The 22 Best Albums of 2025 (So Far)

So how guilty should I (we?) feel about liking Addison Rae’s debut album so much? Whatever lingering ick comes with pressing play on a record by someone who came to fame through her TikTok dancing, followed by a few singles that failed to achieve lift-off, quickly wears away. Working exclusively with two female songwriter-producers from the Max Martin camp, Rae draws inspiration from Lana Del Rey, Madonna, and her mentor Charli XCX to find a distinctive, sometimes thrillingly disorienting sound that makes Addison one of the year’s best pop pleasures.

Rock’s orneriest legend puts out more music—old, new, unreleased, unfinished—than it’s possible to keep up with. For his 46th (48th? Who knows how to keep score…) album, 79-year-old Young has assembled a new backing band that can split the difference between the stomp of Crazy Horse and his folk/acoustic side. The result is something of a Neil sampler box—wistful on “Bottle of Love,” scathing on “Dark Mirage,” raging against the machine on “Let’s Roll Again” (“If you’re a fascist/Go get a Tesla,” he yowls, to the melody of “This Land is Your Land”). None of it ranks with his greatest work, but you gotta love the guy for keeping the fire burning.

While the Oasis reunion has gotten the big headlines, in some quarters, the first new Pulp album in 24 years is the real story. And the truth is that Jarvis Cocker & Co’s dry, cynical takes on sex and class were always going to ring truer from 60-somethings than the Gallagher Brothers’ paeans to cigarettes and alcohol. More is heavy on strings, disco beats, and Cocker’s theatrical vocal delivery, while the wit and doubt in his lyrics haven’t lost a step. As for the time away, he sings on “Got to Have Love” that “When love disappears, life disappears/ And you sit on your backside for 25 years.”

Everything about the fifth album from rising Chicago-based rapper McKinley Dixon is too much—too many guests, overcomplicated arrangements, overstuffed metaphors and references. But the ambitious scope of Magic, Alive! is too powerful to resist—over the course of its eleven tracks, Dixon tells the story of three kids mourning the death of their friend and resolving to resurrect him with magic. With jazz, rock, and old-school boom-bap elements, the record plays like a series of interconnected, well-observed short stories, a display of hip-hop’s limitless possibilities. “To live forever is to tell the stories of who light up ya eyes,” he rhymes in the closing title track. “We ran, we danced, survived, we fly.”

On opening track “Gone,” Danielle Haim begins with “Can I have your attention please/For the last time before I leave?” Then she pivots: “On second thought I changed my mind.” And that’s before the song explodes into a sample from George Michael’s “Freedom ’90.” The theme of I Quit is that all three Haim sisters are single and trying to explore and celebrate their independence—a break-up album that’s not just a downer. It careens in many (too many) directions, from the hazy shoegaze of “Lucky Stars” to the dancefloor beats of “Spinning” (lead vocal by Alana) before bringing things full circle with the rave-y throb of the closer “Now It’s Time.” I Quit doesn’t hit the peaks of Haim’s spectacular 2020 Women in Music Pt. III, but they’re still a national treasure.

Like the Haim record, Virgin isn’t the best work of Lorde’s paradigm-shifting career, but it has plenty to offer. Somehow, it’s been a dozen years since the 16-year-old New Zealander stormed the world with Pure Heroine, clearing the way for Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and even elements of Taylor Swift with her rough-edged electro-hip-hop-pop—and four years since the mystifying indie-folk project Solar Power. This album takes Lorde back to the maximalist sound and heartbroken spirit of 2017’s Melodrama, addressing anxiety, gender fluidity, and body image over pulsing, woozy beats. There’s no “Royals” or “Green Light” here, but the intimacy and physicality of Virgin point the way toward more great things to come.

On his sixth and most fully realized solo album, the frontman of the Hold Steady teams up with Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs for a moving and open-hearted song cycle. Always Been tells the story of a defrocked agnostic minister (we eventually learn that he’s known as Clayton, in a gut-punching song of the same name) who roams the country, from Delaware to Seattle, in search of…kinda everything. Granduciel stretches the sound beyond the Hold Steady’s bar-band heroics into a more expansive and evocative feel, while Finn—who has always written finely-etched character studies—delivers an ambitious but not pretentious novelistic work.

The stunning second album from young singer-songwriter McRae marks the arrival of a major talent. A biracial woman with an acoustic guitar will of course draw comparisons to Tracy Chapman, but the echoes of Joni Mitchell and Taylor Swift across I Don’t Know How But They Found Me (a phrase taken from McRae’s favorite movie, Back to the Future) add up to a distinctive and exciting voice, incorporating folk, pop, and a few sprinkles of electronics. Songs like “Savannah” and “Massachusetts” are well-observed sketches along the journey of recovering from a break-up, with space for rage and humor; “I want to blame the drugs,” she sings in one chorus, “but I don’t do drugs.”

For more than 30 years, Galactic have been flying the flag for traditional New Orleans funk, but they’ve also collaborated with a range of rap and soul artists. You might expect their teaming up with 84-year-old Irma Thomas (whose songs have been covered by Otis Redding and the Rolling Stones) to stick close to the can’t-miss NOLA gumbo. Which would have been more than fine, but on Audience with the Queen, they went for something different; all but one of the songs are new compositions, with a rootsy but modern sound and sentiments like “Injustice was and is the fuel that feeds the flame.” Thomas’s voice may be a little rougher after all these years, but still brings the fire.

Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten met as teenagers in LA, moved to Brooklyn, and are now fully hitting their stride—Momma’s fourth album establishes them as leading lights in indie rock. Welcome to My Blue Sky might not break much new ground with its grunge-meets-shoegaze “I Heart the ‘90s” sound (the line-up even recalls the paired women in groups like Belly and the Breeders), but its shout-along fuzz and stomp is damn near irresistible. Tales of the road make up much of the lyrics (Momma has already opened for the likes of Weezer and Girl in Red), but the takeaway is nostalgia for the alt-rock glory days that these guys are too young to have lived through.

The mysterious, elusive British soul collective strikes again. X is another stealth release from Sault—who have released twelve albums and two EPs in six years—with no warning beyond a couple of social media snippets (but, as usual, no photos or press or even cover art). The husband and wife team of producer Inflo and vocalist Cleo Sol (who recently sold out three nights at Radio City Music Hall on her own) are the steady backbone of Sault and, as always, the grooves are deep, the musicianship stellar, and the jazz-funk atmosphere recalls Roy Ayers and ‘70s Stevie Wonder. On X, though, one of their strongest collections yet, they add some ‘80s touches evoking Prince and Michael Jackson, along with eccentric splashes of metal guitars and reggae rhythms.

It’s not clear which is more powerful, Michael Trotter, Jr. and Tanya Trotter’s story or their voices. Michael was an Iraq veteran who came back with PTSD and Tanya was a singer once signed to Bad Boy Records who helped his recovery. They fell in love and started making music together, a glorious and rich blend of soul, gospel, and country. With contributions from Billy Strings and Miranda Lambert, their fourth album leans harder into the Nashville side—as the first Black duo to be nominated for CMA and ACM awards, they’ve already been expanding the genre’s parameters, and their honey-dipped harmonies and brave honesty are damn near irresistible.

OK, so it’s kind of impossible to know what to make of folk revivalists the Lumineers at this point. On the one hand, you may not even know that they released a new album, which received zero press. On the other, they recently announced tour dates for this summer and they’re headlining stadiums. Stadiums! Automatic adds some edgier, electronic elements to their sound, but it also brings back an intensity closer to that of breakthrough Lumineers hits like “Ho Hey” and “Cleopatra”—which apparently keep drawing crowds, and without which Noah Kahan and Zach Bryan wouldn’t be selling out ballparks themselves.

Sixteen years into an acclaimed solo career, Sharon Van Etten’s latest project is, for the first time, a fully collaborative album with her (newly named) band. The resulting sound is more groove-based, with echoes of Talking Heads and New Order. It’s not a full-on reset, but in songs like the gently propulsive critique of phone culture “Idiot Box,” the expansive “Afterlife,” and the simmering epic “I Want You Here,” Van Etten explores new voices and new possibilities, and a veteran artist pushing her own creativity is always a quiet kind of victory.

Kip Moore knows what Nashville success feels like. Early in his career, he had five Top Ten country hits, including the Number One “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck.” But somewhere along the line, he decided to pursue another, more independent path, hanging out in Hawaii and taking solo motorcycle trips rather than playing the industry game. Moore’s sixth album—his first after parting ways with his longtime label—was inspired by the Clash and the Ramones and he wrote all but one of the, gulp, 23 songs (tellingly, the single “Bad Spot” is the only exception). Solitary Tracks is a deeply personal and probing collection from a fascinating and evolving free spirit.

A solo project created in Kalamazoo by vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jason Singer, Michigander relocated to Nashville but retained the home state moniker. After four EPs in the last decade and appearances at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, Singer has finally released a full-length album. Rooted in power-pop with touches of emo (Singer has previously written with Dashboard Confessional and toured with Andrew McMahon), plus occasional yacht-rock-ish sax flourishes, the songs on Michigander are largely upbeat, catchy tunes about complicated feelings and turbulent times. In the shimmering “Emotional,” Singer sings, "I'm so emotional/But I don't know any other way/So I just roll with it/I never get out of my own way."