2025 Favorites (So Far)

It’s been a busy year in 2025, showing no signs of slacking the breakneck pace of releases set by 2024. I got some time to sit back and reflect on the releases that have spent the most time on the speakers so far, a nice mix of new favorites and catalog continuations from perennial faces. As always, there’s no rank to the list, just a celebration of excellent work from the first half of the year. With the way this month and the next few are shaping up, the year-end list ought to be as packed as last year too!

Aux Meadows – Draw Near

Living in the crosshairs of Krautrock and country, pastoral and progressive, the new album from Aux Meadows is a dose of Kosmiche Americana that’s not to be missed. The band picks at the desolation of the American West, conjuring up ‘70s lonesome epics from The Hired Hand to Paris, Texas, soundtracking a vision of dusted drives and grease-stained suburban sprawl. Here, the band finds beauty amid the dryness and the desolation, an oasis anchored in parking lot corners, their backs to the blight and staring out over the horizon.

Ben LaMar Gay – Yowzers

Discomfort weaves with moments of uplifting joy as the players push and pull at their instruments to whittle out the truth. LaMar Gay is a storyteller, and leads with a storyteller’s heart. Even in the instrumental passages, there’s an emotional gust of wind that guides the listener through themes of defiance, determination, and resilience. The album laughs in the face of infuriating modern absurdity, but it laughs through gritted teeth. Under the surface of it’s sublime scratch, there’s an intensity. Burbling rhythms give way to uneasy tones, sour stomach searches for truth.

Cactus Lee – Cactus Lee

Like the relaxed stage persona that’s become Cactus Lee, the songs on the eponymous new album feel lived in and languid. Dehan doesn’t go in for the cosmic fumes that have haloed quite a few of the newer country crowd, instead balancing a classic strain of Southern charms with a lusher production palette this time around. Caravan pushed the band towards a studio shine, but there’s something that’s just incredibly comfortable about Cactus Lee. Laying into the lonesomeness of the road, the give and take of love and loss, and the foundations of family, the record’s themes always land well with the soft-hearted delivery of Dehan arriving on warm winds.

Causa Sui – In Flux

Where Source was an orchestrated and dynamic record that served as a showcase for the kind of crush usually expected from Causa Sui; In Flux is true to its title, swerving through their map of influences and letting themselves indulge in the kind of chameleonic approach that hasn’t been quite so prominent since the band’s Summer Sessions trilogy.The group gets languid and liquid like Moon Duo headed for the horizon with the Popul Vuh catalog tucked under their arms. They propel themselves through some Can primers before abandoning guitars for a watery synth-scape on closer “Spree.” Cue this one and From The Source up back to back and the band’s soundtracked a day to night dive from high sun to darkness just perfectly.

Clove – Clove

Clove catches a sweet spring wind with their sound, full of hazily strummed guitars and twisting flute trills. The band can easily find their footing with the Canyon Country aficionados, picking at a bit of Rondstadt earnestness while also giving a light touch to some Dusty in Memphis grooves. Yet, those are all subliminal feelings, since at its core the album is much lighter and breezing. It’s more like Perhacs in Memphis, taking a slightly curled folk and giving it a rhythmic shake.

Cole Pulice – Lands End Eternal

For their first LP for the venerable Leaving Records, the songwriter expands the view once again, turning Land’s End Eternal into an expansive, pastoral vista that showcases not only Pulice’s warm woolen sax lines, but also a larger focus on piano, guitar, and electronics. The record is bookended by the tumultuous opener “Fragments of a Slipstream Dream,” which plays into Cole’s prowess with constrained noise, and the beautifully constructed closer, “After The Rain,” a winding piece that assembles a brass choir to achieve a pastoral glow that peaks with guest vocals from Maria BC. There may be no greater well of calm that can come your way this year, so I’d recommend letting this one soak into the seams every chance you get.

Creative Writing- True 90s

True 90s serves as a nod to the decade with a bit of a hangover from the late 80s college contingent holding on as well, swerving through SST, Homestead, and Matador catalogs like a shopping list. Filling its ranks from some favorite Northeast corners, with members of Luxor Rentals, Jeanines, Estrogen Highs, Huevos II, and Sore Eros on board, the band extends the ethos of quite a few of their past outings, feeling like particular kindred spirits to the Huevos crew. Like that band’s oft-overlooked EP, the release licks at jangles more than the seething grunge of the era. There’s an unmistakable aura of reverence for the past without repeating it wholesale. Just a bit of an itch in the background that gives the songs a feeling of familiarity. One of 2025’s best debuts.

Eli Winter – A Trick of the Light

With a rotating ensemble that includes David Grubbs, Mike Watt, Andrew Scott Young, and Sam Wagster among others, the new album finds Winter both among the players and as bandleader, turning turbulent from the outset with a scorching take on Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s “Arabian Nightengale.” Always a bold move to open an album with a nearly side-long dive into the abyss, Winter sets the tone for the album and makes the rest of the songs work to catch up in the wake the opener’s path. Scarred, sauntered, expressive, and elegiac, the album sees Winter push himself and his band to new and depths and exhilarating heights.

Ex-Vöid – In Love Again

On their second outing songwriters Owen Williams and Lan McArdle parry harmonies while picking apart the particulars of love and longing. McArdle’s plush vocals render the band’s songs warm and inviting. Atop the fizzing churn of the band’s indie pop, peppered with just enough punk to sate those who’ve come for the fuzzed riffs over the ringing jangles, the Vöid turns personal turbulence into whirlpools of pop. For every fizzing riff and towering wave of sound that gets thrown at the listener, the band always leaves themselves unguarded. It’s an album of soft underbelly, but in an era when artifice often outweighs authenticity, it’s nice to see a band that displays their loneliness, their insecurities, their infatuations, and their regrets in bold pastel strokes.

Freckle – Freckle

I think, among Segall’s output, I’ve always found a certain charm in the collaborative releases. These records bring out a different side of Ty, one that still displays the consummate pop-psych sorcerer, but also an artist who’s open to a sonic give and take. Past releases with White Fence, Brian Chippendale, Mikal Cronin, and Cory Hanson have numbered among his most eclectic offerings. Now, it’s another Corey that makes it into the midst, with Freckle finding Ty in league with Corey Madden of RSTB faves Color Green. The new album slips back away from some of the synth scars and scorched hooks that have permeated Ty’s recent work, feeling like a bit of a return to form. The record finds the pair exploring the loose and lysergic glam gone gooey that permeated the Self-Titled record, Freedom’s Goblin, and First Taste.

Gold Dust – In The Shade of the Living Light

In The Shade of the Living Light is an album that’s about rebirth, a second act set to shed some scars and break through the veil towards the light. The record still centers on the psychedelics that rippled through Gold Dust in the past, but this time the tumult has been turned to the top of the dial. The record ripples with heat, inspired in part by Western Mass’ long history with prickly, communal psych. The record feels like a bigger vision, a melted meeting house that draws the folk out of Pierce’s wounds and cauterizes them with a new psychedelic heat. If the past records were the incubation, this one is breaks out of its shell brilliantly, a record that draws listeners close, and leaves a few lacerations on the way out.

Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes – Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes

Following solo works by Josh Johnson and Anna Butterss and the excellent debut from SML, the latest tangential release finds Gregory Uhlmann (SML, Anna Butterss, Perfume Genius), Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet & Anna Butterss, Leon Bridges), and Sam Wilkes (Sam Gendel, Chaka Khan) assembling into a trio for a new record that feels like a kindred spirit to SML’s vision of rhythmic freedom. Like Uhlmann and Johnson’s work on Small Medium Large, the trio fuses contorted patterns and bucolic tones. The record draws the listener in and sets them loose within its aural maze, mesmerizing them within its walls of circular siren song.

Hayden Pedigo – I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away

A leaving record at heart, I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, is an intimate portrayal of grief and ennui dressed up in subtle psychedelic colors. Not as straightforward as some of his past albums, which have been painterly studies in guitar, this time around his fretwork is framed by a wealth of accompaniment that dip his longing in deep shadows of cinematic prog. Pedigo sews shut his Motor Trilogy with tenderness and care, but also a little mystery. It would be easy to just soak the listener in sanguine strums, but the third chapter has a feeling of progression, end credits that leave more questions than answers.

Hooveriii – Manhunter

The band’s last few albums have built up their studio prowess, culminating in the widescreen wonders of 2023’s Pointe. The album turned their stage-gnarled sound into something bigger, a more ornate vision that found prog taking center stage. For the follow-up, the band leans back into instincts. Recorded fast n’ fuzzy with Eric Bauer at Discount Mirrors, the record still has a coat of wax on its hooks, but the pace feels less precise. The crucible cooks the cuts well, and Manhunter sweats sonic heat from every pore. The band loosens the handling, still sparkling with a glossy finish, but driving their songs with a new abandon. Hoover and co aren’t afraid to scuff ‘em up from time to time here. The band has proven that they can plan and plot and turn their turbulence into a nine and a half-minute epic, but here they assert that under the gun they can wrestle chaos into catharsis and sound good doing it.

Horsegirl – Phonetics On and On

Crafting a collection of songs that growl with a penned in ferocity, the debut also operated under the shadows of their elders’ amplifiers. With Phonetics On and On the band really sounds like they’re coming into their own, starting to climb the pedestal that’s been thrust under them. The record stretches out, and loses quite a bit of the claustrophobic tension of the last album. Guitars still set the tone, but the smudges of the ‘90s have cleared away in favor of post-punk’s austerity and icy exhale.

Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, William Parker – The Ancients

Isaiah Collier has already been on the radar here with his outfit The Chosen Few, backing Angel Bat David in Tha Brothahood, and as a guest with The Heavy Lidders at Milwaukee Psych Fest. Here, he proves more than capable of sparring with his more well-known partners, devouring styles that swing from soul jazz to the scars and squeals of the free set. The album’s main energy stems from Collier’s willingness to both give and receive energy from other points in the trio, scrawling his runs across the speakers in blood one minute and riding the rhythm like surf in the next. That rhythm is, as expected, completely hypnotic. At this point Hooker and Parker have spent years perfecting their way around and through the maelstrom, but it’s nothing short of amazing to hear the two of them work the rudder here.

Joe Harvey-White & Bobby Lee – Last Ride

The pair’s first full length expands on the hypnotic choogle that anchors Bobby’s solo records, bridging highland mountains with a distant Western Sun. The record exists in some intangible haze; a bakelight bridge to the past that reverberates in the V-hold flicker of home videos from forgotten desert expanses. The album hovers in hallucinations of the desert — dehydration delusions fighting for space with heat and peyote among the brain’s short circuits and hot wire wonders to soundtrack a lysergic landscape. The pair are both no rookies to the wrangle of the cosmic shades of Americana and country, and here they offer up an album that’s doused in a quivering lightness, a heat-ripple conduit from the plateaus to pulsars.

Kassi Valazza – From Newman Street

The record boasts some of Valazza’s most vibrant songs, from the Joni reflections of “Your Heart’s A Tin Box,” to the mirrored maze of “Time Is Round,” playing out its plaintive whisper among a few psychedelic refractions. Though, vibrant doesn’t by any means imply upbeat. The record also finds Kassi diving deep into contemplative corners, curling through the air like candle smoke on “Small Things,” and singing through the sighs on “Weight of the Wheel.” Like her last, the record is a masterful distillation of the connections between country and folk, following the Ley Lines between the genres.

The Laughing Chimes – From Newman Street

After a stretch of exploratory singles and EPs, the band has resurfaced for a sophomore album, shedding some of the skin of their lighter jangle fare for an album that’s shouldering the weight of The Rust Belt, catching the wind as it whispers through the crumbling specter of the American industrial age. Dipped in drama, the record watches the jangles of C86 slip quietly away in the rear view, aligning itself with the sublime sweep of The Church, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Psychedelic Furs.

Matthew Dunn – Love Raiders

Still draped in a meticulous studio grace, Love Raiders also injects a touch of shagginess into the mix, balancing the gloss of his solo guise with a few bouts of the Cosmic American choogle and psychedelic char that long ago brought him to my speakers. The new record is nothing short of ambitious; a double album’s worth of wonders co-produced with Dunn’s latter-day foil Asher Gould-Murtagh. A self-described “rural-glam opus,” the album blends country, folk, AOR, and, yeah a bit of the platformed crunch, into the kind of gatefold boogie booster that would make Ty Segall blush. Yet, it also serves as the kind of deep-inhale inventory of the past that makes use of the brushes left aside by Young, Clark, and Browne.

Mazozma – Bathing In The Stone

The record moves through moon phases, chilly and calm, haunted by specters that reach out from the shadows. The record boasts a big step up in sound from the past few Mozozma releases, pulling Turner’s wind-torn folk onto a bigger sound stage without losing any of the band’s inherent loneliness. The close-mic connection that Turner fosters on the album drags the listener into his oubliette, a companion at the bottom of the well watching shadows and shades of light move through the cracks above. Sure, on paper that might sound morose, but there’s something comforting, even calming about Turner’s songs on Bathing In The Stone. Current times are fraught with fatigue, friction, and anxiety, and somewhere in the resigned sighs of the record there’s a solace that allows the listener to let themselves bleed, bruise, and maybe eventually heal.

Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas – Totality

Totality finds both bands at their peak, exploring each half’s expertise and smelting their sounds into something singular. As they approach the altar once more for Totality, the bands don’t dilute their respective roles, but rather arrive at an alchemical formula that lays rhythm at the base of their brew. The hypnotic thrum of Abrams’ bass and guimbri urge the listener into caverns carved by Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium and Mikel Patrick Avery’s percussive patter. The caves glitter with light from Rob Frye’s flutes and Jason Stein’s bass clarinet. Totality taps into something otherworldly, the kind of cosmic call that draws visitors from across the reaches of space, a beacon in the darkness reverberating on irradiated waves.

Now – Now Does The Trick

Featuring members from a cross-section of those favorites, NOW brings together members of Cindy and Thunder Boys for a record that feels akin to The Smashing Times in their ability to find the fusion between British eccentricities of the ‘70s and the wide-eyed wonder of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The album, like those charmers in The Times, holds a particular affinity for The Television Personalities, offering up sweetly stung pop melodies that don’t feel the need to sand down all the edges. The band ingests a potent cocktail of pop outside of their overt love of Dan Treacy. From the greasy visions of Robyn Hitchcock to the bumpy hooks of Barret and Ayers, and the incandescent buzz of Comet Gain. Touchstones are nothing without hooks, though, and the band knows how to weave the frayed ends of the past into the kind of earworms that stick with you.

Pearl Charles – Desert Queen

Embracing the fluidity of the ‘70s, and a freedom from the constraints of genre, the latest album from Pearl Charles crystallizes the vision that she’s built over the past few records. Her first for her own imprint, Taurus Rising, the new record Desert Queen dips through country, pop, disco, and rock, tied together with silk scarves and a bolo-tie boogie that’s caught in the radio waves between Linda Rondstadt, Fleetwood Mac, Boney M, and Gene Clark. Holed up in their Joshua Tree studio, the pair enjoy the kind of freedom to wander that used to require the ability to bankroll a French mansion and team of managers to keep label creditors at arm’s length. Swerving from Swedish platform pulses to the cusp of the Canyon and the tarnished brass bluster of Muscle Shoals, Desert Queen is free range pop at its best, a sterling example of letting vision over committee take the wheel.

Prison – Downstate

A companion to the band’s last album, Upstate, the new record revels in the street level dirt and dirge of Downstate. Not that the last album was pastoral by any means, but the new record employs a windows down scroll through city sonics, scraping through the doppler blur of blues riffs off the bricks, noise floor fumes that funnel from the overpass, and broken-busked folk that seethes with hunger. At its heart, Downstate is a raw wound that refuses to heal and the band seems set on poking at it to generate heat. Aside from the boys in Boogie and perhaps Weak Signal, there aren’t a lot of bands still mapping out the muck that runs rivers through the city these days. NYC’s gone a bit soft at the seams, but Prison’s still out there ripping through threads until the frayed edges are all that’s left.

Rose City Band – Sol Y Sambra

The early records were more sparse, mirroring the private press feel of collector’s classics, but over the past few releases Ripley’s begun to find a fullness and warmth that hits like finally letting a sigh escape. Sol y Sombra makes good on its sun and shade aesthetic, basking the listener in its glow while sheltering them from the full swelter of life. The album appears like an oasis in the heat and humidity of the harshness all around us. The strums and organ runs seem to weave around the heat ripple haze of the open roads with uncanny ease. The band expertly folds into that haze, setting their sound to steam, stretching out and embracing a more languid form of the Cosmic sound. A patter of hand drums dips in and out of view. Memories of AM disco waft from hidden speakers, twisting with the sounds of country and cumbia from passing cars.

Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears – Head In The Sand

Sean’s been on the radar around here since well before his debut, one of the true heads in the Cosmic Country scene and Nashville’s own secret weapon in the studio. Striking out on his own, with a new label dubbed Ears Across America, the new album picks up the country psych reins once again, burning some kaleidoscopic saunter into the synapses. Though, Sean’s no slouch in the traditional trades either, and both get a display on Head In The Sand. Tour tough and storm seasoned, the new album balances rambling jukebox rockers with a heady dose of organ-doused DMT mind flayers. The debut was a shot over the bow, but the sophomore album proves that Sean’s comfortable at the helm and climbing higher on the marquee every day.

Silver Synthetic – Rosalie

Looser and more limber, the new record strips away even more of the band’s garage roots, skidding solidly through the Cosmic American sun. The group aren’t alone on Rosalie either, bringing in a few friends to the mix, with Nashville luminary Luke Schneider’s pedal steel lighting up a a trio of tracks, and hometown studio head Rex Gregory helping the band fully cross the jazz line on “Cool Blue Night,” with touches of sax and flute. Their sound is imbued with a sense of ease and openness that seeps through the speakers and into the sinews. The band doesn’t let go of that feeling one bit on Rosalie and it looks to join its predecessor as a perennial favorite.

Snails – Just Look Around

Skirting the periphery of the new jangle slingers, Bristol’s Snails don’t exactly dip into the oft-drawn well of Sarah/C86. Instead the band feeds their indie pop engine on a welcome mix of Kinksian Village Green comforts, the sweater weather introversion of Nick Drake, and the aloof delivery of Dean Wareham. The band’s third album, and second for UK label Glass Modern, finds the band proffering a plethora of cozy pop without a button out of place on their cardigans. While there are some that might hackle at Just Look Around’s precious nature, it succeeds in creating an atmosphere that’s intimately lived in, a curio that comes to life through their strums and sighs.

Spunflower – Spunflower

Seeking to tap into the deep cosmic vein that had haunted the Wümme studio-era of Faust or the Open Studio session of Turkish band Haza Vuzu, the band let the hands of fate drive their communal connection, emerging with a bedrock of synth and percussion. The band didn’t leave their beast to rest at that point, though. Further overdubs add Russ Thallheimer’s horns and Michael Dieter’s bass, transforming the final form into something stranger and more pungent. The record is ripped on nocturnal energy. Edgy and hackled, the album stares over its shoulders with apprehension, forming attackers and antagonists out of every darkened corner.

Stereolab – Instant Holograms On Metal Film

I love that the predominant theme for the new Stereolab record is that it sounds like no one other than Stereolab. The band’s psychedelic burble belongs to them and them only, no matter how many imitators and acolytes have tried to tie up the sound. There’s only one Lab and having them return after fifteen years feels like a beautiful blessing. The record is hazy, lost in their rhythmic psychedelia and splashed with a UV paint that illuminates when keys crest in a chemical reaction that fizzes over the edges of the speakers. Evolution is overrated when you’ve already perfected a corner of pop so succinctly that you practically become a genre. The new album is one more classic in the band’s pristine catalog.

The Tubs – Cotton Crown

On the band’s second outing, UK jangler’s The Tubs tap into a confrontational energy that drives them to new heights. Rooted in the lesser plumbed wells of jangle pop – from The Housemartins to The Sundays — the band combines their pop acumen with a lash of the acid tongue. Not that the first album let the listener off lightly, but here Owen O. Williams finds a way to make the usual melancholy sighs of the genre move aside for menace, self-sabotage, obsession, and the awkwardness of social interaction. Some bands need to worry about where their second album will leave fans of the first, but on Cotton Crown, The Tubs spend little time hemming and hawing about fan service and instead proceed to best themselves on their own terms.

Tobacco City – Horses

Scratched and patched by pay day sorrows, but mixed with a nostalgia for a more carefree youth, the new album is filled with deeply sighed odes to times when responsibilities were scarce, the days stretched long, and the nights seemed endless. The band ably captures the years when you’re expected to quit waking up on couches and porch swings, reluctantly creeping into responsibility with eyes still locked on the years close to the rear view. Quite a few of their contemporaries have gone cosmic, but Tobacco City remain grounded, finding themselves tied up with Grievous Angels rather than the heat flicker quiver of The Burritos and points further West. The clear-eyed croons sound good on ‘em and underpin their pining all the more.

Ty Segall – Posession

Channeling his inner Glynn Johns behind the boards, and soaking in the diamonds and dirt of American lore, Ty Segall points his compass back towards bigger sounds on Possession. The glint of glam returns as well, putting the crunch into the guitars and swinging pop around from the hips. Segall records always reverberate when they have a little bit of vamp, a wry smilie on their lips, and a few hooks that can leech the paint off of the parlor. The record’s an American quilt of storyteller songs, fleshed out with lyrical help from filmmaker Matt Yoka, who helps turn Ty’s pop turbulence into tapestries that feed on the theme of possession, whether it be the grip of mania or the cauldron of Capitalism. The record ropes in Witch Trials and wonders, myths and the mundane, large vistas and small dreams then sifts them through the shiny pop sieves of The Kinks, Love, Billy Nicholls, and Brian Wilson.

Water Damage – Instruments

The band, monolithic as ever, turns dirge into destruction. They foster the slow erosion of ego as they whittle away resolve and resistance to the ebb and flow of their drone. Water Damage is a tectonic force, something born of nature, and by turns just as unstoppable. Working as a symbolic organism the band’s ten members turn rhythm and thrum into a hypnotic wave, impossible to ignore, impossible to repel. The only true way to really experience Water Damage is to lay back into the fray, let it wash over you and surf the surge, trying to hold on as best you can to the walls of the psyche.

William Tyler – Time Indefinite

Unlike the bulk of Tyler’s back catalog, the breezes on Time Indefinite aren’t always so hung with honeysuckle. The record opens with an uncharacteristic scrape of noise, pulling up the floorboards of his foundations and settling the listener in to be unsettled. The album is imbued with the notion of memory; its permanence and impermanence, the coloration that occurs on the continuum of what we let ourselves remember and what the mind buries and distorts. Like The Caretaker before him, Tyler plays with corrosion and its subtle hunger. Sometimes the past comes flooding in golden waves, but many times it’s hung just out of sight, always in danger of the moths of memory working a few holes into its fabric.

Willie Lane – Bobcat Turnaround

His trio of instrumental LPs stretching from ’09 to 2016 have long been essentials of the East Coast aura, but with his latest, Lane subverts expectations, turning in an album of tender, if slightly toasted, country blues. With a backing band culled from some of the region’s finest, Ryan Jewell (Chris Forsyth, Ryley Walker) on drums, and Rob Thomas (Sunburned Hand of the Man, Stella Kola) on bass, Willie sinks deep into the woodsmoke on Bobcat Turnaround. Circling the ‘70s slide through acoustic blues, hung with the saddlebags of country and folk, the record picks at early Hot Tuna, The Groundhogs, MU, and Siren. Lane and the trio char their songs into the tape, leaving a lingering smell of ash and a heat ripple warping the air around the speakers. There’s certainly a kindred spirit with the kind of ‘Get Right Church’ linoleum-bound backroom blues of his days with MV & EE, but Lane makes the genre his own here, carving his own initials into the soft wood of Americana and letting the moss take root.