesn’t shatter—grieving a fucked up country while still trying to make something beautiful out of the wreckage.
24. Hayden Pedigo – I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away
Few guitarists working right now sound anything like him. On his latest, Hayden and his guitar offers a sense of place, not destination — landscape music, not travel—as each phrase lands patiently, shaped by the atmosphere around it.
23. Turnstile – NEVER ENOUGH
Turnstile don’t just write joyful songs; they make joy feel physical and collective. Their latest record is built for bodies and shared momentum — less contemplation and more connection, without ever losing focus on the fight for what matters.
22. Quadeca – Vanisher, Horizon Scraper
Quadeca steps away from the fabricated persona of reclusiveness and into something closer to plainspoken honesty — something outright beautiful. Ben Lasky’s latest fractures and flickers but stays close to an effort that is clearly revealing.
21. Squid – Cowards
This band’s most recent offering is a constant experience of push and pull, with long stretches of uneasy calm that feel barely held together. The tension sits there, patient until the edges finally split and the whole tips toward collapse and the advent of apocalypse.
20. Freddie Gibbs – Alfredo 2
Freddie Gibbs raps with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where the line is—and he always wants to cross it. Precise with his honesty and one-of-a-kind one-liners, his craft is the flex here and leaves no stone unturned; he licks the bowl clean on Alfredo 2.
19. Racing Mount Pleasant – S/T
Their songs move like headlights on wet asphalt—urgent, uncertain, impossible to forget once they pass. Their self-titled is desperation in real time, chasing the boundary of a place it can’t quite name.
18. La Dispute – No One Was Driving the Car
La Dispute’s wounds feel less personal now and the exorcisms have escalated into all-encompassing prayers. La Dispute still sound furious — just more focused, more weathered. It’s the sharpest they’ve sounded in years.
17. Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong
Their music no longer hides behind irony; it recedes into an unabashed joy, and what’s left is tender, exposed, and trembling — the sound of a band learning to trust the miracle of merely being one.
16. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power
After pulling back from sheer force and leaning into atmospheric shoegaze, Deafheaven made the right and frankly, only decision by going full-throttle, except the guitars are still shimmering; they’ve put it all together.
15. Open Mike Eagle – Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
Open Mike Eagle’s humor is not without real emotional labor. His jokes feel like admissions he’s already thought through, and he’s fine with them coming out. On Neighborhood Gods Unlimited, he’s fully himself — loose, thoughtful, sharp.
14. Tyler, the Creator – Don’t Tap the Glass
Tyler’s joy has never been accidental. On Don’t Tap the Glass, it feels earned, shaped by years of trying on different selves. He’s still all of them at once, but here he sounds freer—joyful on his own terms, even when the room tries to read it for him.
13. Jerskin Fendrix – Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire
After a few years scoring films, Jerskin returned with a sharper sense of pacing and emotive scale for his own creations. Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire feels staged and textured—like scenes from a movie—yet remains defiantly strange and human.
12. caroline – caroline 2
caroline once again performs a careful and astonishing balancing act between quiet devastation and quiet rebuilding, and few records this year make that balance feel so deliberate — or so moving.
11. Maruja – Pain to Power
Maruja crumple punk, jazz, and rap into a ball of chaos and immediacy. The noise of Pain to Power is earned through urgency instead of indulgence — it all feels necessary, and their debut screams every reason why.
10. Dijon – Baby
Groove and mood still anchor Baby, but Dijon lets his voice step closer to the center — unforced, almost confessional. II brushes up against theatrics, but the intimacy never breaks.
9. Militarie Gun – God Save the Gun
Militarie Gun keep the hooks big, but now the feelings are bigger. They’ve sharpened their punchy, melodic hardcore into its sturdiest and most reflective form yet on God Save the Gun. It’s loud, tuneful, and stubbornly human.
8. Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love
Cool, breezy and effortless in a way only Earl can pull off, he gives the phrase “Live Laugh Love” new meaning—it’s less a meme; it isn’t so much a motto for 50 year old white moms in Orange County—it’s a mantra for his existence and persistence as one of hip-hop’s best.
7. Youth Lagoon – Rarely Do I Dream
Powers once again avoids nostalgia, even when the music brushes against it. These songs feel worn-in and humane, like conversations with a past self finally turning kind. Quiet, cautious, deeply felt.
6. Geese – Getting Killed
Who up getting killed? Geese are, and they seem more lively and even weirder as it’s happening. Except that weirdness feels calculated now — not in a safe way — they remain jagged, often sharpened by the ingenious songwriting of one of the boldest and most exciting voices there is.
5. Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
Nourished by Time continues to build R&B from solitude without letting it overthink itself. The quiet funk on his latest keeps things physical, turning reflection into motion that sneaks up on you.
4. Alex G – Headlights
New label, same instinct: on Headlights, Alex G continues to write familiar songs without being predictable. Comfort and unease coexist as melodies pull you in while the boundaries and borders stay warped like an old photo—exactly as they should.
3. Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
With Pusha T rapping as if inevitability is a virtue and Malice sounding like a man who’s made peace with his past but won’t stop examining the scars, Clipse return like ghosts who never really left the block — and yet, they’re better than ever on Let God Sort Em Out.
2. Model/Actriz – Pirouette
On Pirouette, Model/Actriz soften their tension just enough to let vulnerability in. Bodies still move, but now the movement carries feeling, not just force. The heart may break but it wants to still move.
1. Cameron Winter – Heavy Metal
The year of Cameron Winter technically started at the end of 2024, but it doesn’t matter. Heavy Metal belonged to ’25 because it refused to let go. It’s frank at first, devastating second, then oddly comforting. Few albums this year felt so unpretentious about simply existing, so I’m allowing myself a loophole; this was the best of the year.
Honorable Mentions:
Snooper – Worldwide, Car Seat Headrest – The Scholars, billy woods – Golliwog, Water From Your Eyes – It’s a Beautiful Place, Olivia Dean – The Art of Loving, Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter, Baths – Gut, Wet Leg – Moisturizer, Erika de Casier – Lifetime, Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow, The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising, horsegirl – Phonetics On and On, Greg Freeman – Burnover, Rosalía – LUX, yeule – Evangelic Girl is a Gun, Joanne Robertson – Blurrr, Great Grandpa – Patience, Moonbeam, Lorde – Virgin, Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – New Threats From The Soul, Shallowater – God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars
Enjoy my playlist of what I consider to be the best 100 songs of 2025:
