Wow! Check it out! After I published last year’s roundup in February, I swore I’d get this year’s list done ON TIME! And hey, it appears I have done so!

Part of me wonders why I still bother doing these. I used to get a few comments on the site and a few Facebook likes when I posted these things… but now I get very, very little feedback on it.

Since my heart attack, I’ve had to do a daily walk, and I often take that chance to ponder things. And I guess no one really cares about the musical choices of a random, almost 55 year-old dude on the Internet. Let’s be honest: I know I wouldn’t care about the top albums of some random 53 year-old dude from, say, Roanoke, Virginia… so why should anyone else?

But there’s more: I seem to have cornered the market on my specific music style.  I sometimes joke that “I like all kinds of music: Norwegian girls with synthesizers, Danish girls with synthesizers, French girls with synthesizers, Greek girls with synthesizers, Swedish girls with synthesizers… even German girls with synthesizers!” But holy crap is that SO TRUE for me this year. There’s not a lot of variety here. But it is what it is. The records below are my Top 10 Albums of 2025, from the extremely narrow spectrum of music I love. Please sit back and enjoy!

As always, the list comes from my Last.fm stats generally, although I often tinker with the specific order of the albums. After that are the honorable mentions, followed by the “Band of the Year”, “Song of the Year”, “Live Song of the Year” and the raw data from Last.fm.

My Top Albums of 2025

10) Wet Leg – moisturizer – I wish I could find the analogy I want for this album. Because it’s a really solid album. As a collection of music, it’s undeniably better than Wet Leg’s eponymous debut LP. But there’s just something… missing here. In a sense, Wet Leg was kind of like Duran Duran’s Rio album. Here in the US, Duran Durans’ self-titled debut was overlooked by almost everyone. It would later be reissued with an updated cover and “Is There Something I Should Know?” on it. So for many in the US, Rio was the first Duran Duran LP. It was so perfectly of its moment – so new and singular and noteworthy – that it dwarfs other Duran Duran albums, even ones that are arguably “better” than Rio. Wet Leg was a like a bolt of lightning across the pop music firmament – an “OMG what IS THIS?” moment – that any follow-up LP just can’t match. “Catch These Fists” was a MONSTER hit, but quickly grew old… to me, anyway. As the ladies themselves may agree: the second hit is never as good as the first.

9) Nation of Language – Dance Called Memory – And this album seems to have the same problem. Nation of Language’s last album, 2023’s Strange Disciple, wasn’t their first, but my goodness what an amazing LP it is! Much like Wet Leg’s new LP, this one is (arguably) the better album. The band has always been a mixture of OMD, New Order and Tears for Fears, and they’ve refined that model even more here. Much out it is flat-out beautiful: the opening track “Can’t Face Another One” reminds me SO MUCH of something you’d hear on one of my all-time favorites, OMD’s Dazzle Ships! And there’s the raw emotion Ian Devaney is known for, but I’m not sure if we’ve ever heard him bare his soul at a depth like this before. Only problem is, this album just doesn’t stick with me the way Disciple does, and “Inept Apollo” is the only thing resembling a single on the LP:

8) Mogli – Paradox – Selima Taibi is a German singer, songwriter and filmmaker who makes music under the name Mogli. She’s pretty. And that’s about all I objectively know of her. She makes (wait for it!) a dreamy, gauzy pop that’s just soooo nice to listen to. I came across the title track in a random Spotify playlist (like you do) and fell in love. Beautiful. Haunting. Downright sparse at times. Sounds like something an exclusive European luxury brand like Longchamp would use in a commercial? That’s ticking all my boxes. And you know what? The rest of the album is pretty good, too! I mean, not everything is a platinum single here, but “Cupped and Open” and “Swim” are solid. Very much worth a listen!

7) Magic Wands – Cascades – Man, these guys… they have all the thumping drums and cold bass of Pornography-era Cure, with a touch of Cabaret Voltaire’s Red Mecca thrown in for spice. It’s really great when it works, and I was amazed at how often I threw this on when walking or working. Only thing is, as dreamy as most of the tracks from this album are, there’s a lot of “samey” here, even for me. This is one of those records where you get to track 6 (of 10) and say something like, “weeeeeelll let’s see what else Spotify has for us!” That doesn’t mean the first 6 tracks aren’t good. These guys are fun, and if you squint your eyes hard enough, it almost REALLY IS like 1982 all over again!

6) Melody’s Echo Chamber – Unclouded – So, last year’s Album of the Year was Juniore’s Trois, Deux, Un. If you haven’t listened to it yet… ONE, HOW COULD YOU? Seriously, Juniore is yé-yé (an early 60s musical fad in the Romance countries, but especially France; it was a French take on American bubblegum girl bands like The Crystals, The Shangri-Las and The Shirelles)… except Juniore is also partially surf pop and partly The Doors. Melody’s Echo Chamber – fellow Frenchwoman Melody Prochet – is kind of similar. Where Juniore only sing in French, Melody mostly sings in English these days. She’s also more in the style of the original yé-yé music than Juniore’s twisted blend of Jim Morrison and Dick Dale. If you’re old enough to remember early Saint Etienne and The Cardigans bringing back that 60s pop sound… it’s like that, but with French music.. only it’s in English? All that is to say, Procet is an AMAZING musician. If you’re every having a dinner party or are just making dinner one evening, just throw this on and see. I am a FAN, and I think this is easily her best work since her eponymous 2012 debut.

5) Maria Somerville – Luster – Ireland’s Somerville paints a picture like few others can. Her music seems to float in a dreamland… so light and airy and fragile. She’s drawn comparisons to late-era Cocteau Twins, but to me Somerville (and this album specifically) seem to inhabit a sphere more like Julee Cruise. It’s just so haunting! This album (her second) is all thriller, no filler. Every song on the album is amazing, blurring its way to next amazing song to the next. She seems to perfectly fit the dreampop niche of being singular and obscure and hard to fathom at time, yet in the end is still more relatable than fringier “art pop” like Julianna Barwick and Julia Holter.

4) Saint Etienne – International – After 35 years, Saint Etienne are finally calling it a career… or have at least announced that this album, their 13th studio LP, will be their last. It leaves me with mixed emotions. A big part of the reason I stick to newer music is that music requires fresh blood. So you could say it their time to go. Still, they’ve been a part of my world since 1998, and it’ll be hard to say goodbye. But thankfully, this last LP is good. Alas, it’s not quite what I’d hoped. It’s a collection of good songs – some of them really, really good – but nothing more. Saint Etienne’s catalog seems filled with albums of purpose. They invoke a place, like Home Counties or Tales from the Turnpike House – or a time and place, like I’ve Been Trying to Tell You and The Night. Or perhaps they’re about influences, like Words and Music by Saint Etienne or Tiger Bay. The songs here, while again quite good, still somehow seem random, as if Bob and Pete put out a call for “songs to end a career on”. I like it, but I think I’ll miss Saint Etienne more.

3) Sea Lemon – Diving for a Prize – Sea Lemon is the stage name of the Pacific Northwest’s Natalie Lew, who also looks a bit like an illustration of a  “sailor’s wife” in a 19th century novel set in New England. But make no mistake: when it comes to writing good songs, this girl doesn’t miss. I daresay there’s not a bad song on this album. “Stay” was a huge hit in the indiesphere, as was “Give In” (below). It’s truly lovely dreampop, and if gets a bit “samey” before it’s done, that’s OK. It’s an album I can listen to over and over (and have done so!)

2) Purity Ring – Purity Ring – Purity Ring has been one of my favorite bands for about a decade now, and another eternity is easily on my All Time Top 10. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that their new LP would land on this list. Instead you should wonder why it wasn’t crushing the vote for album of the year. It’s a great album, but I’m not sure it jells in the same way Shrines, another eternity and WOMB do. Megan and Corrin sound as great as ever – better, in a lot of ways. And I get the idea – it’s almost like a video game soundtrack in which the band (in Megan James’ own telling) allows them to become avatars in a beautiful new world to replace our crumbling one. They mostly accomplish this, yet… I just can’t quite put my finger on it, other than “it’s just not as good as another eternity“. The former is an album I can (and have) just out on and listened in wonderment all the way through. I skip around on Purity Ring a lot. There are a couple songs I… “like, I guess?” II think a bit part of it is I’m not much of a gamer, and this LP is crammed with musical tributes to obscure Japanese game composers I don’t know. It’s a fine album, but if anyone else had put it out, it would almost certainly be #1. This album is NOT a swing and a miss. But because it’s Purity Ring, I expect more. And this album doesn’t deliver enough… but juuuuusst barely.

1) Night Tapes – portals//polarities – There seems to be a pattern at work. A band releases a few records. Some of their songs end up on my Spotify playlists, but it’s a song here, another there… so gradual you don’t really notice it much. Then you hear that they’re coming to your town. You think “well, how often are they gonna come here?” So you go see them and they’re AMAZING and the next thing you know, you’re in love! It happened with Yumi Zouma in 2022. It happened with Ladytron in 2024… and now Night Tapes in 2025!

Night Tapes are a south London band consisting of the Estonian pixie Iiris Vesik singing and playing guitar & flute, and English musicians and producers Max Doohan and Sam Richards. They record their own samples across the world as they tour, from Estonian swamps to LAPD helicopters to Mexican birds. It’s then blended into a delicious dream pop swirl. This is absolutely the album to put on at a party – not a raging frat kegger, more like a mid-century modern fancy people’s party in North London. THAT kind of party. And I can guarantee someone at that party will ask: “hey, is this is same album from a couple songs before?” I knew this was the Album of the Year when I asked myself that question for the 100th time. EVERY SINGLE SONG on this record has had a “pause work to check Spotify to see if this is the same album I’ve “wowing!” for the past 42 minutes. There are 13 songs here, and I love every one of them!

Honorable Mentions and EPs

Releases I especially like are in BOLD.

Blondino – Hauteurs
Brigitte Bardini – Blue Tigers
Bryan Ferry & Amelia Barratt – Loose Talk
Causeway – Anywhere
Ela Minus – Dia
Emma Hoet – L’autre moi
Erika de Casier – Lifetime
Flunk – Take Me Places
Geowulf – The Child
Hachiku – The Joys of Being Pure at Heart
Hatchie – Liquorice
Ivy – Traces of You
Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist
Lipsticism – Wanted To Show You
Meggie Lennon – Desire Days 
Men I Trust – Equus Asinus
Minuit Machine – Queendom
Pearly Drops – The Voices Are Coming Back
Polo & Pan – 22:22
Pomplamoose – Photogénique
R. Missing – Like the Sound of Injured Love (only came out 3 days ago!)
Roller Derby – When The Night Comes
Scratch Massive – Nox Anima
Sexores – Sangre
Sophia Stel – How to Win at Solitaire (Truly amazing!)
The Cords – The Cords (Also amazing!)
The Raveonettes – P’eahi II
Wolf Alice – The Clearing

Band of the Year

How this for nostalgia: Roxy Music. I often revisit old bands from time to time and spend a couple months going through OMD or The Jam’s catalog. In 2025, I did that for Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music.

They’ve always been around for me. Their live EP, The High Road, was one of the first records I bought not just with my own money, but unsupervised, too. I walked to my local Turtle’s one day and bought it because I had $5 and it was on sale for $3.99.

But I’ve gone a lot deeper this year. I read the 33⅓ (a book series about individual albums) about Avalon. I finally got one of my Holy Grails from the first time I collected records in the 80s: an original Japanese copy of Flesh + Blood with the obi and everything. I decided For Your Pleasure is my favorite Roxy album because it’s just so dang weird.  And I fell hopelessly in love with The Bride Stripped Bare and took a deep dive into In Your Mind.

Roxy Music was just… something. They weren’t outwardly weird, like, say, Velvet Underground. But there was a LOT going on under the Roxy’s carefully polished veneer. The band that ended on Avalon took quite a journey to get there from Roxy Music, don’t you think?

I also want to give a special shout to Swedish dreampop geniuses Postiljonen for FINALLY releasing a new song after 7 long years! The world missed you more than you could ever know!

Song of the Year

Part of what made Night Tapes’ bid for Album of the Year so easy was the monster hit that is “Helix”:

I was truly getting worried about not having a song of the year… but then I heard this, and it blew me away, and has been in my weekly Top 10 ever since!

Live Song of the Year

Normally, when electronic bands pull out the acoustic guitar, that’s my sign to hit the restroom or beer line or merch table. I will go to my grave convinced that Depeche Mode recorded that acoustic version of “Personal Jesus” as personal favor to the CIA as part of that PSYOP to get Manuel Noriega to surrender from the Vatican Embassy, and is used to this very day by the CIA on inmates at Guantanamo Bay.

So you may sort forgive me for the skepticism when Purity Ring performed an acoustic version of their fan favorite, “Stardew”:

I literally held my breath for 4 minutes while this went on. It was – by far – the most magical moment in a concert full of them. Purity Ring always put on a good show, but HOLY CRAP this was AMAZING! And yes, this is the actual show I was at: The Orange Peel in Asheville.

Last.fm Stuff

Data scraped on 2025-12-15.

Overall albums of the year, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-15, with release year and play count:

1) Requin Chagrin – Bye Bye Baby (2021, 786)
2) Purity Ring – another eternity (2015, 757)
3) Night Tapes – portals//polarities (2025, 559)
4) Yumi Zouma – Yoncalla (2016, 466)
5) Empathy Test – Monsters (2020, 434)
6) You Drive – You Drive (2018, 415)
7) Purity Ring – Purity Ring (2025, 412)
8) Yumi Zouma – Truth or Consequences (2020, 342)
9) Maud Geffray – Ad Astra (2022, 335)
10) Letting Up Despite Great Faults – Crumble (2023, 306)

Adjusted albums of the year, 2025 releases only:

1) Night Tapes – portals//polarities (559)
2) Purity Ring – Purity Ring (412)
3) Sea Lemon – Diving For a Prize (250)
4) Wet Leg – Moisturizer (224)
5) Saint Etienne – International (142)
6) Maria Somerville – Luster (141)
7) Melody’s Echo Chamber – Unclouded (115)
8) Mogli – Paradox (77)
9) Hatchie – Liquorice (76)
10) Hachiku – The Joys of Being Pure at Heart (73)

Total plays per artist, 2025

1) Yumi Zouma (1,767)
2) Purity Ring (1,711)
3) Requin Chagrin (859)
4) Night Tapes (739)
5) Minimal Schlager (558)
6) Letting Up Despite Great Faults (522)
7) Beach House (500)
8) Cocteau Twins (494)
9) Empathy Test (484)
10) You Drive (418)

Total plays per artist “All Time” (since June 10, 2010)

1) Mint Julep (10,024)
2) Yumi Zouma  (9,953)
3) Marsheaux (6,657)
4) Purity Ring (6.031)
5) You Drive (5,113)
6) Saint Etienne (4,944)
7) Empathy Test (4,338)
8) Beach House (4,044)
9) Minimal Schlager (3,405)
10) Alvvays (2,914)

Previous “Albums of the Year”

2024: Juniore – Trois, Deux, Un
2023: Beach House – Become EP
2022: Yumi Zouma – Present Tense
2021: Mint Julep – In a Deep & Dreamless Sleep
2020: Mint Julep – Stray Fantasies
2019: Chromatics – Closer to Grey
2018: You Drive – You Drive
2017: Saint Etienne – Home Counties
2016: Marsheaux – Ath.Lon
2015: Purity Ring – Another Eternity
2014: La Roux – Trouble in Paradise
2013: Marsheaux – Inhale
2012: Beach House – Bloom
2011: The Raveonettes – Raven in the Grave
2010: Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

NOTE: There was no single choice for “best album” in 2010; the article simply listed my favorite albums that year in no particular order. The choice of Teenage Dream was made ex post facto from that list of albums.