Welcome to the second part of Song Bar favourite albums of 2025. Another year of many interesting and varied releases. See also yesterday’s Part One, and Part Three to follow. As usual, unlike many other publications, there is no countdown nor describing these necessarily as “best” albums of the year. But they are chosen from a variety of criteria – not merely from the quality of the songwriting, as well as originality, even oddity, but also to a certain extent popularity – by how much they have been viewed since publication. All the albums detailed below are shown in the collage of covers above.
There is also always the aim to bring a broad spectrum of genres, as well as giving space for small records as well as large ones. Naturally these choices are also a matter of subjective taste, but please enjoy them by clicking on each headline link to explore more in detail, where you will find a selection of videos as well as the album in a choice of embedded streaming formats. It is hoped that this will encourage further explorations, purchases, sharing your discoveries, and even supporting music artists by going to see them play live.
Many of these albums were released the middle - spring and summer of 2025. After browsing, feel free to add more of your favourites in comments below. The albums are listed in no particular, preferential order
Jacob Alon: In Limerence
A sublime contemporary folk debut by the high-voiced Scottish singer-songwriter from Dunfermline, Fife, who exudes a fragile vulnerability, has warm musical echoes of Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley, finger-picking acoustic guitar, the gentle brush of drums and subtle, emotionally nuanced, poetic lyrics
These New Puritans: Crooked Wing
Southend-on-Sea twin brothers George and Jack Barnett return with their fifth album and first in six years - with a striking, otherworldly experimental fusion of rock, classical and electronica, with guests including Caroline Polachek and veteran jazz bassist Chris Laurence
Pulp: More
The beloved Sheffield Britpop band return triumphantly with their first LP in 24 years, bringing familiar themes – nostalgia, sex, life changes, chance encounters, time passing, also wrapped in metaphors of celestial astronomy, all now from a candid, middle-aged perspective, but still with some crowd-pleasing bangers as well as Jarvis Cocker’s whispery, witty intimacy
Divorce: Drive To Goldenhammer
With a warm, engaging sound, and beautifully crafted, intelligent songs, this excellent debut by the Nottingham indie quartet transcends genres from pop to country, Americana folk to rock with enduring passion and quality
BC Camplight: A Sober Conversation
Witty, inventive, droll, painfully dark, self-deprecatory humour, killer lines, and timeless piano-based pop, almost showtune melodies? It can only be the latest set of classic songs by the Manchester-based American singer-songwriter Brian Christinzio, who confronts his repressed past, depression and more with his eccentric, eclectic panache
Tropical Fuck Storm: Fairyland Codex
The Melbourne quartet return with a fourth LP of unique, acerbic, eclectic post-punk and dadaistic psychedelia – droll, dark, menacing and humorous, here themed underworld of fateful characters facing the collapse of society
The Bug Club: Very Human Features
A tremendously catchy, lively, witty, humorous and poignant new LP by the Welsh trio of Sam Willmett, Tilly Harris and Dan Matthew with a terrific toe-tapping indie-rock-pop take on a whole spectrum of human contradictions
McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive!
Classy, literary, cultured, narrative-rich, experimental, dramatic, dynamic and stylish hip-hop by the Richmond-born, Chicago-based rapper in this follow-up to the acclaimed Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (2023) in a release exploring the fate of key characters and the idea of what constitutes magic in the turmoil of daily life
Little Simz: Lotus
The Mercury prize-winning London rapper and actress Simbiatu Ajikawo brings a powerful, playful as well as personal issues, defiant rage-filled articulate new sixth album, broadening her musical scope with collaborator and producer Miles James with a title inspired by the flower that blooms, despite a harsh environment in mud and swamp
Kathryn Joseph: WE WERE MADE PREY.
Stark, menacing, visceral also hauntingly beautiful, the Glasgow singer-songwriter’s fourth LP reprises her creative partnership with fellow Scottish artist Lomond Campbell first explored on 2022’s For You Who Are The Wronged, with striking experimental soundscapes coloured by electronica as well as her piano and other instruments
Richard Dawson: End of the Middle
Extraordinary songs about ordinary lives by the wonderful Newcastle alternative folk singer-songwriter – poetic, strikingly detailed, touching, warm, gently humorous, melancholy, original and gorgeously profound, bringing beauty to banality, private tragedies and small joys
Sparks: MAD!
LA’s beloved veteran brothers and international treasures Ron and Russell Mael return with their 28th studio LP , filled with various styles of their pioneering pop, new wave, art-rock, chamber, operatic – various amusing, mischievous, satirical, trivial and declamatory, dipping into subjects such as branded backpacks, tattoos, and performative devotion
Stereolab: Instant Holograms On Metal Film
Expansive, eclectic, catchy, clever futurist-retro experimental electro-pop? Yes it’s the first studio LP for 15 years by the now veteran band formed by Laetitia Sadier and Tim, Gane, here with significant instrumental skills by Joe Watson and production by Cooper Crain
Ezra Furman: Goodbye Small Head
The acclaimed punk, indie-rock and other genre-spanning Chicago-born artist returns with a 10th LP, one of her very best to date – sharply poetic in lyric and melody, delivered with visceral power, themed on different forms of losing control, with emotions variously wild, exciting, and frightening, joined by their wonderful longtime band and here a small string ensemble
Deradoorian: Ready For Heaven
Quirky, creative, clever, eclectic, lo-fi experimental pop by the American singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist and former Dirty Projectors member Angel Deradoorian, with a new LP about the erosion of humanity, and mental struggles in the ongoing degrading age of destructive capitalism
Model/Actriz: Pirouette
Following 2023’s Dogsbody, a second LP of strikingly innovative experimental, staccato, percussive post-punk by one of the most exciting bands around – the Brookyn-based quartet of vocalist Cole Haden, guitarist Jack Wetmore, bassist Aaron Shapiro, and drummer Ruben Radlauer
Emma-Jean Thackray: Weirdo
A remarkable release of experimental p-funk jazz, soul and pop by the British singer and multi-instrumentalist, exploring the ups and downs of her neuro-divergence (autism and ADHD), and playing, writing and producing everything entirely on her own in her south London back-bedroom home studio
The Moonlandingz: No Rocket Required
Seven years since their last LP together, and many different projects in the meantime, Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi and Eccentronic Research Council’s Dean Honer and Adrian Flanagan return with their clever, witty electro-dance satire on a dystopian world, with guests including Iggy Pop, Nadine Shah, Jessica Winter and actor Ewen Bremner
Self Esteem: A Complicated Woman
Rotherham’s charismatic Rebecca Lucy Taylor returns for a third LP of empowering therapy-themed full-on gospel harmonies and dance music styles with lyrics that are earthily honest, filthy, sweary, humorously emotional, philosophical and entertaining
Rebekka Karijord: The Bell Tower
This extraordinary work, a fusion of experimental folk and classical, is a one of rare and exquisite beauty by the Stockholm-based acclaimed Norwegian composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, creating sounds from the human voice alone into a powerful, delicate, poetic melancholy, mother-perspective ode to the peril of our planet in the age of the Anthropocene
Viagra Boys: viagr aboys
A mischievously rewritten self-title comes with this witty, infectiously catchy, devilishly energised new release by the raucously fun Swedish punk band from Stockholm, one which satirically lampoons the stupidity of day-to-day modern existence
Sam Fender: People Watching
The likeable, powerful tenor-voiced, 30-year-old singer-songwriter from North Shields has hit mainstream success, especially with his last LP, Seventeen Going Under (2021), and while this continues with a sometimes Springsteen-like style, there’s a lyrical melancholy colouring this third LP, on trappings of fame, music industry, and tales of tragedy within his northern working-class roots. Later in the year it won him the Mercury Music Prize.
The Nightingales: The Awful Truth
With sharp turns of phrase and pace, the legendary Birmingham post-punk band fronted by Robert Lloyd return with meatily rich riffs and rhythms, and a collection of wittily ironic songs on social injustice and current affairs like a musical news broadcast
Hannah Cohen: Earthstar Mountain
A warm, simmering, insightfully beautiful, bittersweet, gently paced, folk-country-pop album by the New Yorker Catskills Mountains-based singer-songwriter, made in collaboration with partner Sam Owens (aka Sam Evian) and including guest appearances from Sufjan Stevens and Clairo
Yukimi: For You
This debut solo album by the seasoned frontwoman of Sweden’s acclaimed electronica/dance group Little Dragon Yukimi Nagano is a classy collection of measured pace, poise and elegance, mixing soul, jazz and pop with guest vocals by Lianne La Havas
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Feel free to recommend more new songs and albums and comment below. You can also use the contact page, or find more on social media: Song Bar X, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running: