In recent years the most imposing ghoul rattling its gore-streaked chains at us has been Artificial
Intelligence. It already seems this tech has done little other than create a gigantic contemptible
Ouroboros of shite, responsible solely for derivative, easy to spot, idiot-dazzling slop, that has little
effect on the wider culture than breeding even further creative bankruptcy and depression in people
who use it.
If we can pivot to say, Organic Intelligence – human creativeness – maybe we can hope to do justice to
the untamable, life-changing, pulse-quickening music that we’re lucky enough to have access to every
year. And in that spirit we wish you a happy listmas, please do have a wonderful holidays and a happy
new year:
20 These New Puritans : Crooked Wing
best moment : ‘Wild Fields’, all left-hook right-hook drums, disembodied and monstrous breaths, with
Jack Barnett giving us an exhortation to “come down / from the crystal heavens / from the wild fields
above” with a sensual warning : “I’ll drape your mouth in every town / with liquorice and violence”.
RIYL : Talk Talk, Radiohead, William Blake,
fav songs : “Industrial Love Song” (ft. Caroline Polachek) / “Waiting”
Companion LP: Black Country, New Road : Forever Howlong
19 Deftones : private music
best moment : “infinite source” gifting us quintessential Deftones: huge riffs, booming drums and the
saccharine vocals that soar over the mayhem, easily one of the best tunes they’ve dished out in a while,
in a record chockful of the best Deftones in awhile
RIYL : Deftones in a séance summoning themselves, A Perfect Circle, Tool, Mew, The Smashing
Pumpkins, shoegaze, post-metal, prog metal
fav songs : “milk of the madonna” / “infinite source”
Companion LP: Turnstile : Never Enough
18 billy woods : Golliwog
best moment : all of the sampling of Beloved, Toni Morrison’s haunting exploration of memory,
motherhood, and pain – see the outro of “Misery”; her voice cuts through: “You can go… she’s what I
need.” another reference returns in ‘Lead Paint Test’, with Woods muttering “my beloved home” like a
curse or lullaby. The phrase doesn’t just echo; it grows mildew
RIYL : Armand Hammer, Earl Sweatshirt Abstract Hip Hop, Jazz Rap, Drumless
fav songs : “Misery” / “Waterproof Mascara”
Companion LP: Armand Hammer & The Alchemist : Mercy
17 Rochelle Jordan : Through the Wall
best moment : I love the pockets of raucousness among the smooth, like the thumping drums which
precede the final chorus on “Bite The Bait” or the gnawing synths which disrupt the back half of “Sweet
Sensation”
RIYL : this year’s answer to Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure?, Kylie Minogue, Sade, dance-pop, deep
House, UK Garage, Garage House
fav songs : “Doing It Too” / “The Boy”
Companion LP: Sudan Archives : The BPM
16 Ichiko Aoba : Luminescent Creatures
best moment : the vibrant arrangements that position Ichiko in the middle of a vast landscape, like the
synthesizers shimmering in the distance on “SONAR,” making her sound alone, her voice lightly bathed
in enough reverb to draw attention to the magnitude of everything surrounding her
RIYL : Singer-Songwriter, Chamber Folk, New Age, Ambient
fav songs : “Luciferine” / “SONAR”
Companion LP: DANIA : Listless
15 Rosalia : LUX
RIYL : Bjork’s last three albums, Bad Bunny, Arca, neoperreo, latin electronic,
flamenco nuevo, art pop, orchestral pop, choral
fav songs : “Reliquia” / “Magnolias”
Companion LP: Juana Molina : DOGA
14 Deafheaven : Lonely People With Power
best moment : “Heathen” trying something new by tempering dark pop with heavy yet anthemic
choruses, finding a satisfying balance before locking into a lumbering groove in its final section; as the
tempo quickens, George Clarke lets his voice stretch out over each word, adding as much texture to the
music as the dreamy washes of guitar
RIYL : Blackgaze, Post-Metal, Post-Rock, Alcest, Deftones, Bosse-de-Nage
fav songs : “Magnolia” / “Heathen”
Companion LP: Agriculture : The Spiritual Sound
13 No Joy : Bugland
RIYL : shoegaze, noise/dream pop, Garbage, DIIV, The Cure, Deerhunter, A Sunny Day in Glasgow
fav songs : “Garbage Dream House” / “Bugland”
Companion LP: Sword II : Electric Hour
12 Barker : Stochastic Drift
RIYL : Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Oval, Fennesz, IDM, ambient, new
musical languages
fav songs : “Fluid Mechanics” / “The Remembering Self”
Companion LP: Matmos : Metallic Life Review
11 Panda Bear : Sinister Grift
best moment : in general, nearly every track on Sinister Grift feels like it could’ve been written at any
point in the last 50 years—but in the case of the strolling Everly Brothers-style lament “Anywhere But
Here” it hits in an extremely poingnant and timeless way, with his daughter Nadja’s Portuguese spoken
word adding to the beauty: ““Sitting on the porch/ Looking at the sky/ Count the stars/ Saved above/
But focused on beyond/ It’s just a distraction/ Because actually/ You need to comfort your heart”
RIYL : Person Pitch, Animal Collective, Beach Boys, Spacemen 3, psych pop, sunshine pop, ambient
sampledelic
fav songs : “Anywhere But Here” / “Elegy for Noah Lou”
Companion LP: Dean Blunt : Lucre
10 FKA twigs : Eusexua
best moment : aside from the moment you realize there’s an alternate version of the album on
streaming that replaces a few tracks with three new ones that should’ve been on the album (“Perfectly”,
“The Dare”, and “Lonely but Exciting Road”.. I’m going to say the unexpected and sensuous slice of R&B
that is “Striptease” that’s analogous with twigs’ early work thanks to help from Eartheater, making a
divine heel-turn into drum and bass.
RIYL : art-pop, Madonna – Ray of Light, Oklou, Two Shell, Koreless,Beyoncé, , Electronic Dance
MusicAlternative R&B Post-DubstepUK Bass
fav songs : “Striptease” / “Drums of Death”
Companion LP: fka Twigs : Eusexua Afterglow
09 John Glacier : Like a Ribbon
best moment: on “Found” where she (yes her name is actually John), combines glitchy pastoralism and
new-age samples to realize the constant tension of paradoxical living in the digital age: like a feedback
loop between opposing forces – conveying renewal with the great line “new green grass where the grass
never knew”
RIYL : Shabazz Palaces, early M.I.A., Vegyn, Smerz, experimental Hip Hop, abstract Hip Hop, trap, glitch
hop, cloud rap
fav songs : “Found” / “Emotions”
Companion LP: Jim Legxacy : black british music
08 aya : Hexed!
best moment : on “off to the ESSO” where aya gifts us an exquisitely unhinged psychic noise
cancellation scenario where nerve-jangling sound design, strobed-out percussion skitter, serotonin-
ravaged reportage from the fifth night spent hunched over a baggie in a stranger’s kitchen with a door
key, and sick comedown bass actually combine to produce one of the most life-affirming bangers of
recent years, where she casually says “you dropped your gay-card, love”
RIYL : SOPHIE, Arca, transformational sound design, deconstructed club, dank IDM, glitch
fav songs : “the names of Faggot Chav boys” / “droplets”
Companion LP: Chuquimamani-Condori & Joshua Chuquimia : Los Thuthanaka
07 Nourished By Time : The Passionate Ones
best moment : it’s basically a greatest hits album, but without a doubt the most notable line is on the
urgent “Baby Baby”, when Marcus Brown spits “If you can bomb Palestine, you can bomb Mondawmin,”
referencing a neighbourhood in his home city of Baltimore that sports a giant shopping mall. “Buy
anything, just buy it fucking often / Yeah, turn your fucking brain off.”
RIYL : Dijon, Sudan Archives, MK.Gee, Prince, Blood Orange, bedroom pop, alt R&B, hypnagogic pop
fav songs : “9 2 5” / “Max Potential”
Companion LP: Dijon : Baby
06 Erika De Casier : Lifetime
best moment : “Delusional” nailing the ‘90s fuck music vibe, like Madonna’s murmur period
circa Erotica or the 1993 Sliver soundtrack, trip-hop so ethereal, you feel like you could float away on it.
This one gets bonus points for using a horse neigh sample cribbed from Mel & Tim’s “Good Guys Only
Win in the Movies” and popularized by Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain”
RIYL : Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Sade, Toni Braxton, Usher, pop music in 1998, unironic sex jams, alt r&b,
trip hop, downtempo, ambient pop
fav songs : “Miss” / “Two Thieves”
Companion LP: Snuggle : Goodbyehouse
05 James k : Friend
best moment : If James K makes use of some of pop music’s melodic logic in “Play,” she also healthily
inverts its structure, and I love when the floor falls out of this track halfway through, landing us in a vat
of ambient sirens, vocoder, and Squarepusher drum n bass. Guitars right out of Grimes’ evergreen
“Flesh vs. Blood” start to blast in like hot steam; “Hold on to your home,” she urges, which might not
mean staying pinned to one spot; it might have more to do with setting down roots wherever you
happen to land after the storm
RIYL : Grimes, trip hop Sarah McLachlan, downtempo, dream pop, ambient, ethereal wave, glitch pop
fav songs : “play” / “Blinkmoth (July Mix)”
Companion LP: Laura Groves : Yes EP
04 Oneohtrix Point Never : Tranquilizer
best moment : the humor inherent in a track like “Rodl Glide,” which begins with three minutes of
ghostly, slow-motion R&B before abruptly unleashing a cascade of garish rave stabs and lush Detroit
techno chords— – a 90-second detour that may have you wondering if some other artist has hijacked
your playlist. It’s the rare moment when Daniel Lopatin offers us a glimpse of something from beyond
the limits of his own invented universe.
RIYL : Autechre, A.G. Cook, Actress, Laurel Halo, Aphex Twin, Emeralds, electro prog, art pop,
Japanese ambient, movement in a static space, romantic synth wizardry, glitch
fav songs : “Cherry Blue” / “Measuring Ruins”
Companion LP: Yawning Portal : Anywhere
03 Maria Somerville : Luster
best moment : “Garden” is THE highlight, and has that sense of mystery and subconscious weight. The
gorgeous swooning melody is carried aloft by clouds of feedback, where guitars seem to glide without
human intervention; and finally, the miniature New Order-like guitar refrain at the song’s conclusion,
which nudges us back into mundane reality
RIYL: Grouper, The Sundays, The Cranberries, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, dream pop, dream
folk
fav songs : “Spring” / “Garden”
Companion LP: Joanne Robertson : Blurrr
02 Smerz : Big City Life
best moment : on “You got time and I got money,” that treacly string motif that’s instantly familiar yet
untraceable, it sounds like the Norwegian duo of Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt is
slipping into a plush eiderdown. “I am yours and your boy only,” Stoltenberg sings, as if the song were
written for someone else to sing and she’s just holding their spot on the stage, “So put your hands
around me.”
RIYL : art pop, Sade, Jenny Hval, Tirzah, Kelela, Janet Jackson, The Verve, trip hop, hypnagogic pop
fav songs : “You got time and I got money” / “Feisty”
Companion LP: Jenny Hval : Iris Silver Mist
01 Oklou : choke enough
best moment : when homespun hyperpop artist underscores (2026 AOTY contender!) joins Oklou on
the clubby centerpiece “Harvest Sky”, a song inspired by Oklou’s childhood memories of bonfire
celebrations for La Fête de la Saint-Jean, beaming a memory directly through the speakers; the words
hardly matter and the moment they’re electrified by a timeless trance eruption – and this isn’t even the
best song on the album.
RIYL : ambient pop, trance, music made for bugs, Shygirl, Caroline Polachek, Eartheater, A.G. Cook, Erika
de Casier, ethereal trip hop
fav songs : “ict” / “obvious”
Companion LP: Sophia Stel : How to Win at Solitaire
15 more GEMS :
Addison Rae : Addison
caroline : caroline 2
Darkside : Nothing
DJ Koze : Music Can Hear Us
Djrum : Through Tangled Silence
Ethel Cain : Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love
Jenny Hval : Iris Silver Mist
Little Simz : Lotus
Marie Davidson : City of Clowns
Perfume Genius : GloryPinkpantheress : Fancy That
Joanne Robertson : Blurrr
Stereolab : Instant Holograms on Metal Film
TOPS : Bury the Key
yeule : Evangelical Girl is a Gun
FAV ALBUMS of 2025
20 These New Puritans : Crooked Wing
19 Deftones : private music
18 Addison Rae : Addison
17 Rochelle Jordan : Through the Wall
16 Ichiko Aoba : Luminescent Creatures
15 Rosalia : LUX
14 Deafheaven : Loney People With Power
13 No Joy : Bugland
12 Barker : Stochastic Drift
11 Panda Bear : Sinister Grift
10 FKA twigs : Eusexua / Afterglow
09 John Glacier : Like a Ribbon
08 aya : Hexed!
07 Nourished By Time : The Passionate Ones
06 Erika De Casier : Lifetime
05 James k : Friend
04 Oneohtrix Point Never : Tranquilizer
03 Maria Somerville : Luster
02 Smerz : Big City Life
01 Oklou : choke enough