Best Songs of 2025

As I age, I tend to be a tougher grader. Such is the nature of having listened to tens (hundreds?) of thousands of songs in a lifetime. Like show posters bulging on a telephone pole, it gets harder and harder to find room for the new when you don’t let go of the old. It’s hard, too, not to fall into the claim of saying something now isn’t as good as that thing you loved 10, 20, 30, or even (now that I’m closing in on 50, sigh), 40 years ago. But that’s just the memories talking. And so this year—a year in which I also listened to a ton of new-to-me music from the mid—’60s (see my Best of 1964 for one such example), I made a point to really listen to these songs.

It’s my attachment theory, if you will. The more you listen, the more you can attach the music to a memory—a time, a place, a feeling. The more you can do that, the more you can love them. I listened to some of these songs a LOT more than I have in recent years of list-making. I think it worked. I am finally coming around to the idea that current music can still be truly great, rather than just “pretty good.”

I suspect, as I have now done with songs from last year’s list, that I will keep reevaluating my song ratings in the months and years to come, realizing how much they mean to me and to my memories of this, another difficult year. And yet! These particular songs were competing with SO many more this year. Turns out embedding them in my mind as the year goes on only makes it harder for new songs from within the same year to come in late and dislodge them from the list.

In other words, I am pleased to say that after some recent times where I felt like it was a struggle to get up to 100, I am back to saying it’s actually quite tricky to pare this down. I probably have another 50 I really like that I could not fit in, for whatever reason. That is especially true for hip-hop, which I don’t listen to as much in my middle age but still feels under-represented here. (Sorry to Clipse and De la Soul, who are probably the most glaring omissions.) Despite that, I feel good about the representation on display, both in terms of showing off my taste and with regard to gender and genre specifically, and to a lesser extent, region and age.

As ever, I make this list for myself. But I also hope that, like I do with various Best Songs lists every year, someone out there can find something here they already know and love and use that as a springboard to try something else with which they aren’t as familiar. Your next favorite song is always peeking around the corner, after all.

For these year-end lists, I like to undertake the seemingly impossibly task of creating an hours-long mix. The order you see below represents that effort, which you can listen to via Spotify or Apple Music. Sadly, tracks are missing—one on Apple Music, two on Spotify—but such is life in the streaming age. Notes included, yet again. Some day I will add them to all my lists, I promise (myself).

December 23, 2025

Show Grid

Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World

Destroyer

Dan’s Boogie

Merge
via past experience library: 2/6/2025

What 2025 often feels like. Which is to say: out of control, nonsensical, and a constant state of worry. “Fools rush in, but they’re the only ones with guns” may not be a metaphor as Dan sings it, yet it seems to sum up the leadership under which we find ourselves.
Destination

Neko Case

Neon Grey Midnight Green

Anti
via past experience library: 10/2/2025

Neko goes full strings here, adding new textures to her old ways, the age of which is far less about tired and wizened as it is mature, honed, and imbued with a strength that only true wisdom can provide.
The Forks of Cypress

Patterson Hood featuring Waxahatchee

Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams

ATO
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

The first of three Katie Crutchfield appearances on this list is an ambling, twangy country ballad from another (if less frequented) longtime favorite of mine. Patterson Hood’s wistful croon pairs beautifully with Katie’s higher register. In a weird way that I hadn’t considered until now, it reminds me a bit of Stipe & Mills.
New Orleans

Jeff Tweedy

Twilight Override

DbPM
via past experience library: 10/2/2025

The epic, poetic “Feel Free” was a strong contender here, but this was my first and truest love from Jeff Tweedy’s excellent 30-song triple album. That lilting melody is uplifted by a gospel-tinged chorus that I cannot help but think was influenced by Tweedy’s time working with Pops and Mavis Staples. I wonder what New Orleans thinks about this? The song has an outsider’s romanticism that works on me, a guy who’s never been.
Sparkle Song

Florist

Jellywish

Double Double Whammy
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Another song from this album caught my attention early, but after noting this one because it made me think of my sister, I completely forgot about that one and came back here, time and again. ”Isn’t amazing that we get to share this life?” Indeed.
Reliever

Phil Cook

Appalachia Borealis

Psychic Hotline
via past experience library: 7/11/2025

Even at its most delicate, the percussiveness of the piano asks for your attention. In this case, it asks you to sit in the quietude and reflect. And then it implores you to let go.
Willow

Daughter of Swords

Alex

Psychic Hotline
via past experience library: 5/3/2025

More twinkling piano, but here with the whispered voice of Mountain Man’s Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, a brushed drum, and a saxophone seemingly pulled from another time and place in the past, as if to remind us of what was once good, and could be again.
I am here now

Thanya Iyer

TIDE/TIED

Topshelf
via KEXP library: 5/2/2025

A mantra for presence in the moment that becomes more and more important as our world speeds up beyond what we can keep up with, or even comprehend.
The Forest

Blue Lake

Weft

Tonal Union
via past experience library: 1/17/2025

Patiently unfurls its peaceful repetition over the course of nearly 10 minutes, lulling you not to sleep but to a meditation on nature and our place in it. Every new sound arrives at precisely the right time to invite you deeper into the forest of your mind.
WCFOA

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg

Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

no label
via past experience library: 2/7/2025

A cozy instrumental in the American Primitive tradition that you’re going to have to go to Bandcamp to hear, as it’s from a benefit compilation. I keep buying these sorts of comps every year, needing to both cope and contribute as the tragedies pile up. This simple song might have helped me more than buying it helped anyone else.
On the Gold and Silver

Joan Shelley

Real Warmth

No Quarter
via past experience library: 12/12/2025

Despite being a huge fan of Joan’s for years, it took me awhile to warm up to this record (no pun intended). As such, this was my latest (and last) addition to the list. That it slots so neatly into this spot is not a coincidence, but it does make me wonder in retrospect what took so long for me to come around.
Still Too Soon

Small Shake

Platonics

no label
via Atticus on KEXP library: 7/11/2025

If this song were a wine, I’d say it gives off notes of Low, Hem, and maybe a little bit of Mazzy Star, if you want an analogous band that’s made of more than three letters. But that’s only at the start. When it explodes into fuzzy guitar solo, all that’s wiped away, and from the moment I first heard it, I was left in pieces. An instant classic for me, at an age when that’s so hard to do.
Get Still

Alan Sparhawk

Alan Sparhawk With Trampled By Turtles

Sub Pop
via Kevin Cole on KEXP, past experience (Low) library: 7/14/2025

Sparhawk laments the death of his late wife and bandmate Mimi Parker with a dirge that both expresses the pain of loss and invites community to help him (and us all) get through it.
Dollar Store

Ben Kweller featuring Waxahatchee

Cover the Mirrors

Noise Company
via past experience library: 8/9/2025

To age is to know tragedy. The best of us use art to process. Some may be the listener or the viewer. Others may be the maker. But we all benefit from the act of creating something new from the ashes. I’m grateful to BK for sharing his story through the songs on this album.
Anhedonia

Mamalarky

Hex Key

Epitaph
via Cheryl Waters on KEXP library: 5/2/2025

Sometimes all I need is a guitar tone and chord progression for a song to burrow its way into me. I love the vocal performance, too, especially how it counters the more jagged jangle of the instrumentation. The end result brings me to the exact opposite of the song’s title, no matter how many times I hear it.
Kneel

Nilüfer Yanya

Dancing Shoes

Ninja Tune
via past experience library: 7/11/2025

A moodier, grayer take on a jangle, with Yanya’s whispered vocal sitting atop an uptempo beat that feels both hurried and deliberate. To put it another way, this is a love song for rainy days or an anti-love song for late nights. In other words, it swings.
Forget Her

EERA

I’ll stop when I’m done.

Test Card Recordings
via Mark Baker library: 10/3/2025

Back on my guitar bs. Sure, the piano is a foundational piece of this song’s appeal on the verses, but it’s that guitar on the chorus that I want to bask in. We all have a pretty good idea what film noir is, but can music be noir? If so, this is it.
Semitones

Madeline Kenney

Kiss From the Balcony

Carpark
via past experience library: 8/1/2025

Nobody’s combining electronic atmospherics with rock songwriting these days quite like Madeline Kenney. This song twinkles and refracts while her voice snakes through the spaces, lying in wait to jump out and demand your attention.
Rising Soul

Etienne de Crécy & Damon Albarn

WARM UP

Pixadelic
via Stereogum, past experience library: 7/2/2025

Ten years after I last checked in with this French artist (whom I first discovered 25 years ago), he returned with a hypnotic visual album chock full of collaborators. That I gravitated to the one I know best is perhaps on me, but I blame the video (my entree to the album’s existence), and was immediately enthralled by its striking visual and masterful editing. How did they do that??
Inland Ocean

Matt Berninger

Get Sunk

Concord
via past experience library: 6/6/2025

When a band, 20+ years in, inevitably splinters into solo- and side projects, not everything is going to reach even the biggest fans on the same level as the original project. Either I’m more a front-person disciple than I’d like to admit, or the connection to a human voice is stronger for a more primal reason. In other words, I will follow the lead singer around, especially when they find other great collaborators to aid them when they go “solo.”
It’s a Mirror

Perfume Genius

Glory

Matador
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Mike Hadreas may sound a bit less inventive and adventurous here than on past records, but there’s a supreme confidence at play when you stop trying to be different, and instead allow yourself to be the difference, as you join the patchwork of history.
Lose It All

Sasami

Blood on the Silver Screen

Domino
via KEXP library: 7/2/2025

Making a pretty good argument for going for it even when you’re probably going to fail, Sasami crafts the kind of mid-tempo rock/pop banger that used to have a place on the radio, but now mostly gets lost in the algorithmic shuffle.
Afterlife

Alex G

Headlights

RCA
via Stereogum library: 8/22/2025

An ode to the new, and shedding the old. Not just about the afterlife as we think about it in a religious context, Alex G hints at the idea that we can all have a life full of these small epiphanic moments. A before, an after.
The Line

Trace Mountains

The Line digital single

Lame-O
via past experience library: 7/11/2025

Dave Benton’s Trace Mountains was a 2024 discovery, and I’m glad to have a return here with a new single about the small grudges that turn into bigger barriers between us. I can’t help but get excited by the transition from the previous track, either; an accidental discovery, its synchronicity almost feels like a baton handoff in a relay race.
The Simple Joy

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

New Threats from the Soul

Sophomore Lounge / Tough Love
via Greg Vandy on KEXP library: 8/22/2025

Like early Beck with none of the irony—well, maybe a *little*—, Ryan Davis sings lyrics that border on nonsense in his verses, but then in the chorus explodes into a refrain of unabashed earnestness. The result is rousing even when it confounds.
Los Angeles

Big Thief

Double Infinity

4AD
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

Six albums in, and Big Thief can still pull off a small miracle at least once an album: a song that feels like a campfire singalong that never alienates. It’s an invitation. To find something to play, to add your voice, to bob your head as you close your eyes.
Afraid

Flock of Dimes

The Life You Save

Sub Pop
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

You cannot fix anyone but yourself. And even that is a tall task. Sometimes all you can do is make a promise to yourself, and keep it. If you needed a mantra, you could hardly do worse than Jenn Wasner’s “I did not enter this world afraid, and I refuse to leave it that way.”
Day One

Bon Iver featuring Dijon & Flock of Dimes

SABLE, fABLE

Jagjaguwar
via past experience library: 4/11/2025

Justin Vernon closed the loop on last year’s retro- and introspective SABLE EP (and likely the entirety of the Bon Iver project) with a joyous celebration and goodbye in fABLE. I love much of it, but thanks to his guests, this song is the one that I returned to time and again.
Another Baby!

Dijon

Baby

R&R Digital
via Fluxblog library: 8/22/2025

Dijon is a fitting collaborator for Justin Vernon, since both, to my ears at least, recall the sounds of 1987–91 without ever actually sounding like they came from that era. This is twitchy, modern R&B that nevertheless makes me feel 10 years old again.
Call on Me

Daniel Caesar

Son of Spergy

Republic
via Olivia Woods library: 10/30/2025

I could have kept the Bon Iver collaborative spirit going here, but instead I’ve chosen a more uptempo track. It’s one that, welcomely, brings a riffing guitar back to a straight-up R&B jam, a move that feels boldly out of step with today’s fashion.
Promised Land

Young Fathers

28 Years Later

Milan Entertainment
via past experience library: 7/2/2025

The legacyquel 28 Years Later was one of my favorites of the year for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest ones was the score by Young Fathers, anchored by this song, which plays as a young boy and his father venture out into the unknown lands of the undead.
Max Potential

Nourished by Time

The Passionate Ones

XL Recordings
via past experience library: 8/22/2025

This epic merger of ’80s synth and ’90s fuzz hypothetically takes the place of a new Twin Shadow track, in so much as it is the kind of song that I imagine playing over the end credits of some long-lost, under-seen movie I found on VHS—one whose paper case is a bit frayed and scuffed, an which has been played and rewound a few too many times.
Somebody New

Tunde Adebimpe

Thee Black Boltz

Sub Pop
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

I wrote the above on feeling, and then I remembered the opening to the music video for this track from the once and future frontman of TV on the Radio, which begins with some scrambled tape from a Soul Train-esque telecast before getting a little weird—a fitting image for a skittering dance pop gem.
POP!

Miso Extra

Earcandy

Transgressive
via Apple Music library: 5/17/2025

Did someone say pop? The sound of bubble gum snapping in someone’s mouth, or the imaginarily amplified sound of soap bubbles popping over a bath. I don’t know what the algorithm saw in my listening to direct me here, but I’m happy it did.
Sugar on My Tongue

Tyler, the Creator

DON’T TAP THE GLASS

Columbia
via past experience, Olivia Woods, Fluxblog library: 7/28/2025

When I told my Tyler-loving niece my favorite song on this new record, it wasn’t this one. But something about its ebullience and cheekily blue language—reminiscent of, if more explicit than, songs of my youth—kept bringing me back, and hearing this with smoke and shiny colors on the high ceiling of the Laser Dome sealed it.
Girl Like Me

PinkPantheress

Fancy That

Warner UK
via past experience, Fluxblog library: 5/24/2025

I think they call it a ‘flip’ these days, or maybe a rework. By interpolating that old Basement Jaxx banger “Romeo,” with the added benefit of sniping (to my ears, at least) a vocal melody from my all-time favorite Wham song, PinkPantheress made me an easy mark for this song’s charms.
DO IT! (AGAIN!)

Kaytranada featuring TLC

AIN’T NO DAMN WAY!

RCA
via past experience library: 8/22/2025

Here’s another flip of sorts, a heavily reworked sample of TLC’s “Let’s Do It Again” from their landmark 1994 album CrazySexyCool. That this was never one of my favorites on that record goes to show the power of taking a couple steps beyond the obvious, and why our current cultural need to avoid risk-taking and stick to regurgitating the hits is so frustrating.
Everybody Gets Down

NxWorries

Everybody Gets Down digital single

Stones Throw
via past experience library: 5/17/2025

More uptempo than usual for the duo of Knxwledge and Anderson.Paak, feels like a track made for the club. It’s fitting, then, that this was one of the highlights when I saw them live at Showbox Sodo back in September.
K.T.Y.W.S.

SAULT

10

Forever Living
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

It’s a bit of a shame that UK collective Sault obscures the title of this song behind an acronym, because “Know that you will survive” seems like a useful mantra for 2025 and beyond. “Don’t let doubt / speak in your mouth / Listen inside / know that your future’s bright” sings Cleo Sol, inspiring us to believe in the face of all that stands before us.
(Isn’t It) Obvious

Alessia Cara

Love & Hyperbole

Def Jam
via past experience library: 7/22/2025

This single arrived in October 2024, and if I paid it any attention, I cannot recall. But when the album on which it resides arrived in February, I was captivated by it. I may have lost some of my fandom for Cara’s work on the whole in recent years, but as she progresses in her career and continues to musically remind me of her now-retired fellow Canadian Nelly Furtado, I will keep checking in.
Elegantly Wasted

Hermanos Gutiérrez Feat. Leon Bridges

Elegantly Wasted digital single

Easy Eye Sound
via Cheryl Waters on KEXP library: 8/22/2025

Leon Bridges continues to find his way onto my lists thanks to excellent collaborations like this with the Swiss duo Hermanos Gutiérrez, who put out an album last year that I discovered too late to fall for, but enjoyed for its ’desert country‘ stylings. Pairing with the Texan Bridges is a natural choice that nevertheless adds new colors to both artists’ palettes.
There She Goes

Curtis Harding

Departures & Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt

Anti
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

This lead single from his 4th album was, a bit regrettably for this longtime Harding fan, the high point of the record for me. But if it’s the clear standout, that’s fine, because it’s a gorgeously composed, earthly (ironic given the spacey album art) taste of early ’70s soul with just a dash of psychedelia to enliven the proceedings.
Be a Witness

Lady Wray

Cover Girl

Big Crown
via Kennady, Troy Nelson on KEXP library: 6/6/2025

Retro never goes out of style. This one also feels old, but from whence it comes, I cannot exactly place. Could it sit alongside early ’90s groups like TLC and En Vogue? How about the disco era? Or maybe the funk world of Parliament? It was witness to all these sounds, I can tell you that.
Carry Me Away

El Michels Affair featuring Norah Jones

24 Hr Sports

Big Crown
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

I’ve been really into a melty synth the last couple years, and I’m not sure anyone’s doing it better than Leon Michels. After joining forces with Norah Jones on her last album, the pair turn the tables. If you’re not carried away like me up into the clouds—and then past, onto the stars—by this one, well… I will see you when I get back.
Doin’ Me

Amber Mark

Pretty Idea

Big Family / Interscope
via past experience library: 10/11/2025

It remains a travesty that Amber Mark’s slinky, sexy, mid-tempo but always dancey flavor of R&B cannot find an audience. With a voice somewhere between Janet Jackson and Sade, sings here in an ode to self as if to accept that sad fact. She may be woefully underground, but she’s going to keep “doin’ me” until the world catches up.
Sweetie

Kokoroko

Tuff Times Never Last

Brownswood
via Cheryl Waters on KEXP library: 8/22/2025

A little different flavor of danceable R&B than I’m used to, Britain’s Kokoroko infuses more traditional African rhythms with a soft ’70s funk sound. Every time I hear this song, I’m transported to a stress- and worry-free sunny summer day, in a backyard or on a deck, enjoying good friends, good food, and good times.
The Field

Blood Orange featuring The Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek & Daniel Caesar

Essex Honey

RCA
via past experience library: 8/29/2025

Nostalgia is Blood Orange’s greatest weapon, whether it’s bringing you into his world or inviting an evocation of your own. I dare not seek out what this song is about; for me, imagining a dusky drive with the windows down, my arm surfing in the airflow, while I stare at some ocean or watch the activity the world go by… that’s enough.
Recognise

Shura

I Got Too Sad For My Friends

Play It Again Sam
via past experience, Bandcamp library: 6/6/2025

“What if I recognise I’m alive?” asks Shura in between taking a classic sorry/not sorry approach to being sad and alone. It’s an offer to and an incantation for herself, and one that maybe we could all afford ourselves a bit more in these heady times.
Sad Makeup

Yukimi

For You

Ninja Tune
via past experience (Little Dragon) library: 5/2/2025

If this song is autobiographical, it’s clear that, like Shura, Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano is also sad and unclear on how to handle it. “I’ve been wearing smiles, trying my best to be polite / Holding a façade, saying, “Yes, I’m doing fine” she sings, and I start to wonder if anyone is doing okay.
Hearbreak

Tune-Yards

Better Dreaming

4AD
via past experience library: 5/17/2025

There is sadness, and then there is heartbreak. Merrill Garbus is going through it, too, but she vows not to give up. And maybe more importantly, not to forget that just cause someone ‘broke your sun’ you can’t erase them. And that’s okay, too.
Gold Rush

Lucius

Lucius

Fantasy
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Fighting off that heartbreak is an ode to mining the gold in times happy and sad. This is on the more muscular/angular side of the Lucius style, but much like the push-pull described in the song, those harmonized Holly and Jess vocals are always what brings me back to Lucius. I’ll never leave.
Guess I’m Fallin in Love

Spoon

Chateau Blues / I Guess I’m Fallin in Love

Matador
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

Oh look, Spoon put out a double A-side single and surprise, they still write bangers. Every time they return, they sound a little differnet than their last iteration, but somehow manage to always sound like themselves. It’s a nifty trick, made niftier by the fact they keep pulling it off 30 years on.
Let Me Go

Deep Sea Diver featuring Madison Cunningham

Billboard Heart

Sub Pop
via past experience library: 3/8/2025

Singing partner du jour (in certain circles, at least) Madison Cunningham joins Jessica Dobson for a (dare I say) grunge-y rock song that, thanks to their powerful vocal combo, remind the listener of classic Heart.
Afterlife

Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory

Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory

Jagjaguwar
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Hate to say I wasn’t too into Sharon’s new iteration as lead singer for her new goth rock band The Attachment Theory. But that wouldn’t stop me from loving this song, which feels like a bridge between her past and current self. I just never made it fully across, I guess.
Paint By Number

Coral Grief

Air Between Us

no label
via KEXP library: 8/1/2025

Add a little shoegaze and a little Paisley Underground-esque dream pop and you get this new-ish Seattle band who broke through (to me, at least) this year with a strong record, top to bottom.
Best Laid Plans

The Beths

Straight Line Was a Lie

Anti
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

I had the privilege of seeing The Beths perform at the KEXP Gathering Space before this record dropped, and when this song began, I was not only immediately entranced, I just knew this was the last song on the album. I don’t know why, exactly, but it’s a perfect album closer. (So of course I put it smack dab in the middle my list, LOL.)
Spike Island

Pulp

More

Rough Trade
via John Richards on KEXP, past experience library: 5/17/2025

Cannot say I was ever a huge Pulp fan, so take this with a grain of salt, but: when I heard this, the lead single from Pulp’s first album in 24 years, for the second or third time on KEXP, I asked myself honestly, ”Is this the best song they ever put out?” That they did it in a year when Oasis grabbed all the headlines yet again seems apt for these perpetual underdogs.
Julia’s War

Hotline TNT

Raspberry Moon

Third Man
via past experience library: 7/11/2025

Rock isn’t dead, it’s just gone underground. And that’s especially true when a band like Brooklyn’s Hotline TNT takes their music off Spotify. If a band’s not on streaming, does it make a sound? Let the anthemic “na na na na” of this song’s chorus be a resounding yes.
T&A

Blondshell

If You Asked For a Picture

Partisan
via past experience, KEXP library: 5/2/2025

Liz Phair called, and she wants her sound back. JK, she approves. And so should you. Let this be a reminder that to give a listen to the next version of that thing you once loved.
Back in Time

Tinsley

Tinsley

no label
via KEXP Blog library: 3/8/2025

If you do want to go back in time, eh, sure, you can do that too. But just know that it won’t be like you remember it. You have changed just like everything else.
Forever Is a Feeling

Lucy Dacus

Forever Is a Feeling

Geffen
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Why go back in time when you could live forever. In order to do so, you just have to realize that forever is a feeling. “Isn’t that what love’s about? / Doing whatever to draw it out.”
Time Waited

My Morning Jacket

is

ATO
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Unintentional or intentional: three straight songs about love and time. I know not, mostly I just liked how they sounded together. Yet somehow they magically combine. Forever may be a feeling, but if we don’t watch out, time will roll up on us. Appreciate what you got while you got it, you know?
My Own Way

Emily Hines

These Days

Keeled Scales
via Stereogum library: 8/22/2025

Chris DeVille at Stereogum sold me on this by comparison to Adrienne Lenker, Madi Diaz and Florist, which feels like a RIYL algorithm pitch but feels so much better when given to me by a human.
Heat of the Summer

Whitelands

Heat of the Summer digital single

Sonic Cathedral
via Stereogum library: 7/11/2025

This song sounds, in a very real way, as if someone left a Real Estate record on their dashboard on a sunny day. It also happens to be a song very much about our modern age, when summer is less a break from everything than something to endure. Glad to have this song to get me through.
Float

Jay Som featuring Jim Adkins

Belong

Polyvinyl
via past experience library: 10/12/2025

Jay Som’s Melina Duterte wrote herself a Jimmy Eat World banger and then had the guts to invite Jim Adkins to sing on it… [Ali G voice] respek.
Bashville on the Sugar

Yumi Zouma

Bashville on the Sugar digital single

Nettwerk
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

It comes at you quicker, and you won’t find any bleeps and bloops on here, but this latest single from the Kiwi indie rockers scratches an old Postal Service itch.
Buffalo

Tobacco City

Horses

Scissor Tail
via Greg Vandy on KEXP library: 3/8/2025

Regular listeners of the Roadhouse like me will know Chicago’s Tobacco City as a Vandy favorite. Consider me on board for this rambling country rock in the vein of a Canned Heat or the Byrds.
So Much Better

Dean Johnson

I Hope We Can Still Be Friends

Saddle Creek
via past experience, Greg Vandy on KEXP library: 9/5/2025

The local hero returns for a second album, and I don’t know about you, but it got to me way more than the first. No sophomore slump here; if anything, the production and songwriting are even more assured.
carry me through

Maren Morris

dreamsicle

Columbia
via past experience library: 8/28/2025

I continue to carry a torch for this Nashville star turned outsider. On this gospel-tinged power ballad, she sings an ode to herself. She’s going to make it through this year, if it kills her.
Sugar in the Tank

Julien Baker & TORRES

Send a Prayer My Way

Matador
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Two artists I would never have even classified as Americana or folk pair up and write a classically twangy country love song that sounds like it could’ve been sung by Dolly and Willie in their heyday.
Streets of London

Zach Bryan

Streets of London

Belting Bronco / Warner Bros.
via past experience library: 7/2/2025

Yep, I’m still in the bag for Bryan, to the point where I’m checking in off album cycle and falling for a slide guitar- and horns-backed single about a subject as far from country music as one can get.
Hotel TV

Folk Bitch Trio

Now Would Be a Good Time

Jagjaguwar
via Stereogum, Greg Vandy on KEXP library: 8/22/2025

The only way this Aussie threesome could have been more plainly—or more accurately—named would be if they made reference to their national origin, too. But it’s probably best they leave some mystery (which I’ve now spoiled for you), since this almost-gothic folk sounds like it could have come from anywhere, at any time.
Citronella

Georgia Maq

God’s Favourite

1000 Rats
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

The former Camp Cope frontwoman has put out solo stuff before, but it never sounded quite like this. Softer and more tender than even much of Camp Cope’s work, this is the kind of song that makes you wish for a Lilith Fair revival.
Pyramid Scheme

Hurray for the Riff Raff

Pyramid Scheme digital single

Nonesuch
via past experience library: 3/8/2025

A one-off single from an artist I have been slowly warming up to for a decade, “Pyramid Scheme” might be the apex of my fandom, because I was hooked from first listen. Low-key, high-quality folk rock at its finest.
Peace

Cass McCombs

Interior Live Oak

Domino
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

Nobody plays a catchy little melody on their guitar like McCombs, but also nobody writes a song quite like he does—chugging down the tracks like the little engine that could, it always reaches its destination.
Crimson and Clay

Jason Isbell

Foxes in the Snow

Thirty Tigers
via past experience library: 3/10/2025

Isbell stripped down for his 10th album, going truly solo (and acoustic) for the first time. It suits him well, and suits these confessional, personal songs. Not so much lyrically, but a song like this reminds me of my younger self, back in college, listening to Shawn Mullins or Peter Stuart.
Bovine Excision

Samia

Bloodless

Grand Jury
via Stereogum library: 5/2/2025

Don’t be bothered by the fact that Samia’s another one of those young Hollywood scions making music—just enjoy this slightly off-kilter, earthen rock in the classic singer-songwriter mold.
Take Out Your Insides

Sunflower Bean

Mortal Primetime

Lucky Number Music
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

Intimacy and vulnerability are hard, duh. But also, we need that reminder, and we need it constantly. What better way to do it than with a song?
Satellite

S.G. Goodman

Planting by the Signs

Slough Water
via past experience library: 7/16/2025

Going back to the days of R.E.M.’s “Feeling Gravitys Pull,” I love a grungy country song. And I really love a quiet, moody one with a propulsive drum beat like this.
Joy, Joy!

Valerie June

Owls, Omens, and Oracles

Fantasy
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

In counterpoint to some grungy country, how about some bouncier soul-country in the Ray Charles tradition? When the inimitable Valerie June sings in her earthy growl “I found that joy joy in my soul,” I begin to locate it in mine.
Goat House Blues

Fust

Big Ugly

Dear Life
via past experience library: 3/8/2025

On their third album, the Appalachian band masters a flavor of country rock that goes in and out of vogue but always sounds good to these ears. If you like this, try “Spangled” and get hooked.
Losing Streak

Margo Price

Hard Headed Woman

Loma Vista
via past experience library: 9/5/2025

Price is right, peace of mind is hard to find when you’re on a losing streak. But she need not worry—she’s on a winning streak when it comes to appearances on these lists.
Elderberry Wine

Wednesday

Bleeds

Dead Oceans
via Atticus on KEXP library: 7/11/2025

The North Carolina indie rockers’ latest album is sonically all over the map, often sounding like a mashup of dozens of ’90s alternative bands—I nearly put the buzzy “Townies” on this list—but it’s this twangier ballad that first grabbed my attention.
Wasteland

Snocaps

Snocaps

Anti
via past experience (Alison Crutchfield, Waxahatchee) library: 11/7/2025

As Katie Crutchfield took Waxahatchee into a country-er direction on recent albums (which I loved), I kept wishing she’d return to her indie rock days. Lo and behold, she re-teamed with her sister to form an excellent new indie rock band, and then I fall for the most country-leaning song on the record. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Light Night Mountains All That

Ratboys

Light Night Mountains All That digital single

New West
via past experience library: 10/3/2025

Technically this is the first single from their 2026 album, but it was announced as a one-off, so this thrashing epic Julia Steiner sneaks onto the 2025 list anyway.
River

Suzzallo

The Quiet Year

Thirty Something
via John Richards on KEXP library: 10/3/2025

Has Rocky Votolato talked to Ben Kweller? As parents grieving lost children (both dying in car accidents), they channel that pain into their music. There’s a mystery at work in my attachment to these songs, leaving me wondering about the intertwining between audience and artist, art and expression, emotion and empathy.
The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)

Car Seat Headrest

The Scholars

Matador
via past experience library: 5/2/2025

There aren’t many in the indie rock space doing it as reliably these days as Will Toledo and Car Seat Headrest. Over its lyric-heavy five and a half minutes, this song walks toward you with open arms. “There’s still some life inside these bones.”
Taxes

Geese

Getting Killed

Partisan
via past experience, KEXP, Stereogum library: 10/2/2025

Geese—and especially the warbled delivery of Cameron Winter—are weird but warm, strange but familiar. It’s easy to be wary of this voice and of the hype, but it’s also exciting to take part. As if aware of this, they tiptoe through the opening half “Taxes,” before exploding in a manner so surprising, that you can’t help but be swept up.
Year of the Snake

Arcade Fire

Pink Elephant

Columbia
via past experience library: 8/17/2025

The pandemonium around this band has long since waned. I may be ready to jump off the bandwagon, too, as there wasn’t much I liked on this album. Except this. Perhaps more importantly, I love slotting it here, in between two modern buzz bands for whom the bright lights will one day dim as well.
u and me at home

Wet Leg

moisturizer

Domino
via past experience library: 10/29/2025

The normally feisty Wet Leg softens just a bit here, with a drunken, warped guitar veering into a fuzzier sound on a classic quiet verse, loud chorus setup. One of many candidates from a very strong third album from the UK rockers.
Trenton

Parts Work

Parts Work - EP

Many Hats
via past experience (Frances Quinlan), Stereogum library: 10/30/2025

I really got into Hop Along about a decade ago, but my faded quickly for reasons I’m still sorting out. Then this arrives, and its more jagged musicality proves to be the best foil for Frances Quinlan’s uniquely toned wail. That counter melody she sings (“Bitterness, no, bitterness doesn’t tend to change”) is an earworm.
Fatal Optimist

Madi Diaz

Fatal Optimist

Anti
via past experience library: 10/12/2025

Got to see the delightfully loose, unabashedly honest Diaz perform this title track live a month or so after picking up the album, and it confirmed that this is one of her great confessionals, naturally builds from an admission into a defiantly confident statement of purpose.
Be Like the Water

Indigo de Souza

Precipice

Loma Vista
via past experience library: 8/22/2025

The former Asheville, NC singer, songwriter and painter had her home, studio and livelihood nearly destroyed by the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene, yet she asks herself and the listener to “Be like the water, go where you’re going / Say what you need to, you know you’re dying.” It’s an anthem for us all in this difficult age; borne from grief and loss, the only good response is release.
Thread and the Spark

Jamie Drake

Thread and the Spark digital single

no label
via Evie on KEXP library: 9/7/2025

Possibly my favorite song of the year. A driving, sparkling, pop-rock banger that feels at times like an alternate universe where Tom Petty took Stevie Nicks up on her offer and let her join the Heartbreakers in the mid-’80s.
Big Shot

Chitra

You Can See It When It’s Dark

no label
via John Richards, Evie on KEXP library: 10/3/2025

A driving, churning river that manages to transform into something more chaotic and mysterious in the chorus, like water rolling over a massive falls.
UFO

UFOs

UFO digital single

Domino
via Stereogum, past experience (Phoenix) library: 10/12/2025

I don’t believe in UFOs like Thomas Mars, but I do believe in this hazy, dreamy love song where he croons plaintively while backed by French touch heroes Braxe + Falcon and his band Phoenix.
Into Dust (Still Falling)

Four Tet

Into Dust (Still Falling) digital single

XL Recordings
via past experience library: 7/11/2025

On this rework of Mazzy Star’s “Into Dust” from their landmark 1993 LP So Tonight That I Might See, Kieran Hebden transforms the stately, haunting original into a propulsive, if still relatively chill, dance number.
earth 5

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

IC-02 Bogotá

Jagjaguwar
via past experience library: 10/3/2025

The kind of patterned instrumental dance track where I want to watch synchronized animation along with it, Sesame Street style. All the bleeps and bloops, the synth wails, and the keyboard combined with visuals would make an already catchy number even stickier inside my head.
Belong to You

Cut Copy & Kate Bollinger

Moments

Cutters
via past experience library: 9/7/2025

More than 20 years later, Cut Copy dropped a song so buoyant and catchy that it could easily slide alongside songs from their debut. I’d call this joyous dance pop, but if you’re paying even the slightest attention, you can hear the hidden sadness in these lyrics.
Relationships

HAIM

I quit

Columbia
via past experience library: 3/28/2025

“What’s all this talk about relationships?” Love songs are great, but break-up songs are better. More relatable. More useful.