Let me offer you a piece of advice: Do not check the Billboard Hot 100 right now. I’m serious—unless you like Christian rock and stomp-clap-hey music, you won’t like what you’ll see. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! (How the hell is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” still in the top 10? And why is a third of this chart Morgan Wallen?)
OK, so things are pretty dire in popular music right now, but we’re here to help you fight the urge to get yourself to God’s country. Outside of the Hot 100, there’s still a ton of interesting stuff happening in music this year: the rise of Americana folk, innovations in glitchy electropop, and legacy artists turning in some of their best work to date. While the monoculture is dead (propaganda I’m not falling for: Benson Boone being a famous person) and music has never been more fractured, it’s always taken a little digging outside the mainstream to find the records that really challenge and stick with you. So as you reckon with the facts that, one, Morgan Wallen and Tate McRae have a song together; and, two, it’s the no. 2 song in America right now, here are some great albums from the first part of 2025 (and one from just before that) to tide you over—unranked and presented in reverse chronological order. —Julianna Ress
Editor’s note: Check back periodically throughout the rest of 2025, as we’ll be updating this with some regularity to highlight new albums we love.
Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out
Release date: July 11
Key tracks: “Chains & Whips,” “P.O.V.,” “So Be It,” “M.T.B.T.T.F.”
We swore the cutoff release date for this midyear list would be June 30, but then Pusha T called himself the “Bezos of the nasal.” The first Clipse record in 16 years does not disappoint, as the brothers Thornton have barely lost a step since Til the Casket Drops. There are a few heart-wrenching moments—namely the opener dedicated to Push and Malice’s late parents—and a few TMZ-worthy ones (e.g., the warning shot Push fires at Travis Scott), but Let God Sort Em Out is mostly a showcase for cocaine punchlines and the best Pharrell production you’ve heard since Hell Hath No Fury. In other words, it’s both exactly what you expected and exactly what you needed—and in a year short on event rap releases, it towers over the field like a mountain packed with so much white you could run a slalom. —Justin Sayles
More on Clipse’s Return
yeule, Evangelic Girl Is a Gun
Release date: May 30
Key tracks: “Eko,” “Tequila Coma,” “Evangelic Girl Is a Gun”
Nat Cmiel turned their work as yeule into appointment listening at breakneck speed. After establishing themself as a unique voice in hyperpop on their critical breakthrough, Glitch Princess, and then seamlessly melding that with ’90s alt-rock on their follow-up, Softscars, expectations couldn’t have been higher for the trip-hop-inspired Evangelic Girl Is a Gun. Cmiel didn’t quite reach the highs of their last two efforts this time around, but their fourth album is a worthwhile endeavor regardless. From the ethereal call of “Tequila Coma”; to the warbled whisper of “Eko”; to the reverbed chorus of “1967”; Cmiel keeps finding ways to subvert expectations in their work, while continuing to explore themes of loneliness and heartbreak. Largely producing Evangelic Girl Is a Gun themself—with some assists from Mura Masa, A.G. Cook, and Clams Casino—the Singaporean artist proves they’re still seeking out new worlds to conquer. —Ress
Aesop Rock, Black Hole Superette
Release date: May 30
Key tracks: “John Something,” “Send Help,” “So Be It,” “1010WINS”
For someone who first broke out two decades ago with a barrage of abstract, inscrutable lyrics, Aesop Rock sure knows how to tell a remarkably simple and effective story. When someone is praised for their extensive vocabulary, it’s easy to forget they’re at their peak when they’re spinning tales better suited for kids than graduate students. For my money, the most relatable he’s ever sounded came the first time he slowed it down and opened up, on 2016’s The Impossible Kid, a record where he told funny but evocative parables of the juice shop employee with detachable dreads and his brother’s Little League coach playing whack-a-gopher mid-game.
They’re prime examples of a storyteller who’s ditched the purple prose for emotional truths—who’s matured enough to let the intimate details stand on their own. These kinds of moments abound on Aes’s new album, Black Hole Superette. Conversations about his dog, a mutt with blue eyes? Those are here, sitting alongside slant rhymes about “40 thieves” and “Jordan 3s.” Bragging about his home garden? Just know his bok choy looks like Sideshow Bob. A whimsical story about an escape-artist hamster? A rapidly multiplying snail population in his aquarium that teaches him to live and let live? Increasingly thick fruits by which he marks the passing of time? Look, Aesop Rock understands there are metaphors everywhere you look. They’re all beautifully mundane and inspiring to varying degrees, but my favorite story on this record comes on “John Something.” It’s a half-remembered incident about a guest artist who spoke to Aes’s college class nearly 30 years ago. He can’t really remember his name—maybe it was indeed John, or maybe it was James—or anything important the guy was there to talk about. All he recalls is how “John” gushed about the documentary When We Were Kings—how it moved him, and how it later became one of Aes’s favorites. The details don’t matter. Nor does the craft. All that sticks is the feeling. And if I happen to be misinterpreting, I’d argue that’s in the very spirit of the song. —Sayles
Home Is Where, Hunting Season
Release date: May 23
Key tracks: “migration patterns,” “bike week,” “the wolf man”
Ever since Waxahatchee revved up her Ford pickup for 2020’s Saint Cloud, a wave of Americana folk has swept through indie rock. From “Elderberry Wine” to Geese, the current wave of indie stars have all taken their stabs at alt-country, and the genre was brought into the emo world this year on Home Is Where’s third record. The Florida natives were no stranger to the folksy sound—their breakthrough release, 2021’s I Became Birds, often leaned acoustic—but on Hunting Season they embrace full-band country without losing sight of their emo roots. What makes it all work is Bea MacDonald’s voice—hear her nearly yodel on “black metal mormon,” only to then channel that raspy howl that originally put Home Is Where on the map on songs like “migration patterns” and “bike week.” Paired with the band’s heart-wrenching storytelling, the result is a moving and thoughtful mix of emo and country—and while those two genres are linked more often than you’d think, the blend sounds truly innovative on Hunting Season. —Ress
billy woods, Golliwog
Release date: May 9
Key tracks: “STAR87,” “Corinthians,” “Counterclockwise”
Plenty of smart words have been written about billy woods in general and Golliwog specifically, and I’m sure plenty more will be written about his work in the coming months and years. I’m not sure there’s much I can add, truthfully, though I will say this is my favorite of his since 2022’s exploration of generational and cultural trauma, Aethiopes. He remains one of the greatest living writers regardless of medium, and he’s established himself as the standard-bearer for independent rap in the 2020s.
This record’s been described as “horrorcore,” but unlike the Gravediggaz or early Geto Boys, the imagery isn’t supposed to shock you—it’s supposed to unnerve you. (And it should: just consider the artifact the album’s named after.) Equally unsettling: the production, which comes courtesy of the Alchemist, Preservation, Kenny Segal, and Conductor Williams, and warbles like a vinyl jazz collection left in the sun too long—punctuated by literal screams and tears.
I will say, however, that despite how disquieting this entire affair is, it did produce one of the funniest ideas to ever appear on a rap record: “I had my community sick / When they unraveled, I time traveled and still picked Darko Miličić,” he raps on “Cold Sweat.” Maybe he’s a better writer than he is a pretend-GM, but if there’s an underlying theme to woods’s work—both real and imagined—it’s that awful history has a way of repeating itself. —Sayles
The Ringer’s Best of 2025 ... So Far
PinkPantheress, Fancy That
Release date: May 9
Key tracks: “Illegal,” “Stars,” “Stateside”
“My name is Pink and I’m really glad to meet you,” PinkPantheress aptly opens her new mixtape, Fancy That. “You’re recommended to me by some people.” It’s a funnily vague way of introducing herself to what the song later reveals to be a weed dealer, but it could double as a tongue-in-cheek impression of any number of Pitchfork readers who approached her music with caution after hearing that a “TikTok musician” was actually doing something interesting. But while anyone in the know can attest that she’s long moved on from any pejorative connotation that “TikTok musician” may carry—she’s obviously a scholar of Y2K, from her samples of Panic! At the Disco and Jessica Simpson to her wardrobe that often looks like it was purchased with Kohl’s Cash circa 2007—her music is undeniably modern.
On Fancy That, PinkPantheress takes the minimalist, looping beats that made her a TikTok staple and thoughtfully broadens her inspirations. There’s the EDM-lite “Girl Like Me,” which doesn’t sound unlike early-2010s relics Cobra Starship and Far East Movement (complimentary). She borrows from early-2000s house duo Basement Jaxx on the bubblegum “Stars,” and enlists burgeoning pop powerhouse the Dare for the cool jam “Stateside.” The result is an unmistakably 2025 portrait informed by the offbeat pop sounds of past and present—and anyone who still needs to be convinced probably wouldn’t get it anyway. —Ress
PUP, Who Will Look After the Dogs?
Release date: May 2
Key tracks: “Get Dumber,” “Olive Garden,” “Needed to Hear It”
Is there any band more consistent than PUP these days? Since the mid-2010s, the Toronto rockers have been totally reliable in offering up gang vocals, abject nihilism, and self-deprecation in spades—and their fifth LP is no different. Still equipped with their signature sense of humor (there’s a song on the album about meeting up with an ex at an Olive Garden called, you guessed it, “Olive Garden”), PUP uses the record to get introspective and self-aware. All of the usual emotions are there—regret, anger, desperation—but frontman Stefan Babcock has just gotten a little wiser. Even the album’s title, which was written after Babcock ended a long-term relationship, is a tongue-in-cheek yet all-too-real logistical hurdle that comes with adult breakups. When it comes up in the depression anthem “Hallways,” it’s downright devastating: “I’m losing the will to keep draggin’ on / But I can’t die yet, ’cause who will look after the dog?”
Maybe as a result of all that growing up, the album leans more mid-tempo than PUP’s previous work, but it’s there that they find one of their greatest earworms to date in “Needed to Hear It.” On the track, Babcock recounts a cycle of arguments that keep enabling the same behavior over and over again. The root cause of it all? “I was only telling you that because I know you needed to hear it,” he admits on the shout-along chorus. What “that” is doesn’t matter—it doesn’t get more grown up than confronting your own avoidant tendencies. —Ress
Skrillex, Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! <3
Release date: April 1
Key tracks: “Recovery,” “Mora Kaiju VIP,” “San Diego VIP”
A decade before the red-pill manosphere epidemic influenced an election and inspired overly didactic Netflix content, the worst thing you had to worry about was your kid getting into brostep. The hypermasculine, IDGAF dubstep offshoot was defined by cracked copies of FruityLoops, excessive molly use, and enough glow sticks to overtake the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There were plenty of flash-in-the-pan star DJ/producers, from Flux Pavilion to Rusko to Bassnectar, but the official mascot for the genre will forever be the former emo singer with the dirty-kitchen-mop haircut: Skrillex.
He’s also possibly the only brostep survivor with anything resembling a mainstream career post–Obama administration. The man born Sonny Moore has spent the past decade or so racking up production credits for the likes of Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Mariah Carey, Ed Sheeran, Juice WRLD, and Beyoncé, in the process reinventing himself as a stealth hitmaker and auteur who could also credibly collaborate with more critic-approved electronic artists like Fred again.. and Four Tet. All of which made the return of the scary saw-bass monster this year downright exhilarating.
Coming on the heels of his conquering-hero welcome at this year’s Ultra Music Festival, Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! <3 is a legitimately thrilling collection of songs (34 of them, to be exact), filled with bass drops that fall like Acme anvils. It’s a prodigal son coming home and showing what his absence has wrought—Fuck U Skrillex is more aggro than the pop or hip-hop dalliances of his twin 2023 records, and it’s full of features from old friends (Joker, Boys Noize) and Skrillex’s spiritual progeny (Dylan Brady of 100 gecs shows up on a few tracks; it makes too much sense). It’s hard to recommend many songs individually—they’re mostly instrumental and mixed together like a DJ set, so few stretch beyond two minutes—but taken as a whole, it’s a return-to-mecca experience for anyone who ever downloaded the “Pro Nails” remix or had an emotional experience while listening to “Levels.” There’s even an obligatory “Damn, son, where’d you find this?” vocal tag midway through Fuck U Skrillex, but maybe the most important spoken words come in the opening seconds of the relatively tranquil “KORABU.” The voiceover says, “Reject society, return to nature,” and amid the wobble and chaos, you think: this sounds like salvation. —Sayles
Brian Ennals & Infinity Knives, A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears
Release date: April 4
Key tracks: “The Iron Wall,” “Everyone I Love Is Depressed”
Few albums introduce themselves like the latest from rapper Brian Ennals and producer Infinity Knives. “For four generations, your boots up on they neck / October 7 happened, the fuck did you expect?” Ennals raps at the start of “The Iron Wall,” the opener to this year’s great A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears. In short order, he’s calling Donald Trump a rapist, Joe Biden a Nazi, and Barack Obama a devil. It’s perhaps, as Fantano called it, a little reverse-edgelord-y, but it’s an effective example of the old Se7en maxim: You can’t just tap people on the shoulder anymore—you gotta hit them with a sledgehammer. Once Ennals and Knives get your attention, though, they make good use of it.
A City is backdropped by moody, noisy production and filled with Modest Mouse references, self-medicating cocaine use, and pure aggression that’ll be a good litmus test for how you view the world. (“The bitch that got Emmett Till killed just died, and I prayed that it was painful as fuck,” goes the opening to another track. When Ennals later calls himself “Mike Tyson and Mao in a blender,” you’re inclined to believe him.) As with their last team-up, 2022’s excellent King Cobra, it’s all dark and mostly dirge-y. But the moment I keep returning to is the most upbeat song—tempo-wise, at least. “Everyone I Love Is Depressed” is roller-rink disco that deploys the “Tom’s Diner” cadence—typically not the template for a track with a chorus like “Don’t kill yourself / ’Cause we love you too much.” But the beauty is in the juxtaposition. At a time in history when it can feel like you’re constantly running around with your hair on fire, it can be cathartic to listen to. One hopes that making it was cathartic for its authors, too. At the very least, they’ll remind you directly that they are not fucking around. —Sayles
Deafheaven, Lonely People With Power
Release date: March 28
Key tracks: “Doberman,” “Magnolia,” “Winona”
What would Deafheaven’s career look like without Sunbather? The black metal album for people who couldn’t care less about black metal, the band’s 2013 sophomore record burst through like a flower in a wasteland—pop melodies drenched in distortion and buried beneath frontman George Clarke’s throat-tearing screams. It changed their trajectory, earning AOTY praise from practically every outlet worth a damn and making them the best known band in a genre previously best known for Norwegian weirdos.
But perhaps because of the attention Sunbather got, each of Deafheaven’s subsequent albums has felt like a reaction to what came before: 2015’s New Bermuda shored up their metal bona fides, 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love evoked shoegaze melancholy, and for their most abrupt lane change, 2022’s Infinite Granite saw Clarke dropping his trademark screams for something more subdued and accessible. (It was fine; tellingly, its best moments came in the back half of its closing track, which crescendos with Clarke and Co. tearing open the sky anew.)
In that light, it’s hard not to read this year’s Lonely People With Power as an intentional shift from their weakest-received record to date. Clarke is back to screaming, while the songs climax in moments of pulverizing beauty dialed up to maximum overdrive. But there are other moments that will bowl you over—I’m partial to bassist Chris Johnson’s work on “The Garden Route” and drummer Daniel Tracy’s breakneck speed on, well, everything. Lonely People is possibly their best album since their breakthrough 12 years ago—or it’s possible that whatever Deafheaven record you’re currently listening to is bound to consume you like a tidal wave. All I know is that it’s impossible to listen to a song like the seven-minute “Winona”—which cycles through gorgeous riffs, hypnotizing percussion, and, yes, cathartic screams—and not want to bathe in its light. —Sayles
Panda Bear, Sinister Grift
Release date: February 28
Key tracks: “Defense,” “Anywhere But Here,” “Ends Meet”
After a long career of crafting some of the most innovative and compelling pop music of the 21st century, Panda Bear has nothing left to prove. So on his eighth solo record, Sinister Grift, he just decided to go full Beach Boys—and, again, made some of the most excellent music of the year. Not to mention, the music is still extremely intricate—the layered harmonies on “Anywhere But Here” are gorgeous beyond comprehension, while the groovy “Ends Meet” has new clicks and clacks to discover on every listen. He taps Cindy Lee for some psychedelic guitar on album closer “Defense” (a dream collab for any ’60s pop scholar obsessed with the story of Brian Wilson pulling his car over out of sheer astonishment the first time he heard “Be My Baby” on the radio) and his old Animal Collective bandmates for some assists on noises and samples throughout the record. That all said, I’m still stuck on the opener, “Praise,” a rush of California pop so perfect that I can’t help but keep hitting replay. —Ress
Horsegirl, Phonetics On and On
Release date: February 14
Key tracks: “Rock City,” “Julie,” “In Twos”
When Horsegirl debuted with Versions of Modern Performance in 2022, it was clear that the teenage trio were students of fuzzy ’90s alt-rock. Their first record came with a crackling, fully-formed sound indebted to Sonic Youth and Stereolab, but where could that take them moving forward? Teaming up with the Welsh art rock musician and producer Cate Le Bon for their second effort, Phonetics On and On, Horsegirl found room to deepen and enrich their music even further. The album is still full of the catchy, layered ditties that got Horsegirl attention in the first place, but Le Bon’s production places them in mesmerizing, lush soundscapes. Paired with the band’s understated yet poignant lyricism, Phonetics On and On yields captivating tunes that can lean both twee and contemplative.
Take the spare and stunning “Julie,” on which co-lead vocalist Penelope Lowenstein plainly asks, “We have so many mistakes to make / What do you want from them?” as a simple guitar riff loops in the background. The words seem uncomplicated on paper, but as the production subtly builds on that refrain, it’s clear that the feelings at hand are important ones. Or on the quietly devastating “In Twos,” which finds Lowenstein and Nora Cheng reckoning with lingering loneliness. “The footprints on the street, they walk in twos / Every good thing that I find, I find I lose / And I try,” they sing, repeating that last part several times until culminating with a low note the guitar echoes, emphasizing the emotional weight one carries in isolation. Phonetics On and On is full of these flourishes that serve to heighten its themes, making the record a rich text that rewards relistens. —Ress
FKA Twigs, Eusexua
Release date: January 24
Key tracks: “Room of Fools,” “Childlike Things,” “Drums of Death,” “Striptease”
The closest you or I will ever get to a night at the club with FKA Twigs is by listening to her third record, Eusexua, which doubles as a tour through the British techno scene by alt-pop’s preeminent purveyor of cool. Working with buzzy U.K. electronic musicians like Koreless and Two Shell, Twigs was clearly fascinated by propulsive, hypnotic beats when making the album—and, as usual, combined that with her experimental inclinations. Like on the standout “Room of Fools,” which builds on a rush that seems impossible to let up, until the instrumental drops as her voice rings out. Or on “Striptease,” where she tags in 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady for a darkly erotic banger that culminates in a sinister, glitchy bridge. It all leads toward the ultimate comedown in the album closer “Wanderlust,” a meditative ballad with a touch of Auto-Tune in what is fundamentally Twigs’s version of a stripped-down track. “If I don’t wake up Monday morning / I’ll make it up to you, babe,” she croons, as the album’s high gives way to a morning-after wave of long-simmering emotions. In Twigs’s hands, the reckoning that comes after is just an essential part of a good night out. —Ress
Cameron Winter, Heavy Metal
Release date: December 6, 2024
Key tracks: “Nausicaa (Love Will Be Revealed),” “Love Takes Miles,” “$0”
An album released so late in 2024 that it missed practically every year-end list—including our own—Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal is one of the most spellbinding records in recent memory. (Also one of its most deceptively named—there’s nary a lick of distortion on it, let alone anything listeners could mistake for Pantera.) But if Winter’s band Geese evokes classic rock at its best, then his solo debut conjures the spirits of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, or Rufus Wainwright—the types of hyperliterate singer-songwriters capable of provoking deep thoughts and spiritual feelings at the same time. Heavy Metal comes packed with lore—it was allegedly recorded partly in several New York City Guitar Centers; he was reportedly advised to shelve everything but the album’s poppiest song, “Love Takes Miles”—and it’s not always a soothing listen. (Winter wails and bellows in equal measure, and it’s not unreasonable to call his wavering baritone an acquired taste.) But in its best moments—like the climactic seven-minute piano ballad, “$0,” which ends with him declaring “God is real” enough times that you believe—Heavy Metal is truly transcendent. Presumably, we’ll be replacing Heavy Metal when it comes time for the year-end list—perhaps with Geese’s upcoming Getting Killed—but we’ll be damned if there’s a record we’ll listen to more in 2025. —Sayles
