[Playlist at the bottom of this post if you can't wait to listen]
Best Song: Stephen Wilson Jr - 'I'm a Song - Live at the Print Shop'
This category is reserved for the best song released in the calendar year... But 2025's winner isn't clear cut. The song appears on the 2025 album, son of dad (deluxe), a reissue of a 2023 album with extra tracks, including this one. As the 'Live at the Print Shop' suggests, this is a live recording. It was actually a YouTube video, posted in October 2024. Here it is:
So many things to say about this song about songs... But firstly, kudos to the sound engineer at the Print Shop.
I didn't come across this song (and Stephen Wilson Jr) until December 2025, when 'I'm a Song' made Rick Beato's top 10 songs of 2025 (more YouTube!). I got chills listening to the first minute, and went straight to the full video, and listened to it about six times more that day, tearing up each time.
My son was like, what is happening?
It's so good, I said.
The song went straight onto our roadtrip playlist as we went to Christchurch and back for Christmas, Naseby and back for a camping entree, and Golden Bay and back for proper camping (complete with four straight days of rain at the end). That's a lot of k's, and a lot of spins for this track.
I also devoured son of dad, and there's some bangers on there, too. 'Cuckoo', 'Patches', 'American Gothic', 'Year to Be Young 1994', 'Holler from the Holler'. And then there's some slow, sad songs from the heart, like 'son of dad' and 'Grief is only Love.' Sometimes the grunge influence is to the fore (in 2025 SWJ also released a 4-song EP with covers of Nirvana, Temple of the Dog, Postal Service and Smashing Pumpkins!). Sometimes the Nashville country songwriting is a little too... obvious (think 'Fancy Like' by Walker Hayes and Ke$ha). Sometimes you wish he'd open his mouth a little wider when he sings. But all in all, I love this guy.
(Bonus points for his backstory, which you can research yourself. Late starters/late bloomers in the music business a definitely a softspot for me. And the fact he's married to Leigh Nash, the lead singer from Sixpence None The Richer, is one of those weird, I can't believe these historical timelines intersect things, like how Oxford University was established before the Aztec Empire emerged.)
Honourable mention - songs (that don't appear on any of the top albums below)
- Knockin' Heart - Hamilton Leithauser (no shame in second place)
- Irish Goodbye - Somebody's Child
- Dinosaur - Soft Launch (strong Local Natives vibes)
- Louie - Arcy Drive
- Black Dog / White Horse - Big Special
- Elephant - Jasmine.4.t
- Bovine Excision - Samia
- Bloodline - Truman Sinclair (manages to overcome the vibe it's a Neil Young cover)
- Marionette - Twisted Teens
- Wet Dog - Dead Gowns
- Under the Table - Balancing Act (actually from late 2024, but I'm hella late with this list; nobody's perfect)
Top 10 albums of 2025
Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up
Friendship have been releasing albums since 2017, but I first came across them in 2025. 'Free Association' was the song. It might still be my favourite of theirs. But then I'll listen to the opening bars of 'Tree of Heaven'... Or the part in 'Resident Evil' where he sings 'Some shithead in my living room / Playing Resident Evil'...
There's a Bill Callahan quality to Dan Wriggins' voice, a Dave Berman/Silver Jews vibe to the lyrics.
I mostly had band-written bios on Spotify, give me a Wikipedia page anyday, but Friendship's bio is pretty good at describing their music/this album:
...Okay in elevators, not great for dinner. On Caveman Wakes up, the band's historically capacious definition of country music grows wider still. Shambolic guitars are offset by flute pads, bleary poetry is set against a Motown rhythm section.... like if Talk Talk came from a dingy Philadelphia basement and was fronted by James Tate... steeped in reference and experimentation, delivered casually and as a dire warning, dedicated, above all, to music's creative soul.
Petey USA - The Yips
Another artist that's been around a while but was new-to-me in '25. This album might have made the top spot if it included 2023's 'I tried to draw a straight line', which includes the lyric: 'You see, how I've been kinda angry / since the Kings lost to the Lakers / In the Wester Conference finals / Ain't it funny when you find out everything is fake.'
Niche sporting interests aside, The Yips is brimming with great songs, like the title track/album opener, 'Model Train Town', and 'As Two People Drift Apart'. There's a definite LCD Soundsystem vibe to the instrumentation (as if LCD Soundsystem wasn't also derivative), but the arc of the compositions bend towards indie rock rather than EDM. There's an emotional rawness to the lyrics that James Murphy could never reach. This is dance music to listen to while lying face down on your bed.
Blondshell - If You Asked for A Picture
This was my contender for the album where my taste and my 13-year-old-daughter's taste would overlap (she loves Tate McRae, Adela, Katseye, the Pitch Perfect movies, K-dramas and Queer Eye). But I've not heard her play Blondshell of her own volition yet. This is not conducive evidience: I remember buying Jimi Hendrix's greatest hits on CD when I was about 13 and hiding it from my dad in case he thought I wanted more of his music recommendations.
I really rated Blondshell's debut, which made my top 10 in 2023. 'IYAFaP' is a step up in terms of songwriting and composition, but it still has the bedroom grunge undercurrent.
Lead single 'T&A' typifies this growth, opening with a wall of guitars, then pulling back to a Nirvana-esque subdued verse. 'Thumbtack' has a country-vibe. Lyrically, these songs aren't a world away from Olivia Rodrigo ('I don't wanna be your mom, but you're not strong enough' - 'Arms'), but they sit a lot better against this musical palette than a pop-forward one. And there are songs addressed to a parent, or a lover where the singer is the one doing the letting down. A song like 'Event of Fire', with its refrain 'What if I'm burnt out?' is ageless / timeless. Though maybe I'm glad it doesn't hit the same with my 13-year-old daughter.
Julien Baker and Torres - Send a Prayer My Way
I've had albums from both artists make my top ten before. But nothing from Torres had ever quite reached the heights of 2015's Sprinter. And Julien Baker's mental health issues have been well documented (I had tickets to her subsequently cancelled Wellington show in 2019) and wondered if this teaming up with other artists (see: Boygenius) was becoming a crutch.
So my expectations for this collab weren't through the roof.
But boy howdy.
It's very country. And very good.
'Sugar in the Tank' sounds like the Eagles x City of Color x Fleetwood Mac.
'Bottom of a bottle' is a top five Brandi Carlisle song.
'Tape Runs Out' is literally inspired by Songs: Ohia.
These are all compliments by the way.
And writing this, I've loaded the full album up in my queue. So good.
Ben Kweller - Cover the Mirrors
Late 2024/early 2025 I went on a Ben Kweller discography dive. And then news of a new album emerged - how it would be a tribute to Kweller's sixteen-year-old son, Dorian, who died in a car accident. I wasn't sure I could handle a full album of this (Kweller is less than 2 years older than me). But then I got obsessed with 'Dollar Store' (featuring Waxahatchee) when it came out in Feb and it didn't seem too on the nose. Three days before the full album, 'Oh Dorian' (featuring MJ Lenderman) came out and it wasn't maudlin. It was catchy. More country than anything Kweller had done before.
So too the full album manages to smuggle in sadness and loss while you're marvelling at the breadth of genres this one-time grunge wunderkind is incorporating.
Viagra Boys - Viagr Aboys
Time for a change of pace. And tone.
The Swedish post-punkers sing about Chandler Bing, trying to get free sweaters from LL Bean and your mum's OnlyFans. 'I am a man that's made of meat / you're on the internet looking at feet.' This is just the first song.
As if an edgelord gained sentience / a sense of humour.
Butthole Surfers for the age of GenAI.
And then you reach 'Medicine for Horses', track 6, which drops the bpm way down. It's a bit Carseat Headrest, a bit Arcade Fire. 'Hey baby, can I borrow your car? / I wanna drive it into a wall and make us two-dimensional.'
Totally different. Totally great.
Florry - Sounds Like...
Okay, so the name of this album encourages the kind of comparisons I've already indulged in too much in this list, so I will not reference another artist when talking about Florry.
From the ragged chaos of opener, 'First it was a movie, then it was a book,' to the careful tunelessness of 'Hey Baby', the uniting thread of all these sounds is a love of 1970s country rock (not naming names).
There's a Spotify playlist that sometimes pops up on my homepage called 'Indie Twang'. This, my friends, is Indie Twang bandisonified.
Geese - Getting Killed
This album was on A LOT of best of lists. Call me basic. Call me a follower. Call me fucking Ishamel, because at least I was on the bandwagon for 3D Country, which also made my Top 10 in 2023 (a theme seems to be emerging).
Back then, I said:
"3D Country" is basically a whole album designed to get my son to complain. From the discordant jangle and drunken vocals of album opener '2122' to the tuneless trumpets, broken glass and violins on closer 'St Elmo', there's a lot of provocation going on...
This album, more than any other in 2023, made me feel like there was still a place for noise and denim in somewhat-popular culture.
Not everyone is a rock critic, or reads their best of lists or listens to those kind of podcasts, so whether Geese has ascended above somewhat-popular culture remains to be seen.
Getting Killed is a little less rock, a little more musical. But Cameron Winter's voice still noodles all around the scale. His lyrics are sometimes psychedelic, sometimes political, sometimes daft. It's easy to see the backlash building. But for now, lets enjoy this moment where a discordant art rock group rules the roost.
The Amazons - 21st Century Fiction
The last few slots on a list are always the hardest. Do you go for the album with a couple of standout tracks but the rest kind of never stuck? Or something that was solid from start to finish but its highs were never quite as high.
I'm opting for the former here.
My Blood' is such a good track. It's very big. Unshy about taking up space. Which isn't something most of my indie twangy list so far can really boast. There's definitely something about the UK that allows space for bands to be more straight-ahead. Think the 1975. Think Foals.
21st Century Fiction adds to the canon of stadium rock while remaining underrated.
Flycatcher - The Wrench
'Brother' came out as a single in 2024, and doesn't appear until the penultimate track on The Wrench, but it's very good. Definite Nirvana vibes - calm verses, 'Yeah, yeah' chorus, but a much cleaner guitar sound, a more straight-forward approach to lyrics. 'I wanna be like my brother / He learned to work with hands / He just dismantled the engine on my minivan.'
The lack of cynicism is refreshing.
There's no reversal in subsequent verses. His brother remains virtuous and worthy of emulation. The singer may be a dirtbag, but the fact he admires this virtuous, simple man, means maybe there's hope for him too.
The rest of the album is good. Highlights just now as I re-listened : 'Dissolve', 'Down', and album closer 'Super Bowl' ('You always hated Tiny Dancer / I can't agree with you on that').
Honourable mentions - Albums (* means they also had a song in contention for best of the year)
- Communions - Unreconciled
- NO CIGAR - Under the Surface
- Preoccupations - Ill at Ease
- Perfume Genius - Glory*
- Alan Sparkhawk & Trampled By Turtles - self-titled
- Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band - New Threats from the Soul
- Hayley Williams - Ego Death at the Bachelorette Party
- Snocaps - Snocaps
- Wednesday - Bleeds*
- Miya Follick - Mid July*
Albums from 2024 I missed at the time, but would have probably waltzed into that list
- Wunderhorse - Midas
- Wild Pink - Dulling the Horns
Older album & artist that I listened to for the first time in 2025 and liked the most
- Lowest of the Low - Shakespeare My Butt (1991)
- Amoeba - Adolescents
