It’s time again for Undertone‘s yearly roundup of my 40 favourite songs released this year, with a focus on rock and pop, plus a few dance, country and rap wildcards thrown in. In some ways, 2025 was a tough year for pop – there was no clear song of the summer, the same bland TikTok songs hogged the charts for weeks on end and, most alarmingly of all for fans of frivolous pop like myself, Eurovision appears to be in a death spiral. But there was good news: Lady Gaga returned with one of the best records of the year, Sam Fender released his spectacular third album People Watching and rightly won the Mercury Prize in his home town, and Geese dominated rock music discourse towards the end of the year with their boundary-pushing new album Getting Killed.
This list, as always, is a deliberately personal one – there are plenty of other publications that will give a much broader overview of the vast amounts of music released in 2025 – and in particular rap is a blind spot (I’m still yet to listen to the rapturously received new Clipse album). As usual, I’ve limited myself to one song per artist, but the ‘also listen’ sections often include songs I would otherwise consider as one of this year’s very best. Links to roundups from previous years can be found here.
40. Next to Die
by Ugly (non-album single)
Ugly, the latest graduates of Brixton’s famed Windmill scene (see: Black Country, New Road, Fat Dog and black midi to name a few), continued to tease us with fresh snippets of their refreshing folk-informed approach to indie in 2025 following a breakout year in 2024. Next to Die is relatively straightforward by their standards, with no freewheeling sax solos or avant garde choral interludes, instead focusing its efforts on a charming acoustic guitar riff and perfectly harmonised group vocals. A headline-grabbing debut album in 2026 beckons.
Also listen: the band’s other single this year, Gallowine, takes things in a jazz fusion direction with a tangled piano riff.
39. Grandmother
by Big Thief from Double Infinity
If Big Thief’s latest album was faintly disappointing, it was only because their previous album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, was a sprawling 20-song modern classic featuring some of Adrienne Lenker’s wisest – and simplest – compositions to date. Still, existing fans of the band’s spiritual approach to indie folk can find plenty to love in the dreamy instrumentals and sturdy melodies on the new album Double Infinity. Grandmother was the first song the band wrote following the departure of bassist Max Oleartchik in June last year, and gently builds to a heart-rending refrain with the words “gonna turn it all into rock ‘n’ roll”. It works as a concise mission statement for the album, reminding us to take life’s heartaches and, as Lenker said in an interview with Mojo, “alchemise them into something that can unify us, so we can sing together and metabolise the craziness of life together”. It’s intuitive, heartfelt and, for those open to the grand notions of life and death Big Thief continue to fearlessly tackle, a deeply rewarding listen.
Also listen: How Could I Have Known’s melody, set in part to a poignant description of strolling through a drizzly Paris, feels utterly timeless.
38. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!
by RAYE (non-album single)
It would be a crime not to include WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! on this list, the most thrilling, virtuosic pop single to hit the UK charts this year by miles (although it was cruelly denied the No 1 spot after 11 weeks floating around the top 5). No question marks or lowercase letters are to be found here: just a massive, in-your-face big band blasting their way through each chorus, and a clattering ride cymbal to add fizz to Raye’s relentless salvo of words in the verse. Isn’t it just the verse of Crazy In Love with the chorus of Let Me Entertain You? Well, yes, but when your two main references are two of the biggest stadium roof-raisers in recent pop history, it’s hard not to write another roof-raiser yourself. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! certainly fits that lineage: a high-budget stab at making the biggest pop song of the decade. The fact that it doesn’t quite reach those heights hardly matters – Raye’s sheer ambition and technical prowess alone already makes her one of the finest popstars of our time.
Also listen: WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! was Raye’s only new single this year, and it seems reasonable to suggest that a song of this dazzling complexity did indeed take the entire year to produce. Instead, head back to her wealth of live recordings. The Thrill Is Gone live at Montreux Jazz Festival ends with a full minute of solo vocal ad libbing punctuated by Adele-style banter (“bloody hell, it’s so quiet!”). So silly, so ostentatious, so brilliant.
37. Fake ID
by Riton and Kah-Lo (non-album single)
When it comes to pre-night out bangers to loosen up to, look no further than Riton and Kah-lo’s bouncy collaboration Fake ID, a house track that hops and skips from one chorus to the next with glee. The men are disposable, the streets are catwalks, and the rum and cokes are flowing – this is the giddy excess of a gloriously unhinged night out in song form.
Also listen: Kah-Lo’s collaboration with alt-pop’s most chaotic duo Sofi Tukker Woof is predictably a barmy delight.
36. Total euphoria
by caroline from caroline 2
You could be forgiven for thinking there’s something terribly wrong with your headphones upon first listen of Total euphoria. Two plainly strummed guitars slip in and out of sync with one another, as if both playing to two different metronomes. But then the splashy drums and plaintive vocals arrive, and suddenly it’s clear that imperfection is the whole point. On Total euphoria London experimental rock group caroline take the feeling of euphoria and attempt to tackle it head on with an intuitive melding of sounds: trumpets, synths and a fiddle eventually getting stuck in. As a wall of electronic fuzz arrives and the gang vocals kick into gear, it’s hard not to be inexplicably moved. This is not the gleeful euphoria of a Confidence Man or Parcels song. Instead, it’s something more introspective, more nuanced and altogether more meaningful. The painterly result conveys a cocktail of emotions that mere words would struggle to convey – surely the whole point of art in the first place.
Also listen: caroline’s new album, caroline 2, is a fascinating work of art. Caroline Polachek is the perfect guest to lend her featherlight vocals to the prismatic Tell me I never knew that.
35. I’m Really Hot (For Myself)
by Mura Masa from Curve +1
There was a time not so long ago when guitars in dance music was as passé as socks in sandals. Guernsey producer Mura Masa proved it’s still possible to mix punk and dance music with spectacular results on I’m Really Hot (For Myself), which pairs an irresistible drum machine groove with heavy, distorted power chords. The way Mura Masa splices a single vocal sample into all sorts of strange shapes, turning it into a percussion instrument in its own right, is a further mark of his genius. With the possible exception of Fred again.., no one is pushing the boundaries of 2020s dance music quite like he is.
Also listen: the lilting drum groove and effervescent horns on JUMP are enough even to compel even the biggest electronic music luddite onto the dancefloor.
34. You N33d Me
by Viagra Boys from viagr aboys
Some vocalists spend a lifetime perfecting their vibrato, strengthening the limits of their vocal range and aiming to hit their notes as precisely as possible. Sebastian Murphy is different. Melody, pitch and rhythm often feel like trivial afterthoughts in his work as frontman of beloved Swedish post-punk group Viagra Boys. There a moments in You N33d Me where he appears to forget the lyrics, and other moments in the band’s latest, self-titled album when he finds himself belching mid-lyric. It all works because filthy music is exactly what Viagra Boys are best at, Murphy’s deliberately sloppy performance mirrored by Henrik Hockert’s scruffy bass tone and Oskar Carls ear-bleedingly shrill sax playing. In You N33d Me Murphy plays the role of a self-aware drunkard, aware that he brings “a type of vibe to a party that nobody likes, and I make everybody sad”, but prepared to go ahead and show off his patchy knowledge of World War Two trivia anyway. It’s a committed, hilarious performance that’s underscored by the realisation that “it doesn’t mean anything if you ain’t here with me” – beneath the fun, danceable groove is a man barely keeping it together on account of his loneliness. Like all of Viagra Boys’ best songs, You N33d Me is enormous fun on the first listen, and starkly tragic on the second. The punk scene needs them.
Also listen: the band’s new self-titled album is one of my favourite LPs of the year. Man Made of Meat and The Bog Body are two more obvious choices for this list, both gloriously deranged belters, this time featuring discernible melodies.
33. Second Best
by The Last Dinner Party from From The Pyre
The Last Dinner Party seemed to let all the early career hype get the better of them for their sophomore album From The Pyre, which felt unfocussed and overstuffed with tangential musical ideas. The singles were great though. The band have been sitting on playful 60s-esque rock ‘n’ roll number Second Best for some years, and on record it sounds just as punchy as when I first heard it performed live in Newcastle 14 months ago. Abigail Morris is on imperious form behind the microphone, bellowing about coming out worst from a love triangle over chugging guitars and Casper Miles’ rifle-like snare drum. It ends with a blitz of noise every bit as mosh-worthy as previous hits My Lady of Mercy or Sinner.
Also listen: the new album’s lead single, This is the Killer Speaking, is a winningly theatrical tale with Morris clearly relishing the role of villain.
Read the full review of The Last Dinner Party live in Newcastle here.
32. L.O.V.E.
by Jessica Winter from My First Album
Portsmouth upstart caused a stir in indie circles with her polished debut album in July, a record blessed by both sugary pop confections and grungy left turns towards stadium-worthy rock. L.O.V.E. is most certainly the former, a euphoric track about getting swept away by desire with a finale reminiscent of The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. It’s music for springtime walks through wildflower meadows.
Also listen: Worst Person In The World has a particularly catchy chorus, whilst Got Something Good displays Winter’s punky potential.
Read the full review of Jessica Winter live in Leeds here.
31. The Little Mess You Made
by The Favors from The Dream
The Dream, the debut album from FINNEAS and Ashe’s new duo The Favors, was in my view one of the year’s most underrated albums, a thoughtful take on sweeping Fleetwood Mac country rock fuelled by the pair’s honeyed vocal chemistry. The Little Mess You Made is the album’s pivotal slow burner, the duo getting all theatrical with a spine-tingling call and response finale that could almost be a Nicks-Buckingham onstage domestic. “Say when you’ll never see me again!” they belt in harmony as the strings surge. Perhaps it’s a little melodramatic, but that’s precisely why I love it.
Also listen: on album closer Home Sweet Home the Favors give up trying to be all artsy and thoughtful and throw in a glitzy disco number. It doesn’t make a huge amount of sense in the context of the album, but as a single it’s a straightforward delight to listen to.
30. Now What?
by Orla Gartland from Everybody Needs a Hero (Deluxe)
Irish rocker Orla Gartland largely took a year off in 2025, rightly so after the release of Everybody Needs a Hero, one of the very best indie rock albums of last year. That’s not to say Gartland hasn’t done anything this year – she won the prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award in May for her exquisite ballad Mine, and finished a European tour with a triumphant night at Dublin’s Olympia, a euphoric concert which Undertone had the luck of witnessing in person, albeit not the time to write a review. At that show she debuted bonus track Now What?, an adeptly written single every bit as good as Everybody Needs a Hero’s highlights. Appropriately, Now What? is about dealing with the strange sense of emptiness that follows grand accomplishments, albeit with the focus on overcoming heartbreak instead of pipping Fontaines D.C. to the Ivor Novello. It sports what Gartland herself has called a bridge with a capital B, before an awesome wall of noise in the finale. Gartland has never sounded noisier, or more justifiably confident.
Also listen: other bonus track Pest is a breezy pop number with a satisfying electronic edge and charming guest vocals from folk rock duo Tommy Lefroy.
Read the full review of Orla Gartland live in Leeds (2021) here.
29. Fairy in a Bottle
by Jacob Alon from In Limerence
Scottish singer-songwriter Jacob Alon was one the breakout British artists of the year, with their gorgeous debut record In Limerence rightly earning them a Mercury Prize nod. Fairy in a Bottle was the right choice to perform at the awards ceremony in Newcastle, and was successfully used to smuggle in a plea for solidarity with Gaza Trojan Horse-like, BBC censorship be damned. Alon’s delicately picked acoustic guitar part is nothing less than opalescent, patterns gently twisting and turning like a wind-up ballerina. Some notes are fluffed or buzz incongruously and Alon’s voice sounds perilously frail in the falsetto chorus, but that’s exactly the point: Fairy in a Bottle is achingly authentic, the artist pouring their heart into the microphone with no restraint or filter. They sing about wanting to hold onto love, so much so that the narrator finds themself becoming a villain: “I lead my heart to become so cruel / As to imprison the idea of you”. Fairy in a Bottle is therefore a song about the pain of letting go and the crushing comedown of realising that one’s grand plans for the future turn out to be mere fantasy. It’s so compelling that you don’t have to relate to be able to feel their acute heartbreak.
Also listen: Don’t Fall Asleep washes over you like a warm bath, whilst the waltzing August Moon is home to Alon’s best storytelling and musical climax.
Read the review of Jacob Alon’s In Limerence here.
28. I Like Ur Look
by Kim Petras (non-album single)
Kim Petras’ three 2025 singles may have toned down on the outrageously explicit lyrics that helped catapult her to cult hero status, but the new tracks sound no less sonically daring then the German popstar’s classics. I Like Ur Look in particular is a unapologetic return to the messy electronics of Kesha-esque ‘recession pop’, ushering a new era of 2010s nostalgia. Her chorus hook is a cracker, Petras’s lyrics about shamelessly stealing another woman’s boy toy (“She wears you well, but can’t you see you look better on me?”) punctuated by wall-shaking blasts of synth. Released 15 years ago, this would have surely been a hit. Instead, I Like Ur Look merely trailers what should be a major 2026 for Petras, with a new album apparently brewing.
Also listen: Freak It is an absurdly loud dubstep track with a bulletproof vocal hook that willfully (and accurately) refers to the song as “a little Eurotrash”. Needless to say, it’s a total blast.
27. gossip
by Confidence Man featuring JADE (non-album single)
A collaboration between Confidence Man and JADE, two of pop’s most gleefully camp auteurs, was always destined to be a joy, and gossip was appropriately the topic of giddy discussion when it was debuted at Glastonbury last summer. The sticky synth bass hook is one of Con Man’s best, but the masterstroke is the unexpected glimpses of flamenco guitar that punctuate Janet Planet and JADE’s playful back-and-forths about the salacious “talk around town”. It culminates, naturally, in JADE blurting out a very naughty word I won’t repeat here, cueing a glorious final chorus and no doubt some wild choreography when Con Man perform it live. It’s everything that’s made Con Man of late so irresistible: colourful, hilarious exuberance.
Also listen: Damaged Goods, from Confidence Man’s new EP, sounds marginally more mature with its hypnotic bass line and minimalist synth hook.
Read the full review of Confidence Man live in Newcastle here.
26. Heavy
by florence road from Fall Back
florence road were arguably the breakout Irish band this year, justifying a support slot on tour with Olivia Rodrigo by releasing one flawless single after another. Their breakout track Heavy is the obvious choice for this list, a moody song that leans into Lily Aron’s amazing ability to belt out unwavering high notes without sacrificing an ounce of raw emotion. Emma Brandon’s screeching guitar solo takes things to a new level before the bait-and-switch of a heartbreaking final chorus delivered with only vocals and piano. The result is an exquisitely well-crafted indie hit that’s had me refreshing the band’s website for upcoming tour dates on several occasions.
Also listen: eight songs in to the career, Flo Ro are yet to release a dud. Break the Girl is an obvious descendant of Olivia Rodrigo’s hook-focused pop-rock, whilst Miss follows a contemplative intro with a lightning strike of guitars reminiscent of early Kelly Clarkson – which is to say it’s the most badass thing I’ve heard all year.
25. JUMP
by BLACKPINK (non-album single)
K-pop embedded itself ever further into the Western mainstream this year with the staggering charts success of KPop Demon Hunters, but my favourite release was BLACKPINK’s blockbuster summer single JUMP, a bonkers piece of no-holds-barred techno designed to test the limits of your speaker’s subwoofer capabilities. Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa are onto a winner here and they know it, asking “Are you not entertained?” before a gratuitous yelp of “Blackpink in your area!” to usher in a ludicrous final key change. The production choices are nuts – an arena-filling synth riff, pulsating electronic kick drum, monumental drops – but somehow it all just about holds together, the high-budget chaos and beat switches making their own sort of sense. It’s the sort of frivolous joy this world needs more of.
Also listen: naturally JUMP has spawned a wealth of remixes that take the track in an even more hardcore techno direction. KSHMR and Ezra Hazard’s effort is my favourite.
24. Shells
by Westside Cowboy from This Better Be Something Great
Shells, from buzzy new Manchester country rock band Westside Cowboy, begins by lulling you into a false sense of security with gentle guitars and a lullaby-like vocal duet. Soon enough, though, this band’s special songwriting talent cuts through, and the chorus becomes a memorable singalong with delightfully splashy drumming and passionate vocal performances from Reuben Haycocks and Aoife Anson-O’Connell. If this sure-footed single is anything to go by, this band is destined for great things.
Also listen: I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You) nails an Midwest emo pastiche, right down to the neatly overlapping vocals and obnoxiously long title. Alright Alright Alright is a scrappy two-minute terrier of a song that would sound great soundtracking a high speed police chase.
Read the full review of Westside Cowboy live in York here.
23. Pussy Palace
by Lily Allen from West End Girl
Lily Allen’s return after a seven year hiatus was always bound to be one of the biggest music stories of the year, but few expected she would choose to return with a singles-free album like West End Girl, a brutally detailed song-by-song account of the collapse of her marriage with Hollywood actor David Harbour. Tragicomic synth pop track Pussy Palace was at the centre of the viral online discourse about West End Girl for the stark details it covers regarding Harbour’s sexual proclivities (“Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside / Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken”), and the effortlessly catchy chorus which adds a sprinkling of humour to the otherwise bleak tale about discovering your husband is a sex addict. It’s both an essential piece of 2025 pop culture and a strong song in its own right, equipped with astute turns of phrase and soaring synth melodies.
Also listen: 4chan Stan is also both witty and heartbreaking and features a marvellous wandering bassline, whilst Nonmonogamummy is the album’s silliest, most danceable moment.
22. d£aler
by Lola Young from I’m Only F**king Myself
It’s been a hell of a year for Lola Young, who was propelled to fame last November on the back of her ubiquitous hit Messy, a song about confronting one’s vices whose release coincided with Young checking herself into a rehab centre to deal with a cocaine addiction. Young’s recent consolidating album I’m Only F**king Myself leans into the themes of self-destruction and radical honestly that was the key to Messy’s enduring success. In fact, Young’s personal yet very public strife appears relentless. In October she became embroiled in an expensive lawsuit against Messy producer Carter Lang over songwriting credits and, more urgently, she was carried off stage by medical staff after collapsing mid-song at a recent gig in New York. For the listener, this troubled context makes the new album’s fantastic lead single d£aler even more fascinating: a song about defiantly cutting off your drug dealer undermined by a barely hidden reluctance (“Tell my dealer I miss him,” she sings). Over shrill layered vocals Young delivers a far more inventive earworm hook than on the overrated Messy, and the buzzing guitars are minimalist and tasteful. Young’s recent downturn is alarming, but the fact she can still churn out songs at gratifying as this one should give us hope.
Also listen: One Thing is Young’s first proper attempt at tackling the subject of sex, and the result is a volatile and stylish piece of polished funk pop – so long as you can withstand the irritatingly oversung vocals in the first verse.
21. More
by Carly Rae Jepsen from Emotion (10th Anniversary Edition)
2025 marks 10 years since the release of Carly Rae Jepsen’s seminal album Emotion, a classic of 2010s pop that still holds up as a flawless portrayal of all-consuming young love. New bonus track More is every bit as catchy as Emotion’s best, but adds an unusually ambiguous lyric sheet about mortality and how to know whether you’re making the most of your life. It’s the sound of Jepsen growing up in the best possible way – the lyrics may feel wiser, but the youthful exuberance in that punchy bass line and sparky synths is also very much present and correct.
Also listen: Emotion is an album very close to my heart. See Boy Problems or I Really Like You for exemplars of Jepsen’s feelings-first approach to sugary pop, Your Type for a titanic mid-tempo ballad, and When I Needed You for what I consider to be the greatest bass riff of the 2010s.
Read the full review of Carly Rae Jepsen live in Leeds here.
20. Vanish Into You
by Lady Gaga from MAYHEM
For all the recent talk about a Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx and Chappell Roan taking over pop, it’s easy to forget about the founding mother of A-league modern pop. Gaga’s outstanding 2025 album MAYHEM set the record straight, reminding us of her stadium-filling charisma and of just how ahead of the curve she was in the first place. The album’s resulting world tour – which features 30 songs divided into five acts, and opens with Gaga being wheeled onto stage in a 30-foot tall crinoline dress – surely has a strong claim to being the greatest pop spectacle on earth. In an album of maximalist showstoppers it’s hard to pick a favourite, but it’s Vanish Into You that feels most epic to me, a stunningly melodic piano ballad that sees Gaga belting out the soaring chorus with verve. It’s just been released, but it already feels like another classic to add to the Gaga canon.
Also listen: Abracadabra is unmissable – a gloriously unhinged hellish rave, and 2025’s premier gay anthem.
19. Get Dumber
by PUP featuring Jeff Rosenstock from Who Will Look After the Dogs?
A collaboration between PUP and Jeff Rosenstock – two of the greatest forces in the current US punk scene – was always a mouth-watering prospect, and Get Dumber delivers the goods and then some. Stefan Babcock and Rosenstock’s traded vocals sound so vitriolic it’s occasionally hard to make them out, which is no problem when the rest of the mix is an enthralling battlefield of distorted power chords and explosive lead guitar screeches. It culminates in a buffeting blast of bass guitar that only sounds better the louder you turn up the volume. Listen to it and watch your heart start racing.
Also listen: Get Dumber is the heaviest number from PUP’s solid new album Who Will Look After the Dogs?. Anthemic Concrete is my other favourite.
Read the full review of PUP live in Leeds here.
18. Leaves
by Parcels from LOVED
Parcels’ third album, LOVED, lacked some of the daring musical left-turns of their ambitious 2021 double album Day/Night and had the general feel of a solid wedding band settling on playing some tried-and-true crowd-pleasers. But when it comes to crowd-pleasing live bands, there are surely few better than Parcels, and Leaves exemplifies their ability to nail the basics: four good chords, one good vocal riff, a nut-tight groove, and you’ve got yourself a hit. Anatole ‘Toto’ Serret is a tease as ever on the drums, saving a game-changing snare drum entry until the optimal moment in the second verse, and the harmonised vocals sound exceptionally velvety even by Parcels standards. Patrick Hetherington’s lyrics about a faded love add an intriguing dimension of melancholy, but really this is all about the straightforwardly joyous music. Who knew making great pop was so wonderfully easy?
Also listen: LOVED may have lacked ambition, but outlier Safeandsound is genuinely a fresh and exciting new sound for the band: contemplative soft rock that bubbles up into a deeply cathartic synth solo.
Read the full review of Parcels’ LOVED here.
17. Talk Olympics
by Obonjayar featuring Little Simz from Paradise Now
It’s Obongjayar’s extraordinarily agile bass line that turbo charges this terrific Afrobeat track, a tongue-in-cheek dig at people who talk too much delivered at break-neck speed. The London rapper goes full Netta with his cooky chicken impressions, but Talk Olympics has a serious edge, mostly delivered by his exemplary hip hop peer Little Simz in a deadpan blink-and-you’ll-miss-it guest verse. The lyrics are witty, but really this is all about that bass line and the rapidfire onslaught of percussion, plenty groovy enough to send you to the GP with chronic neck pain.
Also listen: if you like these two artists’ chemistry on Talk Olympics, try the return fixture: Obongjayar featuring on Little Simz’s Lion, another eminently danceable, jazz-inflected Afrobeat number.
16. Schäfer
by Honningbarna from Soft Spot
When it comes to the noisiest album of the year, Norway’s hardcore punks Honningbarna surely take the biscuit with the ironically titled Soft Spot. 140-second beast Schäfer is the rocket launcher at the start of the record, starting with a blistering bass riff before proceeding to add in one heavy metal guitar riff after another. Edvard Valberg’s vocals are so passionately delivered it’s genuinely frightening – no knowledge of Norwegian is necessary to understand the full might of his rage. Listen and be awed.
Also listen: Schäfer is best served immediately following album opener Alt går over, noe varer, which foreshadows Schäfer’s ominous bass riff under an unsettling spoken word piece about Elon Musk. Festen som aldri stopper is a galloping, no-nonsense indie rock track which demonstrates the band’s impressive melodic talents.
15. Bread Butter Tea Sugar
by Wolf Alice from The Clearing
Wolf Alice cemented their place as one of the country’s best bands this year with a convincing pivot to flamboyant soft rock in their fourth LP, The Clearing. Ellie Rowsell is on top form gallivanting her way over a swinging groove, and the band throws the kitchen sink at the instrumental: thumping rock piano, rousing strings, a guitar solo or two for good measure. It’s a through-composed tour de force from a band that just keeps getting better.
Also listen: drummer Joel Amey gives an unexpectedly enchanting vocal performance on the faintly psychedelic White Horses.
14. I Know (A Little)
by Jacob Collier from The Light For Days
The general critical consensus of once-in-a-generation virtuoso Jacob Collier is now well established: the guy knows his way around the circle of fifths alright, but his tiggerish enthusiasm for every genre under the sun has resulted in five bafflingly scattergun and unfocused studio albums. It was a pleasant relief, then, when Collier announced a new low-key album called The Light For Days, in which he focused his efforts solely on songs with just vocals and acoustic guitar. Sure, Collier’s habit of overshadowing his originals with much better cover songs remains (see this album’s charming Beatles cover Norwegian Wood), and this album was hashed out in just four days, but a time-restricted Jacob Collier is still Jacob Collier, and despite lack of nu-metal interludes or Gregorian chants, these songs still have the compositional density and attention to detail of any other Collier concoction.
What is new, though, is a palpable authenticity, now no longer buried under hoards of exotic instruments and gimmicky microtonal harmony. I Know (A Little), for example, sees Collier diving into a love song more earnestly than ever. Each romantic miniature – “Lying awake in the dark with you” or “Kiss me down to the ocean” – is tempered by the words “a little”, Collier’s romance full of both alluring potential and troubling incompleteness. Musically it is, thank goodness, comprehensible, but by no means trite. Waterfalls of guitar trickle downwards at moments but never flood the scene, the heartbreaking intimacy of Collier’s vocal remaining very much front and centre. Perhaps it’s a little unfair to call this Collier’s best song – opuses like the two-part crash course in world music Box Of Stars undoubtedly took orders of magnitude more time and effort to make than I Know (A Little) – but this track hits home in a way no Collier song has done since Hideaway. Less is more, and I Know (A Little) sounds like Collier finally realising some of his immense potential.
Also listen: Heaven (Butterflies) is similarly beautiful and pop-leaning, although Collier’s strange baritone vocals in the second verse might be an acquired taste. Album closer Something Heavy manages to achieve an epic emotional crescendo without the need for any orchestral window dressing.
Read the full review of Jacob Collier live in Manchester here.
13. March On For Pax Ramona
by Psychedelic Porn Crumpets from Carpe Diem, Moonman
Aussie psych rock stalwarts Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are currently enjoying their imperial phase with not one but two thrilling new LPs in 2025. March On For Pax Ramona is their most impressive opus – a dazzling showcase of electric guitar virtuosity that starts at breakneck speed and never takes its foot off the gas. Jack McEwan is on particularly manic form behind the mic leading his own Roman army into an imagined epoch-defining battle, but it’s the impeccable groove transitions and blistering riffs that blow you away. The result sounds like a distorted, coked-up version of a particularly knotty Beethoven symphony.
Also listen: both PPC albums released this year are worth your time. Incubator (V2000) opts for a much simpler bass riff but the effect is no less propulsive, whilst zany Salsa Verde throws in a genius interpolation of The Beatles’ Come Together to the hardcore punk melee.
12. Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation
by jasmine.4.t from You Are The Morning
jasmine.4.t was one of the breakout UK songwriters of late 2024, and she came good on her potential with January’s You Are The Morning, a charming indie folk record elevated by the unmistakable presence of US supergroup boygenius as producers. Phoebe Bridgers herself offers ghostly guest vocals on this highlight, a song about pushing away intrusive thoughts about a bathtub suicide whilst on your weekly Tesco shop. Bridgers happens to have built a career on dark songs that sound like dreams, and so her delivery of absurd lyrics like “Potatoes make the faces smiling warmth from deep inside” feels perfectly natural. The premise is both silly and bleak, but Jasmine Cruickshank’s music leans towards the former with a plonking banjo and cheery fiddles. She sticks the landing too, belting into the mic for an oddly uplifting final chorus with all the gutsiness of a textbook Bridgers scream.
Also listen: Kitchen opens jasmine.4.t’s debut album with a remarkably self-assured and intricate acoustic guitar number. I Can’t Believe I Did This Without You features a jaunty chorus hook, but your mileage on Cruickshank’s undeniably Sooty-esque vocals may vary.
Read the full review of jasmine.4.t live in Manchester here.
11. Switch Over
by Horsegirl from Phonetics On and On
If J.S. Bach had been born in 1990s Chicago, given an electric guitar and fed on a diet of Sonic Youth and Pavement, he might have made music that sounds a little bit like Horsegirl. The trio’s inventive February album Phonetics On and On took a radically mathematical approach to indie rock, every last phrase split into musical cells repeated two, four or eight times with scientific precision. Not a second is wasted, and not a single hook is repeated one too many times. The result is a hypnotic 37 minute listening experience filled with songs that seem to worm their way into your brain without you knowing, 20-year-old Penelope Lowenstein’s nonchalant vocal hooks taking up long term residency in your subconscious. Catchiest of them all is Switch Over, a hopeful up-tempo number typically spare in lyrics but rich in feeling. The harmonic ingredients here are simple, but there’s also so much to listen to: Lowenstein’s lynchpin of a bass line, Gigi Reece’s insistent drumming, the very Horsegirl-esque background hum of a harshly bowed violin. It’s unclear exactly why it all works – there’s not the usual verse-chorus rise and fall structure to orient yourself around – but if there’s a secret formula to producing the mathematically perfect indie rock song, Horsegirl may well have found it.
Also listen: lead single 2468 endearingly establishes an obsession with the number two present throughout Phonetics On and On, whilst Julie is a woozy, down-tempo number about repressed desire.
10. Follow Excitement!
by Rizzle Kicks featuring Rachel Chinouriri (non-album single)
Spare a thought for Rizzle Kicks. The Brighton hip-hop duo, whose endearingly naïve joke songs like Down With the Trumpets and Mama Do The Hump were major cultural moments in the early 2010s, returned after a 12 year hiatus with a mature new record about entering adulthood that also started with the bold proclamation that Rizzle Kicks are “fucking back!”. The results? Faintly positive reviews and a week at number 59 in the UK charts before being quickly forgotten. It’s a crying shame because Rizzle Kicks are genuinely on top form, not least on this subsequent collaboration with UK pop’s it girl Rachel Chinouriri, a terrifically fun samba track that playfully nods back to the plasticky horns that first made the duo famous with Down With the Trumpets. Chinouriri’s hook is a cracker, and Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule’s lyrics take a refreshingly level-headed approach to fame. “No shortcuts in life, you gotta be aligned with the suffering,” Stephens advises, concluding of this song that “It might not chart, so you might as well dance”. Alas, this single never did make it onto the UK charts, but quite why is beyond me: Follow Excitement! is a hoot from start to finish, striking a balance between candid humour and genuine musical nous. There’s even a double bass solo at the end, for goodness sake!
Also listen: Javelin, the new album’s slinky lead single, is also criminally underrated.
9. Elderberry Wine
by Wednesday from Bleeds
“Sweet song is a long con,” is the disarmingly cryptic lyric Karly Hartzman opens Elderberry Wine with, an elegant country crooner about old relationships gone sour. The prominent presence of MJ Lenderman on slide guitar and backing vocals – Hartzman’s ex-lover and also perhaps the world’s foremost songwriter of guitar-first country rock – lend things a Silver Springs-esque complexity, but Elderberry Wine’s songwriting alone is alluring enough in itself, the band painting a bittersweet sunset of weeping guitars and sighing melodies. “Say I wanna have your baby / ‘Cause I freckle and you tan” Hartzman sings, depicting a relationship built on mutually beneficial flaws in one of several genius lyrical flourishes. It sounds like a long drive home and a long goodbye, after the relationship has ended but before either party has summoned up the courage to admit it.
Also listen: Elderberry Wine is the standout gem in Wednesday’s altogether rockier recent album Bleeds – look to Pick Up That Knife for Hartzman wailing into the mic like her life depends on it. I was too late to the MJ Lenderman party to include songs from his amazing 2024 album Manning Fireworks on last year’s list, but just know She’s Leaving You is one of the most heartbreaking and frank songs I know.
8. 15 Minutes
by Sabrina Carpenter from Short n’ Sweet (Deluxe)
Sabrina Carpenter continues to bask in such a prolific imperial phase that the world seems to have already moved on from 15 Minutes and onto discussions of her August record Man’s Best Friend, which wasn’t nearly as risqué as the controversial album cover promised, but still added several noteworthy new tracks to the Carpenter canon. But for my money Carpenter’s finest track this year was this offcut from 2024’s world-dominating Short ‘n’ Sweet, a bonus track found only on the deluxe edition but every bit as delightful as hits like Juno, Please Please Please or Taste, if not better. It follows a now well established Carpenter formula: coy, clever lyrics about pathetic boyfriends set to lusciously produced bubblegum pop that bursts forth from your speakers like a ray of spring sunshine. Dolly Parton pops up for a few bizarre ad libs but thankfully resists croaking her way through a verse, letting Carpenter rightly take the reins for a freewheeling chorus. The topic is, naturally, brevity in the bedroom (“I can do a lot with 15 minutes / Only gonna take two to make you finish”), but also so much more: a mature acceptance of Carpenter’s 15 minutes of fame or youthful beauty, or indeed the brevity of life itself. In fact, it’s less a song about pathetic boyfriends and more a masterclass in how to make the most of life’s impermanence. “It’s fleetin’ like we’re all gonna die,” she slips in before the second verse, but the rush of musical honey – ebullient disco strings, an ecstatic guitar solo, a gratuitous jam outro – makes the undercurrent of mortality easy to miss. But make no mistake, this song is much more than just a pretty face.
Also listen: House Tour is my pick from Man’s Best Friend, a ludicrous pastiche of wacky 80s synth pop that sees Carpenter in fine fettle reeling off one double entendre after another. The relative political-correctness of the album’s approach to sex drew criticism (it’s no Kim Petras Slut Pop), but the slinky guitar solo on Sugar Talking sounds so outrageously sexy it requires an Explicit Content label in itself.
7. Nostalgia’s Lie
by Sam Fender from People Watching
This becomes a very different sort of blog when I try to write about Sam Fender. I’ve taken his music so much to heart in the last 12 months that it’s now very difficult to write about him without, at least in some ways, writing about myself. In fact, February’s People Watching felt like the closest an album has come to changing my life. For the student newspaper in Newcastle I remember a fruitless attempt to conduct an interview at a local corner store selling his merchandise about the palpable buzz in the city ahead of it’s release. On release night I found myself strolling through Newcastle alone at 1 a.m. as I fell in love with the album for the first time. I gazed up at Grey’s Monument as Nostalgia’s Lie enveloped me, and later stood awestruck on a motorway bridge as Wild Long Lie unspooled for six dreamlike minutes. I’d listened to it another five times before I arrived bleary-eyed in the newspaper office early the next morning to write up a rave review. I will be raving about it for years and decades to come.
A few months later when Fender played an unprecedented three-night residency at St James’ Park, me and a friend sat in Leazes Park to listen and reminisce on our recently completed degrees. We hugged when The Dying Light – the emotional apex of Fender’s previous album – reached it’s awesome climax. People Watching was the sound of Newcastle and my reluctant departure from it. Best of all, Fender’s hazy, bittersweet songs already sounded exquisitely nostalgic from the moment they were released.
Unlike 2021’s Seventeen Going Under, in which the elegiac title track rightly took the bulk of the acclaim, People Watching lacks a clear contender for standout track. The title song and lead single would be the obvious choice – indeed it sent Newcastle’s Utilita Arena potty when Fender played it twice in the space of 30 minutes on the night he took a surprise but richly deserved Mercury Prize win – but there are plenty of songs on People Watching that lean less heavily on a certain Springsteen for their appeal. Arm’s Length has the catchiest vocal hook, Little Bit Closer the most anthemic chorus, TV Dinner the most daring lyrics and songwriting. Then there’s the poignant, ghostly presence of Easington Colliery Brass Band on the monumental Remember My Name, or the payoff of a soaring sax solo at the end of the hypnotic Wild Long Lie.
But my choice is perhaps People Watching’s formally simplest song, Nostalgia’s Lie. There is no significant musical development here, no great Coldplay-esque blast of “woah-ohs”, few vocal flourishes and certainly no obvious TikTok-able snippets. Instead, Nostalgia’s Lie picks a mood – wistful, mournful, quietly hopeful – and sits with it. Fender’s melodies are as pristine as any timeless folk song (Danny Boy comes to mind) and the chord progression gently weaves around him, falling elegantly like an autumn leaf just before the chorus in line with Fender’s tastefully harmonised tune. “Was it ever what I thought it truly was?” Fender asks, reflecting on his rose-tinted memories of a working class upbringing in North Shields. Indeed, the “violet path and the oak tree hollow” mutate unsettlingly to a “violent mark on the oak tree hollow” from one chorus to the next, Fender’s blissful nostalgia marred by a darkness that he perhaps couldn’t see as a child. And yet, not for the first time in a Fender song, he somehow cooks up euphoria from such troubled ingredients. “Before I’m pushing up daisies / Give me a long heady summer / With arms open wide,” he belts on the spine-tingling bridge. They’re lyrics to live by, a final injection of hope that typifies a songwriter with a rare ability to cut straight through to the heart. My life in Newcastle is over, but songs like these are the stuff of lifelong devotion.
Also listen: besides those 11 core People Watching tracks that I’ve already written about at length, Me and the Dog is easily the pick of the B-sides – a groovy, gritty frugger about depression that peaks with both a rip-roaring guitar solo and a Johnny Davis sax solo that can only be described as stonking with a capital S. Best of all, they’re tied together by a thunderous Drew Michael drum fill – a minute of flawless old school rock hedonism.
Read the full review of Sam Fender’s People Watching here.
6. Hangman
by Divorce from Drive to Goldenhammer
“It came from an overwhelming desire to care for someone, and the tension was in how I was able to do that whilst also looking after myself,” Divorce singer Felix Mackenzie-Barrow told me between puffs of his cigarette sat in his back garden last March. We were discussing his recent single Hangman, which is about his six month stint working as a support worker. It was a genuine thrill to interview him and drummer Kasper Sandstrøm, not only because Divorce are one of the best bands in the UK right now, but because Hangman is one of the year’s very best songs – a jangly, hook-packed indie rock number that aptly closed out their set when I saw the band play in Newcastle last month. Reined in by the strikingly tangible context of care work, here Mackenzie-Bray’s instinctive, occasionally esoteric lyricism really hits home as he symbolically decides to just keep playing games of hangman with a patient since “I don’t know what you’d rather do, man”. More than just a stark depiction of Britain’s strained care sector (Mackenzie-Barrow also railed against government cuts of disability benefits in our interview), Hangman is a song about the sometimes unbearable price love demands. There’s a sense of Mackenzie-Barrow steadily losing his mind as he belts out the words “I care about you already / I wanna lift you up” in the song’s passionately sung finale. In Newcastle, the words prompted the crowd to spontaneously raise their hands, lifting up Mackenzie-Barrow in return. He described to me feeling numb whilst writing the song, but Hangman feels anything but.
Also listen: Mackenzie-Barrow is just one of two fantastic vocalists in Divorce, and gorgeous duet Antarctica makes the most of his vocal chemistry with Tiger Cohen-Towell. Lord is a more straight-talking indie rock highlight from the band’s rewarding debut album Drive to Goldenhammer.
Read the full review of Divorce’s Drive to Goldenhammer here.
5. Man I Need
by Olivia Dean from The Art of Loving
We’re already well informed of Olivia Dean’s exceptional talent on these shores, but with Man I Need the South London singer broke the States, performing the song in a headline-grabbing appearance on SNL and picking up her first ever Grammy nomination. If any song could achieve such feats, it’s Man I Need, a flawless light-footed bop and this year’s belated song of the summer. It’s got all the glamour of a slinky 70s soul track, but something in Man I Need’s artful exuberance feels timeless too, Dean’s melodies leaping gracefully over a gently funky bed of guitars. The lyrics may focus on a rather old-fashioned idea of man-worship, but that skipping drum groove adds something more universally joyful, the artist coming to the crystal clear realisation of how she needs to be loved. Indeed, Man I Need feels like the song where Dean finally discovered the world-conquering popstar she was always destined to be.
Also listen: The Art of Loving is one of the year’s best pop albums. Nice To Each Other is another earwormy hit single, So Easy (To Fall In Love) is a merry bossa nova number drenched in the all-consuming joy of new love, whilst Loud is one of Dean’s most moving ballads.
4. Au Pays du Cocaine
by Geese from Getting Killed
It’s not entirely clear whether you should take Geese seriously or not. Their latest album, Getting Killed, is relentlessly absurd and knowingly shoddy, frontman Cameron Winter singing about men with no limbs, 124 horses (give or take) dancing on a battlefield, and an imagined romance with Joan of Arc, all whilst sounding like some exotic alien with delusions of becoming an opera singer. Musically, they pack their songs with flashy classic rock mannerisms but also a Ukrainian voice choir, drunken trombone and happy-clappy gospel singers. It’s unclear why on earth this particular song title is in French, and where cocaine comes into it, besides a potential songwriting aid.
The remarkable thing, and reason why Getting Killed has been rightly lauded as the latest great cult classic alt rock album since Ants From Up There, is that intuitively it all somehow makes sense. In fact, never has Winter’s songwriting felt more direct and urgent than on the quietly heartbreaking Au Pays Du Cocaine, a song whose straightforward chords and plodding groove are the blank canvas for a rich palette of Winter’s raw emotion. On a yearning chorus we get the trademark absurdity as Winter imagines his lover as a sailor in a big green boat in a big green coat, before a desperate cry of “You can be free and still come home”, perhaps the most heartfelt and impactful lyric I’ve heard all year. The effect is a devastating sense of longing and loneliness that Winter’s oddball vocal style only serves to intensify. When he spends an entire verse repeating the words “You can change” the effect is oddly moving, as if the narrator is trying out a mantra for his lover or for himself, hoping that if he repeats his words enough times they may eventually come true. “It’s fine / I’m alright” Winter mutters unconvincingly as the piano swells and almost derails in the song’s final spectacular ascent. It’s not just fine, it’s sublime.
Also listen: lead single Taxes features a brilliant lyric about a crucifix, and marries heavenly guitar riffs with the guttingly earnest wail of “I will break my own heart from now on!”. 100 Horses is a Jackson Pollock painting in blues rock form: inventive, technicolour and spectacularly messy. And whilst I’m here, the band’s rendition of New Radicals’ You Get What You Give for BBC Radio 1 is the most moving cover I’ve heard all year.
3. Cold Dreaming
by Doves from Constellations for the Lonely
Cold Dreaming feels less like a pop-rock single, more like a IMAX-sized cinematic blockbuster, kitted out with all the high budget bells and whistles one could hope for. It even starts somewhat self-importantly with its own theatrical trailer, strings swelling to an epic climax before even the first words have been sung. With longtime frontman Jimi Goodwin now taking a backseat to focus on recovery from substance abuse, his bandmates Andy and Jez Williams take to the mic on Cold Dreaming, and the result is not far shy of the Mancunion indie rockers’ best work. For band known for being a little doom and gloom, Cold Dreaming is powerfully optimistic, the Williams brothers beckoning in the coming summer and declaring “I can’t live my days in fear”. Musically, it’s awesome. Every chorus arrives like a tidal wave, the strings lurching skywards, Jez Williams’ lead guitar trilling ecstatically. The long instrumental bridge, which transitions gracefully from moody synth-rock to another euphoric chorus, is almost unbearably epic. No other song this year has followed through with this much audacious ambition with such flair.
Also listen: Goodwin does appear on other album highlight Renegade with a movingly world-weary vocal performance.
2. Look Down On Us
by Maruja from Pain to Power
To say Maruja’s Leeds gig in November blew me away would be an understatement – it clattered my on the head, punched me in the gut and pulled out my legs from under me. Look Down On Us, the lead single from the band’s mind-blowing new album Pain to Power, was an anthemic highlight of the gig and neatly covers everything that makes Maruja so exciting in one 10-minute post-rock expedition. There is simply no band that sounds like this, Joe Carroll’s free jazz saxophone curdling with Matt Buonaccorsi’s gut-churningly massive bass tone as Harry Wilkinson preaches to “turn pain to power, put faith in love”, sounding more compellingly earnest than ever.
Yes, Look Down On Us is lengthy (but not even the longest track on Pain to Power), but not a second is wasted, and the emotional and musical range on display is awe-inspiring. The opening three minutes run like a particularly fearsome Viagra Boys track, Carroll’s brutish sax hook slicing through the mix like an axe. The real masterstroke comes when these tatted Manchester lads reveal their soft sides: Buonaccorsi’s mellow bass guitar chords usher in a dreamy free jazz passage that builds patiently towards something transcendent. By the time Wilkinson demands us to “Be twice the ocean, be twice the land / Be twice the water for your sons and daughters”, the swell of strings and heartfelt vocalisations is emotionally overwhelming. The first time I heard it I was moved to tears. When the band finally return to their original, scorching hook Wilkinson is largely absent in the din, shrewdly letting the breathtakingly fierce music do the talking. Look Down On Us is a song filled to bursting with both rage and transcendent love. The punk choruses go hard, but it’s the astonishing emotional maturity of Maruja that sets them in a league of their own when it comes to contemporary rock.
Also listen: if you appreciate Look Down On Us’s patient rise and fall, you’ll love Born to Die, a poignant spoken word piece that ends in the most extraordinary passage of guitar music I’ve heard all year – you won’t believe your ears. Bloodsport and the deceptively funky Trenches fit the bill when it comes to good old fashioned three-minute punk belters.
Read the full review of Maruja live in Leeds here.
1. Love Takes Miles
by Cameron Winter from Heavy Metal
How many emotions can a song embody? Two? Twenty? Two hundred? Love Takes Miles seems to tick off most of them: joy and despair, youthful naivety and hard-won wisdom, loneliness and solidarity, love and grief. It feels like every last detail of Love Takes Miles is serving two or more emotional purposes at once. It opens with what sounds like a bumblebee aimlessly strolling into Cameron Winter’s guitar, woozy and carefree, but with a stinger onboard. It ends drenched in strings, Winter melting into the microphone as he delivers his one-line denouement: love takes miles, so “you better start a-walkin’, baby”.
Evidently, it’s oddly easy to forget that Love Takes Miles isn’t an abstract jumble of metaphors, emotions and moods, but an actual song written by an actual songwriter. Winter, the Geese frontman who, since releasing this song and Geese’s superb Getting Killed, has become probably the most fawned-over songwriter of the year, quietly released his debut solo album Heavy Metal in December 2024 (a little too late for inclusion in last year’s list – this is a 2025 song as far as I’m concerned). It was a remarkably intimate record that announced Winter’s bizarre, singular vocal and lyrical abilities to the world. He croons over tracks like the haunting piano ballad Drinking Age with a sort of superhuman vulnerability, mumbling like a gen Z Bob Dylan before drifting semi-drunkenly into shivering vibrato. Perhaps it was precisely this oddness that resonated so much with listeners; in a modern age of tech-induced loneliness (particularly in men), here was a vocalist deliberately distinguishing himself as a musical ugly duckling and eccentric loner, albeit one that’s saying what we’re all privately thinking: to use two lines from Love Takes Miles, I’m “lonely as hell” and “what I want is far away”.
What makes Love Takes Miles so fascinating is that it takes that yearning and overlays it onto a peppy Olivia Dean-style 60s soul track, albeit one smudged by wayward guitars and spectral backing vocals. When Winter laments resorting to conversations with the moon on his solitary night walks, it’s the chirpy piano that whisks you away from the pain of it all. In fact, the theme of night walks becomes not only a symbol of Winter’s loneliness, but also his striving for something better and refusal to sit down and take it. “Feet on the ground / What I want is on my mind” he sings with newfound determination in the second chorus, a motley crew of instruments (sitar, congas, tambourine) rallying behind him. “Love will make you fit it all in the car,” he summarises beautifully; the good times will come, there’s just no way of knowing when.
It’s that hopeful wisdom that’s made Love Takes Miles my most trusty companion throughout this year, not least during my frequent (and by and large very happy) solitary walks. It’s hard to think of a three minute song that has taught me more about life and love: namely that the best things require the most patience, and that escaping personal hardship is often a case of one foot in front of the other, sometimes literally. It’s nothing less than a manifesto for living in 4/4 pop form. You better start a-listenin’, baby.
Also listen: Wurlitzer-powered Nausicaa (Love Will Be Revealed) has a similar vague 60s feel to it, whilst Drinking Age is Winter’s most entrancing ballad. Also don’t miss the instinctive piano reworkings Winter tends to perform live in his solo shows – his performance of Love Takes Miles on Later… with Jools Holland is very different to the original, but no less captivating.
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