As I pick myself up from the floor: silence! I grab one of the plastic water bottles that’s standing around and pour it over my aching head, on my burning eyes, into my dry mouth, shaking whatever excess is left out of my long hair, like a wet dog. I give it some more seconds to make sure: nope, no protesting mob outside the BPM office compound. There’s likely more pressing matters. Personally, I’m just happy I don’t need to hand out the booze to pacify an angry mob again.
The coffee machine hums to life, and I dare to take a curious look around the offices. Rob is asleep on one of the luxurious couches we keep around on the main floor hallways. I caught a glimpse of Andy earlier, asleep on the floor, blanketing himself with copious promo copies of the 27 variants of The Life of a Showgirl. I can’t see Joshua anywhere – I guess he’s been up for a while, and gone for a walk to the local Tesco for Smoothies. The rest is surely somewhere in the pool area, either sleeping or having a morning shower. But I have no clue where Chase is, as his office is empty, and by the time my mind manifests a connective thought, the coffee machine starts beeping. Which, BAD; I don’t want to wake anyone…
As I walk over, I notice an envelope pinned to the fridge, curiously with my name on the front. Oh look: it’s from Chase! “Hey John, I’ve taken the red eye out of the country, hope nobody is too hung over from the sake I brought. Oh, and, please, remember to hand in the Honorable Mentions intro by noon. Cheers!”
Oh, GODDAMN, I forgot the intro! So, off to my office room, door locked, laptop up, coffee in. Here we go.
2025 was a difficult year in terms of compiling a top list. Because, frankly, it was an immensely strange and emotional year. The general mood seems to be that everything gets ever worse, but internally, we find different coping mechanisms to digest the horrors and chaos we have to confront individually. This results in very varied experiences with art: some look for progressively more confrontational sounds, while others want music that’s easily digestible, to somewhat contradict the outer unrest on the inside. Any consensus thus evades the actual emotional impact of records that are more personal, riskier, unique. Looking through our individual top lists, I was struck by the amount of high scoring albums that only featured once or twice in total – and all of them were incredible in their own right.
I guess that explains the silence outside of our offices. The broad masses of the mainstream will be pleased by our consensual highlights, but this year, the list seems merely a compromise.
First of all, three of the strongest albums that would have been features in our year end list – Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal, ELUCID’s INTERFERENCE PATTERN and Whirr’s Raw Blue – were released in the last days of 2024, meaning they missed out last year’s tally and Rob’s harsh ruling excluded them from any 2025 listing!
And then, our personal experiences of the year warranted personal connections with immensely idiosyncratic records. In short: our honourable mentions this year are especially recommended. They are less so albums that are simply notable, and more of a personal emotional compass. And to be fair, in an alternate reality, this could well stand as our definitive list of 2025’s best albums: there’s not a single release on here that wouldn’t be an at least respectable inclusion in our top 25! So I wholeheartedly recommend you to give these spectacular projects a try, lean back in your chair with some coffee – as do I (though I don’t recommend to indulge in hangovers: PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY) – and let our words inspire you. Together let us delve into 2025’s most underrated, unheard and unmatched records!
Listen to a Spotify playlist of highlights from our Honorable Mentions 2025
Anna B Savage – You & i are Earth
[City Slang]
Anna B Savage‘s first two albums were rife with drama, depression and self-doubt, which made for rowdy and resounding music. But with her third, You & i are Earth the British songwriter has relocated to Ireland, found love and seems to be at peace. And lo and behold, it’s yielded the most beautiful and resounding music of her career.
Savage being Savage, she has thrown herself wholeheartedly and whole-voicedly into her new life – as perfectly evidenced by the album’s cover, where she’s embedded in the flora of her new home. This commitment makes every heartbeat she dedicates to her love an undualating musical triumph. Whether describing them as a lighthosue in a storm, reaching for them in her sleep or using their native language to express the depth of feeling, we feel every magnetic attraction, every bodily yearning and every heady moment of romance as if it were our own. This is not only down to her superb writing but of course her inimitably rich voice and the most sophisticated arrangements she has utilised to date. The result is landscape of golden and green glory. – Rob Hakimian
Barker – Stochastic Drift
[Smalltown Supersound]
The Berlin-based DJ and producer Sam Barker truly soaks in the storied musical history of the city that he resides in, but what comes out of his mind and fingertips is something completely reprocessed into an efficient and explorative amalgam of modern musical trends. His second full-length, Stochastic Drift, will likely be found among the techno or house sections of a record store, but sonically it doesn’t sit comfortably in either of those, even if the basis of his sound draws from a similar palette.
This meditative masterstroke of a record takes you on a subtle slide through sonic dimensions, one minute glacial, the next percolating; a moment of smoothness gives way to pulsating tactility. A track like “Reframing” feels like watching glowing sunshine creeping over snowy foothills that are rising and falling at random; “The Remembering Self” recalls Eno’s atmospheres but propels them to new climes; “Positive Disintegration” pairs a liquid, almost funky bassline with shiny splashes of synth tones. Towards the end, Barker heads in more jazz-tinted directions, with “Cosmic Microwave” splattering tones in off-kilter rhythms before “Fluid Mechanics” puts a piano on a precipice and continually tilts it then twinkles its way back from the brink. Barker then departs us with some light gabber on the completely indefinable title track, leaving us none the wiser as to where he’ll end up next – but desperate to find out. – Rob Hakimian
Barry Can’t Swim – Loner
[Ninja Tune]
What elevates Barry Can’t Swim‘s Loner above so many recent tributes to 90s electronic music is how its rose-glasses eventually focus on the death of optimism. The Scottish accent has never been the cheeriest of UK dialects, so its sprinkling among sides like “Machine Noise For A Quiet Daydream” doesn’t do much PR for the past’s profile. Therefore, highs like “Childhood” and “Still Riding” are a bulwark against the coming lows, forestalling the “stal” in “nostalgia”. – Steve Forstneger
Benjamin Booker – LOWER
[Fire Next Time]
Lower came into my life at a point of suspension – I was feeling anxious, disconnected and deeply unsettled. My health was a mess, my mental state wasn’t quite there and my perspective on the world was ashen and black. Then, this strange album made its way to me. Benjamin Booker reportedly made it on the precipice of chaos, finding a sound that is bathing in the candlelit comfort of despair. I am not keen to psycho-analyse art, but it’s clear that Booker inhabits dark places on this project. As he says himself, opening “Speaking with the Dead”: “I keep waking up in a nightmare / Blood like oil from the ground / Rises high up in the night sky / Scaring everyone around”.
Collaborator Kenny Segal finds light in this immense darkness, shifting between industrial, guitar-led singer songwriter and Black music influences. This results in a strange tone that almost comes across as infernal post-soul music. And yet, Lower is a deeply healing, comforting album, that seems to organise and clean out the debris of psychic turmoil. Songs like “New World”, “Same Kind of Lonely” and “Hope for the Night Time” are genuinely optimistic and hopeful – therapeutic, even. At our darkest, we sometimes need a stranger to hold our hand and comfort us. This album, in all its broken beauty, is witness to our strength to survive. Moving and deeply personal, it can save lives! – John Wohlmacher
Dilettante – Life Of The Party
[Launchpad+]
I will concede that Dilettante‘s latest record, Life of the Party, isn’t strictly perfect in any way but damn, I would be lying if I said it hadn’t taken up a residence in my brain since I first heard it at the start of this year. Dilettante bandleader Francesca Pidgeon has an exceptional knack for an earworm, and Life of the Party is overspilling with them. Even the melancholic-tinged tracks have a way of piercing a flag in your mind and claiming your memory space as its own. All wrapped up in this feeling of secluded creation, it pours out like lines from a diary, the details of a party that went askew. Not only is the story fascinating to eat up, the relentless slew of hooks and earworms make it all the more addictive. – Ray Finlayson
Disiniblud – Disiniblud
[Smugglers Way]
Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith formed Disinblud not just to collaborate with each other, but also a cast including Julianna Barwick, June McDoom, and aspidistrafly. Despite its one-off-ish-ness, the album has a surprising cohesion, a set of plans designed to sound spontaneous and serendipitous. Contemporaneous with Japanese pop like Hakushi Hasegawa and strangely tied to other volcano products – specifically Björk’s Homogenic and Sigur Rós’ Takk… – frayed electronics synthesise with organic textures and vice versa. There’s the persistent tinkering of someone winding a clock or playing foosball plus ties into Ethel Cain (“Serpentine”) and a delay-drenched, jam-band guitar solo (“It’s Change”) without ever coming apart. – Steve Forstneger
Erika de Casier – Lifetime
[Independent Jeep Music]
Erika de Casier had already released a few albums of alternative R&B that had introduced her name to a humble audience. But Lifetime is evidently her most fully formed, confident and elaborate work to date. As suggested by the cover, the record is an oneiric journey of translucent, luminescent tracks that seem to float through nocturnal streets. This is reflected in the lyrics, which explore the thin layer between sexuality and desire, as well as memories and nostalgia – everything takes place in familiar spaces, which suddenly transform, only to disintegrate into echos.
With a lot of Lifetime paying homage to the sounds of the 90s, de Casier seems to imagine the emotional landscapes familiar to her from childhood, conjuring a past that never quite existed this way. Here, trip hop, RnB, rap and dub all co-exist in a hypnagogic bliss-state. Unlike many other projects that attempt to convey this state of a captured dreams, de Casier’s willingness to explore and experiment with sound manipulation fully succeed in merging these genres with a deep understanding of ambience, to a point usually only familiar from shoegaze. A brilliant and revitalising album, Lifetime is hands down the best RnB all year. – John Wohlmacher
FACS – Wish Defense
[Trouble In Mind]
It’s unfortunate that Wish Defense will be mostly mentioned in the context of Steve Albini’s passing. With only one day of additional overdubs left, Chicago’s Post-Punk trio FACS had almost wrapped recording of their sixth album, when Albini’s heart betrayed him. Still, after a brief period of reflection, and reassured by the Electrical Audio staff, the group completed the project.
In a discography of vast sonic landscapes and elaborate compositions, it stands as their most brutalist, with an edgy live sound and a focus on immediate writing. Tracks like “Desire Path”, “Wish Defense” and “You Future” could fit well on alternative radio stations, while the complex, textural experiments of “Sometimes Only”, “A Room” and “Ordinary Voices” retain shades of Glenn Branca’s exploratory compositions. Live, the trio builds these songs into monolithic architectural structures, which generate a crystalline power that few post-punk bands this year managed to retain. Destined to become a cult album, Wish Defense provides an entryway to Chicago’s possibly best group of the past 10 years. – John Wohlmacher
Haunted Horses – Dweller
[Three One G]
Seattle’s Haunted Horses have been an insider tip of the industrial noise rock scene for a while, but Dweller tears that veil of obscurity wide open. A grim, pummeling record with an almost blasphemous level of heaviness, Dweller is steeped in existentialist, cosmic dread to a degree where its surreal images and blunt soundscapes induce visionary links to David Lynch and Thomas Ligotti. Many of these songs, evading traditional climaxes, are downright frightening. Take the unsettling “Destroy Each Other”, or the demented “Fucking Hell”, which come close to the broken turmoil at the heart of Daughters or These Arms are Snakes. It would be easy to write this off as an experiment of post-punk textures or poetic imagination (the cover image of a negative-well from inside could double as a manic, blackened eye of an unforgiving reptile god). But where other noise rock albums allow for resolution and catharsis, Dweller is all lingering unease and Industrial discomfort: one of the most unforgiving listening experiences of the year. – John Wohlmacher
keiyaA – hooke’s law
[XL]
It’s logical that R&B has eyed Cyberpunk philosophies for the better part of this decade: with the progressively transforming into William Gibson’s Sprawl with every day, questions of the soul and the body become ever more complex – where does our spirit go, what will our sex be? Similar to Liv.e’s Girl in a Half Pearl and Kelela’s Raven, keiyaA crafts a labyrinthine and nocturnal world of desire and release on hooke’s law.
Focusing on a strong jazz influence, the Chicago native is clearly inspired by the cinematic and cultural history of her current turf, New York City, as the music slowly creates a rich tapestry of emotional snapshots. Often, these songs become brief short stories, aiding the embodiment of the characters with rich use of samples and atmospheric details buried within the production. At times, the album transports the listener right back into the streets of a futuristic metropolis, where steam rises from the hot pavement and neon lit signs promise exotic drinks, foreign foods and hungry bodies. A sexy and immensely intelligent album that dropped on Halloween eve, hooke’s law is the perfect soundtrack to next year’s hot summer nights. – John Wohlmacher
Lana Del Rabies – Omnipotent Fuck
[Phage Tapes]
The best Industrial album released this year is not even considered an album by its creator. Reportedly recorded within four subsequent takes and mostly incidental, Omnipotent Fuck is the second part of a loose trilogy from Lana Del Rabies that has yet to be concluded. While the first, a short EP, centred on the mysterious character of Anne Boleyn, the second is a dense, murky exploration of demonic possession. Sex, dependency, submission, desire and shame all collide in this eerie, 52 minute journey of corporeal disgust and physical violence. Del Rabies, whose exceptional, sacral Strega Beata is still underheard, crafts atmospheres familiar from Pharmakon and Uboa, but adds her own twisted sense of feminine horror to the equation. The imagery of early 70s horror films is evoked whenever she allows synthesisers to lay the fundament for her unsettling vocal parts, linking the project to the chilling body horror of early Cronenberg ventures. Not for the faint of heart, Omnipotent Fuck nonetheless is a record that gets better with each subsequent listen, revealing a carnal magnetism that is absolutely unique! – John Wohlmacher
MurderMartyr – PoemforNothing
[Longinus]
As far as experimental shoegaze goes, Korean outfit MurderMartyr are as out there as can be: creating loose, psychedelic pieces that owe as much to My Bloody Valentine as Lovesliescrushing, Guitar and Seefeel, this thoroughly strange and wonderfully bewildering album is an immensely innovative, colourful and euphoric listen. With its muted electric beats, reflecting guitar tones and hushed vocals, it resembles the massive structures of alien glass architecture on foreign planets. And it has some of the best shoegaze released this year. “OceanofAntique” is an elysian ballad, “PurgatorySherpa” a wonderfully trippy 90s homage and “Pattern” the manic jungle-freak-out Kevin Shields became famously obsessed with in the making of MBV’s third album. MurderMartyr have just begun, but they already are making a good case to be allowed consideration for the throne. – John Wohlmacher
Nerves – Iarmhaireacht
[Self-released]
Technically an EP, the second release by Ireland’s Nerves is a dark, cinematic journey of tension, anger and deeply resonant symbolism. Produced by Gilla Band’s Dan Fox (which great album from Ireland or the UK is he not producing these days?), the record comes at a time when the bourgeoning Futurismus movement is slowly penetrating mainstream awareness – yet it’s as edgy, sharp and acidic as any music of their contemporaries. Using images of a flailing romance to explore the broken, deeply traumatised national subconscious of their home country, the four combine post-punk, no-wave, industrial and even techno into a searing, defiant statement. Poetic and restless, the record forces itself into a spiral of despair, which finally erupts in its brilliant closing track, where all walls break down for a gigantic, cannibalistic techno beat. It’s an unfathomable beast, this EP, which demands to be acknowledged! Nerves are ready for you – are you ready for them? – John Wohlmacher
NoSo – When Are You Leaving?
[Partisan]
Baek Hwong’s NoSo nom-de-plume has specific, geographic origins, but on When Are You Leaving? it looks like an ironic embrace of the classic, bluffing reply to “You think so”?: “Know so”.
Blessed with a voice that masterfully portrays passion-cum-exhaustion, Hwong retraces a relationship that was always doomed to fail. Its HUGE RED FLAGS ignored, highlights like “You’re No Man”, “DAD MADE TOAST” ft. Bartees Strange, and pyrrhic closer “Let It Die” are consolation for foolish pride. – Steve Forstneger
Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Sortilège
[Backwoodz Studioz]
Fair enough, billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz already had a few blockbuster releases under their belt this year – but Sortilège was unfairly ignored by most hip hop aficionados. While Preservation fully leans into his sinophilic interests, lifting rich textures from China-related sources, Gabe ‘Nandez delivers steady, gritty bars that retain the edge of early 90s rap.
At times, the album feels like a cross of woods’ Aethiopes and Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers, sharing the dark interests, multi-cultural influences of these projects – listen to “Muay Sok” and “Spire” and tell me these aren’t forgotten classics. But then, Preservation finds genuinely abstract ideas in his sampling (such as on “Hierophant”, with its stuttering piano colliding with 70s horrorfilm synthesisers, or the sci-fi aura of “Mondo Cane”), making way for a wholly different, modernist type of rap, which ‘Nandez jumps at immediately. It often feels like a dense, Asian rain forest, alterating between swamps, clearings and dense sections where no sun shines. A rewarding, rich album, Sortilège might still stand in the shadow of other projects, but nobody should sleep on this fantastic record! – John Wohlmacher
quannnic – Warbrained
[deadAir/Sony Music]
At just 20 years old, quannnic had already released what are considered two contemporary classics in internet-centric music circles, mixing shoegaze, bedroom-noise and alternative rock into an intoxicating, sludgy smoothie. On his third album, the aptly titled Warbrained, the young musician finds a full embodiment in the blend of the great rock stars of the 20th century: Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Kevin Shields, Brian Wilson.
The transformation into rockstardom succeeds thanks to a host of brilliant, noisy songs that are firmly rooted inside 90s angst and 60s psychedelia. This marriage turns the album into somewhat of a Bildungsroman, chronicling zoomer nihilism through the prism of counter culture: Loveless for generation Twitch. It’s a brilliant album that lines up hits like pearls on a string: the swag of “Wrenches”, “Aviator” with its (very) early Foo Fighters’ elegance, the elysian waltz of “Torch”, the 4AD-esque ballad “Heavensafe”, the crushing “Observer” with its outro calling back to “I am the Walrus”. They are songs to make Billy Corgan reconsider his synthesiser collection. Heavy and brittle, majestic and grungy, flirtatious and volatile – the message of this album remains clear: quannnic is cooler than you, he has a hotter girlfriend than you, and he’ll be the voice of an entire generation! This is no hyperbole: dude’s gonna rule the world, eventually! – John Wohlmacher
Ramleh – Hyper Vigilance
[Sleeping Giant Glossolalia]
Gary Mundy’s immense body of work over the past four decades is absolutely unique within the British canon. Ranging from punk and post-rock to death industrial and noise, his work as Ramleh is impossible to classify in traditional manner. Like many post-industrial artists of the British underground, it simply transforms steadily, following Mundy’s own classification as a compass: ‘bleak psychedelia’.
On Hyper Vigilance, which like its predecessor The Great Unlearning merges the many configurations of the band, Ramleh manage a sound that crosses the brutalist punk of Wire with the gargantuan constructs of Swans. There’s hints of Glenn Branca in the compositional strictness, and shades of Unwound’s joyful experimentation – the harmonising guitars of Ramleh possibly never sounded this American. But then there’s also pieces like the Krautrock seeping “The Ingathering”, which would fit well on a NEU! album, or the searing slasher-film tension of the throbbing “Into the Termite Mound”. And then there is the 19-minute long magnum opus “New National Anthem”, a wholly realistically recreated acid trip that slashes itself through rock history. Had The Beatles, ca. Sgt. Pepper’s, downed LSD for 24 hours and recorded continuously, then edited the outcome back together – this marvelous track would be the result. Coming from an erstwhile provocateur like Mundy, Hyper Vigilance feels like a peace offering: a version of Ramleh that exists within the long canon of beautiful, rainbow tinged, psychedelic counter cultural artefacts. – John Wohlmacher
Richard Dawson – End Of The Middle
[Domino]
Richard Dawson has often travelled to fantastical worlds on his albums – sometimes with the help of Scandinavian heavy metal bands – but with his latest solo record he’s centred his attention on the quotidian life of a normal English family and the result is nothing short of magical. With the kind of eye of a master filmmaker, Dawson hones in on specific moments in the relationships between loved ones that is the very essence of life.
On “Bullies”, he plays the part of a father who finds out his son is bullying other children at school, which takes him down a wormhole of horrible memories from his own troubled childhood and how he tries to reconcile it with who his boy has become. “Knot” is about someone else in the fog of an extrmely thick depression who drags themselves to a friend’s wedding when they would rather be anywhere else and ends up getting blackout drunking and singing “My Heart Will Go On” at karaoke. The sobriety of moments of loss (“Polytunnel”, “More Than Real”) are balanced with the possibility of a glorious future with a new family (“Removals van”), each artfully told with just enough detail to make them feel lived-in and believable. Richard Dawson is beloved in some circles, but may never reach the breadth of fanbase his talent deserves. Yet, it wouldn’t surprise me if End Of The Middle is rediscovered decades down the line and reevaluated as the classic it truly is. – Rob Hakimian
Shrine Maiden – A Theory of /Cloud/
[Whited Sepulchre]
With A Theory of /Cloud/, Shrine Maiden stir the various “gazes” (black, doom, shoe), infusing their weighty tracks with subtle brightness. The title song, for example, features a classic lycanthropic vocal, slamming drums, and sandpaper guitars. A celestial tone, however, radiates at the track’s core, like a star flaring as it collapses into a black hole. “Field of Snow” recalls Divide and Dissolve – sprawling, droney overtones and yet, again, a bright, even angelic tone flickers in the background, casting light into darkness. “A Storm at Sea” is /Cloud/’s most brittle piece, Rachel Nakawatase’s vocal pure snarl, Ryan Betschart’s guitar trebly and serrated, bringing to mind the Shields/Butcher gestalt circa Loveless, though a loose melody wafts throughout, adding gothy drama, airiness, and a dash of hope. In this way, Shrine Maiden mine metal and its subgenres, but with a keen ear for paradox, suggesting: the forces of ignorance will never eclipse our natural affinities for beauty and wisdom. – John Amen
Slime City – National Record Of Achievement
[Slime City Death Club]
I know I just wrote about National Record of Achievement, but I am already convinced it deserves more light shone upon it. Slime City‘s second album has brought a joy that few other records have this year: It’s there for when you need some loud punk/rock music to drown your ears; it’s as catchy as the flu in winter; and like a good friend trying to keep your spirits up during a rough period, the band always have a joke at hand that (even after repeated listens) can still brings a goofy smile across your face. The twelve songs here are friends waiting to make your acquaintance, new buddies you will want to hang out with all the time after your first spin. – Ray Finlayson
Suede – Antidepressants
[BMG]
Suede copy/paste/photoshop themselves into the postpunk/posthumanistic realm, reveling in dark and moody gestalts on Antidepressants (with the exception of the sunnier “Dancing with the Europeans”). Songs here are lush, gothier than the punk-inflected Autofiction and edgier than their pop-leaning and glammy 90s and early 00s work.
The title cut is alternately weighty and airily melodic. Vocals are at once bratty and pleading. “The Sound and the Summer” merges bright overtones and turbid undertones, strained vocals, and a vision of running (from self and the world): “Put your foot to the pedal / you are moments from disgrace”. “Broken Music for Broken People” blends reverb-y vocals and ringing guitar chords, while “Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment” features stadium vocals unfurling above dramatic guitars and synths. Think early-80s U2 and late-80s The Cure run through a 21st Century noir machine, Brett Anderson committing to navigate the world sans medication. With Antidepressants, Suede respond to a current zeitgeist as well as the more archetypal uncertainties that each generation encounters in its own way. – John Amen
Teethe – Magic Of The Sale
[Winspear]
Do you love drinking and hate life? Magic of the Sale might just be the album for you. No, but seriously, Magic of the Sale, in all its sleepy glory, did a lot for me this year. Many late nights I was lulled by its steel guitar, muted voices and half-tempo rhythm section. On morning drives to work, too, it relaxed me into a state of calm. Teethe’s album is produced exceptionally well, with crystalline clarity that allows its many instruments to each make their mark in delicately arranged songs. “Holy Water” and its aftershock “Iron Wine” stand out for their ability to rock you awake, but this record thrives in slowness: songs like “Push You Forever” and “Ammo” that revel in somnolent beauty. Do you love Tindersticks and hate goodbyes? Magic of the Sale is definitely the album for you. – Ethan Reis
Titanic – HAGEN
[Unheard of Hope]
Hector Tosta (aka I La Católica) and Mabe Fratti have been building chemistry – both collaborative and romantic – for some years at this point, and their latest album as Titanic is the latest waypoint on a journey that feels like it still has many lightyears left in the tank. The partners seem to have created a musical language of their own that creates dimensions; whether driving with guitar, dancing around percussion or floating on synthesizer plains, they are locked in together, wherever it might lead. These proggy, psychedelic, shapeshifting songs are each unique in shape and texture; completely unpredictable but somehow twisted into keys that slot into a very satisfying groove in your brain. – Rob Hakimian
Vines – I’ll be here
[Self-released]
Vines‘ debut album I’ll be here is like a perfumed knockout gas. Like the misty cover art, it slowly seeps in and surrounds you until you don’t know where you are anymore. New York-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Cassie Wieland has perfected her art, and I’ll be here is a showcase of that, a testament to knowing your strengths and playing to them. Her songs envelop, sooth, and anesthetize; they are a balm for both a busy and blank mind. And it creeps up on you too: impressionable and dazzling in a fuzzy way on first listen, but like a fragrance embedding itself into fabric, it lingers and sticks with you unexpectedly. You find yourself finding hints, fragments of melodies trickling out into the surrounding air, causing you to want to bury your head in the proverbial pillow. Let the music suffocate you. – Ray Finlayson
Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack – Six Tenants Killing One Homeowner Six Times Over
[1465795 Records DK]
Imagine this: In 1978, Scott Walker recorded an album of immensely tense songs about gay despair and the tedious frustration of living in capitalism. Sound good? Well, that’s the new album of Timothy Raja de Reuse, aka Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack. Yes, de Reuse often sounds shockingly close to Walker, and his compositions are complex studies in crossover art rock. Where his previous albums were often hampered by their existence in the online underground of bizarro bandcamp indietronica obscurity, Six Tenants Killing One Homeowner Six Times Over is more grounded, relatable and cohesive. And it has real hits: “SO ALIVE!!”, “You Ungrateful Losers” and “How to Please a Real Man” are genuinely memorable and infectious. While de Reuse existed in the underground for the past decade plus, Six Tenants… opens the door of opportunity to finally grant him the rich attention that brings new possibilities. Give this man a record contract and a proper budget, he deserves both. – John Wohlmacher
Listen to a Spotify playlist of highlights from our Honorable Mentions 2025
Take a look at our Top 50 Albums of 2025
Take a look at our Top 50 Songs of 2025
