Northern Transmissions Best Albums of 2025
As Andy Williams once sang, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” And no, I’m not talking about Christmas. We’re recapping our favorite albums from 2025. We had debut solo albums from artists we already know and love from the context of their bands, like Hayley Williams. We had artists coming back from nearly a decade off, like Clipse. We had artists who were on our list in 2024 back on for the second year in a row, like The Last Dinner Party. And artists who seem to never miss, back with another smashing record, Bon Iver.
At #44, Wet Leg had a great year, going on a massive tour across the world with the release of moisturizer. It’s a band tightening the screws on their success. They keep that signature blend of playful swagger and jagged guitar rush, but with sharper writing. They’re balancing danger and relaxation on purpose. We’ve seen them moving through the indie rock world with the passion and intensity of a wildfire.
Wolf Alice at #41 and Pulp at #37 were both more expansive, in totally different ways. Dabbling in different genres, both have highs and lows, and both make room for slower, stripped-back songs that let the writing breathe. Pulp, with roots stretching back to the late ’70s, is a band returning with perspective and bite. Wolf Alice, still young and fresh, is carving their legacy in real time. Different stages of a career, same urge to stretch out and see how much a record can hold.
Youth Lagoon’s Rarely Do I Dream (#26) brought a hazy, emotional clarity that sneaks up on you. A memory turned into music, blurred and nostalgic. Destroyer’s Dan’s Boogie (#23) is a mature, compelling record that probably isn’t for everyone, but it’s a hit if you like complexity and depth. It can feel a little unfinished at times, yet it’s generally intoxicating and interactive, like the songs are still moving while you’re listening.
At #16, Ethel Cain has always been dear to me, and Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is incredibly dark and brooding. It’s the perfect gothic album with an expansive and challenging landscape. It explores themes that are equally brutal, from sexuality to psychic wreckage, and it commits to the discomfort. The atmosphere can be intensely frustrating, but it’s purposeful frustration.
ROSALÍA at #9 is a truly captivating artist, and LUX is a return to earlier instincts without retreating from the exploration of her last album. The orchestral arrangements mixed with her avant-garde, classical pop choices are genius and so fitting, because they’re built around her voice and the way she controls tension. Her performance is compelling and rich with a restrained power, wise beyond her years type of power. It’s a record that can be dramatic. Every choice is intentional.
Hayley Williams’ Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party (#6) is one of the most phenomenal, heartfelt, and passionate works I’ve heard in a long time. This is an absolute must-listen. Put it on the record player, sit down, and listen. The writing is direct and unguarded. Built to be listened from front to back, and not skimmed, it’s deserving of all the praise it has gotten.
Clipse’s Let God Sort Em Out (#3) was maybe my favorite album of the year. The return of Malice and Pusha T was one of the highlights of my year, and it’s an album that stayed on my speakers all summer long. The growth in the brothers and their vulnerability regarding their parents is so fresh from the hip-hop game. They’re nearly untouched from a songwriting standpoint, still stacking triple entendres in every line and even quadruple ones too, laced throughout. It’s sharp, it’s hungry. The rare comeback that raises the bar instead of coasting on the name.
Geese’s Getting Killed stands at the top. Cameron Winter is really having a moment. Last year’s solo album, Heavy Metal, topped many lists of the year last year. Back with the rest of the band this year and they’re doing the same thing, with even more momentum. His voice has a signature warble that is instantly recognizable. He’s at the peak right now, as such a young artist, and I’m very curious to see where he’s going, walking in the footsteps of great artists like Paul McCartney and Kurt Cobain.
Northern Transmissions TOP 50 ALBUMS OF 2025
From position 50 to 21
50. FKA twigs – EUSEXUA
49. The Armed – THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED
48. Big Thief – Double Infinity
47. Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – New Threats From the Soul
46. Danny Brown – Stardust
45. Bartees Strange – Horror
44. Wet Leg – moisturizer
43. Mclusky – the world is still here and so are we
42. Snocaps – Snocaps
41. Wolf Alice – The Clearing
40. Sudan Archives – THE BPM
39. Ty Segall – Possession
38. Lifeguard – Ripped and Torn
37. PULP – More
36. Oklou – choke enough
35. JID – God Does Like Ugly
34. Suede – Antidepressants
33. Iron & Wine – Making Good Time
32. Madi Diaz – Fatal Optimist
31. caroline – caroline 2
30. Home Is Where – Hunting Season
29. Deftones – Private Music
28. Erika de Casier – Lifetime
27. Samia – Bloodless
26. Youth Lagoon – Rarely Do I Dream
25. La Dispute – No One Was Driving the Car
24. The Last Dinner Party – From the Pyre
23. Destroyer – Dan’s Boogie
22. Squid – Cowards
21. Maruja – Pain to Power
From position 20 to 1
20. Matt Berninger – Get Sunk
The title of Matt Berninger’s second solo album, Get Sunk, describes a feeling the National singer had about being stuck in a creative rut. His latest 10-song collection navigates the cloudy waters of self discovery. It’s the sound of him seeking answers to how he became the artist and person he is today.
19. Anna von Hausswolff – ICONOCLASTS
18. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power
The continuity of Lonely People With Power is tied directly to the band’s most iconic material, evident on “Amethyst” and “Winona”. Lonely People With Power is a clear statement of who Deafheaven have grown to be.
17. YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds
45 Pounds channels a similar, raw, industrial power reminiscent of Author and Punisher; combustive and violent, matched with unique tempos and charged with chaos. Similar also to the energies of Frontierer and Black Midi, YHWH continues to be reliably sporadic and eternally engaging with their sound.
16. Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is long and lingering, rarely ever reaching a pulse above a resting heart rate. Though it’s not as tightly edited as its predecessor, its beauty is found in its wistfulness, its lush and expansive sound design, and its winding structure. It’s full of fresh air and charm; Ethel Cain’s love is clearly in every breath.
15. CMAT – EURO-COUNTRY
Why wait for a consultation call when you can jot it all down? Guided by an astonishing voice, a brilliant and earnest pen, and a sense of humor worth its weight in gold, CMAT’s EURO-COUNTRY is a moving and jubilant statement on life in flux.
14. Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE
The best artistic works have been characterized by their ability to move beyond the single register—away from monologue and towards the invitation to work out multiple and unstable meanings. This is art as a game. SABLE, fABLE is the band’s most direct proof its music intends to transcend art, and sometimes, somehow, does.
13. Dijon – Baby
Baby takes the best aspects of both sides of the coin, collaging them into something nearly unrecognizable: the songs are larger-than-life and impossible to sift through, but they could have only been made by a small team of bedroom masterminds. Dijon’s best material used to feel like it could fall apart at the seams, delicately constructed with the loving touch of a careful auteur – now, it sounds like ancestries of R&B and pop being shot through the stratosphere.
12. Model/Actriz – Pirouette
Within that fragile spectacle, Pirouette encourages us to cling to the ghosts we dance with and the selves we’re still becoming despite all the insecurity and fear. In offering a portrait of the self, these songs are more akin to shoulders to lean on, whips to strike with—catharsis claimed by moving through the tension, daring to shape survival into something beautiful. It’s pop music as therapy, darkwave as drag, and confessions transformed into anthems. Ultimately, Pirouette doesn’t seek approval by how it bares itself; it demands surrender. It dares you to experience desire, disgust, shame, and joy—all twirling together in a dizzying blur of lace and lights.
11. Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong
Forever Howlong brims with youth, wisdom, and courage. It ends with “Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me),” an easy-going, folk rock song with a flower power-era, psychedelic flair. “I’ve fallen in love with a feeling,” Ellery sighs in that bright, wispy birdsong voice of hers: to cry, to grieve, to hurt, and to bleed can be a beautiful thing sometimes because they are never truly lonely acts. The record reminds us that while ribs may break and cause the heart to spill all its blood, there will always be people rushing with bandages, casts, and remedies. The healing may not prevent another, future rupture, but it does something more powerful: it allows us to keep breathing. It allows us to love again.
10. Wednesday – Bleeds
The album’s title is only muttered once throughout its entire runtime, with Hartzman bemoaning as a “reality TV argument bleeds / through the floor when I go to sleep”. Bleeds is an album of being kept awake by the trivial, a collage of bleary-eyed snapshots of the humorously mundane and our attempts to wrestle with their unsightliness. The Carolinas finally have their own comedy of errors.
9. ROSALÍA — LUX
Like the prayers one sings at church, mosque, temple, synagogue, or even their home, Rosalía’s LUX aims to be an album that resonates with anyone who listens. The thought that pop music is an uncontrollable force—that it comes to the musician in sudden bouts of inspiration and draws its power from everywhere—is compelling. Most importantly, Rosalía’s attitude doesn’t come across as a tacky, cynical bastardization of a real religion. Instead, her audacious pop sensibilities become just another language, another mode of expression, to show her awe and appreciation of the universe.
8. Turnstile — NEVER ENOUGH
Even in the context of the record the detours on Never Enough are what stick out the most. Songs that would fit well into the hard-hitting catalog of the band are overtly dismantled to make way for something you wouldn’t expect. There is a sense that some elements might have been overcooked in Turnstile’s search to be expansive. Those open to exploration though will find something fertile within Turnstile’s newest vision.
7. billy woods – GOLLIWOG
On GOLLIWOG Billy is not only creating an atmosphere to sober the audience in the unsettling and heavy lyrical topics but he is immersing you in a experience that is 100% unique to any other experimental rap act out there today. The hard hitting and sometimes disorienting beats set the the scene for Billy’s ever changing flows and masterful rhythm.
6. Hayley Williams — Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
For its candor, its daring scope, its lyrical depth and sonic invention, EDABP stands as Williams’ strongest solo work, a project that solidifies her place among the most vital songwriters of the past 15 years. The cover, a tightly framed portrait surrounded by a bold yellow border, serves as a mission statement: to enter the world of Ego Death, you have to set aside your own self and step into the psyche of “Miss Paramore”.
5. Water From Your Eyes — It’s A Beautiful Place
Though It’s A Beautiful Place is able to outwit fatalism, at least with a joke, a riff, and a small step, Water From Your Eyes still cannot promise a happy ending. Yet to say that all they promise is a laugh would be to drastically undersell the magnitude of what they are capable of—leveling up the precision of their slanted approach to pop craftsmanship, and taking the whole universe in stride while they’re at it. There was a time when I thought that Water From Your Eyes were great at irony; now, I hear perhaps the most earnest album of 2025—maybe the only sort of earnestness possible anymore.
4. Blood Orange – Essex Honey
Essex Honey often stutters, switching beats or fading away vocals to reveal new sides of a song, embalming it with sort of a patchwork quality. It can be disarming (“Thinking Clean,” “Somewhere In Between”) or charming (“Life,” “Scared Of It”) — the soft waves of “Westerberg” reveal a buzz that never really gets unearthed. Hynes’ melodies and arranging experiments make for a replayable, effusive record whose insight comes in waves and poetry arrives in short, meaningful doses.
3. Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
Paying homage to the legacy, guests like Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, Nas, The-Dream, and Stove God Cooks all grace the record. Clipse’s place in the pantheon is secure, while the new generation is building upon their foundation.
Let God Sort ’Em Out balances grief with arrogance, glamor with faith. One of the year’s best.
2. Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
Despite being burdened by many societal issues– late capitalism, climate change, political unrest– Brown emboldens his listeners to imagine a better world. Moments of genuine love and joy shine through in the club-inspired production, and create a soundtrack to dance and fall in love to. The Passionate Ones stands out as a powerful sophomore record and an important step in Brown’s journey with the Nourished By Time project, pushing rock and post-punk genres to new places.
1. Geese — Getting Killed
The album isn’t a manifesto—it doesn’t offer any solutions to everything that makes us angry—but it does speak to that general tiredness, that desperation for fun, that wry humor, that disappointment in one’s elders, that void of any remaining feelings for this country, and that impulse to buy a gun and hit a cowbell with it that are a part of this generation’s sensibilities. Getting Killed is an instant classic that only a band as nuts as Geese could compose.
Follow the top songs of 2025 playlist on our Spotify page:
Intro Best Albums 2025 by David Saxum
Credits Best Albums 2025: Charles Brownstein, Alberto Dal Santo, Anastasia Baranovskia, Blake Correll, Bobby Nicholas, Ben Lock, Victoria Borlando, Eli Mui, Erin MacLeod, Beau Goodwin, Diego Machado, Ivy Lock, Ethan Rebalkin, Simone Zangarelli, Gareth O’Malley Adam Fink, Sam Franzini, Hannah Harlacher, Kyle Kohner, Simone Zangarelli, Paul Mackie, Greg Walker, Leslie Ken Chu, Louis Pelingen, Zara Hedderman, Conor Rooney, Allie Mascarello, David Saxum, Igor Bannikov, Tuhin Chicrabatti, Jarrett Edmund, Laura David, Atlin Lester-Serfani and the rest of NT’s family.
order Getting Killed by Geese HERE
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