Top 25 of 2025 (& Other Favorite Albums)

The Albums that Got Me thru the Year of Our (Dark) Lord 2025

If you’ll allow me my little ramble upfront: on a recent episode of Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Kumail Nanjiani explained that he keeps up with new comedy, paraphrasing, because it allows for some new magic in a world with little mystery left in it. A good reason to find new art of any (human-made) kind, certainly, and one that resonates with my own listening practice. Across these many albums, moments of magic – some sound, some voice, some melody that on first and even subsequent listen(s), feels brand spanking new – that restore a sense of awe in an otherwise draining landscape. And so I make these year end lists not say definitively what are the year’s best albums, no one could do that and I wouldn’t want that responsibility either way, but to record and pay tribute to the continual flow of magic that soundtracks a year, no matter how dour. And perhaps it goes without saying, but what a thrill that we get to experience this newness together – perhaps, we share a favorite album already or maybe we’ll introduce each other to a new new favorite – however, the new sounds find us, may they find us reverent and attentive. Okay, here’s some music I loved:

Note: I, like many, am at a crossroads with my usage of a certain music streaming app and so this year, rather than an all-encompassing playlist, I’ve highlighted a pair of songs for each album – one I think would be a good entry point to the album, and one that I personally love. Note about note: ok, a lot have more than two songs – I’m not good with rules, even my own.

RIYL… (recommend if you like…)

The Top Ten

1. Dijon – Baby

    • No album got more replay outta me than this one. Dijon is one of the most exciting producers, songwriters, and performers going right now, and this project perfectly encapsulates his varied deconstructed style and sound. Every listen felt like it rewarded me with something new, and seeing him (and his incredible band) translate the studio wizardry into live arrangements that sounded huge, emotive, and singular cemented Baby as my album of the year.
    • RIYL… Dijon is some parts Prince (particularly Sign O’ the Times era (my personal fav era) Prince), some parts his also famous collaborators (Bon Iver, Mk.Gee, and the like), but in a package that is wholly his own.
      • Track to start with… Yamaha
      • Personal favorite track… Another Baby! Also, Dijon we need a live album – if for no other reason than I need the live version of Referee to live in the world. Rewind is also a big fav of mine!

2. billy woods – Golliwog

    • It’s hard to highlight just how strong a run of album billy woods is on. Since 2012’s History Will Absolve Me, woods has released an album every year, either solo or as part of the duo Armand Hammer, that range from very good to certified art rap classics — this is one of those classics. And possibly, woods at his most conceptual. Golliwog is as close to an A24 horror film that a hip hop album can get.
    • RIYL… Hearing BARS & Getting CHILLS
      • Track to start with… Misery
      • Personal favorite track… Corinthians is phew! El-P still knows how to make a beat sound massive

3. Rosalía – LUX

    • I wanna see the movie that LUX sounds like the soundtrack for. Or, more realistically, the opera that Rosalía was envisioning when writing these songs. Each track contains a world as immense as it’s orchestration, and Rosalía needed 13 different languages to convey the range of emotions on display on this album. This year, your algorithm – like mine – might have been rolling out take after take about our diminishing attention spans, and so how refreshing to have a pop album as immersive, as knotty, as challenging as this one. 
    • RIYL... meditations on romance, God, and flowers
      • Track to start with… Reliquia
      • Personal favorite track… Magnolias (but you would be doing yourself a disservice to not experience this song as the album closer on first listen) 

4. Nourished by Time – The Passionate Ones 

    • I love an artist who grows with each successive release while maintaining a core sound. The Passionate Ones has all the makings of Marcus Brown’s “biggest” sounding album as Nourished by Time, but there’s no mistaking the textures, layers, synths as anything other than his particular reverb-laden palette. Brown’s music is RnB by way of a DIY ethos, hip hop with a dancehall rhythm. And lyrically, he’s never been more incisive. In these late stages of the decline of empire, Nourished by Time provides both the clarity of wisdom and the controlled chaos of rhythm. 
    • RIYL... Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown

5. Geese – Getting Killed

    • What can I say about Geese that a million music blogs haven’t already opined about? Rock n roll is dead, rock n roll never really died. Geese make music that is ALIVE. I, for one, am just along for the ride. Cameron Winter screams on album opener, “Trinidad,” that “There’s a bomb in his car,” and you know what I have and will continue to take him up on his offer to get in the car and let him drive wherever this talented band of weirdos wanna take me. 
    • RIYL… this generation’s Bob Dylan or Radiohead or whoever else, who cares. Geese Rocks.

6. Water From Your Eyes – It’s a Beautiful Place

    • I guess in some circles “bedroom pop” is a diss, but in this house, we love an album that can conjure both intimacy and groove. Drum machine beats, heavily distorted guitar riffs, dreamy synths, and whispered vocals all combine on this album for a wonderful, hooky mishmash of bangers. 
    • RIYL… dancing in the corner at the club or getting wild in yo living room

7. Saya Gray – SAYA

    • I guess there was discourse this year on the death of the mainstream pop album – idk, I both spend too much attention on current discourse but also remain outta touch – but pop is a live and well on whatever constitutes indie music these days. SAYA tones down the tonal whiplash of Saya Gray’s previous albums, but she still manages to explore a range of sounds and vocal stylings over the course of these songs that are as tender as they are strange. 
    • RIYL… messing around in the studio, mothafuckin anthems

8. Armand Hammer w/ The Alchemist – Mercy

    • I already told you how much I love billy woods, and he’s often at his best with his partner and crime, ELUCID. Who both get a boost from some deceptively simple Alchemist production. This album is less “out there” than the woods’ solo album from this year (see above) and even the duo’s last collab with Alc, Haram, but it’s not lacking in depth. woods and ELUCID pack the album full of verses that invite you to hit replay so that you don’t miss a word. A pair of bookmarked bars: from woods on “Dogeared,” “She finished her drink and looked at me inquisitively, asking/ “What’s the role of a poet in times like these?” / I never answered, but it stuck with me all week …” and ELUCID on “Glue Traps,” “Stretch a little, take a little more / Down today, with a little subtle mourning / Getting over, everything half price what he told her…”
    • RIYL… dismantling your enemies with sharp wit and precise disses

9. Blood Orange – Essex Honey

    • Dev Hynes is a genre unto himself, and Essex Honey is perhaps the collection of songs most representative of the heart of that sound. Hynes explores his own upbringing, and his struggles with depression, over these gorgeously composed and produced songs. I wrote about moments of magic in the little opening blurb, and damn does Hynes know how to deliver moments of magic… the drums kicking into the stuttering coda of “Thinking Clean” ; his harmonies with Caroline Polachek on “The Field”; the DJ Premiere-esque opening of “Vivid Light”; among many others. I would not just live in Blood Orange’s sonic landscape, I would set down goddamn roots there.    
    • RIYL… beautifully arranged flowers set tenderly atop a loved one’s grave

10. SML – How You Been

    • In 2024, I heard a short snippet of “Three Over Steel” from SML’s debut release “Small Medium Large,” and I knew I would be following this quintet til the bitter end. A supergroup of innovative jazz musicians – Anna Butterss on bass, Booker Stardrum on percussion, Josh Johnson on sax, Jeremiah Chiu on synths, and Gregory Ulhmann on guitar – it’s no surprise that these four conjure up improvised compositions that don’t sound like anything else you’ve ever heard. The songs on How You Been feel urgent as if the players are urging us toward the future they been hearing, rooted in a vibrant, living jazz scene. How You Been is tighter than its predecessor, but no less wilder in the interplay between the band. If you’ve ever played music with a group of people before, you know how intoxicating it can be when everyone locks into a groove: SML have conjured that feeling over and over here. 
    • RIYL… dancing in dystopic jazz lounges

 

The (On the) Bubble Albums

11. Wednesday – Bleeds

    • It’s becoming hard for me to rank Wednesday albums. 2021’s Twin Plagues was my, like many’s, introduction to the band, and then 2023’s Rat Saw God was the statement album that solidified just how much of a force frontwoman Karly Hartzman was as a songwriter. Bleeds feels like a victory lap in that succession. Hartzman is as wry as ever, and the band is shuffles and rocks in equal parts. It’s Wednesday (forever), my dudes. 
    • RIYL… a lil noise in yo alt country

12. McKinley Dixon – Magic, Alive!

    • McKinley Dixon is a magician and he knows it. Each verse on Magic, Alive! sounds like a performer hiding the work of his craft but daring the audience to try to figure him out. Dixon raps over a live band on most songs, and that energy is the only energy that can match his propulsive bars. These are the kinda beats people are thinking of when they say a song took them to church. His flow is shifts subtly and dramatically over these jazzy arrangements. I keep waiting for the rest of the world to catch onto Dixon’s starpower. 
    •  RIYL… heat both physical and metaphorical

13. Guerrilla Toss – You’re Weird Now

    • I guarantee (read in Charles Barkley’s voice) that you will not have more fun with a 2025 release than Guerrilla Toss’ You’re Weird Now. Regrettably, like much much regret, I have yet to catch Guerrilla Toss live, but this album has all the immensity of watching a band bring a song to life. Add onto that the Malkmus co-sign guesting on two (!) successive tracks, and you have the recipe for a good fucking time. Dance punk, art rock, psych punk, however you wanna categorize them, Guerrilla Toss is pure energy and excitement – you can’t help but shout along. 
    •  RIYL… having a good ass time as society collapses

14. Deafheaven – Lonely People with Power

    • I’ll confess, Sunbather was such a huge record for me that it’s always been hard to be objective with Deafheaven’s subsequent releases (Ordinary Corrupt Human Love fucking rips tho), but Lonely People with Power has pulled me from the spell of that introductory record. Deafheaven has remained an innovative band in the decade+ since Sunbather but this album manages to re-capture some of the excitement of that earlier release, though with a somewhat different sound. This album is HEAVY. And yes, it still has some of the post-rock beauty but it all feels in service to the charging weight of these songs. Lonely People with Power carves open the dark parts of the soul and spews out into something transcendent, terrifying.  
    •  RIYL… screaming into the void of a power vacuum

15. Erika de Casier – Lifetime

    • Dreamy. I can’t think of a better way to describe Erika de Casier’s sound. Listening to Lifetime will first put you at ease and then have you drifting off into the golden sky on the album cover. The bass and drums on her tracks transport you back to a late 90s/early 2000s RnB, but it would be a disservice to limit her sound to its most nostalgic elements. There’s a modern lushness to the production, and de Casier’s voice moves with a feather-lite touch over the dense beats. It’s hard to imagine tethering these songs to any time, but I am grateful they’re of ours. 
    •  RIYL… milk and honey and beats that make ya bob ya head

16. Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love

    • Earl makes it sound easy but there’s a deftness to his writing and his flow. Some Rap Songs was the introduction to this lo-fi style of Earl’s, and this feels like a return – but with an Earl that’s lighter on his feet and clearer, brighter in his perspective. But there’s enough subtle switch ups to the formula to make this an essential addition to the ouvre. Earl has never sounded more melodic, especially on album highlight “TOURMALINE” and Earl in a major key is a good look on him. 
    • RIYL… some rap songs on sunny day
      • Track to start with… TOURMALINE is one of my favorite songs of the year, period, so that one. 
      • Personal favorite track… Live has a helluva beat switch and coda

17. Maria Usbeck – Naturaleza

    • The opening track on Naturaleza is titled “Floating” and it’s also the perfect word to name what Maria Usbeck’s music does to the listener. The Ecuradorian artist blends so many different styles and genres to hone in her gorgeous portrait of the natural world. Her songwriting is as artful as it is groovy, as infectious as they are intellectual. 
    •  RIYL… sun soaking and sepia tones
      • Track to start with… Mar
      • Personal favorite track… Mantarraya

18. anaiis – Devotion & the Black Divine

    • Sometimes it’s just a voice that draws you in. “Something is broken in me,” anaiis sings to open the album and it puts you under her spell immediately. RnB is probably my favorite genre, and the box that critics and listeners try to trap the genre in frustrates me to no end. RnB is as varied a genre as any other, and anaiis explores it’s spiritual and ethereal elements. Her songs, like her voice, are as light as air and as weighty as the earth itself. The album title summons the divine, and by god, does anaiis deliver upon the promise.  
    •  RIYL… the inherent holiness in every living being, the spiritual sheen of Black skin
      • Track to start with… Deus Deus
      • Personal favorite track… Dreamer Too (just fucking stunning!) 

19. Bartees Stange – Horror

    • Make me president of the Bartees fan club please. Horror seemed a little forgotten in the larger indiesphere / music blog world, but it never left my rotation. This album felt like the leap I thought Bartees was going to take after his debut, Live (though I did still really like Farm to Table). Some of his most personal and genre-fluid writing is represented on Horror, and it makes for a compelling listen. Bartees exudes personality, and these songs exemplify that character in a way that feels like he’s just getting started. 
    •  RIYL… imagining the Blade vampire club sequence was set at an old divey venue instead
      • Track to start with… Lie 95 has one of my favorite choruses of the year (and of recent memory) and it amazes me how it wasn’t a bigger song. 
      • Personal favorite track… Wants Needs ; Backseat Banton is a perfect closer

20. Ribbon Skirt – Bite Down

    • Lead vocalist Tashiina Buswa knows how to summon drama. She builds tension with a deliberate hand, and each listen to this debut album still gave me chills like it was the first time. The loudQUIETloud formula can feel stale if you listen to enough alternative rock, but Ribbon Skirt give it new life with songs that add new textures and moves to equation. Bite Down is short in length but these tracks will impress their way into your skull. 
    •  RIYL… moshing with a decolonial spirit
      • Track to start with… Ok, by now you know I’m sucka for a great album opener and by golly, Deadhorse is a damn good opening song
      • Personal favorite track… Cut (went with a live version b/c it is great)

21. Preservation & Gabe ‘Nandez – Sortilège

    • Nobody is making beats like Preservation. They are full of open air and wordly sounds and samples, and often it’s hard to imagine anybody finding a flow, but Gabe ‘Nandez doesn’t just find it, he owns each beat. The verses are as thoughtful as the production. Sortilège is slow-paced, even for undergound hip hop but that just gives you a little time to try and catch up with what Pres and Gabe are throwing at you.  
    •  RIYL… rapping your dissertation, old karate movies
      • Track to start with… Spire
      • Personal favorite track… War (the beat on this thang, I mean, GOD DAMN)

22. Darling Farm – Darling Farm

    • I literally love Darling Farm. I was fortunate to come up in the music scene of Denton, TX – it’s DNA is all over my listening taste and creative output – and so I continue to keep up with the city’s musical output and I continue to be rewarded. This isn’t to equivocate Darling Farm as being good relative to the scene (cause fuck that premise anyway); Darling Farm is just fucking good, and this self-titled record is bandleader Joesph Mings’ songwriting at its finest. Knotty and mathy but never at the expense of vulnerability and immediacy. I’ve heard it said that the best bands defy genre – I don’t know if that’s true – but Darling Farm certainly do and they are the best band.
    •  RIYL… unconventional rhythms, and earnest af songwriting

23. Oklou – choke enough 

    • Debut album is kinda meaningless in the streaming era – Oklou has been releasing music for over a decade before her “debut” – but I was late to this party. I am happy to have been invited into it nonetheless. All that to say, if choke enough sounds more realized than your typical debut, that’s not an accident. Oklou brings a kinda baroque, minimalist texture to indie pop – think ambient Grimes, I guess – and her brilliant, choral-remixed Tiny Desk performance is reflective of the richness of her compositions. choke enough feels like an artist inviting you to the view from their studio window, and it’s an absolutely scenic vision.  
    • RIYL… field recordings of birds remixed over art pop
      • Track to start with… blade bird (the Tiny Desk version – linked above – is also stunning) 
      • Personal favorite track… plague dogs

24. The Armed – THE FUTURE IS HERE

    • The Armed fucking RIP. That is all. 
    •  RIYL… breaking shit with a winking smirk and then kicking the pieces around

25. Mamalarky – Hex Key

    • New to me band, and I couldn’t stop listening. Some really bright and fun and dancy songwriting that brought me back to the days when I was first getting into indie rock. Each member of the band is tight and the grooves are air-freaking-tight. I’m an arm dancer, I’ll admit it, or a wiggler whatever you wanna call me, but when I got my headphones on, the torso is moving. Hex Key rewards the wiggling tendencies. Some great disco-esque rhythms welded to indie tunes, sometimes an album just makes you wanna return to it for the simple thrill of it – this was that album for me.
    •  RIYL… locking in and dancing til the sun goes down and up again

 

Other Favs

(Sorted /

Not Ordered)

RIYL… (recommend if you like…)

Heavy Shit

Deftones – private music

      • RIYL… gnarly riffs, and making a comeback

Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound

      • RIYL… the scales being melted from your eyes

CHIME OBLIVION – CHIME OBLIVION

End It – Wrong Side of Heaven 

      • RIYL… ripping pages outta political theory books and shoving em down the throats of bankers

Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – In the Earth Again

      • RIYL… a lone drifter scouring the wasteland for the last gasping signs of life, acoustic guitar strapped to his back

 

Groovy Shit

keiyaA – hooke’s law

      • in truth, I could’ve slotted this with the electronic shit or the jazzy shit too – keiyaA can truly do it all.
      • RIYL… frank discussions of depression, sexuality, and the state of the world, unconventional grooves that still get the body movin

Madison McFerrin – SCROPIO

      • RIYL… getting yo groove back after a break-up, smooth harmonies and lock-step rhythms
        • Track to start with… Ain’t It Nice
        • Personal favorite track… ok, when the beat kicks in on Spent… boy howdy! Also the build on The End – phew!

Yves Jarvis – All Cylinders

      • RIYL… 70s rock n roll frontmen, making the stank face when the song is hitting

FKA Twigs – EUSEXUA

      • RIYL… early 2000s era Timbaland production mixed with house music, scenes when the aliens are dancing in the background of sci-fi films

Tyler the Creator – Don’t Tap the Glass

      • RIYL… when Tyler’s in his talking shit mode, bustin’ moves and bangin’ drums

 

Folky Shit

Big Thief – Double Infinity

      • Listen, I’m a BIG fan of these Large Criminals – so even a Big Thief album like this one that feels less like an event than albums previous still hit for me and it’s exciting to see them still explore the range of their sound 
      • RIYL… when the polycule starts a jam band, the more direct Adrianne Lenker lyrics
        • Track to start with… Words
        • Personal favorite track… album closer How Could I Have Known is such a lovely song, but Grandmother (w/ national treasure himself, Laraaji) is such a different style for the band and a thrill of a listen

Greg Freeman – Burnover

      • RIYL… imagining the late great Jason Molina as the frontman of Drive-By Truckers

Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter

      • RIYL… tellin’ stories to the neighborhood kids, burnin’ rubber down a farm-to-market road in the waning hours of the day

Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – What of Our Nature

      • RIYL… the early parts of A Complete Unknown before Dylan and Baez started beefing, sticking it to the man with composure and grace

Ringdown – Lady on the Bike

      • RIYL… the particular kinda reverb that only an old empty church can provide, your gay aunts, the kinda vocal melodies/harmonies/textures that only Caroline Shaw can write
        • Track to start with… Ghost 
        • Personal favorite track… Reckoning

Joanne Robertson – Blurrr

      • RIYL… sitting in a room alone just you and a guitar, Grouper with out the white noise filter

Foxwarren – 2 

      • RIYL… imagining what it would sound like if Andy Shauf provided vocals for a Caretaker album (I know this is a niche-descriptor, but if you’re down here, I know you’re rocking with me), genre pastiche, a lil funk in your folk
        • Track to start with… Listen2Me
        • Personal favorite track… I could listen to Andy Shauf sing anything, all day long – Dance is a lovely opener; the soulful elements of Wings is a wonderful addition to the Shauf sonic palette (and one of my favorite songs of the year)

 

Dope Shit – this has been one of my favorite hip hop years in recent memory so this category is a bit packed (and could’ve been longer)…

Clipse – Let God Sort ‘Em Out

      • RIYL… owning yo unc status, when an artist does what they do best to perfection
        • Track to start with… hard to argue with The Birds Don’t Sing as the introduction to this album
        • Personal favorite track… P.O.V. just goes too hard; M.T.B.T.T.F. will also scrunch yo face up tight – especially the a capella verse openers

Little Simz – Lotus

      • RIYL… the clarity of passing time, floating above the chaos
        • Track to start with… the beat on Thief is perfect and Little Simz is in her bag, Lion is also perfect – I don’t think there’s a better active pair of collaborators than Simz and Obongjayar
        • Personal favorite track… the title track, Lotus, is a showstopper

Danny Brown – Stardust

      • RIYL… yo favorite rapper finding new life and purpose in an unexpected scene, when hyperpop and rap collide
        • Track to start with… both of the singles were perfectly chosen: Stardust and Copycats
        • Personal favorite track… man, happy looks good on Danny! Lift You Up has the bounce you need

Ghais Guevara – Goyard Ibn Said

      • RIYL… sage wisdom from unlikely sources, busy beats that still be hitting
        • Track to start with… a drop so good it made the Kendrick superbowl performance, The Old Guard Is Dead (another one of my favorite songs of the year – seriously, that beat is NUTS)
        • Personal favorite track… I love that Ghais has a song titled after Monta-have-it-all (those were fun Mavs years), Monta Ellis, and the ELUCID feature Bystander Effect is effectively dissonant (also love Leprosy – the song, not the condition)

Backxwash – Only Dust Remains

      • RIYL… seeing yourself and the world with equal clarity 

MIKE – SHOWBIZ!

      • RIYL… being the coolest muthafucka in a scene of cool muthafuckas, if Madvillainy was even more stoned out

Open Mike Eagle – Neighborhood Gods Unlimited

Navy Blue – The Sword & The Soaring

      • RIYL… talkin’ bout samurai movies at the bodega, meditations on being
        • Track to start with… Orchards is such a pretty beat and Navy is as poised as ever over top
        • Personal favorite track… Soul Investments

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears

      • RIYL… when rappers say they keepin’ it real and really mean that shit; a Free Palestine (and highlighting the intersections with global oppressions); finding ways to live in spite of it all
        • Track to start with… The Iron Wall is as direct and forceful as an intro as you can get
        • Personal favorite track… for as heavy as this album is, it can also bang and Soft Pack Shorty is representative of that

Saba w/ No ID – From the Private Collection of Saba and No ID

      • RIYL… driving round chicago at night, youths that respect their elders, black and white b-roll of neighborhoods
        • Track to start with… Every Painting Has a Price is a great opener and Saba at his best
        • Personal favorite track… ok, this whole tape is Saba at his best and it eludes me how this project didn’t get more attention – Woes of the World has some more great Saba rapping

 

Glitchy Shit

DARKSIDE – Nothing

      • RIYL… an impossible follow that nails it, strange melodies and riffs that still manage to get lodged in your brain

james K – Friend

      • I’ll confess, I didn’t find this one til I started seeing it on a buncha year-end lists and I’m glad I did, gorgeous record
      • RIYL… anime end credits, not so buried Burial, the closest we’ll get to another Chromatics album
        • Track to start with… when the vocals came in on Days Go By I legit got chills – beautiful song
        • Personal favorite track… so so many, but I’ll limit myself to two: Doom Bikini for the title and the drop, On God for the unexpected psychedelia 

Oneohtrix Point Never – Tranquilizer

      • RIYL… Safdie bros movies minus some of the anxiety but still want some of the anxiety, discovering new sounds
        • Track to start with… ok, realistically, hard to break this one into “fav” tracks – really best experienced as a whole, so start with For Residue and feel out the vibe I guess?
        • Personal favorite track… with the above caveat, I love the textures on Fear of Symmetry 

Everything Is Recorded – Richard Russell Is Temporary

      • RIYL… collaborations galore, Sampha as much as I do (impossible)

 

Poppy Shit

Spill Tab – ANGIE

      • RIYL… sugary cold beverage on an unseasonably warm day
        • Track to start with… great run of tracks to start the album but I’ll go with the single, Athlete
        • Personal favorite track… Adore Me or By Design

caroline – caroline 2

Sudan Archives – The BPM

      • RIYL… albums of wall2wall bangers & future club anthems, afro-futurism

PinkPanthress – Fancy That

      • RIYL… the perfect clapback, hosting dance parties in yo living room, good fucking vibes
        • Track to start with… Illegal for sure
        • Personal favorite track… Nice to Know You has a chorus that just freakin’ slaps

Smerz – Big City Life

      • another one I didn’t find til List Season (listmas), and has been in rotation since – great tunes
      • RIYL… millennial Pet Shop Boys fans, strolling around downtown after the bars have closed and the streets have mostly cleared

Indie Shit

Great Grandpa – Patience, Moonbeam

      • RIYL… big dramatic show-stopping emo ballads, so-and-so w/ strings concerts, herky jerky riffs and stuttery drums
        • Track to start with… Emma
        • Personal favorite track… Doom and Task another great back2back pair

Snocaps – Snocaps

      • RIYL… cool twins, pre-country Waxahatchee
        • Track to start with… Heathcliff is such perfect old Crutchfield vibes
        • Personal favorite track… You in Rehab

Alex G – Headlights

      • RIYL… hanging with the homies and their dogs and reflecting on where life has taken y’all
        • Track to start with… Afterlife and the video is cute
        • Personal favorite track… this is major label Alex G but he still adds some lo-fi(ish) goodness with Louisiana

Deradoorian – Ready for Heaven

Prewn – System

      • RIYL… singing along with the ringing in your ears, videos of wind blowing across fields
        • Track to start with… title-track is the perfect introduction System
        • Personal favorite track… Commotion and Dirty Dog

Ganser – Animal Hospital

      • RIYL… the coolest people at the coolest bar in town, chastising the youth, post punk jams

 

Jazzy Shit

Mary Halvorson – About Ghosts

      • RIYL… the kinda jazz a haunted mansion would write
        • Track to start with… really best as a whole but Carved From will give ya a good sense
        • Personal favorite track… particularly love the groove on Absinthian

Makaya McCraven – Off the Record

      • RIYL… sprawling projects – this is 4 EPs released over the course of the year, sitting in on a jam session
        • Track to start with… the melody on Sweet Stuff will lure you in
        • Personal favorite track… Makaya and Jeff Parker is always an inspiring pair – Battleships is a good ride 

Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream

      • It doesn’t get better than Pino on bass and Blake Mills is makes the perfect pair
      • RIYL… two virtuosos just vibing together, falling asleep in the bath

Nate Smith – LIVE-ACTION

      • RIYL… jazz and hip hop, muthafuckin’ drums, hangin’ in the studio 
        • Track to start with… man, this cover/arrangement of AUTOMATIC (the Pointer Sister’s classic) ft. Lalah Hathaway nails it
        • Personal favorite track… BIG FISH ft. säje will have your toes tapping, fingers snapping, head bobbing

Yazz Ahmed – A Paradise in the Hold

      • RIYL… finding the majesty in even the smallest things, when the comforting presence of a loved one puts your mind at ease

Sean Enfield

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