The Best Albums of 2025 So Far
So far, 2025 has been a massive year for music, filled with seemingly endless new drops from top artists. Every New Music Friday, we look at the biggest albums, singles, or EPs released each week. The following list takes a look at the best albums shared to this point, as the world hits the midway mark of 2025.
The Best Albums of 2025 So Far:
Addison Rae – Addison
Addison Rae is the most modern girl in music. She’s released her debut album Addison, having already amassed tens of millions of monthly listeners from her singles alone. The TikTok and media sensation turned pop icon’s first album is not only one of the most anticipated records out this year–it’s also one of the most fun.
There is great speculation as to whether or not Addison is the only full-length record Rae will ever share. Rae’s website even states under each available physical copy of Addison that it is “the first and last album by Addison Rae.” Whether first and last or latest and greatest, it’s a memorable mark on pop culture that has quite literally been a half decade in the making. Addison Rae is having a moment and she’s certain to have many more. Time will tell if the rest are music related.
Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong
In 2025, Black Country, New Road deliver Forever Howlong, their first studio album with an Isaac Wood-less lineup. All three girls in the band—Tyler Hyde, May Kershaw and Georgia Ellery (from Jockstrap)—are lead vocalists. A bearded Charlie Wayne plays drums, Lewis Evans is on horns and Luke Mark plays guitar.
Forever Howlong is a different BC,NR album than the band has ever released, though it’s not a far-cry from the others (don’t tell chronically online fans and Reddit lurkers). The studio sound is more polished, the pomp and circumstance don’t quite hit cartoonish—and the band is overall more mature than ever. There are still breakdowns that sound straight out of vaudeville and references to being a queer person in this late-stage world, but it’s overall cleaner and upright. It’s this BC,NR that will carry the group’s legacy from here on out. Fans can continue to appreciate what’s already out there, but this is the BC,NR that will continue doing things together, forever.
Blondshell – If You Asked For A Picture
On Valentine’s Day 2023, Partisan Records employees made a love-themed Spotify playlist featuring the label’s artists—including rookie signee Blondshell. Partisan included her song “Kiss City,” a single with godly lyrics like “Look me in the eye when I’m about to finish” and “I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty.” The song was crunched between tracks from established Partisan Records’ bands like Cigarettes After Sex and IDLES. “Kiss City” soon appeared on Blondshell’s self-titled debut album, but not before becoming a meme, all while other songs like “Sepsis” gained popularity among indie fans. Blondshell even performed “Salad” on The Tonight Show. How could she follow that quick of a rise to alt-music fame? By releasing an even bigger record called If You Asked For A Picture.
Blondshell’s second full-length record proves that the artist, whose real name is Sabrina Teitelbaum, wasn’t just spitting lyrical quips as a one-off. She’s still filled with them, though she’s shouting words in a more serious tone on If You Asked For A Picture. On lead single “T&A,” Blondshell discusses a situation with a close guy friend, one she shares a bond with in the way some women may with their girlfriends. When she changes her clothes in front of this man, he makes a comment about her undressing and possibly admits his attraction to her. Blondshell presses to know why he wants to be more than friends. She then tells the rest of the story with her masterful writing.
Blondshell is already well established in the music world. Now she’s legitimized as a major player in it. If You Asked For A Picture is a big leap forward in her career; The record is a snapshot of what great rock in 2025 sounds like.
Bon Iver – SABLE fABLE
Justin Vernon is one of the most admired artists of the 21st Century. The Bon Iver ringleader has received that honor by being very fastidious. See, it’s taken six years for Vernon and co. to release SABLE fABLE, the first full-length Bon Iver record since i,i.
Vernon is very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail in his productions. But even with that strictness, he still gets loose by going on a genre-bending journey, adding exciting artists to feature on his tracks–despite some thinking he picked some of those musicians’ names from a hat. This shows a new sense of maturity for an already seasoned act. Bon Iver is a group so confident in their ability to mix albums that they can now get even more creative without sacrificing quality. SABLE fABLE is a showcase of recorded music with a cast pulled together by its likeliest hero: Justin Vernon, the music world’s point person for high quality productions.
Djo – The Crux
It’s possible Djo is the most well-liked multidisciplinary artist today. When he’s not dropping solo albums that strike the heart, he’s the actor Joe Keery from Stranger Things and the upcoming Pavement biopic (Don’t forget he was in Chicago prog-rock band Post Animal). Now with the release of his new record The Crux, Djo feels like he’s mostly known for his adored displays of musicianship.
Djo now has countless resources available to him. He’s stopped recording songs in his bedroom. The Crux was laid down at the storied Electric Lady Studios in New York. That development allows this record to feel powerful, just like Djo’s presence in pop-culture. The Crux feels like a defining moment for Djo’s artistry. Whatever problem Djo named this album after, he’s seemed to have solved it.
FKA twigs – EUSEXUA
The immediate hook on FKA twigs third studio album, her first in six years, is that she writes sophisticated lyrics about common life situations and props them on a stage of innovative beats and dance music. The English songwriter and dancer speaks in approachable terms on EUSEXUA. She whispers, “Beautiful boys, I wish you knew how precious you are,” in an auto-tuned voice at the beginning of “Girl Feels Good.” A vibey, dancy beat gradually streams underneath until it explodes into a full-blown leathery bass sounding vibe. “When a girl feels good, it makes the world go ’round // When the night feels young, you know she feels pretty.” Songs like this are commonplace across this record, but they take different forms.
FKA twigs is clearly unafraid to expand on concepts and turn them into larger ideas. That kind of evolution for an artist who’s already spent more than a decade transforming her genre’s landscape is incredible, and so are all 11 tracks on EUSEXUA. This album deserves consideration as this decade’s best dance album.
HAIM – I Quit
The Haim sisters are back. Este, Danielle and Alana Haim found themselves all single for the first time in a long time while making their new album I Quit, and they wrote about looking back with equal parts vengeance and guilt.
Danielle Haim shared that I Quit has a pretty severe concentration on explaining why the sisters split off from their relationships. The group got in the studio with their collaborator Rostam Batmanglij and put together a rock record that sounds like the band Haim have always been on stage, along with all the more personal declarations of indie-pendence. Haim have quit relationships, but have no plans to quit making impactful pop and rock.
Hotline TNT – Raspberry Moon
Hotline TNT have been sharing their shoegazey brand of hopeful songs since 2018. The band–which has been primarily led by musician Will Anderson–has taken many shapes and forms in these seven years. Anderson self recorded several EPs and albums, always enlisting different instrumentalists to make up the touring acts of Hotline TNT.
Hotline TNT is a band with great studio records and an exciting live presence. Raspberry Moon is setting the stage for another big run for the band, which will be touring extensively again throughout 2025. This time around, there’s a great chance for the group to make fans somehow even happier with their live performances, given the promise of this hopeful sliver of shoegaze music.
Japanese Breakfast – For Melancholy Brunettes (and Sad Women)
Japanese Breakfast delivered 2025’s first major music announcement this January when the mega popular band, lead by the perennially talented Michelle Zauner, unveiled plans for their new album For Melancholy Brunettes (and Sad Women). Lead single “Orlando In Love” was the band’s first release in almost four years. It’s a song themed around people, often men, who find themselves seduced by temptation and are duly punished for it. It instantly became this year’s first “on-repeat” song.
Now Zauner is back in New York City with a new record and a year of fresh horizons awaiting. Regardless of hair color, gender (or lack thereof), Japanese Breakfast has unlocked new boundaries on their new album, just like they opened doors on their first record Psychopomp, each release after, and hopefully, from now until whenever.
Julien Baker and TORRES – Send A Prayer My Way
Cowboys are supposed to ride alone, but Julien Baker and TORRES aren’t your usual bunch of bandits. That’s perhaps why the two superstars have joined forces, gone country and released the new album Send A Prayer My Way. This record (not that record) is the first Baker has released since that record and the first from TORRES since her early 2024 hit What an enormous room. But this story goes back further than those iconic LPs. Baker and TORRES have been scheming up this album since 2016 when they first performed a live show together. Now at long last, the pair have released a collaborative record. Partners? Partners.
Baker and TORRES have many commonalities as both humans and musicians. They are both queer people with Southern American upbringings. They are both recording artists influenced by the country genre. Their energy, when combined into one force, is like a prayer or hymn given to the masses: it’s simultaneously beautiful and self-aware. Man is like Julien Baker and TORRES, except Julien Baker and TORRES have guts, guitars and horses.
Lady Gaga – Mayhem
Lady Gaga has let nearly two decades worth of aura drive the anticipation for her sixth album Mayhem. It’s been five years since her last record Chromatica, which is the longest stretch Gaga has gone between solo studio albums in her lustrous career. That’s also ramped up hype. Not that Gaga’s gone awol between now and 2020, she certainly hasn’t. She’s acted in films and built a larger cult following along the way. As Gaga now can openly declare, for better or worse, she’s a “Perfect Celebrity.” On Mayhem, Gaga has now lived enough to have an even harsher edge towards the entertainment industry, get more daring with her performance art and pageantry, making her somehow an even larger than life figure than the singer who wrote “Born This Way” 14 years ago.
Gaga is one the greatest pop artists of the 21st century. She has always grown but maintained her Gaga-like composure. See, she can only be compared to herself, even when other stars are at her side. “Die With a Smile,” her duet with Bruno Mars, appears at the tail-end of Mayhem, the last in a closing trifecta of songs that give in to her predilection for dramatic balladry. This level of glory is a tricky thing to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain. No one knows that more than Gaga. Even with all the Mayhem, here she is proving that all it takes to be successful for so long is to trust your instincts and be yourself.
Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs Out
Lambrini Girls are a loud band from Brighton, UK. They’re angry about cops, workplaces, men and filthy rich nepo babies. They sing with discontent about most mainstream subjects and male-trope attitudes like BDE on their new debut LP Who Let The Dogs Out. Lambrini Girls singer/guitarist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Marcieira bark out a lifetime’s worth of built-up ruthless aggression across this 29-minute album.
Lorde – Virgin
It’s been four years since Lorde’s last studio album Solar Power, a record that pivoted away from the singer’s usual musical formula. On Virgin, the now 28-year-old performer is leaning into the newest and freshest standout production techniques in pop music. Lorde has openly discussed being influenced by her friend Charli xcx, making this a certified mid-2020s pop album: it’s loud, beat-forward and filled with one liners. While Virgin doesn’t exactly feel innovative, it does feel like the right record for Lorde to release right now.
Lorde is letting the world see a lot of her right now. She doesn’t owe that to anyone. Regardless, she has spoken about her regrets in music, what visions she has for the present and future and has somehow become more candid than ever before. Virgin may not be a masterpiece in creative songwriting, but maybe Lorde never meant for it to be. Perhaps she just wanted to express herself freely in all the ways she sees fit–and she’s accomplished that.
Lucy Dacus – Forever Is a Feeling
There is something about Lucy Dacus’ aura that is undeniably Lucy. There’s a mysteriousness in performing at haunted museums, a sleek coolness to being one third of the boys in boygenius and something even cooler about being in a queer relationship with one of those boys. But there’s something else so subtly pleasant about her voice, instrumental giftedness and lyrical relatability that makes Dacus feel different than other rockstars. Whatever it is, it’s encapsulated within the new album Forever Is a Feeling.
This record is in many ways different from prior Dacus offerings, but it manages to dig her lore even deeper. An artist’s stylistic changes often stem from the idea they should push themselves forward, and it feels that Dacus is embracing a new era with sensitivity, but never shyness. She’s somehow more open than ever before. Listen closely and it’s there in Forever Is a Feeling.
Miley Cyrus – Something Beautiful
Miley Cyrus has finally shared her highly-teased and highly-anticipated ninth studio record, Something Beautiful. It’s probably the most experimental album Cyrus has ever shared–but it’s still very much a pop LP. This go around, Cyrus has decided to draw influences from the freeform pop music of the 70’s and 80’s. This record rocks and touches on psychedelic vibes at times. It’s the most “all over the place” release of her career and that also places it among the most interesting. While not a “career left turn” by any means, the different courses Cyrus takes on throughout Something Beautiful forces listeners to stay very attentive.
The reason for these song lengths and psychedelic direction? The Wall by Pink Floyd. It’s no-doubt one of the most influential albums ever–and it’s cast its prism on Cyrus. “My idea was to remake The Wall, but with a better wardrobe, more glamour, and full of pop culture,” Cyrus told Harper’s Bazaar earlier this year. Whether or not that vision comes to life remains to be seen–however, pop culture is bigger and better than it was in the 70s. It’s safe to say the majority of Cyrus’ fans would rather have her rendition of an artistic masterpiece. That’s why she’s delivered with Something Beautiful.
Perfume Genius – Glory
Is there another American-born singer so invested in nailing vocal performances on rock songs the way Perfume Genius is? Seeing as he had to tap New Zealand’s unbelievably talented Aldous Harding to accompany him on his latest album Glory, the answer is “hardly.” Perfume Genius, whose real name is Mike Hadreas, is a product of the baroque-pop musical style that knows no boundaries. The most notable people of this sort (other than Hadreas and Harding) are Welsh singer Cate Le Bon, English producer John Parrish and Parquet Courts’ ex-pat singer A. Savage. Perfume Genius is an anomaly. There are few examples of modern well-known artists portraying obscurity in instrumentation and sorrow in lyricism than he.
At first blush, Glory is almost a discouraging listen. Its soft, slightly psychedelic folk pop is deceptively thorny and dense. Take the strummingly-rugged tune “It’s a Mirror.” You have to learn how to listen to it, like how high schoolers decipher Shakespearean English. Once you discover how to enjoy Glory, it’s one of 2025s best overall albums.
Rebecca Black – SALVATION
It’s 2025 and Rebecca Black, yes, that Rebecca Black, is holding a glitter-casted gun on the cover of her new album SALVATION. For those not in the know, Black isn’t just stepping back into the spotlight now (“Friday” turns 14 years old in 2025, btw). SALVATION is Black’s second full-length LP this decade. She has an upcoming largely sold-out headline spring tour with Montreal electronic act Blue Hawaii. This new fun album is not a reinvention. Black’s true fans know that this is the next chapter in–and some may never believe this–her tearing up the dark, hard-hitting hyperpop scene.
This all may sound like a joke or fever dream. But fans know that Rebecca Black is one of the best stories in pop this decade. It doesn’t matter if her parents funded a wacky music video when she was a teenager. Black redeemed herself years ago, so it’s fitting that she’s letting everyone know of her SALVATION now.
Samia – Bloodless
During Samia’s February 2023 Honey tour stop at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the crowd roared when the now 28-year-old musician sang “I’ve got a letter still in my backpack // It’s from the Saint Paul Police Department // They wanna give me my state ID back.” Those lyrics, from the song “Kill Her Freak Out,” refer to what might have been a presumably booze-filled night out in the other half of Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Samia has officially called that midwestern region home as of December 2024. And while there’s no references to the area on her latest effort Bloodless, the album is stuffed with lyrics so strong that fans in any city are likely to erupt when she performs.
Bloodless is about a lot of things: Unsolved mysteries, the presence of God, the never ending chase to find “perfect” femininity, inexplicable cattle mutilations and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Whether or not these are all actually ghosts in Samia’s life, she’s happy to share her feelings on them. There are things haunting Samia, though. “I noticed a pattern in my life of wanting to live up to the person I became in someone’s head,” she says. “You become a lot bigger with distance.”
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory – Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Sharon Van Etten and her band of usual suspects are back with a new record–but this one has a different approach than their previous work. Longtime listeners might scratch their heads at this new LP and ask “who are The Attachment Theory?” Van Etten has frequently written her own songs and then recorded and produced them with musicians Devra Hoff and Jorge Balbi. Now, for the first time, Van Etten has entirely written and collaborated with Hoff and Balbi. Van Etten also commissioned Teeny Lieberson of 2010s New York City band Teen to the group. Together, this collaborative crew is known as The Attachment Theory.
A number of songs feel like they’d be found on other parts of Van Etten’s discography, including singles “Trouble” and “Afterlife.” This record offers something for fans of the alternative sound of 30 to 40 years ago. It also provides the sound Sharon Van Etten’s become known for. The biggest takeaway: Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is fun. It’s an original blend of several great sounds. The Attachment Theory has ushered in a formulaic blend of all its contributors’ backgrounds, making a complete album and one that is enjoyable from beginning to end.
Stereolab – Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Stereolab never “disappeared.” The pop group (or groop, as they call themselves) has spent 15 years touring over and over again while also releasing compilations and box sets of previously unreleased material. But now, they’ve “returned” with their first studio-recorded album in 15 years, Instant Holograms on Metal Film. That’s a long time “away”, especially for newer fans of the band who’ve never experienced a timely Stereolab release. It might feel even longer for the fans who were there for Stereolab’s heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Stereolab’s latest experiment may or may not have been intended to save the world, but it feels like it could. The band’s sound makes bodies dance and brains think. That might be the only way humanity can move forward in these polarizing times. If Stereolab are the ones offering their helping hand–then they are the heroes the world both deserves and needs. Instant Holograms on Metal Film is a rescue mission packaged as an album. In case of emergency, dance to Stereolab’s fascinating new record.
Tate McRae – So Close to What
It’s abundantly clear from the beginning of Tate McRae’s new record that listeners are about to go on a sexy, danceable journey. “Get your hands off my man,” the 21 year-old Canadian pop singer sternly says before even singing a note on “Miss possessive,” the opening track on her third studio album So Close to What. “I know what you are, tryin’ so hard // Runnin’ ’round tryna fuck a star,” McRae continues.
The beats and rhythms on songs like “It’s ok I’m ok” and “Sports Car” have a Y2K feel to them, making this LP a fun listen for most occasions. McRae also displays variety by ending this album with an acoustic song called “Nostalgia.” She sings at her sweetest and softest to close out this record, putting an exclamation mark on a strong performance.
Turnstile – NEVER ENOUGH
Few rock bands have had as big a decade as Turnstile have had in the 2020s. The band blends hardcore with experimental sounds. The singles from their new album NEVER ENOUGH have already garnered the attention of millions of listeners. The record is the highly anticipated follow up to 2021’s GLOW ON. Fans have had great expectations that NEVER ENOUGH would be as strong as its predecessor. Those fans need not fret any longer.
Turnstile has churned out an epic album with NEVER ENOUGH. “This is where I wanna be // But I can’t feel a fuckin’ thing,” singer Brendan Yates shouts during “Sunshower.” The band knows they are on top of the world–but sing about complexities and emotions. This record is similar. NEVER ENOUGH is about to be (and really already is) everywhere. Why? Because it says a lot about people and culture while sounding like a fantasy and a dream. It’s another installation of greatness from Turnover, a band that has offered more than enough with their two latest ventures.
Which of these albums are your favorites from 2025 so far? Any we missed? Let us know on Instagram! Be sure to never miss a new record drop by checking out our weekly New Music Friday column.
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