An irony to 2025 is that while considering this year’s best albums proved to be a more daunting than usual task, the songs of 2025 were a completely different story. It was as if even though the long-play format of releases found themselves in a promising transitional phase, there were no shortage of undeniably solid songs from within in every corner of music these pages covers, be it the niche underground to the ubiquitous mainstream, from the heaviest of metal, punk, and hardcore to the poppiest of — well, pop, electronic, and dance music. Even the indie rock bands and songwriters are beginning to break away from homogeny and re-learn how to color outside the lines again. The common denominator between them? This is arguably the most cutting edge class of memorable standalone music that seems to be ushering in a new era (even if it’s returning from eras past.) That’s encouraging, especially when there’s no lost future, baby.
Speaking to that, you’ll also notice this year’s list sees itself expanding by 10 placements versus past years’, because who doesn’t love a little bit of consistency chaos when self-made rules were meant to be broken? It’s deserved for the unpredictable nature which the music world currently finds itself in. These are the 40 Best Songs of 2025.
40. How Much Art – “PR” [Convulse Records]
How Much Art features (mostly) New England scene familiars in Fiddlehead and Have Heart frontman Patrick Flynn, his bandmate in drummer Shawn Costa, former GEL guitarist Maddi Nave, Darin Edward Thompson and Justin Mantell of the departed Boston dream-pop band QUALMS respectively on guitar and synths, and Adam Gonsalves of New Bedford melodic hardcore outfit So Automatic on bass. It’s telling from their debut single “PE” that beyond Flynn’s infinitely passionate howl, the six-piece want to create a different layer of themselves beyond what we already know. This is synth-driven post-punk statement with a harder edge behind it, with Flynn’s words here in How Much Art provoking thoughts philosophically impressionistic, though potentially not any less political. “I can’t believe how you feel so right / When everything feels so wrong,” he shouts, as Nave’s vocals move over their rough exterior applying a reflective coating. This is one bold way to get the word out of your arrival.
Listen to How Much Art – “PR”
39. Nuovo Testament – “Picture Perfect” [Discoteca Italia]
Nuovo Testamento is giving the hardcore scene an education on freestyle house-pop from an era when songs like Rockell’s “In A Dream” and Cynthia & Johnny O’s “Dreamboy/Dreamgirl” ruled FM waves in the ’80s and ’90s. The Los Angeles trio of vocalist Chelsey Crowley, drummer Giacomo Zatti, and synthesist Andrea Mantione understand their audience’s intentions very well — Zatti played in the straight edge hardcore punk outfit TØRSÖ and Mantione did time in gothic death rockers Horror Vacui — before turning their energy from the pit into Hi-NRG on the dance floor. “Picture Perfect” gets their formula for retro-fitted synth-pop for a modern day — er, perfected — in its finesse. True that there may be a familiar frame of dream-fated romance staring down another body in motion here while the clarity of some crafty wordplay helps seal the deal, the way Nuovo Testamento flash the image of yesterday on an even harder dance floor makes it an original copy.
Listen to Nuovo Testament – “Picture Perfect”
38. Horsegirl – “Julie” [Matador Records]
Horsegirl removed themselves from the cantankerous effects of their 2022 breakthrough debut, Versions of Modern Performance, with just as much to consider of what makes a noise on their sophomore effort, Phonetics On and On. Julie”, the album’s centerpiece, goes even further with the deconstructing mechanics of the inner mind, and in turn, ear. The softs thoughts of Penelope Lowenstein on the listen’s titular character thump against her cranium to ta beat of low current electrical plucks. Greater brainwaves begin connecting the dots, with realization coming fully into view across a blanket of droning synths and casted harmonies from her ‘mates. “I have so many mistakes to make with you / I want them, too.” In this case, noise is the desire that has a way of creeping up on you before it becomes so loud inside, it’s unavoidable.
Listen to Horsegirl – “Julie”
37. Joyce Manor – “Well, Whatever It Was” [Epitaph Records]
Nearly getting run over by your dream car. Spending forever in the ER. Losing your job at Little Caesars. It’s always the best day when Joyce Manor can make a really bad day sound like a human highlight reel. Barry Johnson just manages to keep pushing all kinds of boulders up the mountain with the slight of a shrug on the early highlight from the Torrance trio’s forthcoming 2026 album, I Used To Go To This Bar. What more is how he alongside guitarist Chase Knobbe and bassist Matt Ebert have gotten soooo very good at making bad vibes bounce right off you with the most affecting yet effortlessly-sounding sunny, SoCal pop-rock hooks that bear enough of a harder edge that keeps the tension right at the surface and their perpetual punk darling status firmly in place.
Listen to Joyce Manor – “Well, Whatever It Was”
36. MSPAINT – “Angel” [Convulse Records]
MSPAINT are more than just titans of hope — they’re divine experimental punk messengers whose sound is supercharged with the power to give us wholly mindful anthems for a timeline where everything else around it feels like it’s going to Hell. An apparition in the form of a burning “Angel” is their spiritual message sent through a refined pixel-perfect clarity. Synthetic keys glittering against the flames, but also serve to define the underlying muscle mass of rumbling basslines and drums of that greater epiphany burgeoning within. “I feel like the problem / I feel in the way / But I’m staying present / This is just today,” frontman Deedee proclaims in his boom of characteristic certainty. “You’re good enough / There’s no control, just controlling yourself.” Let this be another another sage reminder of thoughts being just thoughts amid the chaos, which MSPAINT are coming to command with ease themselves.
Listen to MSPAINT – “Angel”
35. Clipse – “So Be It” [Roc Nation]
“So Be It” is Clipse with no ring rust showing up between the bars to the surprise of no one, flexing off in a classic, ultra-finessed, calculated form to their detriment of a new generation of rival targets. In this corner, making his Pusha T ragdoll debut is 2025 WWE celeb tough guy flop Travis Scott looking like a total nerd and a poser when put in the shadow of what he and (the re-rechristened) Malice have amounted in their own life’s riches. “You cried in front of me, you died in front of me / Calabasas took your bitch and your pride in front of me / Her Utopia had moved right up the street / And her lip gloss was poppin’, she ain’t need you to eat.” Poured over an ice cold Pharell-produced beat with just the right menace in its walk in sampling Saudi musician Talal Maddah’s “Maza Akoulo Wa Qad Himto”. As cool as it flows, the only thing left remaining once they’re done on the mic is all that smoke.
Listen to Clipse – “So Be It”
34. FKA twigs – “Girl Feels Good” [Young Records]
EUSEXUA is heavily indebted to that Madonna Ray of Light energy mirrored in her own reflection of art-pop healing powers. Highlights across its broad spectrum of electronica, house, and art-pop more ornate may still be subjectively defined at this stage, but it’s the album’s second track, “Girl Feels Good”, that establishes the listen as one of Tahliah Debrett Barnett’s most tangibly crystalized versions of her creative ambitions to date. Co-produced with fellow Brit Koreless and the duo Ojivolta, it hears twigs tapping into that trance-endental embryonic electricity that makes the serotonin drip just right between the higher conscious and universal pulse hitting the masses. “When a girl feels good, it makes the world go ’round / When the night feels young, you know she feels pretty,” she sings. All is in sync on this one, and it elevates FKA twigs’ body music to a higher state of being.
Listen to FKA twigs – “Girl Feels Good”
33. Algernon Cadwallader – “noitanitsarcorP” [Saddle Creek Records]
“Concentration is harder on art than it is on the artist / Hallucinating is easy but once you come in contact there’s no turning back.” It took awhile for them to get back there, but they did it. “noitanitsarcorP” is a song that sounds both everything and nothing like Algernon Cadwallader has done at this point, combining a fully charged punk-pop energy spike alongside some signature noodling with the Philly indie-emo revivalists in their acumen of the sigs. Apparently, it was born out of a group ketamine trip, which might explain its excitable focus and a grand irony to what vocalist Peter Helmis leads on in lyric. “The only thing more helpful than a deadline is an extension,” he sings The patience and cadence to get this Algernon Cadwallader energy in 2025 was well worth the wait nonetheless.
Listen to Algernon Cadwallader – “noitanitsarcorP”
32. AKAI SOLO – “Peace To The Heavens!” [Break All Records]
“Peace to The Heavens!” finds AKAI SOLO fully exalted by a higher conscious of blessings and gratitude while also recognizing there’s still a lot work to do “What does me even mean? A difficult decision for you, trying to figure out which pill to pop,” he wonders. “Meanwhile I’m in the queue with killers / It don’t stop, it just get realer.” Bombasted by live drum and basslines produced by groundskeepr and some light FM flutework from Keenyn Omari, the beat makes the rapper’s words go even harder against its daytrippin’ green screen which sees him traveling the world and the cosmos over in its complimentary Michael Petrow-directed visuals. There’s no end destination figured out this plane just yet, but it’s always something to be able to go along with AKAI on his big, existential ride through life.
Listen to AKAI SOLO – “Peace To The Heavens!”
31. Chappell Roan – “The Subway” [Island Records]
There’s something about the sound of blushed guitars and a feeling of melancholia moving in just the right speed of slow motion that has a way of not just transcending timelines, but getting stuck in a moment with one, even in this over-saturated dream-pop economy. With the right pen behind it — in this case, the lyrical prowess of Chappell Roan — it’s a fitting style to try on to make a sapphic breakup song like the one she sings of sparkle like it’s all new again. Her signature etchings are all over this train like Sharpie’d graffiti all over the back of seats. Descript physical reminders of green hair and the precise placement of beauty marks to overt sex life overshares on foreplay all come vividly rushing back as her surroundings blur. The listen’s familiar touch and feel (and smell of perfume…) definitely linger, as do reminders of the one who got away.
Listen to Chappell Roan – “The Subway”
30. Ela Minus – “QQQQ” [Domino Recording Co.]
“Si va a ser así / Que se acabe el mundo,” Ela Minus sings on “QQQQ”, the centerpiece from the electronic producer’s latest album, DÍA. “Ultimamente siento que / Todos estamos de acuerdo en que esto es / El fin de los tiempos / Y si vamos a dejarnos ir / Yo prefiero que se acabe aquí.” At these end times, the disenchantment with finding a way out of this mess humanity has made of itself is palpable, and if we as a society are going to collectively agree that we’re headed toward nothing but a bleak path downhill that only serves to line a smart number of people’s pockets with money you can’t take to the grave, then there’s no need to further keep going. Still, if it this it, the final sparks Minus emits from her dance floor are spectacular sight to behold. If this is the last hurrah for humanity, she’s making it worth going hard for.
Listen to Ela Minus – “QQQQ”
29. Model/Actriz – “Cinderella” [True Panther / Dirty Hit]
One of the few upsides to being a grown ass adult is that you can gift yourself all of the things you thought you couldn’t have when you were a kid. For Model/Actriz frontman Cole Haden, that was a Cinderella-themed birthday party when he turned five. The secret’s out on “Cinderella”, the lead single from the Brooklyn electronic noise band’s forthcoming sophomore effort, Pirouette, with the shimmer of a glass slipper sparkling in their sound in contrast to the grimy, visceral industrial grind of their breakthrough debut, Dogsbody. Think of it as Model/Actriz sexing up the racing heartbeat into a moment that aligns with vulnerability at its preciously sublime peak once the clothes come off and the double-backed dance between two bodies thrusts fully into motion. Maybe there’s no blue ball gown to be found, but in this moment, Haden’s feeling like he’s living out his own version of a fairy tale princess fantasy.
Listen to Model/Actriz – “Cinderella”
28. Nuclear Daisies – “Toad” [Portrayal of Guilt Records]
On “Toad”, Nuclear Daisies vocalist Alex Gehring struggles to form the outlines of her feelings. This is apt within the context of the listen, as the Austin trio — which features past and present members of Temple of Angels and Ringo Deathstarr — are a sound beyond concrete recognition in their hypnotic, psychedelic shoegaze-industrial-dance amalgamation that bends sound and light into their extremes. Like the entirety of their debut effort, First Taste of Heaven, Nuclear Daisies juxtapose the heaviest emotions with a brilliance of sonic stimulation. Souls lost in their own heads they may be, the music at least shocks each and every nerve in your body to remind you that you are even when nothing else feels real.
Listen to Nuclear Daisies – “Toad”
27. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – “Super Nintendo” [Backwoodz Studioz]
Armand Hammer gone experimental synth-pop may not have been on your 2025 bingo card, but the listen’s vintage video game aesthetic with a reverent guitar and drum line needling behind it courtesy of the Alchemist stitches the violence and innocence of the duo’s childhood reflections together. “We was drunk and high watching Intervention / We was just happy to be outside when our peoples was in prisons of all types,” goes one line, staggering you with a one-two punch of better times and hard times. Adulthood usually has its ways of looking back on yesteryears without the warm rose tinted glasses on anymore, but billy woods and ELUCID have found a way to keep both visions in tact here within their game.
Listen to Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – “Super Nintendo”
26. Black Eyes – “Pestilence” [Dischord Records]
The discomforts of the sound Black Eyes broke ground with returns on “Pestilence”. As the central focus of the band’s return album 21 years in the making, Hostile Design, it makes total sense that in their recent reunion state, they’d commit to the hellscape of our current timeline in full. The listen begins by setting the scene of all the wrongs through Daniel Martin-McCormick and Hugh McElroy’s tongues twisted up political. Every line they lay down is laced like a powder keg, until eventually, there’s that spark that blows everything off course. “Let it rot in your keep, purify it with bleach,” goes one exclamation in its final moments. When it comes to burning everything down, Black Eyes are still doing it better — and freakier — than the rest.
Listen to Black Eyes – “Pestilence”
25. Hotline TNT – “Julia’s War” [Third Man Records]
The irony of Hotline TNT calling a track “Julia’s War” is that it’s the least traditionally Julia’s War of all Hotline TNT songs so far. Titled in homage to the influential DIY imprint of They Are Gutting a Body of Water’s Doug Dulgarian which has released early works by Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, and Glixen, the lot of the TAGABOW catalog itself, and looks to tomorrow with fib and Her New Knife — the New York band led by Will Anderson leaps even further from the hi-fi-blasted indie-pop of Cartwheel in full band formation alongside guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, and drummer Mike Ralston. That “na na na nah” chorus is so big and dumb, yet warming in earnest with its attempts to reach for the rafters in ways you rarely hear the scene attempting to do. It’s a perfect sendoff as they look toward their past to pave the way for shoegaze’s possibilities in the future without completely changing their style.
Listen to Hotline TNT – “Julia’s War”
24. Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild” [Island Records]
Give credit to where credit is due to Sabrina Carpenter who is continuing to make the most out of her tried and tested formula of using the male gaze and playing it against the boys to her stans’ delight while getting everyone up in a tizzy on album art visuals alone. The funny part about a Carpenter classic like “Manchild” is that it’s not really something you need to deeply discourse over beyond the fact that it’s created from a perfect formula of pop songwriting science. It’s one part Jack Antonoff and one part Amy Allen in its co-writes and production — in itself an equal ratio of ’80s synth pop, countrypolitan, and mirror ball sparkle — and it’s swirled all around a series of quoteables about sexy dumb fuckbois who are giving her an unwanted mother complex. “And I swear they choose me, I’m not choosing them,” she sings, full of competence in her own game.
Listen to Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild”
23. Graham Hunt – “East Side Screamer” [Run for Cover Records]
On “East Side Screamer”, Graham Hunt is visited by a supernatural entity on the mean streets of Wisconsin. From the sounds of it, the guitar-pop songwriter is the one who we should all be scared the shit out of after hearing what he can do with just his instrument and a kickdrum on the Timeless World Forever standout. “East Side Screamer” follows the l̶o̶s̶e̶r̶ slacker ways of his prolific DIY songwriting output by using his license to ill against banshees in an alternative timeline where the Venn diagram between rap-core and indie rock gets bigger every second throughout the apparition. “Four blocks out but it sounds like he’s right here / Then he veers off and he disappears / Disembodied voice from a porch says / ‘Shut the fuck up.’” Just as enigmatic, Hunt’s handiwork leaves you in disbelief, screaming expletives.
Listen to Graham Hunt – “East Side Screamer”
22. This Is Lorelei – “Dancing In The Club (MJ Lenderman Version)” [Double Double Whammy]
“Dancing in the Club” is the kind of song you can listen to 18 times in a day whenever you’re in a particular mindset of existential pointlessness about everything going on your life. It’s like the old friend who never wears out their welcome and knows the vibe of the room all too well. We’ve already heard this song before, too. As a highlight off of last year’s This Is Lorelei’s debut, Box for Buddy, Box for Star, Water From Your Eyes’ Nate Amos crashed out on a romantic fuck up in a delirium of overly pitch-tuned synth-pop that accentuated the sparkle part of the diamonds more so than the epic failure dealt in the cards. In Lenderman’s grasp, however, we get a proper loser anthem where every word is slowed and sang through his Asheville drawl on the sluggish backbone of a long-strummed alt-country sigh. Off his tongue, fucking up his guitar, his heart, and singing Steely Dan sounds like this story was fated with him in mind. Count your lucky stars to have at least that.
Listen to This Is Lorelei – “Dancing In The Club (MJ Lenderman Version)”
21. Agriculture – “Bodhidharma” [The Flenser]
“Bodhidharma” is a loud extension of what Agriculture more explicitly began exploring on last year’s outstanding extended play, Living is Easy, in all of its noisy Zen. Buddhist life lessons again are its center — in this case, the story of Zen Buddha founder and Indian monk Bodhidharma’s 9-year meditative challenge of staring at a cave wall as an extreme act of patience. We, too, are put into a sliver of that space across the six-and-half-minute-listen. The listen quakes in big riffs rapturously before striking us with near-silence beyond the deafening screams and spoken word whispers of Leah Levinson. “Feels like you’re gonna hurt forever,” she observes. Just when it feels like you are bound to break, electricity rips back an intensity that satiates your head with fire. Let this all be a lesson: the wait is part of what makes the reward so redeeming.
Listen to Agriculture – “Bodhidharma”
20. Earl Sweatshirt – “CRISCO” [Tan Cressida / Warner Records]
While there’s much to appreciate about the straight-forward chest-thump of “TOURMALINE” or the chillout soul spin of “exhaust”, “CRISCO” is the true revelation of Earl Sweatshirt on Live Laugh Love. Here, he opens up with blunt introspections on his upbringing, an unsteady family life around him growing up, and how he course-corrected his own way out of it all. “Pops was kinda janky, his replacement beat the failure out me / Made me violent, hated fighting / I know I can’t take no loss, my anger bottled” he rhymes in one tough bar — an explanation of sorts behind what was going on during all those M.I.A “Free Earl” years, only to follow it up with a throwback to a classic with the curtains pulled. “They knew shh was off when I was staying silent and stayed inside / I’m saying sorry for the pain I caused.” Navy Blue’s woozy, soul-spun beat helps peel back the last layers that we’ve been hearing him slowly get to in revealing himself over the years. The apology is honest and clear, though not necessary.
Listen to Earl Sweatshirt – “CRISCO”
19. YHWH Nailgun – “Sickle Walk” [AD 93 / Many Hats]
YHWH Nailgun pack a lot of moving particles into a short distance on “Sick Walk”. The listen is like watching a Rorschach splatter created by metal and synth’s scraping against one another surfaces form, taming cacophony into a whirrling dance, dramatically shifting the senses from opposite ends of gravity. That said, the minute-and-26-second length pulls together an equilibrium between all these vastly different energies made from the same matter of contorted instrumentation, with vocalist Zach Borzone’s rap-informed Kim Gordon-esque smear causing shiver from the friction. Yet, at any moment, it feels like the sound could burst under pressure.
Listen to YHWH Nailgun – “Sickle Walk”
18. Momma – “I Want You (Fever)” [Polyvinyl Records]
With their 2022 breakthrough, Household Name, Momma’s Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten provided a solid body of proof as to why they should become just that: a full-speed listen brim full of dreamy pop hooks with big bites of fuzzed out bliss that ensured you didn’t forget it. “I Want You (Fever)”, the standout single from the Brooklyn band’s fourth studio effort, Welcome to My Blue Sky, doubles down on that lush-in-bold attitude. It’s just that this time, it’s at the expense of a romantic rival. “Take it apart and tear her to shreds / You can’t play it off, you can’t play pretend,” pines one verse with a bloodlust over an elixir of sugar-surging guitars and swirling samplework that’s exhilarating enough to justify turning the the other cheek toward violent fantasy. “Everybody knows that this is going down / We’re the talk of the town.” Even if it all just amounts to a case of limerence getting the best of them, Momma’s red hot fever feels like a dream come true in this moment.
Listen to Momma – “I Want You (Fever)”
17. Addison Rae – “Fame Is A Gun” [Columbia Records]
In 2024, sympathy was a knife. In this post-BRAT 2025, it’s very much looking like “Fame is a Gun”, as Charli’s protege Addison Rae and her debut album, Addison, solidifies the point that the TikTok dance influencer-turned-alternative pop star is taking her pivot to music seriously, even if she’s playing up her brand of perceived dumb plasticity with lyrical musings on the glamorous life. “Fame is a gun and I point it blind / Crash and burn, girl, baby, swallow it dry,” she sings in its chorus. I honestly have no idea what that even means between the elemental contradictions and trying to decipher whether she’s trying to shoot someone, start them on fire, or asphyxiate them to death, but with its immaculate, featherweight electro-pop production designed in a Swedish lab by Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd not missing their targets, the single provides further proof that with the right vision behind you, you can make anyone sound like they were born to be a star.
Listen to Addison Rae – “Fame Is A Gun”
16. Geese – “Trinidad” [Partisan Records / Play It Again Sam]
Get in, asshole. “Trinidad” is an all-timer when it comes to openers while setting a high bar for everything that comes after it (which doesn’t faulter.) If you’re going to be accused of saving rock music, you better be doing something to appease the nostalgia of anyone born before 1962 but speaks to the influence of anyone born after 2002. Vocalist, guitarist and keyist Cameron Winter, guitarist Emily Green, bassist Dominic DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin speak to both generations, edging their way in with a stoned out, earthy crunchy skronk in its buildup that makes you think you’re in store for some real jam band shit. Next thing you know, you’re swerving into some bastardized free-jazz-noise-rap lane, and JPEGMafia is there in the backseat for some reason shouting, “There’s a bomb in my car!” The whole thing just keeps ticking in your head well past the point of explosion.
Listen to Geese – “Trinidad”
15. Alex G – “Afterlife” [Columbia Records]
Alex G seems like the kind of person who’d have a complicated relationship with the concept of an “Afterlife”. He once showed up in a Nothing video carrying around a sign saying the ear was nigh, and his Philly peers are definitely of the company of full-blown nihilism. Life has gotten bigger in recent years for Alexander Giannascoli, now an accidental pop culture icon for Gen Z’s baggy fit listening tastes and now signed to a major label on RCA Records. The Headlights single isn’t too far of a stretch of the imagination for longtime listeners — he still sings in a wonky helium tongue, pondering personal existentialism and matters of human faith taking on the form of animals against varying reflections of light, and sonically, a singular slant on bedroom-pop, Philly scene experimental shoegaze, and odd folk shoestringed through a mandolin strum, albeit more tight-laced. But really, the fact he didn’t have to transform much of his creative soul to get to that paradise should be enough to convince anyone of there being something beyond this life.
Listen to Alex G – “Afterlife”
14. Anxious – “Some Girls” [Run for Cover Records]
Bambi, the sophomore follow-up to Anxious’ great breakthrough debut, Little Green House, is an album that supercharge the quintet’s melodic hardcore strengths in standouts like “Counting Sheep” and “Head & Spin”, but it’s tracks like “Some Girls” that really round out all corners of their intensely emotive sound with a hook-perfect punk-pop sparkle. “Do you think you’ll drown in the shadows in your room? / How to cope with it right when you don’t feel like it / Closing the blinds until you’re through,” vocalists Grady Allen and Dante Melucci harmonize, picking each word out with pins and knives to capture a confusion of feelings in fine detail. “Do you feel like you’re okay?” Honestly, not really, and that’s the feeling you want to leave on a listener after writing arguably your best song to date.
Listen to Anxious – “Some Girls”
13. forever ☆ – “Blade Silver Metallic” [à La Carte Records]
After hearing “Blade Silver Metallic”, the alternative listeners of the underground music world will most definitely want to start planning the escape from this Earth with this as their soundtrack. As the star-kissed Kansas City duo of David Chavez and Rachel Stang, the shoegaze-pop experimentalists are expanding on the genre dissolve and distortion. If you want to know where the future of bent sonics are going moving forward, the opener to their latest EP, Second Gen Dream, speeds through the blurry sheen at ease using the pair’s drum ‘n bass and garage mechanics built into in its ultra-modern upgraded model. Don’t worry — you still get more than your fair fix of blown-out guitars and lovelorn, heaven-ascendant vocals, but the way forever ☆ accentuate the aerodynamic ride of shoegaze’s core body by transcending its airy bliss onto the streets of rave, you can’t help but throw caution to their wind and just let them take you wherever they’re escaping to…
Listen to forever ☆ – “Blade Silver Metallic”
12. crushed – “oneshot” [Ghostly International]
The opening moments of “oneshot” begin with a cryptic vocal sample culled from a Metal Gear Solid boss battle where its exhales let you know that you’ve been brought within an inch of your life. Throughout no scope, gaming culture tropes are thematically used as the emotional targets to pixelate crushed’s sound into the dreamy elixir of electronic pop-rock, and in this instance, it’s the failure to get to that next level with someone that are the makings of what’s killing you. This hero’s death is bliss in its melancholic breakbeat heartbreak nonetheless when rendered through crushed’s celestia-speckled OLED screen. Shaun Durkan’s shimmering acoustics graze the skin just close enough to continue feeling something, and Bre Morell uses those last gasps of air to see it through. “Run it back again, I dug my grave and there’s room for you,” she sings. They’re leaving you haunted and intoxicated in one clean shot.
Listen to crushed – “oneshot”
11. Militarie Gun – “B A D I D E A” [Loma Vista Recordings]
Ian Shelton isn’t running away from his problems. Openly wielding his liquid vices as an album marketing ploy with purpose, the God Save The Gun banger lets the world in on his struggles while forcing the Los Angeles crew to level up their game to compensate for the fuck-ups. Though the listen finds Shelton — crashed out, all baggy-eyed, and face puffed up — coming to grips with himself, there’s a celebration to be had for at least acknowledging where the problem begins and ends. Enter the Gun in their clearest pop-minded state yet to combat the demons, complete with calling them out loud in cheerleader form over a synth-punk-meets-post-hardcore anthem. “Bad idea man, you been heading the wrong way!,” Shelton shouts at himself. Leave it to Militarie Gun for making the intervention sound like a rager.
Listen to Militarie Gun – “B A D I D E A”
10. billy woods feat. Steel Tipped Dove – “BLK ZMBY” [Backwoodz Studioz]
Complimentary to the noise-rap poetry of kindred collaborator Moor Mother, billy woods’ rap game is out here writing a new book on Black history as it truly is through dark art for these times. Pen refined, GOLLIWOG highlight “BLK ZMBY” conjures lore from Haitian voodoo culture where the concept of a zombie isn’t necessarily that of the scary and undead, but rather a physical embodiment of slavery — the forced debt and punishment of being a captive servant against your will. In the current, that would be the shackles provided by capitalism. Backwoodz Studioz producer Steel Tipped Dove’s beat for woods is a thing of cinematic horror, lurching out like a climactic night of the living dead sequence that can’t lead anywhere good for its main characters. “You already know that chauffeur gold Mercedes is a go / Did a harvest where the house and chains are, that oil gotta flow / Zombies go home to platters of prawns and escargot.” Money can’t mask the scent of those who are already dead inside, and the by end of it, maggots and flies are swarming to consume their bodies.
Listen to billy woods feat. Steel Tipped Dove – “BLK ZMBY”
9. Hayley Williams – “Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party” [Post-Atlantic]
For someone who has called Nashville their “home” for most of their professional life, Hayley Williams sure seems to have enough not-so-great things to say about the kind of people she’s surrounded by. One thing is for sure: its backwards behavior needs get called out. On “Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party”, Williams pointedly directs her attention toward Music City’s racist country bar scene and the bachelorette party hedonism plaguing Broadway Street — big draws to the local economy, and yet everything that you’d assume would go against all of those holy book teachings its revelers claim to hold up on high. It’s easy to understand how Williams stands out against that blinding hypocrisy, making it easy to hear why she’s the biggest star among them. With some healthy SZA influence fueling her hot takes with a contempo-R&B cool, Williams can at least live out her California dreamin’ through song. “Can only go up from here,” she sings — an easy fete to clear when the bar is clearly in Hell. Meet her at Whole Foods, bitch…
Listen to Hayley Williams – “Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party”
8. Wednesday – “Pick Up That Knife” [Dead Oceans]
“Pick Up That Knife’ is a song that revolves around feelings of helplessness, when every minor inconvenience hurts double ’cause you’re close to giving up. “It’s also about when our pedal steel player Xandy threw up in the moshpit during the Death Grips set at Primavera Sound in 2023,” says Karly Hartzman. Collectively, the band are in it together in going through it — everything from nearly choking on cough drops, vomiting inside the aforementioned pit, parking too close to another car and not being able to get out, to having to fire the wedding band are the banes of their daily existence. The most first world problem can become the basis of a villain origin stories, and while Hartzman and company’s Southern dazed ebb and flow motions through the bell curves does its best to shrug its shoulders at them, something as micro as a clogged drain loudly sends them off the deep end. “Someday, I’ll kill the bitch in my brain,” Hartzman laments. At least her crash out finds a proper resting place in a great song.
Listen to Wednesday – “Pick Up That Knife”
7. No Joy – “Bugland” [Hand Drawn Dracula / Sonic Cathedral]
No Joy wants to invite you into an altered zone with “Bugland”, the titular track from her hyper-surreal dream of a career-defining album. They’re plenty of sensory paths throughout the listen that can lead you into all sorts of transcendental pathways you never even knew existed through sound, but it’s this one where the more cohesively-shaped highlights brimming full of dense textures and color pull you into Jasamine White-Gluz and collaborator Fire-Toolz’ melted nature collage world. Bluffs of dream-pop, ultraviolet digital corrosion that leaves a playful synthetic stickiness, and shrapnel from nu-metal guitars organically converge onto the same plane. It’s as if your ears touched one of those hallucinogenic frogs that sends you onto an absolutely wild mind trip, and luckily for you, it’s a thrilling one that leaves you wondering what else is left to be uncovered through a bit of sonic therapy.
Listen to No Joy – “Bugland”
6. Bad Bunny – “NUEVOYol” [Rimas]
Benito could have left it all in “EL CLúB” and still had a smash. Instead, the global pop superstar is bringing Puerto Rico worldwide with its new anthem. Album rollouts are a funny thing sometimes producing red herrings. In this case, the advance singles leading up to the release of Debí Tirar Más Fotos stayed in Bad Bunny’s lane of sleek, night neon reggaeton and heritage novelty. What we didn’t know until we hit play on his sixth and most defining album to date is that he was laying the groundwork for merging the two into a singular banger on “NUEVOYol” that kicks through the club door (and glass ceilings, too, for good measure) right after that sample of “Un Verano en Nueva York” by Andy Montañez and El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico gives the cue. What follows is a hype history lesson on Puerto Rico’s past, present, and future of music and culture, and a reminder to itself to stay true.
Listen to Bad Bunny – “NUEVOYol”
5. Dijon – “Baby!” [R&R / Warner Records]
“Baby!”, the pseudo-title track and opener from Dijon’s instant classic sophomore effort stands out in particular fine form, even if its the turn-the-lights-down-low antithesis to all of the neon ’90s pop-rock, vapor wave R&B and neo-soul futurism kaleidoscope dreaming after it. It starts the listen off at a slow and sensuous speed — a rare sex jam and love song thrust into one that humps, bumps, grinds, smoothly caresses, procreates, and lullabies itself — and the Baltimore alternative R&B songwriter’s crackling coo — against the heat of palm-muted electricity. That broken funk drum beat raises your heart’s a few notches the more it presses on, too. Is it about making a baby? Calling someone you’re into “baby?” Naming your child “Baby”? All three can be true with the way Dijon puts a human(-making) highlight reel together in a single song.
Listen to Dijon – “Baby!”
4. Oklou feat. Bladee – “take me by the hand” [True Panther]
That feeling of being seen can a superpower to your inner spirit, and when soundtracked by the muted Euro pop stylings of French singer Oklou on the dazzling choke enough highlight, we’re headed to the stars somewhere beyond paradise and lost at the edge of a bridge that we call land. Vibes are an oft overused term when it comes to placing a feeling on music these days, but in this case, they are what get this one perfectly in line: produced by Danny L Harle, it’s a flawlessly delicate sensory spectacle of twinkling orbs dancing around the oxytocin drip suspended in the air between Marylou Mayniel’s featherweight voice and the cloud rap of Drain Gang collective breakout star Bladee. “You’re too beautiful, I die, and I’m high.” That soft woah couldn’t be more understated.
Listen to Oklou feat. Bladee – “take me by the hand”
3. TURNSTILE – “BIRDS” [Roadrunner Records]
A scene divided. Those are the takeaways from how listeners feel at year’s end about what came our way from Turnstile leading into what was one of the year’s most hotly anticipated new albums in NEVER ENOUGH. Between the dreamy indie-pop detours and star-speckled post-punk, those who wanted to glow on with more of those pop-friendly pit parties had to wait a minute for the Baltimore experimental hardcore band to get there. When they did, they took flight to a new level. “BIRDS” swoops in on a drop and is a burner made to incite bodies flying into the pit in “classic” TURNSTILE form, with Yates commandeering the path from center stage. “Finally, I can see it / These birds not meant to fly alone.” Depending on your vantage point, you might, too. Hopefully you do, because if there’s anything that makes a band like TURNSTILE a fascinating listen and watch, it’s witnessing their audacity to transform beyond set expectations.
Listen to TURNSTILE – “BIRDS”
2. PinkPantheress – “Tonight” [Warner Records UK]
Pop music is at its best when it aims to create the sweet spot in finding a balance between delicate simplicity that strays outside the lines while staying steps ahead of trend better than most, and that’s why PinkPantheress’ debut album, Heaven knows, remains one of 2023’s criminally underrated mainstream releases of that year and beyond. Regardless, Victoria Beverley Walker continues to understand how to twist up pop’s future rather than cater towards its contemporary, and that energy accelerates on “Tonight”, the standout single from the English experimental producer’s 2025 mixtape, Fancy That. Without forfeiting her hyperpop past, she palpitates sensuous lite house beats using just her breath and — for brilliantly dumb reasons — strings sampled from Panic! At the Disco’s 2008 fan-dividing sophomore effort, Pretty. Odd., made ambient. “You want sex with me? / Come talk to me,” she sings. It’s a blunt proposition, and still PinkPantheress makes it sound like a foreign love language.
Listen to PinkPantheress – “Tonight”
1. Water From Your Eyes – “Playing Classics” [Matador Records]
When I get to the club, I wanna hear those “Playing Classics”. According to Rachel Brown, the It’s A Beautiful Place all-timer was written during peak BRAT summer, and it definitely shows in the way they and Nate Amos transfigure their deconstruction of pop into a reconstruction of the dance floor, zooming in and around turbo mode synthesizers and a warped piano line that pulse their way across four-on-the-floor rhythms. Needled together by Amos’ electric thread, euphoria is right there on the verge of collapse if you want it. Whereas Charli went for full-blown party girl hedonism, however, Brown can be seen as her anti-capitalist counterpart. This party is best enjoyed by letting yourself free-fall into nihilism since we’re living in a post-truth world that’s falling apart anyway. “Look, you’re in debt or well, you’re nothing at all / Tried to make it to hereafter, just wound up at the mall,” they deadpan. “The devil’s playing classics, souls with something to lose / Take that long hard road from here to the truth.” The only way to free yourself is to shake it. For six minutes, at least you get that for living through this modern hellscape.
+rcmndedlisten 
Leave a comment