To be honest, the album I listened to the most in 2025 was actually my top pick from last year, Romance by Fontaines D.C. I also spent far too much time listening to two 2024 albums that I didn’t hear until this year, Fine Art by Kneecap and Humble As the Sun by Bob Vylan. We spend a lot of time putting together our year-end lists, but the truth is that time is irrelevant. The right album will hit you when you need to hear it and that could be on the day it’s released or five years later.
Still, I think we should shout out stellar new albums, lest we collectively fall deeper into an algorithmically-induced nostalgia hole. And there was a lot of fantastic music released this year, much more than what’s included on this list. I doubt I heard more than the smallest fraction of good shit released in 2025. So, consider this just the start of a list that will never really be complete.
10. The Cords
S/T
Sisters Grace and Eva Tedeschi draw from Scotland’s indie legacy as The Cords. While the duo’s brand of jangly pop at times recalls the likes of Shop Assistants and Vaselines, The Cords add a pop-punk bounce and a few shoegaze twists to the mix for a delightful debut.
Read: The Cords Channel Classic Indie Pop and Shoegaze Sound on Debut Album
9. Night Ritualz
S/T
What stands out about Night Ritualz’s debut album are the songs that push past the limitations of playlist-friendly darkwave and post-punk. “Take Me 2 the Crib,” which I play in my own DJ sets, is an electro jam closer to A Number of Names and Cybotron than Joy Division and Sisters of Mercy. “Cross My Heart” and “Cuando Andas” bear traces of influences like Deftones and the Mars Volta. It’s a dark, eclectic album that shows a lot of promise for the up-and-coming artist, who has already released two singles from his forthcoming sophomore album, the solemn and poignant “Brown Skin” and space-electro punk stomper “Whoreish.”
8. N8NOFACE
As of Right Now
I was going to limit this list to full-length albums only, but on As of Right Now, N8NOFACE packs more than EP’s worth of highlights into seven songs that, together, clock in at just 24 minutes. Working with Chico Mann, N8NOFACE veers slightly from the synth punk road into a jangle-guitar/synthpop hybrid that is hypnotic. “Everything We Thought We Knew” is the darkwave jam that I’ve been playing in my club sets. It’s melancholic, but, at 160 bpm, it still manages to get your butt moving. My personal favorite, though, is the very Smiths-y “Waiting to Wait For You.”
Read: N8NOFACE and Chico Mann Update a Classic Alternative Sound on As of Right Now
Get As of Right Now by N8NOFACE
7. Optometry
Lemuria
For their sophomore album, Optometry, the L.A.-based duo of John Tejada and March Adstrum, borrowed the title from a legendary lost continent, Lemuria, dropped a reference to Dune in the song “Fear (Is the Mind Killer)” and build a sci-fi/fantasy world through through electronic indie pop that remains very human. Lemuria is the antidote to this year’s onslaught of AI-generated content. Listen to it at your leisure.
Read: Fear is the Mind Killer: Inside the World of Optometry
6. The Divine Comedy
Rainy Sunday Afternoon
Neil Hannon, one of this timeline’s best songwriters, brought back The Divine Comedy this year for a melancholy Rainy Sunday Afternoon. With mortality as a theme, Hannon lends his astute observation on life, death, and, yes, politics to songs that are sentimental (“All the Pretty Lights,” “Invisible Thread”), empathetic (“The Last Time I saw the Old Man”) and satirical (“The Man Who Turned Into a Chair”). “Mar-a-Lago by the Sea,” which is about exactly what you think it’s about, is on my list of this year’s best political songs, but, seriously, every song on here is of a higher karat gold than anything in the Oval Office.
Read: THE DIVINE COMEDY IS BACK WITH RAINY SUNDAY AFTERNOON
Get Rainy Sunday Afternoon by The Divine Comedy
5. Saint Etienne
International
For more than thirty years, Saint Etienne made sublime music that was pop as it was experimental and as forward-minded as it was retro-tinged. With International, the English trio offers a fitting finale to their time as a band with songs that reflect the various facets of their catalog, from the dance pop of “Dancing Heart” to the ambient-meets-breakbeat “Take Me to the Pilot,” and offers a few inspired collaborations, like joining forces with Confidence Man on “Brand New Me.” This album would be a win in my book no matter what, but it also got me through a particularly stupid Saturday night that I spent stuck inside JFK, so bonus points for that.
Read: STUCK AT JFK AND LISTENING TO SAINT ETIENNE
Get International by Saint Etienne
4. Quinquis
eor
Breton singer and producer Quinquis was inspired by mermaid lore for her sophomore full-length, eor, and that resulted in a batch of songs that convey both the enchantment and the mystery of the open seas. It’s an stunning album, where vocals and modular synths are layered in compositions that blur the line between myth and reality and one that I consider absolutely essential for fans of artists like Kate Bush, Björk and Fever Ray.
Read: BRETON SINGER AND PRODUCER QUINQUIS CHANNELS MERMAID LORE ON EOR
3. Ora the Molecule
Dance Therapy
For her second album as Ora the Molecule, Nora Schjelderup developed her stage persona into a bona fide character and channeled an Italo disco energy that’s more Nadia Cassini and Raffaella Carrà than Mr. Flagio to create the concept album Dance Therapy. Here, Ora the Molecule tries to understand the human world, asking “Is This Love?” and surmising that “Nobody Cares” as infectious grooves keep the dance floor going. It’s a clever example of concept album production, where Schjelderup’s very human voice intertwines with the small, high voice of the molecule throughout, that brings disco out into more existential territory without losing the beat.
Read: ‘INTERGALACTIC DANCE’ DIVA ORA THE MOLECULE HAS A MESSAGE FOR THE DANCE FLOOR
Get Dance Therapy by Ora the Molecule
2. The New Eves
The New Eve Is Rising
Maybe you’ve heard “Highway Man,” which is on this year’sTop 10 Bangers list, from The New Eves in my DJ sets. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, you need to get The New Eve Is Rising. English band The New Eves unleashed an astounding debut album this year filled with punk poetry and raw psychedelia. There’s an anarchic feminism to the album, reminiscent to Crass on Penis Envy, that is refreshing, and necessary, after so many years of brand safe girl power. From the wailing in “Cow Song” to the overlapping and slightly off-kilter round of vocals in “Circles,” The New Eve Is Rising is a little unsettling because you don’t know where the band is going to go. This album takes so many turns throughout the course of 40 minutes that, even if you’re listening for the 20th time, it still feels unpredictable.
Get The New Eve Is Rising by The New Eves
1. Sextile
Yes, Please
Do I really need to write more to describe my favorite album of 2025? The first paragraph of my review of Yes, Please, this year’s full-length from L.A.-based Sextile, sums up everything you need to know about the album:
Sextile kicks off Yes, Please with one hell of an “Intro.” It’s all alarms, distorted vocals and squelching electronics that make you think the L.A.-based duo have plans to drop you back into a 1992 Prodigy jam. They don’t. Instead, Sextile diverts you to the sweat-drenched warehouse of right now with “Women Respond to Bass,” a banger for the afters where the subs send the low-end pulsing through the soles of your Docs, and the previously released single “Freak Eyes.”
I guess if there is more to be said it’s that “Women Respond to Bass” and “Rearrange” have been the hits in my own DJ sets and took the top two spots on list of 2025 bangers. But, there are more than enough jams on this album to keep the crowd going well into 2026. Yes, Please is an intense dance album, the kind that will leave you breathless and sweat-drenched as you try to keep up with its energy.
Read: SEXTILE DROPS RAVE-PUNK BANGERS ON YES, PLEASE
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
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