2025 was a year dominated by darkness, tragedy and chaos in the wider world, punctuated by moments of joy and glimmers of hope for the future. In a world increasingly consumed by being online and submerged in AI slop, human connection and art is so important. The stories of very human artists and songwriters also reflect our own struggles and experiences, giving us comfort and hope that we aren’t alone. Music still sustains and kept me going throughout 2025; here are my favourite albums of the last twelve months.
Ichiko Aoba – Luminescent Creatures
Ichiko Aoba‘s, Luminescent Creatures is absolutely wonderful and my album of the year, offering moments of quiet isolation and meditative beauty and hope amidst the overwhelm of doom scrolling and when world events are all too much. Opener ‘COLORATURA’ has delicious echoes of the work of Françoise Hardy, with the whirring instrumental motifs and pungent woodwind notes, guides us into a new terrain of the environment mankind has sought to destroy, while colourful wisps of melody comfort as you are submerged in slumber. ‘FLAG‘ distils pure simplicity and transfixing majesty, with her beguiling, isolated voice and a guitar, Aoba reflects on life while gazing at the sea and singing: “Is it true that we are reborn so many times over?”
At the heart of Luminescent Creatures is the push and pull between the beauty and brutality of nature, one moment its vast landscapes and oceanic depths can make us feel insignificant and powerless to its cruelty, and the wonder and awe it can also evoke and the glowing illumination of the core of every living creature: it’s these dichotomies that Ichiko Aoba channels quite exquisitely. A beacon to call you home in the dead of night, safe harbour, a reminder of what it means to feel grounded, to be alive and it sounds absolutely magical.
Adwaith – Solas
Solas is the latest chapter in the Adwaith story, their most adventurous, vivid, forward-looking, connected work yet. The 23-track double album is a document to literal and creative growth, taking in different moods and textures that enchant and intrigue at every turn. Solas is the culmination of a decade-long quest, looking inward to find the answers to the challenges of the outside world, a record that calls for unity in the face of chaos and division. It exudes an air of supernatural confidence and defiance of young women who have nurtured their craft over years, plugged in, finding the spark of joy, free to experiment, pushing their songwriting past historical boundaries. If there is a glass ceiling for Welsh music, Adwaith smash through it. Solas is an awe-inspiring document to a band that continually travels onwards, the bold forward-looking sound of a new Wales.
Kathryn Joseph – WE WERE MADE PREY
Kathryn Joseph’s record WE WERE MADE PREY dances on the knife-edge: of action versus inaction, of want versus wanting, of self-fulfilment versus shame. It sounds like an evolution in Joseph’s sound, her haunting, outstanding vocals and vivid couplets juxtaposed with bleeping atmospheres, it has echoes of Portishead or Everything but the Girl, yet uniquely it is still Kathryn Joseph. ‘HARBOUR’ is consumed with brooding textures housing Joseph’s twisting, confessional voice, it sounds austere and pulsing yet tender, vivid and haunting. All-consuming, contemplating what offers comfort and what offers pain, it tries and fails to look trauma in the eye, hoping for the obscured warm light in the distance. There is the powerful spine-tingling soul of ‘DEER ‘ and the imperiously haunting WOLF. Formidable, it’s her best album yet, which is some feat.
McKinley Dixon – Magic Alive!
Magic Alive! is inventive, unique and addictive. Maryland artist McKinley Dixon is a wordsmith whose fleet-footed rhyming skilfully marries autobiography, fiction, wit and rapier satire into jazz-blasted lines that are lush yet pointed, echoing with the old school hip hop sounds, and the work of Kendrick Lamar and A Tribe Called Quest, at the same time. “It is the story of three kids who lose their best friend and wrestle with the subsequent turmoil. The essential twist, though, is that the trio wonder what they can do to bring their pal back or, at the very least, reconvene with him, so that their friendship does not end with mortality.” Magic, Alive! is riven with refreshing, lush and off-beat tunes and brought to life through McKinley’s glowing bars that are existential, investigative and constantly asking “What is it that keeps magic alive for you?”
Stella Donnelly – Love and Fortune
The songs on Love and Fortune gnawed away at Stella Donnelly; they wouldn’t leave her alone, they had to be written. They distil the sheer depth of her songwriting, the recognition that sometimes less is more, the purity of her voice, which can turn tiny moments and subtle shifts in a day into ones that can eventually change a life. It’s also proof that sometimes taking your time can offer rewards. It’s a sterling showcase for her indefinable ability to turn trauma into triumph, the feeling of being lost into finding yourself again, one note at a time.
Momma – Welcome to my Blue Sky
There is a charmingly diaristic-meets-travelogue quality to Welcome to my Blue sky, which, given its widescreen scope, is quite a feat to pull off. Written by twin singer/songwriter/guitarists, Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, on acoustic guitars and fleshed out with their band during “parallel chaos”, these duelling and heart-on-the-sleeve vocal melodies that reflect on love, loss and personal growth, are wrapped in refreshingly delivered alternative tunes. Fused to catchy sun-kissed hooks, fuzz box riffing, freewheeling percussion and the deft push and pull of intricate dynamics that remind one of the Celebrity Skin era Hole, or the bold emotive clarity of Belly, the bristling hooks of the Breeders, but firmly stamped with Momma’s imprint. It’s more confessional and more revealing than their debut album; their songwriting has only grown, and their second offering could be a sleeper hit of 2025, and we are fully invested in the journey and along for the ride.
FKA Twigs – Eusexua
FKA twigs says Eusexua is a state of being. A feeling of momentary transcendence often evoked by art, music, sex, and unity. Eusexua can be followed by a state of bliss and feelings of limitless possibility. That feeling of being untethered runs through this forward looking album influenced by her time spent in Prague’s techno scene. Her ethereal vocals tip toeing across a weightless title track that pulses and stretches, smothering you in this enveloping ode to celebration of rising above. ‘Perfect Stranger’ is hyperpop disassembled and reshaped into a sleek infectious track that ripples with hooks and simmers with an attraction to the dark side. The exquisite ‘Keep it, Hold it’ is intoxicating, the push and pull of yearning for touch and connection and rejecting it. Eusexua is the sound of Twigs set creatively free, and is arguably her best record yet.
The Beths – Straight Line Was A Lie
The Beths have always excelled at tunes brimming with hooks and deft. bittersweet melodies, but Straight Line Was a Lie, found front person Elizabeth Stokes producing her sharpest and most revealing set yet, following the diagnosis of Graves disease. She tackles mental health struggles on the catchy ‘No Joy’ that details anhedonia and the side effects of antidepressants. While the brilliant lead single ‘Metal’ brings to mind fellow New Zealanders like the Chills and the Clean, or the jangle pop sound of early R.E.M. Stokes began writing after a period of rigorous touring and health issues both mental and physical. Straight Line Was A Lie might be their best album yet, and its baffling how it has been overlooked on so many end-of-year lists!
Hatchie – Liquorice
Hatchie, the project of Australian singer-songwriter Harriette Pilbeam, she returned with Liquorice, this year refining the swooning sound of her early records. The shimmering and addictive first single from the album, ‘Lose It Again’. Co-written with Jeremy McLennan (Orchin), her dreamy, bittersweet melodies radiate an open heart framed in hook-laden jangle-pop crescendos underpinned by nimble baselines. The keening choruses distil the conflicted emotions of waiting for someone you have feelings for to commit. ‘Carousel’ is absolutely wonderful laden with shimmering Chapterhouse style guitars and a swooping melody It harks back to her earlier work and hints at the likes of The Sundays or The Cranberries, but with a defiant pop sheen that can sit on FM radio alongside artists like Olivia Rodrigo, most of all its Hatchie doing what she does best remoulding dream pop and transcending the boundaries to write simply gorgeous songs that reside with a heart on her sleeve.
Suede – Antidepressants
Proving yet again that they are the comeback kings, Antidepressants in many ways is Suede‘s companion piece to their Autofiction album. ‘Disintegrate’ is primal, throbbing and restless track, incorporating elements of goth, new wave and yes, the sounds of the late 70s and 80s. With scalpel-like guitars, switching from howl to spoken word it rattles with a disquiet at the world, the anxiety at everything falling apart, the planet with ecological disaster, society, the disconnection of humanity through technology, and even our own bodies. ‘Dancing with the European’s spirals across continents with a widescreen open-hearted ambition and romance, while ‘June Rain’ is a haunting and wistful ballad that Suede can still pull off so exquisitely; the chorus is grand and swelling with affection.
Brett Anderson described Antidepressants as broken music for broken people that seeks human connection. It returns to enduring Suede themes, we might be broken but we are broken together.
SPELLING – Portrait of my heart
On Tia Cabral’s fourth album as SPELLLING, Portrait of My Heart, she produces her best work yet, bristling with a tapestry of sound that seamlessly blends genres in its portrait, turning the mirror on herself, tackling love, intimacy, anxiety, and alienation, “pointed into my human heart..” The title track is exquisitely drawn, drums twitch, guitars nag, and Cabral’s vocal swoop as a storm of strings spiral toward the heavens. “I don’t belong here” she sings with sensitivity and supernatural power in the arms of a thunderous crescendo that is the sound of flying through a wormhole, embodying the push and pull of intimacy and the white hot need for tactile touch and rejection, the thirst for human company and the still need for isolation, all at once it’s an awesome alt- pop song. Diverse collaborations are all incorporated seamlessly into the album; they feel like part of its inner world. The sweeping ‘Destiny arrived’ aches with elements echoing 90s r&b and pop, but is punctured by Cabral’s lucid and captivating melodies. Portrait of my Heart’ paints a vivid picture of Cabral as a fascinating artist, and it sounds just marvellous.
Blondshell – If You Asked For A Picture
Two years on from Sabrina Teitelbaum’s (aka Blondshell) self-titled 2023 debut album that turned trauma into tragedy and Blondshell into a confessional indie flagbearer. The follow up If You Asked For A Picture expands her vision to craft a record that burrows deeper into autobiography, and hits harder, delivering wide-screen, anthems built for bigger stages, infused with emotive potency and packing big riffs like punches, if anything it tops her debut and banishes the idea of the difficult second album.
ESKA – The Ordinary Life of a Magic Woman
Whilst her self-titled 2015 record might have been nominated for the Mercury Prize, ESKA has spent time collaborating and experimenting with the boundaries of noise and her voice. She sounds fully in her power and as happy in her skin, freewheeling, embracing her whole self, and pushing her art form as far as she can.
ESKA has sculpted her sound, pushing the boundaries of Afrofuturism, industrial pop, alternative rock, soul, R&B, and jazz. Its narrative examines dual lives, of women as mothers and providers, and the delicate dance between daily rhythms and creative transcendence. She has shaped a sonic tapestry that’s abrasive, challenging and arresting all at once. ESKA’s most diverse, experimental, thrilling and best work yet!
Nightbus – Passenger
Nightbus are vocalist Olive Rees and her partner in crime Jake Cottier. They were birthed in the hinterlands where Manchester’s city pulse meets Stockport’s outer realm where “blue pill meets red, ups become downs, and day merges with night.” On Passenger they craft sleek songs built upon loops, synths and samples flecked with the influence of the 90s from New York Dance floors, ghostly 80s synth and new wave sounds, also mining the North West lineage of Factory Records and the Hacienda, there is a precision to this pulse that ripples with a bricolage that is all of these influences, but its a nowhere place that sounds resolutely like them. A soundscape imbued with humanity by Olive Rees whose weightless and beguiling vocals embody characters that brood with unspoken trauma, just beneath the surface
100%Wet – 100%Wet
The Copenhagen duo 100%Wet consists of producer/guitarists Casper Munns and Jakob Birch who formed the group, when they met at the Conservatory of Copenhagen (RMC). They describe their sound as “hypergaze”: a celestial bricolage of sounds that follows in the slipstream of adventurous pop purveyors such as Magdalena Bay, My Bloody Valentine or M83, it takes you for a spin with mind moulding music that whilst clearly influenced by the last forty years of pop music is layered in intricate gleaming gaze pop, trip hop beats and luscious melodies. Each one is woven, into its futuristic textures, so despite the influences, you can’t see the joins, it sounds resolutely unique and refreshing, like a gleaming comet bursting across the horizon.
Superstar Crush – Way Too Much
In this era where new band campaigns are gamed out by label executives in suits, where stats are defining who gets signed and who doesn’t, it’s so bloody refreshing to hear a gang of kids just doing what they want to do. Superstar Crush are an exciting Canadian four-piece group fresh out of school, that pack a melodic punch. Their debut album Way Too Much is pleasingly live and DIY sounding with all the raw and pointy edges left, in an era where a lot of guitar music has those smoothed off. It’s a tangle of addictive melodies about the push and pull of falling in and out of love and jumping headfirst into young life, riven with big fizzy hooks shout along girl/boy melodies. It rattles with the memory of indie bands such as Broken Social Scene, Los Campesinos, and the offbeat pop of the B-52s , but ultimately just sounds like a gang of youngsters having a riot, as they document their pitfalls and their growth and face them head on with gusto.
Laura-Mary Carter – Bye Bye Jackie
“Bye Bye Jackie marks a bold creative shift for Carter, showcasing a more introspective and personal side to her artistry. Written between hotel rooms and quiet nights at home, the album was recorded in Hackney with producers Oscar Robertson (sholto) and David Bardon (Sunglasses for Jaws), known for their experimental edge and genre-defying work. Carter’s lyrics are filled with dry wit and emotional depth, matched by production that evokes lo-fi indie, vintage soul, and late-night introspection.”‘
‘Four Letter Words’ sashays and sways but has a sting in the tale; Carter’s withering delivery laced with sweetness and skewering dry wit, threading this strutting, hooky song, it skilfully captures the contradictions at the heart of love, its beauty, absurdity, and volatility. A clear departure from Blood Red Shoes’ electric intensity, ‘June Gloom’ finds Carter navigating melancholia in a phone call croon; it’s a moment of late-night contemplation smudged with wit and steeped in Americana beneath the flickering neon lights.
Madi Diaz – Fatal Optimism
Fatal Optimist is Diaz stripped bare, alone in a room with her acoustic guitar, motifs cycling underneath as the words pour out, it’s poignant and healing; the simplicity of each recording adds to the bare and honest nature of these songs. ‘Heavy Metal’ is consumed with self-reflection; it hangs heavy with pain, it’s an excavation as each strum and line reveals another brutal truth to herself. There is also anger here “my toxic trait is hanging on/your toxic trait is showing up” she sings on ‘Why’d You Have to Bring Me Flowers’ comes to terms with the feeling that when your love interest saying the right things is like a sticking plaster to a gaping wound. While she calls herself the “queen of silver linings” on ‘Good Liar’ as she learns to see through the she tells herself, peeling back those rose-tinted glasses, her habit to see the good even when it’s actually bad, to respect her own boundaries as someone offers her the crumbs off the table. It’s a form of therapy.
Emily Breeze – Rats in Paradise
RATS IN PARADISE is grounded in Emily Breeze‘s noirish tales of a life well lived as a hopeless romantic, dreamer and degenerate, an artist with a rare insight and fascinating depth. Her fearless suite of kick ass songs backed by: Rob Norbury, Andy Sutor, Helen Stanley and George Caveney and producer Stew Jackson help her frame her sketches from the margins and eye for the faintly ridiculousness of it all. Emily Breeze and her band prove that longevity and craft still bear fruit, in the fascinating details that can make music magical, that we still cling to or take us out of ourselves when the world around us is going to hell. Most of all, it proves we may be in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
The Cords – The Cords
The Cords, released their brilliant, self-titled debut album in September through Skep Wax and Slumberland. It’s one of the best sleeper hits of 2025; it’s a indie pop gem from start to finish. Comprising sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi from Greenock in Scotland, they started playing drums when they were little kids. They found that they liked ’80s and ’90s indie music more than their peers did, and so formed a band, just the two of them, with Grace on drums and Eva on guitar – and the songs started to flow.
Produced by Jonny Scott and Simon Liddel, their debut LP respects the band’s stripped-down DIY approach. There is the brilliantly hooky first single ‘Fabulist‘ that echoes the best of C86 with breezy drums and jangly guitars and call-and-response melodies; it sounds really upbeat but is actually about a big fat liar. ‘Vera’ that struts with the sass of Lush or Kenickie while the distorted riffing and introspective lyrics of ‘You’ has echoes of early gaze jiving with the Shop Assistants. While I’M NOT SAD’ is a short hooky blast of delightfully bittersweet jangle pop that has hints of early Camera Obscura and ’60s girl groups. A musical conversation that’s dreamy, joyous, and very personal. There is much to fall in love with here.
Nia Wyn – Pleasure To Have In Class
Nia Wyn‘s songs are scorched with personal experiences and framed in a soul-inspired sound anchored in her love of Northern Soul, and the releases coming out of Philadelphia, Memphis and Detroit in the 60s and 70s. Growing up in a small town in North Wales, Nia struggled with mental illness, isolation and confusion around her identity, taking solace in old records she found and playing guitar in her room.
Her brilliant debut album Pleasure To Have In Class showcases Nia’s strong influences of mid-century soul, but shot through with a modern twist. Wyn’s vivid storytelling and reflective lyricism is framed in Motown and Stax-inspired arrangements dashed with bountiful brass and soul melodies, her unmistakable vocals, are laced with emotive power and a cry for understanding. Nia writes, produces and sings songs about modern issues: being queer, the hard times young people face in the UK, mental health and neurodivergence.
Loius O’Hara – A Peaceful Kind of Fun
A Peaceful Kind of Fun is a gorgeous debut album from Louis O’Hara released on Libertino Records, ripe with yearning, whimsy and charm. It depicts an artist with rare songwriting depth. A fourteen track collection that distils West Walian O’Hara’s poetic lyricism, tender folk sound, and subtle chamber-pop flourishes into a deeply personal yet quietly universal debut that echoes the likes of Bill Callahan, and Paul Mcartney solo. Highlights include the wistful and tender ‘Just Grand’, while ‘Magpie’ is one of my tracks of the year. Recorded with his band His Burley Chassis and produced by James Trevascus (Billy Nomates, Young Fathers, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis) in Spain, the album is shaped by themes of memory, loss, joy, and the places and people that anchor a life.
Wolf Alice – The Clearing
When critics previewed the new Wolf Alice album The Clearing some dubbed it ‘soft rock’ (whatever that means),;some fans were surprised. But it contains some of their best work so far, there’s a real maturity and elegance to these arrangements and it also shows just how much Ellie Rowsell has grown as a singer and songwriter.
First single ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ sounds so confident, cartwheels with theatricality, excellent vocals and spinning percussion. But arguably it’s in the more sedate moments that The Clearing excells most. Absolutely lush, ‘The Sofa’ became one of my most played tracks of the year, meditatively on boredom, life and female desire “I wanna settle down/I want to fall in love/sometimes I just want to fuck” . Her vocal performance is exquisite, and the harmonies spiral to the heavens; the instrumentation is richly drawn, framed in airy strings, and layered with dappling pianos. There is a self-awareness sailing through these words where our dreams meet reality, where our hopes meet our fears, it’s both wistful and life-affirming at once. While the plaintive pianos and tender vocals of ‘Play It out’ is meditative and self-aware in a way many songwriters aren’t. American publications may be obsessed with the latest indie rock thing in the states, Wolf Alice had just proved there was reason to look to Seven Sisters rather than LA too….
Real Lies -We Will Annihilate
According to Real Lies, We Will Annihilate is “about taking the hand of someone you love intensely and running headlong into the chaos and noise and grinding forces that dominate modern life. “ In striving to find that connection to find yourself again, Real Lies produce their most vivid and immersive set yet, and that’s saying something. Lyricist, Kevin Lee Kharas, and producer, Patrick King create a world that melds element of techno, house and electronica and puts you at centre of the dance floors as the lights come on and details 3am tube rides home, searching for those moments of ecstasy, then exploring the come down. Loverboy is a certified banger, while ‘Wild Sign I choose you‘ evocatively examines youth culture and what we have lost against a neon backdrop. Kharas says “I wanted the songs on WWAOE to confront modern reality head-on, unflinching,” he explains. “I didn’t want to whine about a lost past. I didn’t want nostalgia. I wanted to learn to love the modern world, with all its horrors and futility.”
horsegirl – Phonetics On and On
Phonetics On And On was produced with Cate Le Bon in horsegirl‘s Chicago basement studio during the winter of 2024, it’s their best work yet. Eschewing the denser noise pop found on their debut album and distil their sound down to its constituent parts, offering clarity, minimalism and playfulness. The trio of Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein and Gigi Reece moved away from the fuzz pedals, their sound is filled with new tools that bring this world to life: violins, synths, gamelan tiles, to marked effect.
‘2468’ is a minimal, pin-sharp track that pairs lockstep rhythmic chants with rattling percussion. it brims with playful experimentation. Raincoats-like violin parts, building stealthily towards a head-spinning motorik crescendo, that echoes early Velvet Underground. ‘Switch Over’ rattles along the tracks with chugging metallic strum and twitchy drums, flipping the breezy melodies. ‘Where’d you go’ tumbles down stairs, spiralling with three-pronged vocals and jangling like early Talking Heads, bristling with a tunefulness that you can’t deny. This trio produced a kinetic record that shows off their ability to grow, vital and pointed that shows a nimble harmonic touch.
Gelli Haha – Switcheroo
Gelli Haha’s shape-shifting single debut album Switcheroo, is like falling through a wormhole of the entire history of popular music and journeying down a hall of mirrors. The tip-toeing analogue synths that remind one of early OMD or the work of Delia Derbyshire are moulded into giddy, witty, and surrealist pop music. Its nagging, bricolage of skittery beats and sounds is at once familiar and nostalgic, yet bristlingly unique. It oscillates somewhere between the fantasy adventurousness of Magadelena Bay, with dramatic, silly yet serious delivery that has echoes of Kate Bush, pirouetting, swooping and whispering in your ear. Described as “A Zero-G Pop Detour Between Studio 54 & Area 51” and it somehow lives up to that billing.
Rialto – Neon & Ghost Signs
Rialto released their first album in twenty-four years, Neon & Ghost Signs this year, it tapped into themes around the different sides of love, the cost of hedonism and the fleeting nature of life. It’s also an evolution in sound for the group. Opening with ‘No One Leaves This Discotheque Alive’, a hooky, hip-swaying, rippling disco cut juxtaposed by his frayed, narrative Jacques Brel-style growl as Eliot casts himself “the hound of London town, where the sheets are stained with gold” , out to “lose my head” and find love “in a perfect storm”. The influence of disco and soul, and the music of the 1970s and the varied sounds that make up his record collection from his youth to today are also littered throughout the album. From the night-time prowl of the opening track, to the shimmering synths of the title track, and the nods to the trademark funky guitars of Nile Rodgers on ‘Cherry’, and the sounds of Abba on ‘Put you on Hold.’
Listen to Jim Auton and I talking about our songs and albums of the year here:
