New Albums I Loved in 2025

I hate grading art, I hate ranking art, and I'm well aware that in 2025, being even a Little Bit Online in December means wading your way through countless year-end best-of lists. So I'm not going to grade or rank anything here — this is just a look back at the best of the 117 records I listened to and remembered to keep track of between January and December. It's a varied list if I do say so myself, and although it wasn't planned this way at all, I think it's also missing any of the year's trendiest consensus picks.

What's on your list of favorite new albums this year?

Benjamin Booker, LOWER
Booker took eight years to finish LOWER, so it's no surprise that these songs represent an evolution for him, lyrically as well as musically. Upon first listen, the record feels subtle to a fault, with Booker leaning heavy into the softer side of his raspy vocals while experimenting with quietly evocative soundscapes. In reality, however, there's nothing subtle about this record at all — Booker's just beckoning you to lean in, all the better to hear him experience the hope and horror of modern living with a poet's eloquence. Speaking as a fan, I don't think this is the type of album that will really grab many people upon first listen, but if you have patience and an open mind, active listening yields rich rewards.

Deacon Blue, The Great Western Road
Nothing earth-shattering here, but you wouldn't necessarily expect that from any band on its 11th studio album. Instead, you get the best any fan of a veteran act could hope for: Another deftly assembled collection of quietly gorgeous tunes from a band that does it unlike anyone else.

David Mead, January, San Leandro
David Mead has the voice of an angel, the heart of a balladeer, and a gift for pop hooks that the guys in Cheap Trick would kill for. This surfeit of occasionally conflicting talents has caused some consternation over the course of his career, with some records leaning too far on one side of the spectrum — or maybe it's just that those of us who remember being happily bowled over by the Technicolor power pop of his earlier sides can get a little antsy with the gentler approach that's crept into his catalog over time. January, San Leandro arrives six years after the stellar Cobra Pumps, which seemed almost mathematically calculated to showcase all sides of Mead's musical personality; this one, in comparison, is much more midtempo/ballad-heavy. That being said, it's still hooky as hell, and finds Mead looking out at middle-aged domestic life with the same grace and self-deprecating wit we've come to expect.

Cold Specks, Light for the Midnight
All the best artists, I think, leave you feeling like their art is something they had to create. Still, there's a continuum between compulsion and need, and Cold Specks lies decidedly toward the latter end; her haunted vocals are the perfect delivery mechanism for a catalog that feels like one long emotional exorcism. This is not to say that Light for the Midnight is a difficult listen, but it also isn't a particularly cheerful one. Fittingly, given its title, this is a dark, moody record — one dotted with barbed melodies that burn like stars against the endless night.

Béla Fleck/Edmar Castañeda/Antonio Sánchez, BEATrio
Béla Fleck has spent his career challenging dumb assumptions about the banjo's place in music; being a fan of his work means you're always delightfully unsure of whatever path he'll go darting down next. BEATrio fits this hopscotch pattern beautifully; the record finds him working with Colombian harpist Edmar Castañeda and Mexican drummer Antonio Sánchez in further pursuit of natural intersections between seemingly disparate sounds. With Fleck's banjo in the lead much of the time, I suppose this could be at least nominally considered some sort of bluegrass album, but that's only if you aren't in the mood to do much considering. Great songs, great players, great time.

caroline, caroline 2
When crushing volume collides with crushing beauty, the results can be intoxicating. Today's exhibit A in support of that argument is caroline 2, which blends mad swirls of sound and half-whispered vocals as effectively as anything I can remember hearing since the sadly slept-on Bel Auburn's Lullabies in A & C in 2006. I feel compelled to note, however, that while Lullabies was sort of Coldplay-adjacent, caroline 2 embraces dissonance and assorted sonic oddities to a far artier extent. This is a record, in other words, that will require you to do a little lifting — but one whose rewards are more than commensurate with that effort.

Raphael Wressnig, Committed
A smooth and funky B-3 record, just like Mom used to make. We absolutely do not get enough of this good shit no more.

Annahstasia, Tether
A slow-building stunner that, in its own way, sounds like as much of an emotional exorcism as Cold Specks' Light for the Midnight. Annahstasia's throaty vocal delivery and confessional lyrics remind me a fair bit of Joan Armatrading, which is something I found myself saying — much to my happy surprise — about more than one artist in 2025. A record that's as raw as it is beautiful.

Tyler Childers, Snipe Hunter
I've spoken with a handful of people who either think Snipe Hunter compares unfavorably with Tyler Childers' earlier work or simply don't appreciate the cut of his musical jib. Both of these positions strike me as wholly unreasonable — this is a record whose sweaty urgency is bolstered by a battery of solid songs, elevated by a well-seasoned swirl of country-rock sonic touches, and topped off by a savage sense of humor. It's so good that I continued listening even after I discovered that the liner notes claim it was produced by Rick Rubin, which is probably one of the biggest compliments I can bestow upon an album.

Indigo De Souza, Precipice
I've liked some of Indigo De Souza's songs in the past, but for whatever reason, had never taken a full-album plunge. Happily, thanks to a recommendation from Friend of Jefitoblog Peter Lubin, Precipice broke that stupid streak and exposed me to a confidently unique distillation of eclectic influences that continually compels from song to song. This is an artist who marches to her own beat while daring you to try and stop yourself from marching along.

Bret McKenzie, Freak Out City
Holy mackerel. The latest album from Flight of the Conchords member Bret McKenzie doesn't quite maintain the momentum it establishes early on, but this is one excellent set of Nilssonesque pop songs, just absolutely slathered with hooks and harmonies.

The Berries, The Berries
This is one of the more straightforwardly conventional picks on my list, and in the context of some of these other records, I suppose The Berries might sound somewhat unremarkable. There's still a lot to be said, though, for unassumingly solid songwriting draped in instrumentation and arrangements that often suggest a hint of Buckingham-era Fleetwood Mac at its most relaxed.

Mike Reid & Joe Henry, Life and Time
If you've read my stuff for any length of time, you're probably extremely well aware of my fondness for Joe Henry's music, and seeing his name here is likely something other than a surprise. Life and Time is something different, though — for starters, Henry contributed the lyrics to these songs, but the music was written by Mike Reid, a former NFL player whose impressive list of post-gridiron credits includes cowriting "I Can't Make You Love Me." Reid also handled the vocals, and the overall effect is not unlike listening to a lost Jimmy Webb record, with Reid's stately piano and warm baritone beautifully complementing the bittersweet melancholy of the lyrics and arrangements. A work of hard-earned beauty, and an album made for sunlight slanting through windows in quiet rooms.

Maruja, Pain to Power
Recommended if you like: Raw punk aggression, soul-searing vocals, thundering drums, wailing sax. Not a record for daily listening, perhaps, but only because it leaves a welt that's best left to linger.

Quetzal and David Hidalgo, Memory and Return
A marvelously creative exploration of, as the title suggests, reckoning personal and cultural memory against the realities of the present. Hidalgo proves a perfect foil for the material, partly because some of it slots neatly in with the more experimental stuff he got up to during the Froom era, and partly because his darkly honeyed vocals express hope and heartache in equal measure. The songs are hauntingly lovely, and the production is never less than interesting. More people need to hear this.

cktrl, spirit
I wrote about this album in my inaugural Song Recommendations post, so I'll save myself some typing and just say I still agree with what I said then, which is that it's "an absolutely, unrelentingly lovely series of sax-led musical meditations" and "start to finish... one of the most beautiful works I've had the privilege of coming across in a very long time, and I hope it moves you the way it's moved me."

Atmosphere, Jestures
Another one I covered here earlier in the year; again, I stand by what I said then. Specifically: "Atmosphere's new Jestures joint has a cute overarching concept — 26 tracks, each one starting with a successive letter of the alphabet — but there's nothing cute about the record's soul-searching music, which consistently gives the lie to the idea that hip-hop is a young MC's game and it's nigh impossible for middle-aged rappers to come up with compelling things to say."

Dave Hause, ...and the Mermaid
It's very easy to be cynical about the type of nicotine-stained, denim-clad workingman's rock made by artists like Dave Hause. Springsteen casts such a tall shadow that the reflexive response to stuff like this is often to assume the act in question is either striking a pose or simply lacks the creativity to avoid succumbing to cliché. I would argue, however, that in this age of ascendant fuckery, we really can't have too many rock-solid slabs of fist-pumping anthems in praise of bruised but unbowed humanity, and Hause's latest is a damn fine addition to that list. Turn it up loud.

Amber Mark, Pretty Idea
As a genre, R&B has historically often been heavily shaped by production — and, more specifically, the trends driving that production — but it's also true that, perhaps more than any other style of music, it really comes down to songs and voices. All of this is to say that Amber Mark has a really appealing singing voice, and with Pretty Idea, she came armed with a very solid set of songs. There really isn't anything flashy about this record, but there doesn't need to be. Classically constructed but wholly modern R&B.

Kara-Lis Coverdale, Changes in Air
If we're speaking strictly in terms of the requisite amount of musical ability, then it's probably fair to argue that making an ambient record probably isn't the hardest thing in the world. Making a really good ambient record, on the other hand, seems like a true challenge, because what are you supposed to do? The whole point of the exercise is to give the listener something mildly evocative without requiring too much of their attention; it isn't quite the exact opposite of "don't bore us, get to the chorus," but you get the gist. Ambient artists are working in another language.

It's a language I'm not fluent in, so I'm not sure I can really get to the heart of why I think Kara-Lis Coverdale's Changes in Air is a noteworthy ambient record. I can only tell you that I spent a lot of time listening to it, and while I was listening I felt like Coverdale was taking me on a journey — a subtle one, because this is still ambient music we're talking about, but a journey nonetheless. Proof that "ambient" doesn't always mean "audio wallpaper."