EMMIE's Albums of the Year 2025
Our staff has pooled some of the cool albums released this year that we thought deserved some appreciation. While this list will never be all-encompassing, hopefully our recommendations give you some new contemporary tunes to enjoy.
Told Not To Worry - Hand’s In The Air!
A powerhouse of sass from Rhode Island was a shocker for the year 2025, but we are all for it. Told Not To Worry’s debut album contains 10 minutes of pure chaos and trans rage wrapped into a potent package of instruments and screaming. The brilliant lyricism brings together campy classics from the 2000s with an indescribable political/social persistence. Interspersed between screams are brutal breakdowns that keep listeners locked in and drowned out by gutturals or guitars. Teen Wolf and Hot Cross Buns make you question what you’re listening to, but by then you’re already hooked. Told Not To Worry is undeniably one of the greatest talents coming out of the Quahog emo adjacent scene.
Highlight Track: “Jane Is A Werewolf!”
By: Ian Hoffman
Danny Brown - Stardust
Danny Brown’s first sober release marks a shift into a more obscure style, featuring collaborations with a different crowd. At 44 years old, Brown’s 7th album shows a more electronic production that suits the many features from artists like Underscores, Femtanyl and ISSBROKIE. Still, Brown’s iconic vocals are unmistakable, lending themselves to each track. Highlights include the explosive “1L0v3myL1f3!” with femtanyl, hit single “Copycats” with Underscores and my personal favorite “All4U” with Jane Remover, which explores how he makes music for his audience.
Highlight Track:
By: Oliver Gerharz
Big Thief - Double Infinity
Double Infinity is an album of paradoxes. It is beautifully expansive, but it does that by narrowing in on the personal and the intimate. The music itself is folk-rock but somehow more, building on the sound and character the group has built for itself over their past five albums. The crowd of new contributors Big Thief brought into the fold for this record is noticeable, and they take the album to another level. Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting talent keeps pace with the explorative and creative instrumentals, opening up new worlds for listeners. The lyrics meet the mutating nature of time with outstretched arms, letting themselves get lost in it. At points, the songs can get a little indulgent, but I won’t hold that too much against an album literally named after infinity.
Highlight Track: “Los Angeles”
By: Aideen Gabbai
Graham Hunt - Timeless World Forever
Timeless World Forever plays like a CD mixtape from a friend and is just as replayable. With tracks reminiscent of early Beck and Matthew Sweet, Hunt expertly crafts 30 minutes of power pop melodies that will be stuck in your head for weeks on end. Tracks such as “Frog In The Shower” offer countless hooks, and each verse could serve as a great chorus. The sonic soundscape of Hunt’s fifth studio album matches the cover’s strange aesthetic, inviting the listener into a surreal world of cartoonish weirdness with distorted drums, toy synths, and even the lyrical content of “East Side Screamer”, a song that discusses an encounter Hunt had with a screaming man on the east side of Madison. Anyone would be happy to get lost in Hunt’s robot world forever.
Highlight Track: “Power Object”
By: James Norcross
Weiland - You Can't Climb The Mountain In N.Y.
Weiland blessed us with another small taste of his post-Packrunner sound with this beautiful pop EP. He not only incorporates his synthpop textures from Vices, but implements bits of his hypnagogic sound of Opiate Sessions. The first track “Let You Go” even pleases his Packrunner-era fans: the song blends his new hypnagogic style and pluggnb, and even features pluggnb god, Summrs. The EP’s hypnotic guitar and rhythmic bass mixed with notes from the synthesizer create a beautifully layered experience for the listener. Its release was subsequent to Weiland’s random single releases on SoundCloud under his other alias Alleen Plains, which made the official release so much more special for fans, especially after not getting anything from Weiland other than Opiate Sessions and random singles since 2022. The album restored listeners' love for Weiland and reinforced the growing adoration for Weiland’s new sound.
Highlight Track: “Let You Go”
By: Lucero Dunscombe
Wednesday - Bleeds
What happens when you fall in love with your bandmate and then break up while continuing to write and record an album together? If you’re a part of Wednesday, you get a paralyzing 12-song record charged with grief, shame and gnawing love. Bleeds is a hundred open, angry wounds of small-town drug dealers, landlords, serial killers, suicidal high school football stars and girls who get their nudes leaked. If this band knows how to do anything, it’s when to build up to God and when to let it all crash down – both musically and narratively. The fates of these townies are woven together through the album with layered pedal steel guitar, seismic riffs and drum fills, and frontwoman Karly Hartzman’s searing vocals that shape the band’s eruptive countrygaze sound. Bleeds is an album that’s hard to shake, in the best way. Despite the dark peculiarities threading this album’s narrative, there is vivid sincerity and familiarity to be found with each character and their torment. In the end, we all bleed red.
Highlight track: “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)”
By: Soleil Rumpit
kmoe - K1
After many impressive singles and shocking collaborations with Jane Remover, Quannnic and Ericdoa, Kmoe has finally released his debut album. Hailing from Vancouver, Kmoe blends digicore and hyperpop into twelve emotional tracks on K1. The vocal performances on the album are undoubtedly incredible and pair seamlessly with the heavy bass and shoegaze elements that fans of similar artists would expect. The production on K1 stands out as experimental, and yet still very capable of appealing to pop sensibilities. Amidst the success of Jane Remover, the fate of hyperpop artists like Kmoe is uncertain, but this album is promising.
Highlight Track: “Bloodbath (Dance)”
By: Ian Hoffman
Ghostholding – venturing
Released under the Venturing side project in February 2025, Jane Remover’s indie rock album Ghostholding (not to be confused with Indie Rock, their 2025 electronic rap mixtape) was largely overshadowed by the release of Revengeseekerz less than two months later. It’s a shame, because Ghostholding is well deserving of album of the year accolades in its own right. Hazy, distorted guitars are mixed beautifully with restless bass and percussion, and dreamlike vocals and lyricism give the album a nostalgic, surreal sound not quite like anything else released this year. Standout tracks ‘Believe’ and ‘No sleep’ showcase Jane Remover’s impressive vocal agility.
Highlight Track: “No sleep”
By: Allie Hoffert
The Passionate Ones - Nourished by Time
It was easy to tell that Nourished by Time already had his desired sound on the couple of projects he released before 2025, but many of his songs sounded like demos that were hinting at something more polished in the future. The Passionate Ones showcases an attention to detail that was not as present in previous works, and sounds like it was made with, well, passion. Although the term “singer-songwriter” is usually associated with a folk artist and their acoustic guitar, Nourished by Time exemplifies the term with keyboards and a drum machine. The expansive atmosphere created by lush instrumentals is grounded by personal lyrics, and emotion behind the vocals. The Passionate Ones contains a unique retrofuturistic pop sound that is all its own, but beware of the melodies on this album, they will follow you around for days.
Standout Track: “When the War is Over”
By: Nolan Majerowski
Jennys_mix.zip - marshall4
A whirling combination of samples, heavy bass and heartfelt vocals that illustrate the evolution of Marshall4 from mashup classics to EDM sagas. While danceable all throughout, there is a certain poignant depth to the tracks that keeps me replaying each song in my head endlessly. From footwork drums over a Venturing sample to the campy vocals of Kesha’s “Cannibal,” each song reeled me in and delivered. Another exciting release from the digital underground.
Highlight Track: “lie.wav”
By: Ian Hoffman
Wishing you a great 2026! - EMMIE Magazine