Year in review

The Montreal band that inexplicably grows on me with each new release as they veer from the bedroom to the past in their efforts finding pop's apex. Beautifully playing with tension without feeling uptight, the drums that round off the second chorus are among the year's most cathartic moments by far.

Speaking of cathartic, the breakdown that starts at around the 2:30 mark in this song by the increasingly viral Chilean indie band Candelabro — is absolutely the selling point for me over any other song on what is already a very good record. I believe that's Carlos Muñoz on piano for the duration of the track? The fact the song continues for nearly five minutes after that high point is a testament to his skill in riding a track out on its momentum, feeling like a real melding of jazz inspirations rather than just reaching for the genre's general aesthetic.

Far from my favorite Ill Considered album, buried in the middle of the tracklist happens to be one of their best ever performances. The whole album substitutes drums for more cinematic soundscapes, getting a good atmosphere down, yet it's on Satori that its purest vision is realized. That saxophone could tear through walls.

2023's 'Fountain Baby' had every right to be considered the album of the year around the block if publications were cooler and braver than they were. This single was a breakout from the follow-up, ebbing more on the aggressive end that Amaarae has toyed with in the past. A more mechanical and explicit dance floor banger with a music video to match. I especially appreciate how she seems natural on such wildly different beats and in radically opposing moods. I wouldn't be surprised to find it in more DJ mixes and remixes as her stock continues to rise closer and closer to the proper chart-adjacent mainstream.

At what might be the end of The Weeknd persona, I'm surprised at how effectively Abel Tesfaye transitioned from cult favorite to household name. For someone who made so much out of sampling in his early mixtape era, he seemed to transition into working with an all-star cast of producers, be it Daft Punk, Oneohtrix Point Never, Metro Boomin, or in the case of Wake Me Up, the French duo Justice in one of the better things they've been a part of in recent memory. An epic MJ-esque opener for what is intended to be a farewell of sorts.

As Cyrus herself is going on a more self-reflective journey through her Hannah Montana reunions and whatnot, it's a good time to acknowledge that her career as a pop star has taken her in seemingly infinite directions. An absurd collaboration list including the likes of Britney Spears, Future, The Flaming Lips, Ariel Pink (Dead Petz is a far better album than any of you give it credit for...), Dolly Parton (kind of a given, but still), Dua Lipa, Billy Idol, Brittany Howard, David Byrne... and that's on top of a voice that, for better and for worse, remains the MOST of anybody in her general area. This song is the perfect chance for her to show it off. Nearly makes up for her having the most egregious case of veneers since goddamn Roman Reigns. POST-SCRIPT: She has seemingly since gotten them replaced, whereas Roman Reigns' look bigger than ever. No disrespect, but those things look like they'd glow in the dark.

Another example of a debut LP that carries the gravity of a full discography. While I wouldn't rank it as my favorite of the year or anything, the vocal performances are just unbelievably emotive. I guess the generic comparison would be to Tracy Chapman's debut back in 1988, though judging Annahstasia alongside her contemporaries, her expressiveness vocally is really only comparable to, I don't know, Nilüfer Yanya? Both have this subtle rawness or fragility in their delivery that feels far more meaningful than those who feel choir-trained from birth for pop ballads. Overflow is the album's standout in my view; the sort of song that sounds so confident and established that it's weird to think it hasn't always been here somewhere.

Easily the longest song on this list by a decent margin (nearly 20 minutes, with the second longest being Burial's Comafields at #94, just barely over 12 minutes), and a drone piece at that. Though I guess that's a misleading tag since it's more appropriately defined as Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko's earth-shattering singing set to production so minimal that it nearly feels a cappella. Both artists look to the past as a means of reflecting on and making sense of the war in Ukraine, stretching out medieval pieces to a glacial pace as centuries cast their shadow.

Punk music doesn't always translate through the studio as it does in a live setting, so congratulations to these Nashvillains for carrying that energy over in such an infectious way. It's a real balance between edgy, quirky, glib, cool, and danceable that can absolutely destroy your tune if you fall flat on one or too overbearing on another, so all these little details help — e.g. those laser beam synths that fill the void of the vocals. The vocals themselves are integral — deadpan, yet the opposite of bored. An absolutely packed three minutes with hardly any time to breathe — you just don't notice that until it's over.

Oh Lord, the vocal sample that enters the picture in that second half is what turns an already great song into something of legend. The EP cover looks more like something you'd find in a dungeon synth binge, but this is on a completely different planet — grimy, vicious, a bit ridiculous, a bit futuristic; altogether capable of lighting a whole place up.

'Abracadabra' was the track that really took off — likely for being the closest to Gaga's artistic peak, sonically-speaking. But I consider 'Zombieboy' to be the album's most dramatic, ridiculous, and danceable cut, one that harkens a little more toward the underrated singles of her comparatively "down" years. Or the sort of thing Sophie Ellis-Bextor has been doing this year as well, just on an even larger stage.

It's easy to confine a genre's more upbeat cuts into the category of "commercial music" — as in advertising specifically. That mentality haunts most of us to an extent — myself included — though it misses the context of an album or an overall discography that puts everything into perspective. Jarvis' weird time signatures, his remarkable performances vocally and on guitar, his rawer and more psychedelic influences, yet still directing him toward a song like 'One Gripe' which is about as pop-infused as he'll ever get. To do so and maintain his integrity and his personality is a wildly underrated skill of his, not to mention a skill much rarer than you'd think.

...I hadn't really considered what a "Mirrorshades pt. 1" would even sound like until recently. I believe that one was released as part of the album's deluxe version? And that one would even get a music video! Though between the two, I think this is still by far the sleeker and cooler track. Frankly, I appreciate that clipping. is still rolling in different directions despite a fanbase happy to box them in the same general corners they yearn for between Injury Reserve side-projects and Death Grips reunion rumors. If anything, I think these guys are at their best when catching everyone off guard, whether that be musique concrète live albums or straight up club tracks.

On-the-nose? Yeah, sure, a little bit. And that's a problem that plagues the whole album, really. It's definitely not their finest hour as a full release. But for how often the 'topical' can feel a little too overplayed, the times when it feels uniquely incisive end up defining the era far greater than one-hundred whiny didactic tracks about how the present is the future despite the loss of future idealism, and so on and such forth. Rather than sounding discourse-defined, 'Smart World' is as rambling as it is revelatory, with some help by a great set of riffs making the rush toward tomorrow all the more urgent and anxious and unclear.

And speaking of dance/synth-punk by seemingly insane people, we have the return of The Moonlandingz, a mere eight years after their debut LP. Granted, it does ultimately feel like a side-project for Lias Saoudi between his work in a number of other bands and musical outfits, but I hold this one closest to my heart since that first album dropped right as I was getting deep into music discovery. Their uncanny, slightly unnerving pop sensibilities have not waned in the slightest — reminding me of another seminal album from around the same time in my journey, that being Xiu Xiu's 'Forget'. Unapologetic absurdism burying beneath itself a subtler ability: the perfect hook, one that I'm sure many more popular artists would kill to have yet wouldn't recognize it here amidst the chaos of the whole.

I still don't actually know who Shelly is besides Clairo and... friends? Well okay, I know OF Claud. But that's about it, honestly. Just a group of four people who get together once or twice every half-decade and record a couple tracks before going off in their own direction again. I consider Clairo far improved from her early days as a bedroom pop artist, so if anything this should be closer to what I didn't like about her work rather than what I like about it now. Yet her maturity as a pop songwriter continues its evolution, where in spite of some corny Swiftisms here and there, she and her pals craft this super tight and cathartic pop song — one complex in its inner-workings (that piano in the mix is so gorgeous...) yet effortless on the mind.

Swanky, weirdly sexual, and bizarrely furry French-Canadian pop music. (As if there's any other kind.) I appreciate that a stranger more arthouse-y aesthetic can come from an artist who doesn't veer too far into boredom — if anything, 'Dogue' is very insidious in how it hooks you. I certainly wouldn't have expected it to be so high on this list originally, but every time I return to it, there's some new subtle aspect that impresses me. I for sure consider Roy a strong contender for international crossover success, or at the very least a much greater critical recognition.

Marcus Brown continues to gain much deserved recognition as one of indie music's most exciting figures. 'Erotic Probiotic 2' remains his masterpiece in my mind, but as evidenced by my choice for best song on his newest album changing from the mid-year list to this one, he's very much still riding high in my eyes. Nostalgia from many angles, eras, and movements, while still impossible to mistake for anyone else. This track in particular has some very sincere Prince worship, and considering the amount of artists attempting (and often failing) to meet those standards within their own sound and style, a success story like this one deserves the acclaim it's been getting.

'My Method Actor' is my favorite Yanya record to date, yet this track off the follow-up EP might be my favorite Yanya song to date. More than 'Safety Net', or 'L/R', or 'Faith's Late', for what that's worth. One of indie pop's raspiest voices managing such a satisfying harmony with itself just never stops impressing me. Just in how she sounds, and how she's sounded for practically her entire career now, is hard to find the right comparable. In the often fleeting legacies of indie artists, it's hard to predict which ones will belong to some future canon of recognized geniuses. I can't guarantee it for Yanya, but I am pulling for her.

Insanely hooky for a Darkside song of all things. Lots of batshit ideas riffed on in quick succession, some sounding slightly awkward and others being potentially the coolest thing ever crafted by anybody. Whenever you think the song is getting complacent, it switches to a new layer while endlessly carried by a perfect underlying groove. Somehow, in so many different forms, Nicolas Jaar catches me off guard as the future of the medium keeps threateningly rushing forward.

Casually poetic and effortlessly cool. MIKE remains remarkably prolific for an artist so consistent in his craft, with a sense of importance that isn't desperate or maximalist, instead coming naturally through whatever influence he takes on next — how these things shape him, just as the world at large has. A terrific rebuttal to "pretentious" allegations while staying true to the vision he's spent the past decade cultivating.

Simple, stark short story-style lyricism from an artist who has been nudging the line toward relevance for the past two decades. Vivid recounting that reminds me a lot of the strongest Leif Vollebekk tracks — living and dying by their hyper-specific details and microtragedies. Few songs this year have felt as vivid and as unique to the person who painted those pictures in the first place. And like his foremost influence Nick Drake, the ripple effect of his work will be much more obvious in distance from the songs themselves.

That genre term — "post-rock" — feels almost meaningless in how broadly it can encompass artists that sound nothing like each other. Besides maybe the crescendocore stuff, the label feels more like an ethos or a reaction in retrospect. Some vague unnamed future that we're still in the process of deciding for ourselves. Few bands in any genre carry that sort of weight even when pleading for it, or having fanbases that brute force their innovation until it's recognized as canon. Caroline, to me, is one of very few that feels three steps ahead of everything we think we're capable of, or are comfortable letting our standards rest within. One of the present day's most exciting promises for the future.

A loving yet almost bitter recapturing of Springsteen or Seger with lyricism closer to some James Murphy ramble where you don't quite get the reason he made a song about it, but you know by his conviction that there's gotta be a real reason. And that sometimes these things are better captured in the irony of that contrast or the space between words. Finn might be somewhat of a staple within the pub rock sound via his work with The Hold Steady, but somehow his solo material has felt overshadowed despite it being the clearest example of his strengths as a songwriter.

Zach Condon remains at an impasse between fresh indie darling and unapologetic legacy act. Here is the moment in time where we pretend it was a fluke or a sign of the times, with each new record getting reasonably tepid or mildly positive reviews from those still keeping track and publications reviewing anything with a pulse and a press release. And while this track is a bit of an anomaly for the album as a whole, its sound more closely resembles the lesser regarded follow-ups rather than the ones people originally praised so enthusiastically. I pretty well like all the Beirut records, though they are very much buried beneath each wave of similar acts getting their shine with a new generation. And while I doubt Condon will ever be an intimidating artist to engage with, I get the sense that there's a sincerity to what he's been doing and where he's been hiding these past two decades. Prior sounds haven't been cast aside, instead intertwined with the next step he's taken on the path to somewhere or other.

...is it redundant to keep putting DJ Sabrina songs on my year-end lists? It's been every year since I've been really keeping track, hasn't it? Every year she has something new, and every year it makes my list. Hell, in 2019 she took the top spot! For an artist whose biggest potential criticism comes down to so rarely changing the formula she's crafted for herself, I imagine the shtick would grow tired to more people with every new multi-hour epic of nostalgic euphoric dance music that you'd never actually hear on a dance floor. But man, I don't know what to tell you. It gets me every time. Something about the way she melds different hooks, it's a craft that's remained about the same as it was a decade ago when she got started, yet she's so consistent with it that I still haven't felt what would otherwise be a very understandable exhaustion and oversaturation. I keep thinking it'll happen next album, but somehow her yearly efforts maintain their status as the shut-in's party of the year.

The perfect middle-ground between subversive hipster teenager and shamelessly corny nostalgic parent. I suppose that's the inevitable outcome of a successful Brian Wilson influence. We so often see the Animal Collective boys shrouded in tricks and psychedelics that we take for granted their absolutely stellar craft for pop songwriting. This is still a psych joint through and through, but it might also be Panda Bear's most infectious and most universal work in a long while.

Completely deconstructing its source material and rebuilding it into something that feels like this is what it was always meant to be. Like the footwork/juke equivalent of 'Brighter Days' over in the Chicago House scene. DJ Manny himself was born in Chicago, and one of the city's clearer examples of these two styles melding so neatly when given enough time and care. A prime pick for DJ setlists that make you look impressive to the others in attendance.

These guys are so close to indie ubiquity at this point, all it takes is one more can't-miss LP with a heavy push on promo. They inherently feel like underdogs, small scale and lo-fi yet still soaring with melodies that sound like your loser brother's stupid rock band just randomly stumbled onto the perfect song. And it's about a department store or some shit, I don't know. Very Guided by Voices in that ethos, or a less dorky Mountain Goats. I'm fully on board for the time being, in spite of their sound being too good to be true long term. Maybe they'll make it big and become docile, or grow old and lose their ambition. But we're not in the future yet, and I can't help but love what these guys are doing lately.

It might sound a little familiar — identity as reflected through cold, disconnected technology, as relayed by a pop singer who is either a response to a more sterile pop landscape, or an attempt to reach it through more independent means. Night Tapes' comparisons are blunt, obvious, and have begun to work against them as their most similar resemblance is to a duo who got much bigger much quicker. And I dig some of those tracks, don't get me wrong, but a lot of those similar artists wanted to make a point by escaping pop structures for something more ambitious and subversive. I believe the reason Night Tapes is more effective for me than those other artists — who I'm specifically not naming because otherwise it feels like beating a dead horse — is that their subversion resides so perfectly within pop structures rather than treading a more awkward unstable ground. They haven't smothered their sound for radio appeal, they haven't grinded down the melodies to make a point. They make their point, they convey a feeling, and they sound stellar doing it.

I'm still mad at this song. I'm mad at how much of it I actively reject, yet make the song what it is — specifically, what makes it as good as it is. These losers keep stumbling into brilliance — not consistently enough that I can trust them, but too common for me to think it's a fluke. Usually I know after a first listen if a song is really gonna stick with me long-term, but this one blew right by me the first time around. Yet I couldn't get it to leave. Such a slick, strategic, impressive earworm without the usual gimmicks or annoyances that burden other hooks of that sort. I imagine Swift is too surrounded by approval to feel envy over other artists' songwriting, but I'd bet you she wishes this was hers.

Slow and steady, popularity-wise. I stumbled onto these guys' debut EP by pure chance around the time of release and I figured they were going to be the next big thing in the British rock scene. A few years later, and they remain well under 1000 monthly listeners on Spotify. And while this latest EP isn't as consistent as their previous outing, this closing track is such a great encapsulation of what they're best at — jagged and tense nervousness threatening to erupt yet keeping its cool.

Floating upwards into heaven. Those gentle orchestral swells carry the already extraordinary vocals from Estrada to new heights, creating a feeling only the Ama Divers and Cocteau Twins of the world are capable of. Estrada is certainly in great company there.

This hazy, nocturnal style of pop/R&B tends to feel uniquely internet-centric. Very digital, very raw, yet shrouded in the mists of reverb. Duffus is very much a part of that circle, yet her influences and ability have her weaving between the artifice of the digital world and the cold air of nighttime bus rides and late-hour McDonald's runs, just as Burial established years ago. And for something this dreamlike, the contrast is made clearest by whatever insane thing she did to those drum sounds. Just the perfect level of jarring without taking away from the moment.

A BLISTERING CUT AT JUST UNDER TWO AND A HALF MINUTES. HOW A SONG CAN BE SO LOUD WITHOUT LOSING ITS DYNAMICS, I'M REALLY NOT SURE. SOME OF THESE SOUNDS — VOCALS ESPECIALLY — FEEL SO FAR ABOVE AN ALREADY AGGRESSIVE MIX THAT IT'S LIKE THE MAN IS RIGHT BESIDE YOU, SCREAMING AT YOU ON THE BUS FOR WEARING OPENBACKS AND LISTENING TO SCHAFER BY HONNINGBARNA.

Every other review and reaction I've seen about this album suggests I'm being a bit hyperbolic in my love for it. Like this legitimately is one of my five or so favorite LPs of 2025, and I think I'm very much alone in that. Why it works so well for me is the same way older pop recordings treat love with this bizarre poeticism, finding words for it that might otherwise never have been said. And in this case, the song keeps rising and rising to the point where it feels like it could never resolve, before it all comes back down to earth as if it hadn't just swept you off your feet.

I'd say these are some of my favorite lines of the year, but the more I listen, the more I think the delivery is the real star. I was genuinely under the impression that this would be some sort of dumb YouTuber thing or somehow desperate for aura. Instead, Father manages to match the cool factor of a goddamn Massive Attack sample. How he managed that is probably the same reason he was interesting enough to try it in the first place.

Just one track took Jorja Smith from "not really my thing" to an artist I'm keeping a VERY close eye on. Absolutely stunning contrast between smooth vocals and sharp mechanical production, like two songs playing simultaneously and somehow lining up perfectly. I'd call it a song with great remix potential, but it already carries the vibe of one artist syncing their vision so brilliantly to another's.

I'm still bitter this album didn't get its due. This was the single that got me convinced that when the full LP dropped, it would have good crossover between popheads and the more hardened electronic scene. And while Celeste's popularity has been steadily growing, critical attention has not reached the level that I feel it deserves. A truly sincere and gorgeous house track that wears romantic cliché like it invented them.

Few artists are as effortless and as tactful in their vocal range as Uchis. Her latest album is easily her crowning achievement in my opinion — one with a massive variety of sounds fitting under one greater vision. This track was not originally my favorite, though it had certainly impressed me the most for how cleverly it grasps pop's mid-20th century history. It has since become the one I return to the most, and an early choice of Discord gamblers trying to predict my song of the year choice, which speaks to how often I'd rave about it.