Top 50 Projects of 2025
- Andrew Doucette
- 3 hours ago
- 20 min read
50. Dogs in a Pile - Distroid
I still think something about the way they recorded this album sounds a bit hollow, but the songs themselves are just so good that it doesn’t matter! I really appreciated how the last few tracks on the album transition well into each other. Hopefully they continue to put out quality songs, and who knows, maybe they’ll even improve some with the next album too!
I probably should’ve put “Cherry Blue” on my top songs of the year list, but alas, we all make mistakes. The song is so gorgeous that I was literally speechless the first time I heard it! As for the rest of the album, it’s a usual OPN album, but it is a bit better than his previous couple albums. I’m always here for more music from him, so I gotta listen to his Marty Supreme score now!
48. Kali Uchis - Sincerely,
Kali never misses, and Sincerely, is yet another example of high quality R&B from her! She’s started to expand her songs outside of the traditional three to four minute song structure the vast majority of her songs fall into, but outside of that, this is basically Kali Uchis as usual!
I haven’t been able to fully digest this album yet, but even from my few listens, this might be the most personal album of Navy Blue’s career! For most artists, that’s not necessarily incredibly impressive, but for Navy Blue, that’s unfathomable considering his past releases. As usual, he’s a really great rapper rapping over these soulful beats. But for the time being, I just hope he’s alright, because he’s experienced so much loss at this young age.
As great as Nourished By Time’s music is, it’s really his voice that sells it for me! Yes, the songs are incredibly catchy and well produced, but there’s no one else that sounds like him out there! His fusion of indie-pop and R&B is also so infectious!
45. Fred Again.. - USB002
This isn’t an official album, but more of a project Fred has been doing the last few months. Originally, the plan was ten songs and ten shows (all around the world) in ten weeks. Instead, it’s now turned into 13 main songs, a handful of extra remixes and SoundCloud exclusives, and 20 shows in an amount of weeks I’ve lost count of. If you look at his USB album on streaming, these USB002 songs are the first 13 that are there (I suppose there might be more by the time this comes out too). As for the songs, they’re just another collection of what makes Fred awesome! Quite a few heavy hitting bangers, including the two songs with Bia and “Ok Ok” with Danny Brown. There’s also a couple more emotional moments, like on “Solo” and “Hardstyle 2”. So while this isn’t necessarily an official project (but it is on vinyl as USB002), I had to include these songs that he’s dropping because they’re just that sick!
44. Mick Jenkins & Emil - A Murder For Crows
I may not like this as much as his previous two albums, but a new Mick Jenkins album is always something to be grateful for! Songs like “Pundits (Yappers)” and “DeadStock” are some of the most powerful hip-hop songs of the year, one being because of Mick’s vocal inflection and the other being because of the moving lyrics. I hope he continues to drop quality music!
43. Levity - Snack Pack Vol. 1
This is just five dubstep-influenced bangers from Levity! While their other projects lean heavily into pacing and track listing, this one is mainly just five bangers. I’m sure they’ll be back with something more substantial soon, but this is nice for the time being.
While I didn’t end up loving this as much as his previous album, there’s no denying that Baby is another fantastic, unorthodox album that I’m really glad is getting Dijon more hype and recognition. These songs are formless, but yet can still function like alternative R&B hits. It’s no wonder people like Bon Iver and Justin Bieber have had Dijon on their albums this year!
41. Rico Nasty - Lethal
It’s been quite a few years since Rico Nasty put out an album, and I’m glad that she came through with flying colors! I do appreciate her mixing in more traditional rock aspects, which is something I always wanted her to do. While it does seem like she’s fallen down in popularity over her break, I think that she’s still making some of the best music of her career!
40. Big Thief - Double Infinity
While this album still fails to live up to the band’s previous material, I still really enjoyed plenty of songs on this album! “Los Angeles” is still a gorgeous track, and “Grandmother” with Laraaji is easily one of the group's most psychedelic and otherworldly tracks. Hopefully they’ll come back with something to the level of their best stuff, but for now, don’t dismiss Double Infinity as anything less than really good!
39. Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Alfredo 2
Unsurprisingly, a follow up to an incredible album is also a really great project! It didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s another example of a great rapper and great producer coming together to make a great album! It was nice to hear the plethora of new features on here too.
This is technically Phrva’s second EP, but it’s his first of any substance. It’s also on Deadbeats, so he now has a big name backing him. Thankfully, this project is exactly what it needed to be! Genesis is six bass-heavy, EDM bangers that’ll hopefully make more people pay attention to him. Now, the only thing to wonder is where he goes from here.
This includes both the original version of Eusexua and the re-released version that came out in November. The newer songs don’t really add that much, and they do take away a couple of the better songs on the original album. Still, no matter what format it takes, great songs are great songs. “Striptease” is still absolutely gorgeous, “Eusexua” starts out the opener with a gorgeous track that builds wonderfully, and “Drums of Death” remains one of her best experimental songs! It may not be my favorite twigs album, but it’s still pretty great!
This is a pretty awesome debut album! Signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records, this punk/metal female quartet seems primed to become a force in this genre! While the straightforward anthems will get most of the praise, and deservedly so, they also have a couple weirder songs on here that show they can actually elevate their sound with their next album. Only time will tell if they actually do, but for now, Something to Consume absolutely rocks!
Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is up there for the best Open Mike Eagle project, and it was nice to get something of that quality from him again! I’m always down to hear whatever collection of trauma bops Open Mike Eagle decides to come back with next.
34. Nitepunk - Lawless EP
I didn’t know much about Nitepunk before this EP, and frankly, I still don’t know much about him. What I do know is that this 5-song EP is 19-minutes of upbeat, dubstep inspired techno and rave music. If that sounds entertaining, then I highly recommend you check this out, especially the last couple tracks!
33. Daniel Donato - Horizons
I really enjoyed this new album from the alt-country jamband! Their country leaning songs tend to be tight and catchy, whereas the jam leaning songs aren’t as frequent, but hit perfectly within the album’s context! I’m not sure where they’ll go next, but Daniel Donato came through with flying colors on this album!
I may not have fully come around to this album like I have with Preacher's Daughter, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a gorgeous album! These songs are so slow, but they always build wonderfully throughout the runtime! While I’ve seen that her fanbase is split between this album and Perverts as the better project of 2025, I still appreciate her slowcore, americana material the best.
31. Danny Brown - Stardust
Danny’s first foray into hyperpop, at least in an album sense, ended up as quite the success! He brings on features for nearly every song on here, some of which include people like Underscores, Jane Remover, Frost Children, Nnamdï, Quadeca, and more. When it comes to the rapping, Danny comes through with flying colors, as usual! I do wish that the project was a bit weirder, but the entire thing was still very entertaining either way!
This is the best Earl Sweatshirt album since Some Rap Songs! It’s easy to call this the happy version of SRS, but honestly, it kind of is! These songs are all short, soulful, lofi, abstract musings on his life at the time. Just now, his life includes a wife and a kid instead of dealing with loss and depression. As Earl says to end the album, “At the end of the day, it's really just you and whatever you think. I'm airmailing you strength,” and this album is one to play when you need that strength.
This is the Paris Texas that I was missing! Their brand of hip-hop is entirely unique, which is a pretty big accomplishment in 2025! They are clearly extremely inspired by alternative music, but still manage to have it be great music that is clearly hip-hop. Hopefully they put out another album that’s just as good as these sister EPs!
28. Larry June, 2 Chainz, & The Alchemist - Life is Beautiful
This may not have been the best rap album of 2025, but it may end up being the most underrated! The project is pretty straight forward, just eleven tracks of great beats and great rapping from two rappers that vocally compliment each other very well. I do hope that 2 Chainz makes a full solo project of songs like this, because this is a bit of a new sound for him, and man did he excel!
27. Skepta & Fred Again.. - Skepta .. Fred
It’s wild that these two could seemingly make this project in the background of whatever main project each of them are working on. Sure, these five songs don’t reinvent the wheel for either artist, but it’s really cool to see Fred get back into his hip-hop producing bag and it’s nice to hear Skepta over some great beats again!
26. Food house - two house
Hyperpop is forever! Listening to this album reminded me of the “good” times of 2020 and 2021 when hyperpop was seemingly going to be the next big thing. Two house balances the usual DIY feeling that comes with hyperpop with the catchy choruses that are stickier than most “normal” pop music. I hope it doesn’t take another five years to get the next Food House album!
25. Frost Children - Sister
I think this is Frost Children's best album, and yet, they still have the potential to make something so much better! Yes, the album is full of engaging electronic indie-sleeze, and Frost Children’s version of it pays homage to it so well while simultaneously creating something new. As great as this album is, I’m excited to see what they end up doing next even more!
This is the first ambient/modern classical album that Macie’s done, and she knocked it out of the park! While I didn’t play this album constantly, it was always there when I needed an anxiety relief or just a distraction from constant thoughts. Her violin and piano playing were gorgeous, and every feature played their part nicely! This won’t exactly convince anyone that’s not an ambient fan, but it provided me a lot of use this year!
23. Clozee & LSDREAM - LSZEE: Enigma Mixtape
This is something that came from the one day of Bonnaroo that actually happened this year. This mixtape came out Thursday, so my first listen of the project was actually chilling at the campsite with my speaker. It didn’t hit that hard then, but between getting quality listens of it with good headphones and it reminding me of good times, I enjoyed my time with this project quite a bit!
22. Little Simz - Lotus
She may have split from her normal producer, Inflo, but Little Simz still put out a fantastic album this year! Having incredible vocalists like Moses Sumney, Michael Kiwanuka, and Sampha on the album only added to the beauty of the project! Simz gave plenty of her usual soulful hip-hop tracks, but also ended up doing a couple different things as well. At this point in her career, I doubt that Little Simz could ever do something less than great!
Depending on the day, this might be my favorite Bad Bunny album! It’s so thoughtful with the lyrical content, while also having enough fun tracks to not make the album feel hard to listen to. I can't wait to see what he does at the Super Bowl this year!
20. PinkPantheress - fancy that
PinkPantheress can do no wrong at this point! Even a mixtape that barely stretches to 20 minutes contains multiple of the best pop songs of 2025! While I think she’s a level below the popularity of her contemporaries like Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan, she’s making music that’s just as good, if not better than all of them!
19. FKA twigs - Eusexua Afterglow
I do slightly prefer this second album she put out this year, where it feels like she tones down the rave elements and gets a bit more experimental. Just look at the single, “Predictable Girl”, which is full of these blasting, distorted hits of noise and Twigs’s heavily autotuned vocals. It feels like her version of a traditional club hit. The rest of the album is great too though, including the vogue-ready “Sushi”, the transforming “Hard”, and an unexpected PinkPantheress feature on “Wild and Alone”. I’m sure twigs won’t have new music for a little bit after dropping 25-ish new songs this year, but I’m glad that she decided to have the most prolific year of her career this year!
This is far from the most explosive material that 2hollis has made, but I think it’s the best overall project he’s made so far. I know he can make something better in the future, but star is still an enjoyable, fantastic electronic/pop/hip-hop project!
Nothing like an album full of eight-minute long indie-rock and alt-country songs with impeccable writing! Ryan Davis is an artist where the writing is really the standout. Sure, the production and instrumentation is tasteful, but it’s his way with words that makes it stand out more than everyone else. There’s too many details to get into the weeds of how he writes, but go back and read my excerpt on my favorite song of 2025, which happens to be from this album!
Hayley Williams had quite the year! She was popping out at so many different artists' shows, including Remi Wolf’s Superjam that I was lucky enough to see in person. The rollout for this album was also quite unique, in mainly positive ways, but at the end of the day, the music is some of the best solo music she’s ever made! Stylistically, she succeeded in quite a few new sounds here, which is exactly what I’d hope from a solo artist. I’d hope that if she continues to make solo music before Paramore comes back together, she continues to try more and more unique sounds.
This is the album I still feel mostly unqualified to talk about! Rosalía has become one of my favorite artists, especially after 2022’s Motomami and the subsequent tour! This album is a pretty big departure from that. Lux is a modern classical epic that contains The London Symphony Orchestra throughout, and is even structured like a classical piece would be. There are four movements on here, and the album contains thirteen (or fourteen) different languages! The reason why is because the album is inspired by different female saints throughout history, and when Rosalía sang about them, she wanted to honor them by singing in their language. Much of the time making this album included reaching out to translators to make sure the lyrics were translated correctly. Now, is the album any good? Of course, it’s Rosalía! She’s one of the best singers in the world, and hearing her sing over orchestras is easily one of the most stunning things of 2025! With all the different languages and stories in the album, and the fact that the album came out in November, Lux could very easily be 20 spots higher or lower on this ranking in the next couple months. Trying to digest something this sonically and thematically dense is a tough challenge I haven’t fully been up to yet. But what I do know is that this is absolutely gorgeous and worth all the three-and-a-half years it took to make!
After already releasing a fantastic UKG album last year, MPH decided to release another great full length album this year! This time, it’s a much more conceptual release, with there being a narrator who explains the story as it’s happening. It’s not exactly a super unique or emotional story, it’s just about a guy and his friends who have a night they’ll never forget, but it’s a cool idea for an album. After these two albums in the past two years, MPH has certainly become a fixture in this genre!
13. Sammy Virji - Same Day Cleaning
Just a couple weeks ago, I was frustrated waiting for someone’s Grubhub order for 20-minutes, and it had started snowing, so I had to drive in the snow. To try and raise my morale, I played this album front to back while driving in the snow, and it turned my mood around! Sure, not all of these 17 songs are perfect UKG bangers, but it’s overall such an easy, danceable, uplifting listen that’s been a lot of fun to listen to in these past few months!
12. Wet Leg - Moisturizer
After sitting with the album for half a year, I do think it’s a better album than the debut. Sure, it does feel a bit more tame at points, but the maturity overpowers the lower amount of quirks. There are probably three or four songs on here that could easily have been in my favorite songs of the year list, and be fairly high on the list too! All in all, I hope they just continue to make great stuff!
The more time I spent with this album, the more I appreciated it! After Tyler’s last few albums have all been high concept, intricately detailed opuses, this album brings it back to basics! Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of little details in these songs, but the main draw of this album is how immediate it is. He even tells us in the first few seconds of the album that the album is made to be enjoyed while moving and not for emotions. So while I could try to dissect and explain all the things about the album I really like, you might as well just put it on and enjoy these 29 minutes instead!
After all his work with ISOxo and his own massive ascension to fame, finally having his debut album come out in January was a big moment, and he lived up to it! Nolimit isn’t necessarily a gigantic step up from anything he’s done before, but it is his most well-rounded project! There are plenty of bass-house bangers, but also a couple good ballads on the backend, a colossal dubstep track in the middle, and even a nasty drum n bass track! This album is a nonstop party for close to an hour, and there are now even more options of where Knock2 can go in the future!
Jane has had one of the most prolific years I’ve seen an artist have in quite some time! Depending on how you view the words “released” and “project”, Jane has put out anywhere between three and five projects in 2025! While everything has been at least good, it’s always been Revengeseekerz that’s the clear best and my personal favorite! This is Jane pivoting into her own version of electronic/digicore mixed with newer rage music. I mean this in the nicest way possible, because she is a good rapper and singer, it’s the production that carries this! I have no conceivable idea how Jane managed to make all of these sounds and noises coalesce into not only songs, but incredible pieces of music! There are so many details in these songs that only uncover themselves after many listens! While Jane’s fast-paced output has made me a bit tired of her music by the end of the year, there’s not really anything else negative I can say about Revengeseekrz! Only time will tell where she’ll go from here!
8. JID - God Does Love Ugly
I get why this album didn’t grab people like The Forever Story did, but that’s made too many people overlook God Does Love Ugly for the great album it actually is! JID is a phenomenal rapper, and it’s no different on this album! Sure, he’s trying to be a bit more direct here compared to his previous project, but even him being simpler is still more complex than 90% of other rappers. To me, the biggest strength in this project is that it can both be listened to as a concept album of JID talking about his experience with faith, but it can also be enjoyed just on the pure aesthetic and sonic level and still be just as enjoyable! Sure, each way is enjoyable differently, but no matter what kind of listener you are, I think there’s plenty of greatness to uncover over this album!
7. Goose - Chain Yer Dragon
This surprise album from Goose was their second of the year, and it definitely eclipsed their first one! While Everything Must Go shows the group subtly trying different things throughout the album, Chair Yer Dragon feels like they wanted to make great songs! These songs are exactly what you would expect from Goose. They’re very jam-oriented tracks with sticky indie-rock choruses! They can jam out really well, like on the 10-minute “Empress of Organos”, but they can also write something that sounds like it should be on the adult contemporary radio, like with “Madalena”. If this isn’t your thing, I’m not sure this is going to convince you that it’s your new favorite genre, but if you do like that sound, definitely don’t let this slip by you!
Hurry Up Tomorrow closes out the newest Weeknd trilogy of incredible pop opuses, and while this is definitely the worst of the three, it’s still a really great album. The album is 22 songs long and almost 90 minutes in length, so it is a bit long! Even with there being so many songs though, it’s not as much of a negative as it could’ve been because everything on here is great! The ballads that end the album are genuinely gorgeous, especially the final two tracks that go into his psyche and dealings with fame. I also really appreciate how the first half of the album transitions together so well!
This might be the surprise of 2025 for me! I had heard of Ninajirachi before, as she was on ISOxo’s 2023 masterpiece of a debut, kidsgonemad!, but I had never listened to her solo music before. When the rollout for this album started, it gained a good amount of traction online, but it was really “IPod Touch” that had me making sure to check this album out. Even in the first couple months of listening, I really liked the album, but it hadn’t fully clicked. What really made it go over the top for me was actually seeing her live. Her set ended with, “All I Am,” a song that I liked at the time, but didn’t love. The melody was simultaneously perfect for an afterparty ender at 1:30 in the morning, but also held so much emotion. I had already gravitated to the emotional parts of the album the most, “IPod Touch” and “Sing Good” in particular, but this moment had me starting to find it in these other songs. All the sudden, the desperation in “Delete” started coming through more, or the trauma in “Infohazard,” a song about accidentally seeing a snuff film way too young. Even “Fuck My Computer,” a song I previously only enjoyed as a lighthearted poke at how much she likes her computer, started to unravel with the line, “‘Cause no one in the world knows me better.” So while yes, the album is produced incredibly and there's a lot of fun to be had, it’s the emotion in I Love My Computer that makes this album special.
4. Bon Iver - Sable, fable
It’s been six years since the last Bon Iver album, and while he didn’t come back with something quite as innovative as his other stuff, I think this might be my favorite album of his! These songs are thoughtful, beautiful, and easy to listen to! I really like hearing Justin’s “normal” voice without all the autotune and falsetto. He also brought alone the perfect features to help him with this album; Danielle Haim, Dijon, and Flock of Dimes. There are also a plethora of awesome musicians that helped make this album, so many that I even found a few more just from creating this list! If you haven’t heard this album yet and you’ve liked anything that Bon Iver has ever done, you really need to listen to this!
3. Geese - Getting Killed
I’m tired of Geese. Ok, not really, but the discourse around them is inescapable. This isn’t a gatekeeping thing, I’m glad they’re starting to get so much attention! In my opinion, they are easily the thing to be most excited about for rock fans in the last few years! I just wish I could scroll social media sometimes and not see every media outlet posting about every single thing they do. (Edit: The day after I wrote this SNL parodied Cameron Winter. There’s no escape.) Ok, grievance aside, this is definitely the best rock album of 2025! It took a couple listens for me to fully get the stylistic change the band takes from their previous album, 3D Country, but I now fully love this one! “Trinidad” starts the album with an explosion about having a bomb in your car, before the album then slows down and starts to give you earworms. Instrumentally, Max’s drumming on this album is perfect, especially on the frantic six-and-a-half minute closer, “Long Island City Here I Come”. Cameron’s lyrics and vocal performances are also a clear highlight! I especially like how Cameron will just have a line in the song that’s absolutely devastating. Just a couple examples are how the title track ends with him saying, “I have been fucking destroyed by this city tonight. I’m getting killed by a pretty good life,” and how the ballad “Half Real” ends with, “They may say that our love was only half real, but that’s only half true.” If for some reason you haven’t heard of Geese and you like rock music, you need to check this album out!
There hasn’t been a better comeback story in music this year than Clipse! It’s been 16 years since their previous album. Malice had stopped rapping on non-secular music for the most part of the 2010s, but he came back to rapping with Pusha fulltime in 2022. This album was supposed to be released in 2024, but they later revealed they had label issues. No matter how much it ended up selling, I have no idea how they listened to this and decided not to release it! This is by far, the best rap album of 2025! Even aside from how incredible and emotional the first track is, the rest of the album is nothing but amazing rapping over amazing beats! Pharrell may have had a hit-or-miss decade so far, but this is by far the best thing he’s done in a long time! Pusha T was able to continue his run of fantastic rapping, but having Malice back adds so much to the music! He may be in his 50s, but Malice sounds better than ever here! If you love hip-hop, I don’t see what there is to dislike.
First listens to albums has always been one of my favorite things about music. Pressing play on the album while having no idea what sounds are going to come out is such a cool feeling! As I’ve gotten older, it’s taken me longer and longer to digest a new album, so it’s especially cool when a first listen does stay memorable. This was a first listen that stuck with me! The day before April Fool’s Day, Skrillex announced a surprise new album coming out the next day! There was also an email link that he had people sign up for at the beginning of the year, and seemingly as a treat to those people, he emailed the entire album to everyone on that list the night before! It came in a single mp3 file titled FUS, and just listening to the absolute assault of sounds on my ears as a surprise that night was the best experience I had with new music in 2025! The album is everything Skrillex has ever been known for in his career, turned up to 100! There are throwbacks to his brostep days of when he became a household name, but there are also more current day bangers that sound similar to his previous couple albums too! Skrillex is also considered as one of the best sound designers in music, and this album is no different! Just the way that everything sounds here is exquisite, from the growling drops to the glistening melodies! The whole album is also in a unique format, which is closer to a DJ set than an actual album. The album has 34 songs, but it’s only 46 minutes. Heck, the longest song on the album isn’t even three minutes long! Because the songs are so short, they depend on each other to make a complete picture, and it makes quite the picture! I understand that this probably isn’t for anyone that doesn’t like EDM, but this has been easily my most played album of 2025, and my favorite!
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