Favorite Albums of 2025

Another jaunt around the sun completed. It feels like we are all constantly looking around at one another saying things like, "wow, what a crazy year." At some point in the last decade we jumped the shark on normal years. But I digress. Thanks to all of you who have continued to read my little ramblings this year, it means the world. I hope you have found something you cherish in these dispatches.

As far as personal updates go: I turned 30 this year, I moved yet again (9 times in 8 years, it's important to keep people on their toes), I watched enough reality TV to merit institutionalization (Summer House streaming now on Peacock), I got back into reading (my favorite book I read this year was Libra), I traveled to see multiple Silkworm shows (and met Tommy Wright III on my journey), and I established myself as the preeminent cat sitter in my social circle (I'm available for hire).

I was shooting for 30 albums but cut the long list down to 37 or so before deciding I'd rather add 3 than axe 7. Most years I'd also include an arbitrary number of songs but I was feeling lazy and compiling this already took a decent bit of time. My favorite song of the year was "You got time and I got money" by Smerz. I also promised my friend I'd bemoan the lack of "Tweaker" by GELO on year end lists if I got this newsletter out in time. Good song.

Last order of business before the list itself are a handful of superlatives, meant to capture things that weren't formally included but still deserve to be acknowledged:

The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to the artists I love who dropped albums I liked a lot and for some reason didn't revisit enough to qualify as Favorites™️ of the year. Never sure why it happens, wouldn't be surprised to look back and regret siloing some of these to the honorable mentions tier. Shoutout to Big Thief, Wednesday, Hotline TNT, Jim Legxacy, Earl Sweatshirt, The Beths, Home Is Where, Spencer Radcliffe, the various members of Snocaps, MIKE, Cloakroom, and Algernon Cadwallader.

The I'm Not Sure How the Hell I'm Gonna Pick Just One Award goes to Damián Antón-Ojeda who released a whopping 25 projects (and a cover of "Parking Lot" by Mineral) this year... and that's only counting the three aliases of his I actually follow. It's all pretty fucking sick so get in there and have an absolute ball.

The Tracks II by Bruce Springsteen Award goes to Tracks II by Bruce Springsteen. Not sure how I could really stack seven shelved albums from one of my favorite musicians ever against normal releases from this year. I listened to this more than anything else in 2025. What can I say? I love The Boss. Not every single disc is essential but at least five of them would be great individual Springsteen albums. He's an absolute madman.

And now, presented in alphabetical order, Tributary's 40 favorite albums of the year.

Alien Boy - You Wanna Fade?

Starting off with arguably my favorite album of the year, and in my opinion Alien Boy's best. Alien Boy are so cool. They play shows with shades on looking like they are high as hell, they write big widescreen emotional songs that you could still play for your bro-ey cousin or a girl you like. It sounds great at normal volume, it sounds even better loud, it just fucking rocks.

baan - neumann

One of a few recommendations on this list from my dear friend "Karaoke" Matt (designated as such because I know too many Matts and we met doing karaoke). This is punishingly heavy, almost like doom-emo, and I love when it sounds like seventeen people are singing at once. Matt has written like 60% of a Tributary entry and I'm always trying to get him to finish it—maybe if we all chant loud enough...

billy woods - GOLLIWOG

The first of a few entries on the list where I'm not sure what I'm supposed to contribute to the conversation. woods remains one of the great writers (across all domains) of our times. Images that rattle around your head for weeks.

Bugcatcher - Big Field

Lots of bands are going for "pastoral" these days and many of them can't quite nail it. Bugcatcher is nailing it, in part because they retain an edge that many of their peers would polish away. I sent this to a friend and he told me it passes the "music for cooking" test with flying colors.

Chuquimamani-Condori - Edits

Wrote a bit about this one back in August.

crushed - no scope

Another impossibly cool album and band. Ceding ground to this Bandcamp user:

DARK THOUGHTS - HIGHWAY TO THE END

DARK THOUGHTS have spent about a decade dialing in the exact right formula of noise and hooks. They are so unbelievably consistent. Every time they release a new album I think "hell yeah, another 22 minutes of DARK THOUGHTS."

Destroyer - Dan's Boogie

"You quote unquote the French au pair" is immediately an all timer Dan Bejar lyric, made all the better by the way his reedy baritone is slathered in delay until it resembles the voice of God. Lounge music for the apocalypse.

Dijon - Baby

Completely awesome and original stuff going on here. Pretty sick to see someone so influenced by Bon Iver receive widespread acclaim even as actual Bon Iver stock is reaching record lows with the cool kids. I love Bon Iver and will continue to hold even if I thought their album this year was Not Good.

Ear - The Most Dear and The Future

Part of the "indie sleaze" sluice but there's definitely some of The Books in the DNA here which is an angle I don't think other bands are really exploring. We here at Tributary really hate the term "indie sleaze" to describe actual mid-00s goings on but we have come around to its utility as a descriptor for the hauntology of those goings on that does seem to exist now.

Elm - Elm EP

Another Karaoke Matt recommendation, sister band to Knumears, and also arguably my favorite release of the year. There are definitely too many bands doing "Hum-style guitars" but you always get a pass doing it this well. If there were any justice in the world Elm would immediately be one of the biggest bands in shoegaze and/or emo right now but this EP is a legit SEO nightmare which honestly makes it so much cooler.

First Day Back - Forward

Was hooked on this from the first note. I've already spilled my fair share of ink on how I don't always connect with newer emo bands, but this is exactly what I'm constantly looking for. Ten more of these please.

forever ☆ - Second Gen Dream

Gnarly fusion of shoegaze and breakbeats cranked up to obscene levels, which is not a wholly unprecedented combo but you can actually dance to this. forever ☆ seem incapable of operating at a level below 11 (complimentary). There's also a healthy dose of Evanescence in a song like "Competizione" which goes a long way for a guy like me.

Geese - Getting Killed

I'm pro Geese. A lot of this definitely sounds like The Rolling Stones, but I also think they got there by trying to emulate other bands and doing the "ass backwards towards your influences' influences" kind of thing. Almost every song here is pretty great and has withstood the repeated exposure of being memed or served to me in Instagram reel footage of that one show that they played outside.

Golomb - The Beat Goes On

Whoever tweeted the link for this album out said it was like a crunchier Beulah. I've been plagiarizing that every time I've recommended this to someone else and I'm not about to stop now. Hey check this out it sounds like crunchier Beulah.

HiTech - HONEYPAQQ Vol. 1

A nonstop ear-to-ear-grin good time. I'm a big fan of music that is riotously horny and these guys bring it in spades. Doesn't play exactly like a mix but the transitions are cohesive and seamless, you could absolutely let this ride on the aux at a party. Quick shoutout to George Riley who, between HiTech and SHERELLE has guested on two of the nastiest pop songs of the year (and released her own great album to boot).

Jessica Williams - Blue Abstraction: Prepared Piano Project 1985-1987

Jessica Williams was a trans jazz pianist who gigged with countless legends and obsessed over the work of Thelonious Monk. This archival release collects three years of experiments with prepared piano (altering the instrument's timbre by inserting objects into the strings), and she wrings all manner of orchestral and percussive sounds out of it. Haunting and beautiful.

keiyaA - hooke's law

keiyaA named her second album for the law of physics governing the force required to extend a spring. Or, in her interpretation, "a downward spiral is a loaded spring." hooke's law is looser and meaner than Forever, Ya Girl; the drums knock harder and she's talking way more shit. It's a blast.

Klein - Thirteen Sense

I had a lot of trouble connecting with Marked last year and was really thrilled to be so immediately taken with Klein's follow up. I have a vivid memory of walking around Bedstuy listening to "role of fear" while a nearby woman was yelling at someone on her phone and it felt like a very simpatico pairing.

Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka

Deserves all the hype (and then some).

Lucy Liyou - Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name

The best way I can describe this album is to say it sounds like primordial yearning, the feeling of desire broken down to its basest components. Sad, affirming, and gorgeous in equal parts.

mrs. hopewell - my father's clock, placed here at my request

I will continue to tell anyone who will listen that Christopher Nicastro is writing some of the best lo-fi pop music in the game. Also this year I read the Flannery O'Connor story that he gets his moniker from. That reveal went crazy in my band's groupchat (which doubles as the official mrs. hopewell stan army hq).

Nourished by Time - The Passionate Ones

Another wondrous offering from Nourished by Time. Few songs this year were as joyous as "9 2 5" or as joyously restless as "BABY BABY." Was a bit less immediate for me than Erotic Probiotic 2 but proved just as rewarding after I spent time with it.

Oklou - choke enough

I haven't quite decided if I think this is "loud music played quiet" or "quiet music mastered loud" but the amount of detail in these songs is insane. It's obviously very carefully rendered and crisp but it all sounds completely effortless. I'm guessing this will spawn a bunch of imitators who absolutely suck (and maybe two or three who make listenable pop in a "shithead-classic" way).

Panda Bear - Sinister Grift

Perfect summertime music and also probably a divorce album. The "Ends Meet" chorus feels like it has existed since time immemorial. Cindy Lee rips a gnarly guitar solo at the end. I also really liked the Geologist album from this year but not quite enough to make the list.

pause - pause

pause are a Japanese band I got into because they were shouted out by the legendary slowcore band Tree. They take the genre in a slightly more pop direction and it's very pleasant. Real Tributary shit, not streaming anywhere.

Perfect 100 - Perfect 100

A good reminder to procrastinate on your list making for when your friend Dan sends you something like this at the last second. Eleven minutes of pure slacker perfection.

Real Lies - We Will Annihilate Our Enemies

Also arguably my favorite album of the year. Blurbed this one for Swim Into the Sound's staff favorites list so just gonna link that. Two lists for the price of one. And that price is zero dollars.

Samia - Bloodless

Samia has always had a knack for winding classical and contemporary imagery together until it becomes uncanny and arcane (like the way the almost anachronistic mention of an iPod in 2023's "Kill Her Freak Out" modernizes a narrative that otherwise feels much older). Bloodless arrives as a culmination, the music finally reinforcing these tensions rather than threatening to smooth them over.

Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars

I think what sets Shallowater apart from all the other bands working in the same sandbox is their willingness to juxtapose more than just quiet part vs. loud part, like the mid-section of the title track where they slip in and out of polyrhythms to make the inevitable volume jump hit that much harder. Either that or the fact that they are writing better and louder riffs.

Snuggle - Goodbyehouse

I don't know what's in the water in Copenhagen but the city continues to churn out reliably moody new music and I keep eating it up. I'm a big fan of all the subtle electronic textures underneath the band format, it all comes together in a really nice way.

Sophia Stel - How to Win at Solitaire

The other big last minute discovery on this list. Dreamy and weird pop music, kind of reminds me of a more digitized Now, Now.

Sue - For the Love of the Game

This is my friend Brad's band and they fucking rip. I saw them play a hardcore fest this year deep in Queens and everyone in the audience had several face piercings and was crowdkilling with DSLRs in hand. I was quite clearly the old guy in the room and they were very nice about not kicking me in the face. Immediately after the show I watched Jalen Brunson put Ausar Thompson on skates to clinch the Detroit series in an empty burger shop, and me and the guys behind the counter all went nuts.

Texas 3000 - Weird Dreams

A quick track by track breakdown of Weird Dreams: one really good emo song, an emo/rap collaboration (not an emo-rap song, key distinction), a coffeeshop jazz-folk song with a fart joke at the midpoint, another really great emo song, and one instrumental noise experiment. Texas 3000 are a fascinating and perennially underrated band.

they are gutting a body of water - LOTTO

Always cool when a band like this sands off some of their harsher edges without compromising what made them interesting in the first place. "sour diesel" is, in title and style, the closest TAGABOW will probably come to writing an Oso Oso song and it's awesome. Curious whether this will end up closer to their Sung Tongs or their Merriweather Post Pavilion.

U.e. - Hometown Girl

The latest album (and alias) from Ulla Straus is twelve tracks of homespun jazz, vintage and slightly dusty sounding in a way that matches the photo on the cover perfectly. It's astonishing that this is the work of a single person—the music feels completely organic, almost as if it were breathing. (Fun fact, when I saw The American Analog Set in November, the pre-show playlist was largely pulled from the 2022 ulla album Foam.)

Virtua dx - Guitarpop Forever

A forward thinking mix of loud guitar music and dance beats that happened to come out the same year as the biggest forward-thinking-mix-of-loud-guitar-music-and-dance-beats release in recent memory, but the vibe here is less "chemical induced meeting with the creator themselves" and more "12 year olds hopped up on Mountain Dew playing Mario Party at a sleepover." Extremely unique music, do not sleep on this.

Weatherbox - The Compass

Including this despite the fact that 2/3 of these songs were released as live sessions via Halfway Home back in 2019 because I love any opportunity to shout out The Box. The old songs sound great and the new songs sound great. I'm seeing them for my first show of 2026 and I'm positively stoked.

Worlds Worst - American Muscle

Ten tracks of sick-ass riffs and great hooks. This was co-released by Smoking Room and Julia's War which should give you a good idea of what you're in for. I like that these guys don't put an apostrophe in their name, it really changes the whole vibe on a grammatical level.

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds

Awesome futuristic alien shit. The guitar sounds like a synth, the synth sounds like a bass, the drums are going in a million directions at once, there's a guy yelling in a crazy voice. What more could you want here.

Recommendation Corner:

READ:

Ed Zitron "Never Forgive Them" / "The Case Against Generative AI" - the crushing onslaught of digital degradation and AI encroachment often leaves me glum about the future. I leave you with these two pieces—full of the kind of righteous anger I am admittedly a sucker for—which peel back the curtain on just how insanely stupid the current tech industry is. They are both quite long and require you to brush up on Business Terminology, but I found them informative and dare I say... hopeful

WATCH:

The Baltimorons (dir. Jay Duplass 2025) - saw this at Chicago's Music Box Theatre while on vacation. It's an absolute delight, a perfect holiday season watch, and it's gone very under-discussed. Highly recommend