My 2025 10-best list is heavy on storytelling songwriters of all stripes, from country to rock to hip-hop to dance-pop.
The Brooklyn band that is hyped as the future of rock is on it, as is the Spanish visionary who’s making outrageously ambitious classical-pop music that isn’t cringe, and a rising Philly band whose wildcat energy is infectious.
And hopefully a few surprises along the way.
Scroll to the bottom for a Spotify playlist to sample the Top Ten, and 10 more from the honorable mentions list.
10. Florry, “Sounds Like …”
Francie Medosch’s roiling Philly-born band is alive with roadhouse energy on its third album, which injects swagger and self confidence into a gleeful attack that builds on 2023’s The Holey Bible. Medosch, who grew up in Berwyn and currently lives in Vermont, infuses Sounds Like … with a locomotive drive that kicks into gear immediately on “First it was a movie, then it was a book.”
Quiet idylls such as “Dip Myself in a River Like an Ice Cream Cone” are welcome, but Florry feels most at home on death defying escapades like “Truck Flipped Over ’19.”
9. PinkPantheress, “Fancy That!”
This hook-filled second album by British songwriter and producer born Victoria Beverley Walker gets the nod from me over West End Girl, the headline-grabbing release by Lily Allen, Walker’s most pronounced influence. West End Girl, which appears to target Allen’s ex David Harbour with philandering allegations shared in forensic detail, is the more lurid listen.
Fancy That! employs a similar musical approach — skittering drum n‘ bass beats, buoyant melodies, light as a feather spoken-sung vocals — but to convey the kick of new romance in the big city.
8. Clipse, “Let God Sort Em Out”
It’s been 16 years since the last album by the Virginia Beach duo of Terence “Pusha T” Thornton and brother Gene “Malice” Thornton. Malice became “No Malice” while making gospel rap, while Pusha carried on with the hard-hitting street tales the brothers are once again excelling at.
Let God Sort Em Out was produced by Pharrell Williams, and its clean sound and exacting rhymes carry a whiff of nostalgia on songs like “The Birds Don’t Sing” and “All Things Considered,” as the Thorntons mourn their late parents.
7. James McMurtry, “The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy”
These nine originals plus a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Broken Freedom Song” reaffirm McMurtry’s stature at the top of the rich tradition of Texas songwriters. (A great one was lost this past week with the death of Joe Ely.)
The album finds McMurtry railing against getting old in “South Texas Lawman” and chronicling the life of a musician on the road without sentimentality on “Back to Coeur d’Alene.” “Sons of the Second Sons” is a snarling, timely protest song partly inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
6. Dijon, “Baby”
Producer and singer Dijon Duenas, a Met Philly headliner and SNL music guest in the past month, emerged as one of the stars of 2025 with his exuberant and deliciously unpredictable second album. The Washington native, who has a costarring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, is a close collaborator with Mk.Gee, the South Jersey musician featured on Baby.
They both also appear on two of the year’s high profile releases: Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable and Justin Bieber’s Swag. Baby is a never-dull shape-shifting listen that, at its best, earns the highest praise: It sounds kinda like Prince.
5. Rosalía, “Lux”
Lux is, without question, the most ambitious and daring album on this list. Not just because its classical-pop mix is a 180-degree about-face from Rosalía’s hyperkinetic dance music on 2022’s Motomami. It’s also an exalted exploration of the feminine and divine, inspired by a host of saints including Clare of Assisi, Joan of Arc, and Hildegard of Bingen. It includes a Bjork cameo, a Patti Smith sample, and sharp words for the Catalan visionary’s ex-fiance Rauw Alejandro.
Amid operatic aspirations and backing by the London Symphony Orchestra, Lux contains elements of hip-hop, reggaeton, and electronica. Though it can be enjoyed for its musical pleasures alone, you get more out of it depending on how much you put in. Rosalía sings in 14 different languages. 14! So if you’re not quite that multilingual yourself, a lyric translation site is essential.
4. Geese, “Getting Killed”
Geese isn’t for everybody. (For something that goes down easier, try Goose.) Cameron Winter, the band’s lead vocalist, warbles unprettily as the Brooklyn band’s fourth album gets underway, immediately working his way into a panic. “There’s a bomb in my car!” he shouts, while accompanied by experimental rapper JPEGMAFIA on vocals.
The young band of the moment — all members are 23 — rides an uneasy groove. Bursts of noise reflect the anxiety of the age. In a recent sold-out show at Union Transfer — they could have easily filled a room twice as large — the band was locked in and in tune with the crowd to an extraordinary degree. “I have no idea where I’m going,” Winter sang, in the midst of thrilling adventure. “Here I come!”
3. Craig Finn, “Always Been”
The Hold Steady frontman has released five solo albums but none so fully realized — or Philly-connected — as this one. It’s a narratively linked set about a Harrisburg priest who loses faith and attempts to reset his life on the Delaware shore. Adam Granduciel of Philly’s the War On Drugs produces and brings a trademark cascading sound while always keeping the focus on Finn’s sharply detailed real life stories. “Luke and Leanna” is a masterclass in understated heart break.
2. Wednesday, “Bleeds”
“Wound Up Here (By Holding On)” is a standout track on the superb sixth album by the North Carolina band Wednesday. It starts off like a Southern gothic short story, with a dead body dragged out of a river. Appropriate enough, since the Karly Hatzman-led band’s blend of country-leaning Americana and shoegaze has been labeled “creek rock.”
“Wound Up Here” also works as a testament to perseverance in the face of hardship, or heartbreak. The latter is in play throughout Bleeds as Hartzman and the band’s guitarist MJ Lenderman — whose Manning Fireworks topped best-of lists last year — split up during the making of the album.
Saddest line, in retrospect: “I wanna have your baby, because I freckle and you tan.” Funniest jam band-dissing line: “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede, two things I now wish I had never seen.”
… And finally, 1. Tyler Childers, “Snipe Hunter”
Tyler Childers’ country-ness is as unmistakable as his pungent Kentucky twang. His sound oozes Appalachian authenticity, but he’s also a freewheeling spirit who flouts convention. He spoke out in support of Black Lives Matter with his 2020 album A Long Violent History and used his 2023 single “In Your Love” to tell a love story about gay coal miners.
At the core of Childers’ Rick Rubin-produced seventh album is “Nose on the Gridstone” a haunting blues about evading addiction. “Oneida” is a tender romance between an earnest teenage suitor and a woman old enough to buy a bottle of wine. Childers has fun chomping down on his enemies on “Bitin’ List” and, spiritual seeker that he is, dreams of traveling to India in “Tirtha Yatra” to further explore the ways the Bhagavad Gita “changed me metaphysically.”
My album of the year.
Honorable Mentions: Lily Allen, West End Girl; Alex G., Headlights; Belair Lip Bombs, Again; Hannah Cohen, Earthstar Mountain; Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, New Threats From the Soul; Mekons, Horror; Snocaps, Snocaps, They Are Gutting A Body of Water, Lotto; Jeff Tweedy, Twilight Override; Hayley Williams, Ego Death at a Bacholerette Party.
