The 40 Best Albums of 2025 So Far
...According to some guy in Chicago. Plus, every new full-length I wrote about in No Expectations this year and more stellar LPs.
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Whenever I’m compiling a list of my favorite albums in a given year (or, in this case, the midyear), I’m always tempted to find a common thread, pinpoint a trend, or come up with an angle that somehow explains what it all means. This was easier when I wrote for music publications like VICE or The A.V. Club, where other writers would pool their picks and conjure up a consensus roundup that broadly showcased multiple genres, acclaimed favorites, and taste-specific sleepers. With this personal newsletter, it’s hard to find an overarching theme beyond, “One 33-year-old dude in Chicago heard it and really liked it.”
Though No Expectations isn’t in the business of covering everything, I think the 40 picks here (or 80—if you count the honorable mentions listed at the bottom of this piece) are eclectic. The artists featured hail from six continents and gleefully traverse genres. I’ve been writing about music as a career for 13 years now (Jesus Christ), and at this point, I’m just grateful to see my taste evolve in real time and have my curiosity for it stay intact. Starting this writing project in December 2022 has made me more intentional about listening to and searching for new music from independent artists. Thanks to everyone who subscribes and has signed up for the paid tier, for allowing me to do this every week.
A couple of things to note: You will likely see that a few universally acclaimed LPs aren’t on here. There’s a good chance I haven’t heard it, and an equally good chance that I have listened to it but think it’s Not Very Good. These things happen. I didn’t start this newsletter to attempt some nebulous canon-building (I’ll leave that to Pitchfork and Rolling Stone). But I do want to highlight under-the-radar, independent artists who I think deserve your attention. If I found myself stuck between two albums I loved to include here, I usually defaulted to the lesser-known act. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to see the same 20 LPs on every list. Seasoned readers will notice I’ve recycled a good number of blurbs. It’s true: I have a full-time job and don’t want to rewrite everything I did this year, but many are reworked, and there are a handful of totally new LPs I haven’t covered yet.
Normally, my midyear roundup is 30 picks, but this year felt stacked enough to round it up to 40. Because of that, I’ve decided to do my annual newsletter sale. It’s $40 for a year of No Expectations now (down from $50). If you’d rather do monthly, that’ll still be $5 a month. That’s not a discount, but it is a good deal: it’s the cost of one Old Style tallboy plus tip at Rainbo Club. Every bit helps, keeps this project going, and allows it to stay paywall-free. It’s rough out there, so I’m grateful you’re still reading and supporting this writing project.
The Weekly Chicago Show Calendar is here this week. If you want a playlist featuring selections from each album blurbed, here are links to Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal. Also, there’s no newsletter next week, but No Expectations will return 6/19.
Ale Hop, Titi Bakorta
Mapambazuko
The Kampala, Uganda-based record label Nyege Nyege Tapes has consistently released some of the most thrilling and cutting-edge music that I always return to when I get sick of indie rock. Its electronic, danceable, and experimental catalog fuses genres and borders with equal ebullience. Mapambazuko is the product of Peruvian electronic musician Alejandra Cárdenas (Ale Hop) and Congolese guitarist Titi Bakorta collaborating for a blitzing and unpredictable collection of instrumental tunes that seamlessly blends these musicians' sensibilities. Its six originals are indispensable doses of absorbing rhythms and electronic flourishes—the three remixes aren't as exciting, but your mileage may vary.
Ben Hackett
Songs for Sleeping Dogs
This Athens, Georgia-based musician has collaborated with folk-rock acts like Rose Hotel and more, and his debut solo full-length, Songs for Sleeping Dogs, is full of immersive, organic, and intentional ambient music. He creates a lush, haunting, and sublime world across 12 instrumental compositions and nearly an hour runtime. There’s an invigorating arc to the LP’s sequencing: songs undulate, simmer, and patiently build from the airy opener “Between Sleep,” the dreamy “18pp,” and the jazzy, winding “Loose Changes 2.” It’s uniformly beautiful and is so clearly made by someone who lives and breathes for the genre. My favorite instrumental release of 2025.
Brown Horse
All The Right Weaknesses
Brown Horse are from Norwich, England, and they unequivocally made one of the finest country-rock records of 2025. It’s urgent, galvanizing, and chock-full of memorable hooks. On All The Right Weaknesses, the wildly collaborative sextet (five out of its six members penned songs on the LP) combines energetic and soaring guitars with blissful pedal steel and earnest vocals from Patrick Turner and Phoebe Troup. It’s a winning formula that the band calls “slacker twang.” Across the 11 songs here, which evoke Greg Freeman, Wednesday, and Neil Young. Despite their UK roots, there’s no put-upon affectation or cowboy cosplay—just undeniable and raw songs played with enthusiasm and an unselfconscious love for American musical traditions. “Dog Rose” is a masterclass in building tension to a cathartic guitar solo, while “Corduroy Couch” splits the difference between lyrical vulnerability and pop infectiousness. There’s not a single dud on the record. Once they tour stateside, I’ll be the first to buy a ticket to their Chicago show.
Cash Langdon
Dogs
If you like your rock music loud and relentlessly hooky, there’s no better place to look than Dogs, the new LP from Birmingham, Alabama’s Cash Langdon. Here, he channels the anthemic choruses of Summerteeth-era Wilco, the frantic energy of Ty Segall, and the melodic prowess of the late Adam Schlesinger across 10 explosively catchy songs. I’ve included a few of the singles in No Expectations playlists like the crunchy “Magic Again” and the countrified “Lilac Whiskey Nose,” and the rest of the LP matches those tunes’ high caliber. It’s just a damn good rock record. I’d also recommend his other project, Caution, which put out albums with the mighty but now-defunct Chicago label Born Yesterday.
Colin Miller
Losin’
Colin Miller is at the center of the burgeoning North Carolina indie rock scene. He’s the drummer for MJ Lenderman, recorded some of his earliest releases, and served as a sort of mentor figure when they all lived in a house called Haw Creek with members of Wednesday and other local musicians. Though he’s released music since at least 2019, 2023’s Haw Creek was his proper solo debut: a welcoming collection of homey, storytelling folk rock. His follow-up Losin’ sharpens the edges and tightens the palette of his first full-length. Inspired by the 2022 death of Miller’s longtime friend, Gary King, the owner of the Haw Creek property, the LP is full of bittersweet odes to shared memories watching NASCAR races (“Cadillac”) and reworked versions of old tunes (like 2021’s “I Need a Friend”). Miller’s a tasteful songwriter. He’s understated but impressively versatile: “Lost Again” boasts an earworm guitar riff and “Porchlight” a delicate, harmony-filled chorus. When he adds a touch of Broken Social Scene-esque catharsis like on “Hasbeen,” he sticks the landing. This is patient and powerful songwriting from an artist who inspired some of your favorite new acts.
The Convenience
Like Cartoon Vampires
Over the past five years, I’ve been writing about a cluster of New Orleans indie rock bands like Lawn and Video Age. It’s a cool little scene: the former expertly melds jangle-pop and post-punk while the latter incorporates disco, yacht rock, and psychedelia into sleek and clever pop-rock tunes. The Convenience, the duo of Nick Corson and Duncan Troast, are both in Video Age, while Corson also plays in Lawn. On Like Cartoon Vampires, the band’s sophomore effort, they incorporate the knotty guitars of Wire, the effortless swagger of Spoon, and the menacing, off-kilter energy of the Fall. The LP opens up on a tear with three unassailable rippers in the alt-rock anthem “I Got Exactly What I Wanted,” the screeching, unpredictable guitar squalls in “Dub Vultures,” and how “Target Offer” dissolves into an explosive crescendo. This trio is everything I love about indie rock: surprising, gripping, and smart. From there, the record gets weirder but no less exciting. There’s shuffling twang on “Western Pepsi Cola Town” and uneasy, dirgelike bassline on “Pray’r” and a slow-burning, 10-plus minute closer in “Fake the Feeling.” I could not have been more stoked to see Friends of the Substack Stereogum give this one Album of the Week: Chris DeVille’s review is great.
cutouts
Snakeskin
Alex MacKay is the bassist for the Brooklyn synth-pop trio Nation of Language, but he just released a debut solo album as cutouts called Snakeskin. It’s a kinetic and propulsive full-length, boasting a sharper edge and heavier bounce than his main project. From the New Order-esque bassline that propels “Paw of the Monkey” and the pummeling low end of “Firstborn,” there are so many menacing club-ready grooves here. Over the past month, I’ve gravitated more to electronic music than I usually do, but this splits the difference between that and indie rock so seamlessly. If you’re looking for something more like Harry Nilsson and David Bowie, start with the highlight “Bloodsucker.” Want psych-rock? Go for “Zeke.” The whole thing’s great, though.
Dead Gowns
It's Summer, I Love You, and I'm Surrounded by Snow
One of the best albums of 2025 was first recorded in 2020. That’s a long time to work on a record. I can’t claim to know what industry bullshit, album cycle purgatory, or exercises in patience Maine songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin had to endure before putting out her debut as Dead Gowns, but I’m so happy it’s out. Not since Angel Olsen’s 2014 Burn Your Fire No Witness has an indie rock voice floored me so palpably. While both LPs tread similar sonic territory, It's Summer, I Love You… is much more animated and energetic. Beaudoin’s croon can oscillate from a warble to a coo and a scream with a violent intensity, but her deft and observant songwriting anchors each track. There’s not a bad tune on here. If this is what she was capable of a half-decade ago, it’s bewildering to imagine the high-caliber material she must have ready to go now.
Dutch Interior
Moneyball
Los Angeles sextet Dutch Interior inserts golden hour twang into nervy, brooding indie rock with a freewheeling, wildly collaborative approach. On Moneyball, the band’s third album, five of the group’s six members share lead vocal and lyrical duties throughout the tracklist. “We bring songs in, and when they’re released to the band, it’s no longer your baby: It’s the band’s," says guitarist Jack Nugent, who sings on and wrote the ghostly ramshackle folk tune “Christ on the Mast,” in an interview with Paste. For all the different singers and distinct sensibilities, this is a surprisingly cohesive full-length that can oscillate between sunny to spooky songs while never losing what the band calls its “Freak Americana” heart. The soft fingerpicking of “Sweet Time,” the galvanizing countrygaze of “Fourth Street,” and the shuffling percussion anchoring single “Sandcastle Molds” all make their case as standouts.
Echolalia
Echolalia
Echolalia is a group of Nashville musicians who decamped to a studio in an ancient abbey on the U.K.’s Isle of Wight to record a wonderfully collective and exploratory album. “[Band founder] Jordan [Lehring] had this idea - the four songwriters would have three songs and we'd work together to make a record of it,” said Echolalia member Spencer Cullum (Rich Ruth, Miranda Lambert, Shrunken Elvis) in the press release. Songwriters Lehring, alongside Cullum, Andrew Combs, and Dominic Billett, all provide eclectic but cohesive songs that make Echolalia a sleeper album of the year contender. There are shades of Radiohead-inspired atmospherics, Nilsson pop-psychedelia, woozy Americana, and boisterous pub rock across these 12 tracks, and there’s not a dull moment throughout.
Eiko Ishibashi
Antigone
Over the past few years, the Japanese polymath Eiko Ishibashi has made mesmerizing and exquisite film soundtracks with director Ryusuke Hamaguchi in Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist. Antigone is her first pop-oriented LP since 2018’s The Dream My Bones Dream, and while it’s a song-based release, it’s just as captivating as her cinematic score work. Here, she enlists a band of her partner Jim O’Rourke on Bass VI and synths, drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, accordionist Kalle Moberg, vocalist ermhoi on backing vocals, and percussionist Joe Talia. Samples, strings, and glitchy electronics weave in and out of these simultaneously stunning and chilly tunes, which often deal with present-day dystopias and digital malaise. “Trial” boasts an uplifting groove while the eight-minute penultimate track “The Model” earns its runtime with an immersive arrangement and a warped, unsettling voiceover. This is the platonic ideal of a 2025 headphones record.
Florry
Sounds Like…
I like bands that feel like bands. Where the unit is greater than the sum of its parts. Where every member feels distinct from each other, yet contributes something palpable and ineffable both on record and onstage. There’s no star, but there’s no uniformity. Seeing a group that’s just four guys in suits stopped being interesting after the Beatles did it. Watching Florry perform last year at Hideout crystallized this observation: each musician has an exuberant and unmistakable personality, but it somehow all coheres into something electric in any given show. The Burlington and Philadelphia-based band captures this lightning in a bottle on their sophomore effort, Sounds Like…, which is one of the finest collections of rambunctious, barroom twang 2025 has to offer. It opens with a torpedo-like intensity with “First it was a movie, then it was a book.” It teems with guitarmonies, kinetic energy, and frontwoman Francie Medosch yelping, “Well, last night I watched a movie / movie made me sad / ‘cause I saw myself in everyone / how'd they make a movie like that?” While Florry thrive on raucousness, Sounds Like… is chock-full of understated moments of beauty and bliss too. “Sexy” is woozy while “Big Something” is plucky and plaintive. While I know Medosch is a fan of Bob Dylan, you can really hear the Rolling Thunder Revue spark exude throughout this full-length.
Foxwarren
2
While I consider Andy Shauf's The Party and The Neon Skyline as two of the finest LPs of the past decade, the one from his catalog that I’ve returned to most regularly is Foxwarren’s self-titled debut from 2018. That was Shauf’s early band, formed years before his solo efforts with childhood friends. Where his songwriting under his name had been intricate, interconnected, and tightly packed, these songs felt loose, spacious, and comfortable. Where both projects are unassailably stellar, this band always felt more digestible and sunny. Foxwarren's follow-up, 2, is a radical reinvention of the live-on-the-floor palette they mined for their first one. Here, thanks to remote sessions, warped musical ideas, and deconstructing their own process, a multitude of samples pepper the songs. It’s glitchy, occasionally unmooring, but always fascinating. It’s somehow as seamless and infectious as their first one, too. When you listen to a songwriter as thoughtful and perfectionist as Shauf, it’s a blast to hear him clearly have so much fun on record.
Friendship
Caveman Wakes Up
Friendship has been a band for over a decade. Named after a town in Maine (three of its members grew up in the state), the now-Philly-based outfit has thrived on thoughtful and kindhearted indie rock anchored by the evocative lyricism and warbling baritone of singer Dan Wriggins. With their fifth full-length, Caveman Wakes Up, they've bested themselves. It’s 11 songs of understated catharsis, wry humor, and devastating one-liners. While every single is excellent, some of my favorite tracks of the year are album cuts. There’s the thunderous clang of a guitar riff that drives “Tree of Heaven,” and the vulnerable “Love Vape,” but my favorite is the tender “Betty Ford.” Sure, it opens with a “Mission in the Rain” Grateful Dead reference, but Wriggins sings a line that’s stuck with me more than anything else this year: “I have been everyone / I’ve been so alone.”
Grace Rogers
Mad Dogs
Louisville’s Grace Rogers spent the early part of her career as a traditional picker and roots performer, but her debut Mad Dogs finds her leaning into conversational and inviting indie rock. There’s still a healthy dose of western and Americana signifiers, buoyed by Rogers’ friendly voice and perceptive lyricism. Released via the Ryan Davis-run label Sophomore Lounge, these eight tracks are charming and delightful: “Downstream” boasts menacing guitars that eventually let loose in its final minute, while “Smoke Em’” is countrified jangle at its finest.
Horsegirl
Phonetics On and On
The Chicago-formed, New York-based trio Horsegirl burst out of the pandemic with a record deal with Matador and a debut album recorded at Electrical Audio with the legendary producer John Agnello. They were still in high school then, but the songs were searching and massive, and I wrote in 2022, “The artists who make up Chicago’s Horsegirl are at least 11 years younger than I am and have the best taste I’ve ever seen in a young band.” Where that palette took from crate-digging sensibilities of indie rock’s fringes, their follow-up is more straightforward, more accessible, and full of heart and fun. On paper, it’s a paring back of what made them so exciting as they were starting out, but Phonetics On and On is a document of a band discovering that they’re better at writing perfect, ramshackle pop songs than setting an atmospheric, immersive, and record-collector-impressing vibe. Recorded with Cate Le Bon at Chicago’s The Loft, these strong songs speak for themselves without being drowned in fuzzy guitars and reverb. The “da-da-das” elevate “I Can’t Stand To See You,” the subtle, shooting star guitars on “Julie” rule, and the single “2468” features the best counting motif since Feist. It’s full of grooves, glowing harmonies, and perfectly mixed drums. I wrote about Horsegirl in the first No Expectations newsletter, saying, “I bet their next album is a classic.” While it’s still way too soon, at least I didn’t totally embarrass myself with that.
Lily Seabird
Trash Mountain
Soon after I started No Expectations in 2022, I wrote about several Burlington, Vermont-based artists like Greg Freeman, Lily Seabird, Dari Bay, and Robber Robber. Alongside North Carolina and Chicago, that city is home to one of the most exciting indie rock scenes in the nation. I’ve gotten to know these musicians through this newsletter and through hosting them when they play shows in Chicago. They’re great folk, and witnessing their artistic growth has been such a joy. They’ve exposed me to so much great music written by their Burlington peers and tourmates (which I’ve written about extensively here) that it’s funny I’ve never stepped foot in Vermont. Since my first blurb on Lily Seabird, she’s released two phenomenal LPs 2024’s Alas, and Trash Mountain, her most confident effort to date. The title of the LP refers to a compound of apartments near a decommissioned landfill where she lives with other musicians and creatives. Written mostly while on tour or coming home from extensive time on the road, the songs have a big-hearted warmth and deal with finding home, connection, and belonging amid life’s chaos.
Lucky Cloud
Foreground
Chicago’s Chet Zenor has spent years as a sideman, playing guitar or bass for newsletter favorite acts like Minor Moon, Squirrel Flower, Whitney, and Hannah Frances. But with Lucky Cloud, he lends his nimble and knotty leads to lush singer-songwriter fare. Foreground is his debut, and it showcases Zenor’s wonderfully unorthodox melodic sensibility. Named after an Arthur Russell song, Lucky Cloud features its namesake’s playfulness as well as Thom Yorke-like proclivity for moody atmospherics and falsetto (“Vacant Eyes” sounds like an OK Computer b-side). There are jazz-inflected chords, muted alt-country, and even songs that evoke Jeff Buckley without the theatricality (opener “Undertow” could have been on Grace). I’ve been lucky enough to hear these songs in different contexts live—with a full band and with Zenor totally solo—and it’s clear these confounding and exemplary tunes broadcast a singular talent.
Mamalarky
Hex Key
Whether they’ve been based in Austin, Atlanta, or now Los Angeles, Mamalarky are one of the most exciting indie rock bands of the decade. I first heard them in early 2020, when Fire Talk put out their single “How To Say.” Everything they’ve put out since has been excellent, like 2022’s Pocket Fantasy, which I raved about in the first-ever No Expectations writing, “Livvy Bennett, who fronts Atlanta’s Mamalarky, is, in my opinion, the most inventive and interesting guitarist in indie rock right now.” The quartet’s latest full-length, Hex Key, might be less reliant on Bennett’s dexterous and mathy riffing, but it levels up the band’s songwriting with their most immediate and pop-forward collection yet. Here, they lean into hazy psychedelia and subtly sticky grooves like on the synth-heavy “Won’t Give Up” and lead single “Feels So Wrong.” It truly shines when the band gets loud like on “Anhedonia,” “#1 Best of All Time,” “MF,” and “Blow Up,” while never losing their playfully experimental ethos. Before the release of this LP, Bennett and bandmate Michael Hunter wrote and produced “Soft,” a single on R&B star Lucky Daye’s The Algorithm. It’s clear their winning chemistry and ease at setting a hypnotizing atmosphere can translate to any setting.
McKinley Dixon
Magic, Alive!
Friend of the Newsletter McKinley Dixon, the Chicago-based and Richmond-raised rapper, has done things his way through his unassailable career so far. From his early self-released full-lengths to his 2021 studio debut, For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her (released via Spacebomb Records), he’s preferred full, live band arrangements, ambitious thematic concepts, and doggedly introspective lyrics that cover the totality of lived experience. He tackles grief with unfaltering clarity, joy with unbridled euphoria, and even named his last LP Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? after a trilogy of Toni Morrison novels. His latest, Magic Alive!, is a dense, concept-forward full-length centering around three young friends who try to use magic to summon the spirit of a dead peer. With production from Sam Yamaha and Sam Koff, who augment beats with a cavalry of live instrumentation and features ranging from Pink Siifu, Quelle Chris, Blu, Shamir and more, it’s maximalist, ecstatic, and adroit rap music. Every song shines, but the title track especially soars.
Mei Semones
Animaru
I doubt you’ll find a more delightful blend of genres and influences than Mei Semones’ excellent new LP Animaru. It gleefully combines bossa nova with jazz, indie rock, and ample breathtaking strings with lyrics in Japanese and English. These are exuberant, frantic, and dazzling songs. Semones is a dynamic vocalist who can wrap herself around her luxuriant arrangements. “Dumb Feeling” explodes with feeling while “Zarigani” moves at a breathless pace. The musical ideas are abundant but never overbearing. She deftly weaves multiple threads without losing the sturdy core of the writing. A singular, distinct talent who excels at songs that are so refreshing it’s almost disorienting.
Monde UFO
Flamingo Tower
Flamingo Tower, the latest full-length from the Los Angeles experimental outfit Monde UFO, is an album that’s better experienced than explained. It’s so chock-full of seemingly disparate ideas that any attempt to transcribe what’s going on in a particular track probably sounds insane. Simultaneously mellow and chaotic, euphoric and menacing, ambitious and casual, avant-garde and agreeable, bandleader Ray Monde delicately guides his collaborators through what would be fraught territory with lesser musicians. Somehow, it all coheres into one of the most psychedelic, beguiling, and thrilling releases of 2025. It’s bookmarked by a haunting organ motif on the ghostly opener “Gambled House We’re Wiping Fire” and the slightly less eerie closer “Psalm 3.” After the dirgelike first tune, it unfurls into propulsive pop that careens from sunny melodies to intrusive jolts of saxophone and percussion into the mix. More welcome surprises ensue across its 11 songs. When the hooks get too bubbly (highlights “Samba 9” and “119” are great entry points), the band finds a way to add wonkiness and menace. Bewitching and innovative, no recent record has felt more like a rollercoaster and more of a hopeful glimpse into the future of indie rock.
Moontype
I Let The Wind Push Down On Me
Back in late 2020, I was sent an early download of a record by a Chicago band called Moontype. Pre-pandemic, I didn’t know much about them except for the fact that I had a few mutual friends with their members, but upon listening to their debut album, Bodies of Water, it was clear this was the LP I needed to hear that year. Bandleader Margaret McCarthy’s voice is ethereal and pointed, her melodies so unorthodox it’s shocking, and the arrangements were livewire, fascinating, and cathartic. I was working for VICE at the time and wrote a long Noisey Next profile on the band when the record came out in spring 2021. It’s funny that then, I wrote that chemistry was the thing that bound this band together, but in 2025, the group has a brand new lineup and is even more locked in. Adding on guitarists Joe Suihkonen (The Deals, Patter) and Andrew Clinkman (Spirits Having Fun, Krill 2)—both absolute shredders in the local music scene—has allowed McCarthy to find new textures for her vivid, heterodox writing on sophomore effort I Let The Wind Push Down On Me. Where all of her songs are written on bass with her voice serving as a counter, the melodies here especially pop on “Long Country” and the hazy “Anymore.” It’s a record where any track could be a single, and I’m so happy I get to live in a city where bands like this can sprout organically.
Neu Blume
Let It Win
Detroit is home to an excellent indie rock scene that can oscillate from commanding post-punk like Protomartyr to krautrock-and-jam-adjacent experimentation like Winged Wheel or conversational folk-rock like Bonny Doon (to name just three). Neu Blume operate in the latter camp. Back in 2022, the group led by Mo Neuharth and Colson Miller (who both used to be in the great Arizona band Nanami Ozone) released a “mini-album” called Softer Vessel, seven songs of stellar, ramshackle, and midtempo jangle. Let It Win, their debut full-length, sounds like a truly confident band staking out their own lane. The songs feel warmer, crisper, and more open, like on the first tune, “Cold Strange,” which is buoyed by delicate harmonies. There’s a casual, gentle folksiness throughout. Even when the songs get brooding, like on “Mitsubishi (II),” Neuharth and Miller perform it with such an inviting grace. Elsewhere, the ambling rhythm of “Car to Go” and the breathy opening to “Wood Pile” make this a perfect road trip record. An early favorite of 2025 that proves the Midwest is best (even if these guys are from Phoenix).
Open Head
What Is Success
On Open Head’s masterful What Is Success, there are guitars that sound like drums and drums that sound like guitars. The kinetic and adventurous post-punk of the Kingston, New York quartet is some of the most inventive heavy music I’ve heard in a long time. There’s palpable danger and edge in these songs that somehow never lose their tunefulness. Equal parts alienating and hypnotizing, to compare it to bands I love like Meat Wave and Squid feels insufficient. Just an exhilarating and pummeling listen from front to back.
Raisa K
Affectionately
Since 2008, the U.K. songwriter Raisa Khan has collaborated with Mica Levi as a founding member of Good Sad Happy Bad (fka Micachu and the Shapes). Considering how confident and immersive Affectionately is, I was shocked to find out that this is Khan’s debut solo effort as Raisa K. Released on the great Danish label 15love (ML Buch’s Suntub, CTM’s Vind), these 12 tracks are exemplary doses of airy and enveloping left-field pop. Gusts of organs and drum machine blasts pepper each tune as Khan’s soothing alto floats above the mix. Fans of Suntub will find a lot to love here, but Khan’s sensibility is more off-kilter. Khan’s Good Sad Happy Bad bandmates join her on several tunes: Levi provides looped guitars on “Stay” and background vocals on “Hello” while drummer Marc Pell (Mount Kimbie) provides percussion on a third of the tracklist. From the wonky yet fascinating bass groove on “Tall Enough” to the mechanical whirr that elevates “Come Down,” Raisa K’s world is warped, illuminating, and riveting.
Renny Conti
Renny Conti
Renny Conti is a Bay Area-raised, New York-based songwriter who explores indie rock’s more infectious fringes on his new self-titled LP. Back in the fall, the New York songwriter and No Expectations favorite Sofia Wolfson, who sings backing vocals on the album, sent me the first single “Room to Room” and it quickly entered my regular rotation. Throughout the following months, more and more East Coast indie rockers I know recommended Conti’s new album, and now that it’s out, it’s easy to see why he has so many fervent supporters. He writes a perfect pop song like the Andy Shauf-evoking “Formspring” or the delicate “Looking at the Geese” but my favorite lane is when he gets noisy and wonky, like on “South Star” or the opener “Workhorse.”
Saba and No ID
From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.
A decade ago, I was the music critic for RedEye Chicago, the now-defunct free culture daily from the Chicago Tribune. It was an incredible time for local music, especially for hip-hop and indie rock, and I got to document these burgeoning scenes as a 23-year-old reporter. Of the many artists I wrote cover stories on during that two-and-a-half-year run, there are few I listen to more than Saba. Though many of his peers had fast ascents and fizzled, the West Side-raised rapper has had a more patient, thoughtful, and painstaking approach. He takes time between albums, doesn’t tour as much as he could, and slowly tinkers on new material that, when released, is always an AOTY contender. A thoughtful lyricist and an unconventional producer, he’s firmly at the sweet spot of my tastes. For his latest full-length, he’s teamed up with the legendary Chicago producer No I.D. for From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D. Here, each track is eclectic and singular, a cross-generational collaboration that melds soul, hip-hop, new sounds, and old. Saba sounds especially comfortable rapping, displaying a staggering confidence that allows him to broadcast his lyrical dexterity by ceding the primary production duties to his elder. There are collabs from Ibeyi, Kelly Rowland, Raphael Saadiq, as well as No Expectations favorites Joseph Chilliams and Eryn Allen Kane. The perfect album for walking around Chicago on a summer day.
Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears
Head in the Sand
Sean Thompson is my favorite guitarist right now. I first met the Nashville-based songwriter when he was on tour playing Chicago in Friend of the Newsletter Erin Rae’s band. Naturally, we bonded over the Grateful Dead and kept in touch following that 2023 show. His new LP Head in the Sand is a first-rate showcase of how he excels at left-field solos, communal bandleading, and breezy lyricism. Some of its best songs tackle heavy topics like the 2020 tornado that wreaked havoc on his east side neighborhood on “Storm’s Comin’ Tonight” and the death of his dog with “Roll on Buddy.” While his earlier material leaned into “cosmic country,” this LP highlights his love for Frank Zappa and Herbie Hancock. It’s for the heads and everyone. See him live if you can.
Silver Synthetic
Rosalie
Hearing Rosalie, the sophomore album from the New Orleans group Silver Synthetic, for the first time was such a needed jolt that it made me get more excited about music than I have in months. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a release from a new-to-me band that felt almost comically in my wheelhouse. The LP scraps some of the Americana of the band’s 2021 debut for something more playful, cosmic, and effortlessly breezy. Across nine consistently memorable songs, the band hits the sweet spot between ‘70s California rock like New Riders of the Purple Sage and 2000s indie like the Clientele. Each hook soars, and each arrangement feels locked in. When every track is great, it’s tough to choose a highlight from the bittersweet melody of “Red Light,” the smooth AOR grooves of “Cool Blue Night,” to the Being There swagger of “Choose a Life.” Released on the always excellent Curation Records (Beachwood Sparks, Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, Pacific Range), this is an album I see myself revisiting all year.
Sleeper’s Bell
Clover
Chicago folk band Sleeper’s Bell is the duo of songwriter Blaine Teppema (who is also a local librarian) and guitarist Evan Green. Together, alongside drummer Jack Henry (who produced the LP) and multi-instrumentalists Max Subar, Gabe Bostick, and Leo Paterniti, they make nine thoughtful, conversational, and surprisingly potent tracks. Teppema’s a comforting yet commanding singer and a direct lyricist, who finds transcendence in the smaller moments. She opens standout “Room” with a stunner of a line in: “The closest to God I ever felt / When we held each other on the bed / You weren't even my lover then / Just a friend and still a friend.” Throughout, they take these pinpoint observations and make something profoundly moving and impeccably crafted.
Bandcamp
Smerz
Big city life
Smerz, the Oslo-based duo of Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt, make dusky, sleek, and slightly askew pop music. Big city life lives up to its title as a collection of diaristic, chatty, and coolly disaffected examinations of youth, lust, and love. Where it really shines is the relaxed chemistry between the two and their impossibly clever arrangements that swerve when you think they’re getting close to Top 40 fodder. Where they get closest is the gorgeous “You got time and I got money,” which feels so much like an instant classic, I initially thought it was a cover. Released via the ultramodern Danish label Escho, it fits right in with the buzzy Scandinavian scene led by ML Buch, Astrid Sonne, and Fine.
Stereolab
Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Stereolab haven’t released an album in 15 years, but Instant Holograms on Metal Film is such a seamless return to form that if you told me it was a scrapped full-length from their creative peak, I’d believe you. In fact, if you’re a new listener, it wouldn’t be crazy to start here: it’s the perfect distillation of the long-running English and French band. For 35 years, they’ve melded krautrock, ye-ye, synth-pop, twee, jazz, bossa nova, and more. It’s the kind of catalog you can burrow into (expect a Discography Deep Dive later this year), and here, they feel exhilarated and energized. Songs like “Aerial Troubles” and “Melodie Is a Wound” stand tall in their vast oeuvre but more than any individual tracks, each melodic flourish and every fleshed-out arrangement feels enthralling and flawless. Produced by Bitchin’ Bajas’ Cooper Crain, the band feels as vital as ever here.
Squid
Cowards
Squid’s music has always dealt with confronting darkness. The first song I loved from them—”Narrator,” the lead single off their debut—features several minutes of exorcising shrieks from Martha Skye Murphy. They’ve billed their latest as their “album about evil” and it’s their most transportive and effective yet. The winding opener “Crispy Skin” tackles cannibalism, “Blood On The Boulders” deals with media-induced desensitization to violence, and “Showtime!” is about a lust for fame. If that sounds depressing, it’s supposed to be, but Cowards is one of the most expansive, hypnotizing, and deliriously exciting rock records I’ve heard in months. They’ve largely scrapped the nervy post-punk clangs of their early output for wide-ranging experimental flavors that sound like righteously angrier versions of Radiohead, Aphex Twin, and Talking Heads. The LP’s sequencing is especially inspired. There’s an ebb and flow, and a solid arc to the tracklist, especially as it gets to “Fieldworks I” and “Fieldworks II.” I still think about the mind-blowing show they headlined at Metro in 2022, undoubtedly a top 10 gig I’ve seen this decade.
Tobacco City
Horses
Chicago’s Tobacco City make gorgeous, neon-lit country songs for long nights and rough mornings. Anchored by singers and songwriters Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard, no two voices in this city sound better together (besides maybe Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham of Finom). The band has excelled in quiet, achy twang since 2018 (their singles “Blue Raspberry” and “Never on My Mind” from 2021’s Tobacco City, USA are good entry points) but Horses, their sophomore effort, adds energy and catharsis to their winning Americana blueprint. Singles “Autumn” and “Bougainvillea” reach shimmering heights, especially as Coleslaw and Goddard’s voices merge, but the real joys of the album are when they pare it back, like on the breathtaking Goddard-led tune “Fruit From the Vine.” These songs are so easy to fall in love with.
Ty Segall
Possession
I’ve argued before in this newsletter that Ty Segall has the ideal career. Last year, I wrote, “For the past 15 years, Segall, the rock’n’roll auteur, has had what I consider a dream career. He’s been relentlessly prolific, jumping between genres, side projects, various bands, and solo records. It’s so clear he’s having more fun than anything else. He’s achieved just the amount of critical and commercial success where he can tour a little bit, selling out mid-sized rooms, and spend his free time making cool records that follow his every whim.” Lately, Segall’s been making career-best LPs like last year’s Three Bells, and he continues the trend with Possession, a collaboration with lyricist and music video director Matt Yoka. Here, he mines his bread and butter: blistering power pop, pristine Abbey Road maximalism, and sunny California psych (the closer is even called “Another California Song”). While this could play as a retread, this collection feels invigorated, tight, and totally rousing. Though he might not be releasing as much music as he did in his early 20s, everything lately has been top-notch.
Uwade
Florilegium
When Fleet Foxes’ Shore came out in September 2020, it felt like a totally welcome balm for a tough year, in no small part due to Uwade’s calming and powerful voice being the first thing you hear on opener “Wading in Waist-High Water.” The Nigeria-born, North Carolina-raised artist was studying at Oxford when she collaborated with the influential indie folk band and five years later, she’s released her debut album Florilegium. Throughout the nine tracks here, Uwade’s voice is as soothing and evocative as ever as she glides through simmering pop tunes like “Call It a Draw” and “Harmattan,” which bubbles with bright hooks and a plucky rhythm. It’s an LP concerned with family histories, grief, and her cross-continental life path. Its title comes from the Latin florilegus, which means a “gathering of flowers,” while florigelium can also mean an anthology of writing. It's a perfect title for something so verdant and attentively autobiographical.
The Weather Station
Humanhood
In 2017, I interviewed The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman for VICE to premiere a song off her then-forthcoming self-titled LP. She was a great interview, but what I remember about that call was her explaining how, compared to her previous efforts like 2011’s All of That Was Mine and 2015’s Loyalty, this album marked a turning point for her because she wrote it on piano versus an acoustic guitar. By scrapping the folksy palette of her earlier releases, she found a more fluid and expansive sound to immerse herself in. She secured a New Yorker AOTY in 2021 with the virtuosic Ignorance, and its more stripped-down follow-up, How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars from 2022 was also excellent. But here, for her seventh album Humanhood, she leans into improvisation, patience, and lived-in arrangements. There’s effusive pop in songs like “Window” and a gitchy, voice-over-laden standout in “Irreversible Damage.” This is a songwriter who’s already acclaimed and clear-eyed, so it’s a joy to hear her settle into a groove and let these songs breathe.
Will Johnson
Diamond City
Will Johnson is a songwriter’s songwriter who’s spent decades melding indie rock and Americana with the influential southern rock band Centro-Matic and through his own solo recordings. (Not to omit his many other projects, including South San Gabriel, a joint LP with the late Jason Molina, bands with Friend of the Newsletter David Bazan, and his current work touring with Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit). His catalog is diverse but consistently thoughtful and excellent, but his 10th solo effort, Diamond City, marks a late-career renaissance. These nine laid-back and gorgeous tunes were repurposed from four-track demos recorded at Johnson’s home studio that mixing engineer Britton Beisenherz brought to life at his Ramble Creek studio. The palette here is simultaneously lived-in and lush with Johnson’s evocative lyrics and weary voice taking center stage above subtly fuzzy guitars and steady drum machine clicks. “All Dragged Out” and “Sylvarena” highlight the way Johnson can write an effortlessly substantial hook, while the stirring title track and the pastoral instrumental closer are a document of his engrossing atmospherics. This is patient music from a songwriter at his best. While immediately impressive, it demands close listening and repeat plays.
Will Stratton
Points of Origin
I’ve loved Will Stratton’s music for almost two decades now. Not to date myself, but I found out about his first album, What the Night Said, via the iTunes Store in 2007 (he was a “related artist” for Sufjan Stevens, who guested on that LP on oboe). The upstate New York-based folk songwriter has released seven more albums since then and each one feels like a subtle but striking evolution (at some point over the years we became social media mutuals and I wrote the bio for his previous effort, 2021’s The Changing Wilderness). His latest and eighth full-length Points of Origin, is his most ambitious in scope, taking a birds-eye view of California, the state where he was born. His clear-eyed and tasteful songs are populated by a wide cast of characters: CIA operatives, duplicitous real estate agents, barroom regulars, and the undeniable West Coast landscape. “Higher and Drier” is as righteous as it is hair-raisingly beautiful, while opener “I Found You” might be his most immaculately arranged tune yet. Even after all these years, I’m still floored by his inviting voice, his openhearted lyricism, and his dexterous fingerpicking. The best of his class.
Honorable Mentions (40 More Stellar LPs)
Blue Lake, Weft // Casper Skulls, Kit-Cat // Cici Arthur, Way Through // The Crime Family, The Shape of Chilling to Come // Discus, To Relate To // Djrum, Under Tangled Silence // Eli Winter, A Trick of the Light // Finnish Postcard, Body // Free Range, Lost & Found // Frog, 1000 Variations On the Same Song // Fust, Big Ugly // Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, and Sam Wilkes, Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes // Half Gringa, Cosmovisión // Hannah Cohen, Earthstar Mountain // Hataałii, I’ll Be Around // Japanese Breakfast, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) // Jonathan Personne, Nouveau Monde // Justice Hill, Cooler By the Lake // Kassi Valazza, From Newman Street // klark sound, This Is Music // Lampland, Get Serene // Laurie Torres, Après coup // lots of hands, into a pretty room // Macie Stewart, When the Distance Is Blue // Maia Friedman, Goodbye Long Winter Shadow // Maria Somerville, Luster // Mess Esque, Jay Marie, Comfort Me // Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas, Totality // Oldstar, Of the Highway // Paper Castles, I'm Sad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Fake It Anymore // Pictoria Vark, Nothing Sticks // Pond 1000, daffodiL // PUP, Who Will Look After The Dogs? // Resavoir & Matt Gold, Horizon // Rose City Band, Sol Y Sombra // Saya Gray, Saya // Sharon Van Etten, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory // Sunny War, Armageddon In A Summer Dress // Taxidermists, 20247 // The Tubs, Cotton Crown // Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl, For Translucence
*rubbing my hands together like Birdman*
I enjoyed scrolling through this album list. It's like a bird's nest of words, all of them totally meaningless to me (except maybe Stereolab). Albums I'll never hear, music that means nothing to me.
This is not a new thing, I've felt this way since 1993. You've listened to twenty five albums, just from this year! Then there's a list of another forty below. When will I ever catch up? What about the twenty five thousand albums I've missed since 2000? And I thought I liked music.
I'm not a high-volume consumer of music, I guess.
Anyway, I'm jealous of your rich musical life. I'm also a bit scared at how much music there is out there.