We did, the home stretch. Proud of everyone for getting through what was, well, yet another difficult year. Regardless where you’re reading this from, it’s probably been difficult there, and I empathize with you. Luckily, music always has our backs. I’m almost always drawn to the heavier, faster, darker bands, and that’s especially true in years like this. You’ll find a lot of that in my top 25 – but not exclusively. I’m jetlagged from a flight and you’re tired of reading top lists, so let’s just get on with it.
#25. PinkPantheress – Fancy That
Without intending to, I listened to a lot more electronic and dance music this year than normal. Sometimes, I need an album that’s just fast and fun. This seriously scratched that itch, a 9-song, 20-minute mini-album that drops big beats relentlessly, alongside PinkPantheress’s bouncy vocals. Whiplash pop music mixed with UK rave music. I don’t make a lot of concessions to “England” but they really got the electronic music scene on lock. This hearkens back to the 90s club scene but also sounds completely 2025. Good music to turn your brain off and dance to.
#24. Billy Woods – Golliwog
Another perennial favorite of mine, his presence on this list shouldn’t be surprising at all. It’s also one of the most acclaimed albums of the year in general. The indie rap hotshot has already released a number of great records both solo and as a member of Armand Hammer, but this is his magnum opus. A tough record about a tough life, an autobiography the artist’s fascinating life and his experiences in NYC. Sure, that album’s been done a million times, but if it’s earnest then it’s justifiable. This is not only earnest, it’s raw, nervous, and at times still redacted, as if Woods immediately regrets telling the listener something.
#23. Smerz – Big city life
It’s rare in today’s music melting pot that you hear something that sounds totally new. This sounds totally new. The best I can surmise Smerz is that they are trip-hop indie, with a little extra -hop, and some jazz. Short, funky blasts that sound like the coolest thing this side of Jon Spencer. I’ve already deep-dived their previous albums – their two prior full-lengths are ones where they serve as a backing band for an indie-pop singer, and an avant-garde choir. This band is hitting originality on all fronts.
#22. Sudan Archives – THE BPM
I was already extremely partial to Sudan Archives, a one-woman showcase that blends indie, R&B and electro music into one. But for her third album, she roped in a significant amount of house influence, and it’s her best album to date. This is blistering and unapologetic dance music. It’s got the fast tempos and big beats that the title implies, and the heart and personality of her other albums. It’s one of the most outwardly fun albums on this list, best played after midnight.
#21. Paris Texas – They Left Me With A Gun
You may be noticing a trend in the rap that I like the most; intense but vibrant indie-rap is my go-to. Thankfully Denzel Curry didn’t release anything this year or it would’ve been overload. The new Paris Texas release is just an EP, and I’m always hesitant on ranking EP’s against LP’s, but when something is this good it’s worth it. A quick, nonstop collection of fast rhythms and big beats, and all without the boisterousness of top 40 rap.
#20. Bad Bunny – Debí Tirar Más Fotos
The biggest album in my top 100 by far. I pity the people who don’t listen to music in languages they don’t speak. I don’t understand a word of this album and, as a pasty white man in Boston, I’m not exactly the target audience. But Bad Bunny has such an inherent skill at taking reggaeton – a genre where the biggest critique is repetition – and making every song feel important and special. Reggaeton, rap, R&B, pop, there’s a touch of everything popular here. And even at 62 minutes, it doesn’t feel overstuffed or tedious. Put this on at a party – any party – and you’ll get everyone moving in no time. Can’t wait to once turn on the Super Bowl at halftime. Eat shit, Stephen Miller.
#19. Ela Minus – DIA
I went into this one totally blind, having heard one song from it many weeks prior. Obviously, I was floored. I was expecting some light-electro indie, and probably “just another indie album” like the influx I’ve already heard this year. It’s electro-indie, for sure, but it’s very experimental and not afraid to take risks. Pop songs are meshed with ambient drone, and enough dense electronica to make Dave Gahan smile. It’s a truly unpredictable album and had me clapping my hands like a seal.
#18. Songs By Jonas – The “Everything Is Wrong” Album
I know nothing about this artist, but this was a whirlwind of bedroom emo and experimental noise. Most songs are short and acoustic, and make clever use of double-tracking to make it sound like a full band instead of one person. But there’s plenty of fuzz and glitch, too – it’s wildly unpredictable. There’s a litany of songs here that worked more than I thought they would from the start. I can’t wait to dig into this catalog more. This one kind of slipped through the cracks – it just missed the cutoff for my mid-year post, and I never got a chance to go back to it. 2026 gives me a great chance to listen to the other songs by Jonas.
#17. Wednesday – Bleeds
I have to chalk this one up as a major disappointment. The Asheville Americana rockers are coming off their album Rat Saw God – my pick for #1 in 2023 and subsequently, my pick for Album of the Decade So Far. Truthfully, nothing would live up to that behemoth, but this is still damn good. We’ve got the most country the band has ever sounded in lead single “Elderberry Wine,” and we have some of their heaviest, grungiest songs to date as well, like the leadoff song posted below. It’s an expansion of their capabilities, and there are plenty of all-time gems here. It takes a few listens to get into, as it is not as immediately striking as Rat, but it’s still unstoppable. They’re the best band in America right now. Surely someone has shown Neil Young this album, right?
#16. Jehnny Beth – You Heartbreaker, You
I’ll be honest, I just tossed this on at work. I remain a diehard fan of the two Savages records, but Beth’s first solo album left me a tad lukewarm. This demolished my expectations. It’s a ripping rock record, not out of league of the post-hardcore/post-punk albums with Savages that put her on the map. Nearly every song grabs you by the throat with boundless energy and urgent emotions, often resembling a cry for help. It’s abrasive, but never uncomfortably so. It isn’t the most melodic album, opting instead more for pummeling songs that don’t sacrifice honesty. Beth has never been afraid to put her real self across her art, and this is real. This barely feels like art, more like raw human feelings on display.
#15. ameokama – i will be clouds in the morning and rain in the evening
The first a few regional Boston* discs to make the list, this is another entry in the “wildly unpredictable” canon. But instead of sticking in the world of electro-indie, this cements itself in black metal. ameokama, who also previously sang for the metal group A Constant Knowledge of Death and just last month joined Crippling Alcoholism, explores every boundary of black metal and pushes past them. She’s confrontational at points, atmospheric at others. The defining focus of this album is existing as something you can get lost in. You know how Deafheaven went from black metal to ambient? Imagine all of that across one album (ahem, more on them later). There’s still time for some doom and shoegaze elements too, because it simply can’t stay contained.
*- She dropped this album and promptly moved away, but it counts as a Boston album.
#14. Little Simz – Lotus
It’s always a safe assumption that Little Simz will make my lists whenever she releases something, but Lotus is excellent even on a grading curve. After the monumental, unexpected success of her album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, she stepped away a bit and released some cold, confrontational albums. But Lotus is plain old fun. The UK rapper sounds like she’s having a blast, with big beats and bouncy rhythms. It’s a different and somewhat relieving direction, as it sounds like Simz has learned to leverage her platform (a guest appearance on last year’s Coldplay album hinted at this too). As expected, there’s a lot of quick, flowing ideas and most of them work very well.
#13. mclusky – the world is still here and so are we
And thank your god for that. Often, I want artists to stretch their own boundaries and explore new territory, especially if they are coming back from a break. But would we want mclusky to give us anything they haven’t given us before? Hell no. The band’s first album in 21 years picks up exactly where they left off, and why shouldn’t it? The things they satirized so heavily in the early 2000’s have only gotten worse! This is full of short, heavy post-hardcore songs that could easily get mistaken as punk. And as expected, the lyrics range from corny and silly to deeply political and courageously specific. I was a huge fan of Future Of The Left, Andy Falkous’ band he formed after mclusky’s initial break-up, but this album scratches a slightly different itch. It’s loose, aggressive, and straight to the point.
I normally post studio versions here, but mclusky live > mclusky studio. Here’s how the song is really meant to sound:
#12. The Croaks – Menagerie
Another favorite Boston band, possibly my actual favorite. Self-described as “wench rock,” this is some Ren Faire indie. A 4-track EP of songs with full minstrel influence, even though some of them go off the rails into punk territory. There’s nothing like this out there anywhere, as far as I can tell. It’s a gimmick, maybe, but it is music that really hooks you in quickly, too. Longtime fans will recognize 2-3 of these songs from live sets, which are always a blast. As far as bassist/vocalist Alli Fuchs goes, more on her later.
#11. TAKAAT – Is Noise, Vol. 1 & Is Noise, Vol. 2
Remember when I said I always debate whether to include EP’s? This is the same boat. But let me say that this is the exact type of thing I’m into. These two 4-tracks represent the first music released by the band, but you may be familiar with them already – it’s African indie-rocker Mdou Moctar’s backing band, without Moctar himself. These songs mix African rhythms with dense, heavy noise production to make something wholly unique and separate from the artist they’re associated with. I saw these guys play a very early show and they managed to stretch the initial four songs into an hour-long set, it was face-melting stuff. I can’t wait for more.
#10. Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound
Agriculture were already promising themselves to be one of the most exciting and unique bands in all of metal. But their second record blows everything out of the water. The band’s black metalish music is riveting, intense, not for the faint of heart. Black metal is kind of tough to mess up – a wall of guitars and some screaming can do wonders if done well. But The Spiritual Sound is not a relentless nor repetitive record. There are a ton of fresh ideas and genre twists, all sewed into traditional black metal heaviness. This feels the same as Deafheaven did in 2013, unparalleled and exciting within a genre that has hardly evolved over three decades. This record has a maximum audience, but for those it appeals to, it is a stone-cold masterpiece. Challenge your senses.
#9. UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK & YES
Two-fer. Deal with it. At the time of writing, I don’t know anything about this band, nothing at all. The covers of their album and singles invoke the same artwork as Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me, and my brain makes a false connection between the two bands. But not that false – this is probably what the Dino guys would sound like if they were young today. It’s alternative, but it takes frequent detours into straight noise. Obscenely loud, this is one of the boldest debut albums I’ve ever heard. So rarely does a band come out of the gate with a unique sound. These folks are not afraid to put a wall of guitars and screaming in the middle of an indie song, and not afraid to stretch a tune to 11 minutes as they do on their follow-up EP YES. The only thing that’s predictable here, besides the unpredictability, is that it will be chaotic. Not for the faint of heart.
#8. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power
The kings reclaim the throne. Deafheaven’s Sunbather is arguably the best metal album of the last 20 years, whether you like it or not, and they’ve been on a tear ever since then. But where each subsequent album has explored a different facet of their sound, Lonely People With Power combines everything into one. It’s their best since Sunbather. Pulverizing black metal, blissful ambient, riffs, beautiful lyrics completely lost through guttural screaming, and occasionally just…rock music? Also these are shorter songs than normal, which gives the band more branches to show themselves off. It’s like a Greatest Hits of all new tracks. Bring earplugs.
#7. nurse joy – can i say something…?
Not the first nor the last Boston band to grace this section of the list. I caught nurse joy by chance at a festival last year when I had downtime, and their midday set in a cramped Rockwell was a damn party. Their debut and final full-length is a dance-punk whirlwind, a bunch of raucous loose anthems that transcend genre but never stray too far from being -punk. It’s fun as hell. In some ways it sounds like a record pulled from 2007 or so, but the basement sweatiness of it can only exist in 2025. Thankfully, I got to see nurse joy three more times before they split up in September.
#6. Backxwash – Only Dust Remains
Another shoo-in, every Backxwash album I’ve listened to has made my best-of lists. There was never any doubt here. The Zambian-Canadian rapper is freed from her now-concluded trilogy of dark, religious albums, but Dust isn’t a whole lot different. We do see some varied and more experimental sides of her, making this her most well-rounded album to date. But it’s also dark, heavy, conscious and sometimes just plain nasty. This isn’t something for everyone, it’s deliberately off-putting at points; but it’s yet another triumph in a catalog full of them.
#5. Deftones – private music
It seems that the kids these days have become nostalgic for the 2000s, a time they just missed out on. It’s bewildering – that era was worse in almost every way. But one thing the kids have gifted on us is a Deftones revival. I saw Deftones for the first (and so far only) time in 2022, at Agganis Arena, a midsize venue mostly housed by BU sports teams. This January, they played TD Garden. Other luminaries who play TD Garden? Kendrick Lamar, Charli XCX, the Boston Celtics. Now, in order to maintain this sudden second career, they had to stick the landing on their new album. They did so with room to spare – this is their best album since their original late-90s heyday. Blisteringly heavy, riff-filled, and equal parts melodic and noisy. It’s been obvious that the band members are starting to move in different directions, but this album captures them blending these differing ambitions beautifully. Deftones should’ve been a “legacy band.” Instead, they’re leaders of a whole new metal revolution.
#4. Laura Stevenson – Late Great
Laura Stevenson’s classic “Master Of Art” is my all-time favorite song. She’s got one of the best singing voice I’ve ever heard. It’s not necessarily a given that she shows up on these lists, but it’s likely – and Late Great is her best album in a long while. Touching, gorgeous indie songs that can stretch into “fun” or “haunting” territory real quick. Stevenson is excellent at making tunes that are drawn-out and dense, and following it up with something minimalistic and catchy. While her music is never exactly uplifting or optimistic, Late Great was spurned by divorce, which only adds extra gravity to the always emotional music. Everything is all under the guise of Stevenson’s beautiful vocals. She’s one of my favorite artists and she’s back even stronger than she has been in many years.
#3. Paper Lady – Idle Fate
The final local release on this list, this album is nuts. Another debut full-length, this one is somewhere in the realm of heavy alternative/shoegaze, even just rock music. These tunes are dense and unpredictable, sometimes putting everything upfront and other times opting for a slow-burning bruiser. Their live show is feral even as the songs are patient. If you’ve been missing some heavy alternative, then have no fear, Paper Lady is here. The band features Croaks bassist/vocalist Alli Fuchs as a frontwoman, and she puts everything forward. Without fact-checking, I believe billy woods is the only other person to make two separate appearances in my top 100. I hope you like guitars.
#2. Bartees Strange – Horror
I’ve been a fan of Bartees for a while, but I never predicted that he would put out a record this good. Horror does indeed dig into the macabre, adding yet another element to his already-stewing melting pot. The indie/rock/rapper delivers a chaotic album of high-speed rap, pretty R&B and catchy indie songs. It’s fun, wildly so, and delivers from start to finish. It’s easy to see an influence of TV On The Radio here, although the more macabre parts come from elsewhere darker. Some of these songs absolutely boom, but not all of them do, it’s a very well-rounded affair. Fun as hell. Pair with a follow-up EP he released in October, Shy Bairns Get Nowt, which sees Bartees dig deeper into specific genres like rap and blues.
#1. Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory – Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
Time to get the tissues out. I mentioned my all-time favorite song already, but SVE’s “Seventeen” is close behind it, and the song guaranteed to make me to weep immediately. SVE’s first album crediting her backing band is her best in a long while. It’s apparent that the band were more involved in the songwriting, as these tunes are more complex and more instrumental. Guitars are largely ditched for synthesizers, itself a big change for her traditionally folk-inspired indie (and usually a kiss of death for me). But her gorgeous voice still prevails and makes these songs vulnerable, shakeable. Remarkably beautiful indie record. I wasn’t sure on this at #1, I had Bartees there most of the year. You’ll notice the two swapped spots from the midyear post. This isn’t necessarily an Earth-shattering #1, but I think it’s one that will have staying power. I can see myself coming back to this one ins forthcoming years.
And that’s a wrap. May we wish for a 2026 as plentiful musically as 2025 was. I’m sure it will be. As always, I hope these posts or even this top 25 can give you one new gem to discover. Or at least it validated your own personal opinions. This wraps up my year-end 2025 coverage, although I may post a little about films watched in 2025 too.
I always highlight some releases that didn’t quite make the cut, so here’s five more in no order: Liam Peroyea – Burn | Freckle – Freckle | Valerie June – Owls, Omens and Oracles | Golomb – The Beat Goes On | AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun
Post-Grad Music Reviews 