The 25 Best Albums of 2025

2025 has been a ridiculous year for albums. We’ve had breakout debuts, bold new chapters and long awaited returns. These are the 25 best, according to Release The Cows.

25. Songs For The Spine – The Royston Club

The Royston Club level up in a big way on Songs for the Spine, trading the scrappy charm of their debut for something sharper, heavier and far more emotionally grounded. You can hear a young band realising they don’t have to write about nights out forever, pushing themselves into bigger rooms, bigger feelings and bigger stakes. The early singles feel like checkpoints from the past, but the heart of the album is in the leap forward: songs that treat love, loss and self-doubt with a maturity their earlier work only hinted at, delivered with Tom Faithful’s increasingly heartfelt presence at the centre. Their guitars still bite, but now they make room for tenderness, tension and narrative ambition, culminating in the six-minute closer that finally gives them their first true epic. It’s the sound of a band stepping into their own story, keeping their indie immediacy but refusing to stay small, proving that the scruffy heroes of Shaking Hips and Crashing Cars are now aiming for something lasting.

24. Cutthroat – Shame

Shame return with Cutthroat, a snarling, shape-shifting leap forward that proves the South London band still thrive on volatility even as they sharpen their edges. Working with producer John Congleton has given their chaos a new clarity, turning the title track into a precision-tooled battering ram built from pulsing electronics, serrated guitars and Charlie Steen’s feverish bark, setting the tone for an album that refuses to sit still. The middle stretch thrives on contrast, jumping from the political firestorm of Cowards Around to the ragged pub-punk sprint of Nothing Better, each song pulling at a different thread of the band’s identity without losing the core intensity that made them so compelling in the first place. The singles Spartak, Quiet Life, and Cutthroat hint at the record’s bigger indie ambitions, but it’s the delirious final run of Screwdriver, Packshot, and Axis of Evil that cements Cutthroat as their boldest statement yet, veering from fully locked-in speed to woozy Radiohead-core dread before closing in a blaze of synth-streaked exhilaration. Shame sound more free and fiercer than they have in years, and Cutthroat captures that sense of a band reinventing themselves in real time, daring listeners to follow wherever the mayhem leads.

23. Trash Mountain – Lily Seabird

Lily Seabird has been everywhere these past few years, touring her own songs while lending her bass and voice to artists like Greg Freeman, and her new album arrives with the clarity that comes from living on the road and suddenly stopping. Written quickly after a long run of tours, Trash Mountain pulls her indie folk into its most stripped and vulnerable form yet, trading ornamentation for close-mic honesty and a kind of gentle emotional gravity. The paired title tracks frame the record’s arc, capturing the strange quiet of coming home with harmonicas, soft acoustic guitars and that worn-in, Lucinda-esque croak she bends into something wholly her own. Piano pieces like How Far Away and the wistful storytelling of Albany show just how far her voice can carry a song with almost nothing supporting it, while moments of light like Sweepstake remind you she is just as capable of warmth as she is melancholy.

22. From The Pyre – The Last Dinner Party

On From The Pyre, The Last Dinner Party step out from the shadow of their blockbuster debut and into something grittier, heavier, and far more human. Their Windmill roots and baroque pop drama are still intact, but the sheen is cracked in all the right places, revealing a band moving with more intention and emotional focus. Markus Dravs’ production gives the album its punch, sharpening the theatrics without sanding down the edges. Tracks like This Is the Killer Speaking and The Scythe hit with a new urgency, while Rifle and Inferno show the band leaning into atmosphere and catharsis. If Prelude to Ecstasy was their coronation, From The Pyre is what happens after the crown settles: confident, textured, and proof that the group can evolve past the hype and shape something that burns on its own terms.

21. Forever Howlong – Black Country, New Road

 Black Country, New Road’s third studio album arrives carrying the weight of reinvention, yet Forever Howlongnever sounds burdened by it. With Isaac Wood long departed, the band lean fully into a new identity that feels less like a reboot and more like a long-overdue bloom. The anxious, slow-building tension of their early work gives way to something warmer and more theatrical, a collection of songs that sparkle with friendship, self-mythology and odd, deeply relatable anxieties. Tracks unfold like pocket-sized musicals about everyday dread, sudden joy and the kind of emotional knots you only admit to your closest people. The palette is lighter, the storytelling stranger, the band chemistry still enormous. Forever Howlong plays like a group discovering that vulnerability can be as panoramic as angst, turning domestic scenes, surreal character studies and quiet heartbreaks into full-blown epics. It is BCNR’s most generous album yet, proof that a band once defined by unravelling tension can just as easily build an entire world out of tenderness.

20. For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) – Japanese Breakfast

Japanese Breakfast’s For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) finds Michelle Zauner returning with something quieter, more inward and more narratively driven than the sparkling indie-pop heights of Jubilee. Instead of chasing another hit, she leans into the anxieties and reflections that came with that success, writing songs that feel like snapshots of complicated relationships, faltering men, and the emotional labour women carry around them. When the album digs deeper, it really lands, with tracks like Honey Water and Mega Circuit building into dense, jangly walls of sound that carry some of her sharpest and most poetic writing yet.

19. New Threats From the Soul – Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

 Ryan Davis has always written like someone trying to outpace his own shadow, and New Threats from the Soul feels like the moment he finally stops running long enough to face it. The Kentucky songwriter’s latest project is a restless, post-country sprawl shaped as much by lifelong romantic idealism as by the slow heartbreak of watching those ideals bend under real life. Davis has spent years circling themes of nature, spirituality and self-sabotage, but here he goes inward with a clarity that is both bruising and strangely hopeful. The title points not to dangers waiting in the world but to the ones built into us, the quiet ways we block our own path forward. Across these long, drifting compositions he treats the soul as a place where dreams sour, hopes claw their way back anyway and every small revelation asks for a sacrifice. New Threats from the Soul finds Davis at his most vulnerable and most assured, turning the collapse of youthful idealism into a landscape worth wandering, a record that still believes in the possibility of light even while standing knee-deep in the mud.

18. Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You – Ethel Cain

 Ethel Cain’s long-awaited follow up to Preacher’s Daughter arrives as a slow-burning companion piece, one that pulls the curtain back on the backstory and mythology fans have obsessed over for years. Instead of chasing anything close to a hit, Willoughby Tucker leans fully into Cain’s love of slowcore, dusty Americana and droning ambience, taking ideas from last year’s divisive Perverts EP and folding them back into a more familiar, narrative-driven setting. The record moves at a glacial pace on purpose, letting tracks like Dust Bowland Fuck Me Eyes build from tiny acoustic embers into widescreen, storm-like crescendos. Interludes like Willoughby’s Theme show just how comfortable Hayden has become in world-building, stretching songs into towering, post-rock shapes that make the album feel less like a collection and more like a place. It’s heavier, more immersive and more self-assured than her previous work, even if its hour-plus runtime occasionally feels like a test. But that’s part of its charm.

17. Racing Mount Pleasant – Racing Mount Pleasant

Racing Mount Pleasant are a young Ann Arbor band shooting for the big, orchestral indie-rock moment on their self-titled debut, and they treat it like a full mythmaking exercise. The album loops in on itself with callbacks, reprises, and a sense of grand design that feels inherited from Arcade Fire, Bon Iver and Black Country, New Road. The ambition is undeniable, and when they lock into those huge, panoramic climaxes, you hear why people are already treating them like the next ‘great collective.’

16. Pain to Power – Maruja 

Manchester band Maruja have been circling the underground for years, but Pain to Power is the moment everything finally snaps into focus. After a run of breakout EPs and packed-out shows, the band arrive with a debut that feels volcanic in both scale and intention. Their sax-led blend of post-rock, noise and jazz has never sounded tighter or more confrontational, with ten-minute blowouts like Look Down On Us pushing their politics and their musical ambition to new extremes. It’s an album built on shared chemistry, songs that grow patiently before erupting without warning, and a worldview that channels rage into something pointed rather than hopeless. Even when the record swerves into spoken word or hip-hop inflections, nothing feels gimmicky because the through-line is so strong.

15. Euro Country – CMAT

Irish songwriter and full-blown showgirl CMAT levels up yet again on her third album, EURO-COUNTRY, a record that finally catches up with the scale of her personality. After years of quietly becoming one of the most electric performers on the festival circuit, she delivers her sharpest and most ambitious batch of songs to date, weaving humour, heartbreak, politics and national identity into something both enormous and intimate. CMAT draws on her Celtic country roots and her lifelong flair for camp spectacle, using stories of economic collapse, self-image, celebrity chef rage and messy relationships to sketch a portrait of adulthood in a place that promised more than it gave. What could have been a maximalist gimmick becomes a surprisingly cohesive vision, as her voice carries every big chorus and every wry aside with total conviction. It is a lonely album with a massive heart, a reminder that sincerity and silliness can coexist and that confidence sometimes looks like pure survival instinct. Most of all, EURO-COUNTRY confirms what her live shows already hinted at: CMAT isn't just a great entertainer, she is one of the most distinct and fully realised pop writers working today.

14. Double Infinity – Big Thief

 Big Thief’s sixth album arrives from a chaotic but creatively fertile moment for the band, written just as they shifted from their long-established quartet dynamic into a looser, more open-ended trio, bringing a rotating cast of players into the room and letting the songs stretch out like living things. That rootlessness becomes the record’s strength, as these psych-folk jams drift with a sense of discovery rather than definition, carried by Adrienne Lenker’s voice which feels lighter and more instinctive than ever. Double Infinity isn’t trying to recreate the rustic precision of Two Hands or the sprawling ambition of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, instead it chases something more fragile and spiritual, a kind of emotional weather system where love, doubt and gratitude swirl together without needing to resolve. Tracks like Double Infinity and Los Angeles capture that feeling beautifully, letting half-spoken memories and small images gather meaning through repetition, while the band’s improvised instrumentation wraps everything in this warm, humming glow.

13. viagr aboys – Viagra Boys

Swedish post-punk outfit Viagra Boys return with a ‘sort of’ self-titled record that proves nobody does chaotic sincerity quite like them. Their last album Cave World took internet paranoia and conspiracy culture and twisted it into something funny, bleak and weirdly catchy. This new album steps away from the big social commentary but doubles down on what really makes the band work: they’re the most unserious serious band out there. Songs like Man Made of Meat, Uno II and Bog Body lean into the absurd on the surface, yet all have that undercurrent of self-doubt and self-sabotage that’s kept their writing interesting from the start. The riffs snarl, frontman Sebastian Murphy barks and mutters his way through an existential crisis, and the whole thing swings between satire and vulnerability. It’s scruffy, loud, strangely moving and another reminder that Viagra Boys are one of the few modern rock bands who can be stupid, sharp and sincere at the same time.

12. It’s a Beautiful Place – Water From Your Eyes

 Water From Your Eyes return with It’s a Beautiful Place, a record that instantly yanks the floor out from under you and reminds you why this band has become one of the most unpredictable forces in indie rock. The duo stretches their sound into a loose constellation of glitchy pop, askew guitar rock and bedroom-born weirdness, every track tugging at the next like a homemade solar system always on the verge of collapse. Nate Amos pushes the guitars forward with riffs that smear together nu-metal bravado, math-rock precision and pure gremlin instinct, while Rachel Brown sings like someone flipping between customer-service calm and existential stand-up comedy. Hooks reappear in disguise, instrumentals warp you into new keys without warning and whole songs cut the power just to rebuild themselves crooked on the other side. Even when they sneak in a straight-up banger like Playing Classics, the floor still tilts beneath it, bending dance music into their own offbeat shape. The whole thing feels bigger than it has any right to, stitched together with hiss, hum and mistakes left in on purpose, carried by the band’s gift for turning disorientation into momentum.

11. Sable, Fable – Bon Iver

 Justin Vernon has spent almost two decades reinventing himself in ways that should feel disorienting but never do, moving from the icy intimacy of For Emma to the glitch-spiritual maximalism of 22, A Million without ever losing the emotional core that made Bon Iver a defining force in modern indie. Sable, Fable continues that trajectory with surprising clarity. Built in part from 2024’s Sable EP, the record leans into stripped-back acoustic writing that feels almost old-fashioned for Vernon, yet still folds in the warm synth haze, gospel-tipped crescendos, and quietly psychedelic electronics that have threaded through his work since the 2010s. What makes this album so striking is how seamlessly it moves between those modes. Songs land with a near-religious stillness, vocals hover in that unmistakable falsetto, and production choices feel handcrafted rather than experimental for experimentation’s sake. It is one of his most grounded and emotionally direct projects, proof that Vernon can return to simplicity without abandoning the strange, luminous world he has built around himself.

10. Burnover – Greg Freeman

Greg Freeman’s second album feels like watching a small New England town flicker between past and present in real time. He takes the ghost stories and half-remembered histories of the Burned-Over District and turns them into lived-in rock songs that crackle with place, character, and regret. Freeman’s voice has that Molina-born mix of grit and devotion, but his lens is wider, pulling in local folklore, rust-belt weather, and the quiet strangeness of living far from where you started. The band behind him plays loose but heavy, shifting from rangy indie rock to warm alt-country without breaking the spell. Tracks like “Point and Shoot” and “Gallic Shrug” show how naturally he blends narrative with noise, turning everyday scenes into something mythic without forcing the metaphor. Burnover isn’t flashy, but it builds a whole world around you, and by the time the closer unravels into its slow, glowing sprawl, it feels like you’ve actually been there.

9. The Clearing – Wolf Alice

 Across more than a decade together, Wolf Alice have shapeshifted through shoegaze, grunge, dream-pop and full-on indie rock, but The Clearing finds the band stepping into something calmer and more assured. It feels like the first deep breath after the chaos of your twenties, a record built from reflection rather than reaction, swapping their heavier impulses for slower, layered songs that still hit with emotional force. Ellie Rowsell’s songwriting is as sharp as it has ever been, gently picking apart friendship, love and the strange pressure of ageing while the band lean into warmer Americana touches, soft-focus folk ideas and the kind of widescreen balladry they’ve only brushed up against before. There are echoes of their past work, but all of it feels renewed, lived-in and wiser, the sound of a group completely comfortable in their own skin. Four albums in, Wolf Alice are still getting better, and The Clearing is their most stunning evolution yet.

8.  Never Enough – Turnstile

Baltimore hardcore rock band Turnstile’s fourth studio album Never Enough is the closest 2025 came to having a cultural phenomenon on the scale of last year’s BRAT Summer. ‘Turnstile summer’, a phrase coined by Charli XCX herself, pushed hardcore into the mainstream with an impact the genre hasn’t felt in decades. Never Enough released alongside a visual album directed by members Brendan Yates and Pat McCrory which showed in cinemas across the US, Canada and UK. On Never Enough, Turnstile double down on the dreamy, genre-bending sound they carved out on 2021’s GLOW ON, blending hardcore punch with serene, almost weightless production.

7. The Art of Loving – Olivia Dean

 Olivia Dean feels like she’s properly entering the pop-star chapter of her career. After the success of her 2023 debut Messy and a wave of huge moments since, including a Glastonbury breakthrough, a Bridget Jones soundtrack cut and arena shows selling out months in advance, her second album The Art of Loving arrives with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what she does best. Across breezy bossa nova daydreams, Motown-kissed grooves and tender indie-soul ballads, Dean leans harder into the warmth of her voice and the simple charm of her writing. Tracks like Nice to Each Other and Man I Need show her talent for turning everyday feelings into proper earworms, while songs like Something Inbetween and Baby Stepscapture the messier corners of love without losing the ease and glow that make her music feel so instantly inviting. The Art of Loving feels like the moment she stops being a rising star and simply becomes one.

6. BABY – Dijon

 Dijon’s second album BABY finds the singer, songwriter and producer doubling down on the chaotic, soul-splintered style that has quietly made him one of the most intriguing figures in alternative R&B. After years of scattered releases, production work and a recent creative run that included contributions to Justin Bieber’s SWAG and continued collaboration with Mk.gee, Dijon arrives at BABY sounding sharper while still keeping the raw edges that define him. The album unfolds like a single, flickering performance piece, moving from lofi tenderness to explosive, unhinged percussion with the kind of instinctive looseness only he can pull off. Tracks drift into each other like fragments of memory, held together by his wild vocal delivery and emotive songwriting. Even his brief appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another feels fitting for a record this cinematic, messy and mesmerising. BABY doesn’t clean anything up; it simply lets Dijon be as vivid and unpredictable as ever.

5. Bleeds – Wednesday

North Carolina’s Wednesday return with Bleeds, their sixth album and their most cohesive distillation of everything that has made them one of America’s most compelling guitar bands. Recorded in their hometown of Asheville, North Carolina with producer Alex Farrar, the record arrives during a moment of transition for the group, with long-time member MJ Lenderman stepping away from touring to focus on his solo career while remaining involved in the studio. You would never guess there was any turbulence behind the scenes, because Bleeds feels like the clearest statement Wednesday have made so far, sharpening the raw mix of alt-rock, grunge and country that first earned them wider attention on Rat Saw God. Lead single Elderberry Winedropped at the perfect time and became an early-summer anthem just as the band’s profile was growing, and the album around it leans further into the strengths that define Wednesday: Karly Hartzman’s vivid storytelling, the noisy yet melodic guitar work, and an instinct for making small-town anxieties feel enormous. There are wilder, heavier moments and quieter country-leaning detours, but the through line is confidence, the feeling of a band completely sure of what they’re building.

4. Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party – Hayley Williams

Redefining the modern album release this year was Hayley Williams with her third solo record Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. The title track is Williams in full metamorphosis, muttering through self-doubt before throwing the line ‘I’ll be the biggest star at this fucking karaoke bar’ like a dare, while the chorus mantra ‘Can only go up from here’ captures the strange hope threaded through the album’s heartbreak. That ache explodes on Parachute, where she screams about a love that failed her in real time, a rawness that echoes across songs inspired by old films, mixtape nostalgia and the messier corners of adulthood. Even the gloomiest tracks beat with vivid production, heavy percussion, and flashes of sunlight she’s still learning to trust. Perhaps the most important song from the album, True Believer, is essentially a southern gothic diss track about the American south. ‘They say that Jesus is the way but then they gave him a white face, so that they don’t have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them’. Freed from the contract that defined most of her life, Williams sounds louder, braver and more herself than ever, turning grief, humour and reinvention into a record that feels less like an ego death and more like a rebirth.

3. Headlights – Alex G

 On Headlights, Alex G delivers the clearest and most confident version of his songwriting yet. Long past the ‘Bandcamp-era’, he leans into something warmer, brighter and more emotionally open without losing the idiosyncrasies that made him a cult favourite. The record pulls together everything he has learned from a decade of left-field indie, major-label polish, and recent soundtrack work, creating a body of songs that feel both intimate and fully realised. Tracks like Afterlife and June Guitar showcase his newfound clarity as a vocalist and arranger, while moments like Spinning hit with the kind of sincerity only he can pull off. Headlights feels like a culmination rather than a reinvention and stands as one of the most stunning records of the year.

2. Getting Killed – Geese

 Geese have spent the last decade shapeshifting their way through New York’s rock landscape, and Getting Killed is the moment everything truly snaps into focus. Since forming as teenagers in 2016, the band have moved from the sketchy experimentalism of their early A Beautiful Memory era to the tight, angular songwriting of 2021’s Projector, before breaking fully into the public eye with 2023’s 3D Country. With their momentum already high, the band entered 2025 with frontman Cameron Winter also fresh off a critically adored solo debut (more to follow on this in the #1 spot…), and Getting Killed feels like the collision of all that experience. It’s loose, urgent and undeniably feral, driven by a chemistry that has only sharpened from years of playing together in tiny rooms and chaotic live sets. If 3D Country was the bands breakthrough, Getting Killed is the confirmation that Geese are one of the most thrilling American rock bands working right now, and the album’s runaway success suggests listeners are more than ready for a band that embraces noise, risk and genuine unpredictability.

1.        Heavy Metal – Cameron Winter

Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal arrives as a debut in name only, because anyone who has followed Geese already knows he’s one of the most distinctive young writers working right now. The album opens with The Rolling Stones, a track that quietly sets the emotional stakes before Winter starts dropping lines like ‘Like Brian Jones, I was born to swim,’ turning a tragic rock myth into a metaphor for the pull of self-destruction he can’t quite shrug off. Across these songs he leans fully into his cracked, magnetic delivery, crooning, muttering, and howling through ballads that feel both intimate and unhinged. Nausicaa (Love Will Be Revealed) glows with Geese-esque drama but lands sweeter and more vulnerable, while Love Takes Miles is the closest he gets to a classic sing-along, proving he can write something instantly catchy without sanding down his eccentricities. His voice is strange, funny, raw, and weirdly confident, even when he’s spiralling.

The real gut punch arrives in the record’s middle stretch, where Winter turns the lens inward. On Drinking Age, he stares himself down with the brutal admission, ‘Today I met who I’m gonna be from now on and he’s a piece of shit,’ a line that hits like a cold slap and anchors one of the album’s most desolate moments. Later, on $0, he erupts into the now-infamous refrain, ‘God is real, I’m not kidding, God is actually real,’ delivered with such feverish conviction it’s impossible to tell if he’s joking, pleading, or genuinely touched by something beyond him. It’s this blend of sincerity and unfiltered chaos that makes Heavy Metal such a thrilling listen. Winter writes like someone with nothing to lose and everything to confess, and the result is a debut that feels fully formed, emotionally volatile, and miles ahead of what most artists reach this early in their careers. It’s the best album of the year not because it’s perfect, but because nobody else is taking swings this wild and landing them with this much heart.