The Best Albums of 2025

As a writer, the best thing you can do is to make the lives of your readers slightly better. But that often takes a long time - especially in politics, where you spend weeks, months, and years banging away on a keyboard, hoping someone begins to see things your way.

But there is a quicker way for me to improve your life - simply by recommending awesome music I listened to this week. As always, I cranked out a Best Albums of the Year list, and here it is!

(And if you want to hear me discuss each of these picks, listen to the Will’s Band of the Week podcast here.)

10. The Wind-Ups: Confection

It’s lo-fi Ramones.

9. Lady Gaga - MAYHEM

Look, I know I am sacrificing my aging hipster cred here, but this album warrants it. After spending years tinkering with other music styles, Gaga returns to what she does the best - four-on-the-floor bangers.

8. Lightheaded - Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming!

Are you wistful for the late 90’s era of dreamy, Belle and Sebastian-style chamber pop? New Jersey band Lightheaded has you covered. Catchy and lush.

7. The Belair Lip Bombs - Again

At the forefront of Australia’s incredible music scene, this follow-up matches the greatness of 2023’s “Lush Life.” Catchy power pop it’s impossible to stop listening to.

6. The Beths - Straight Line Was a Lie

On their fourth album, The Beths do some growing up. Mostly gone are the crunching, catchy hooks, replaced this time by more creative instrumentation and more personal themes. Their previous albums are all great, but this one is a welcome change.

5. Horsegirl - Phonetics On and On

The Chicago band features four women barely in their 20s, yet they show a maturity found in bands that have been together for decades. Their first album was effectively a tribute to mid-’90s power pop bands, but on their second album, they are developing a sound all their own.

4. Jeanines - How Long Can it Last

As spare as bands come, this Brooklyn duo still manages to put together impossibly catchy, lo-fi bangers.

3. Momma - Welcome to My Blue Sky

It’s power pop. And it was recommended to me by my son. And he was right. It’s so good.

2. Lambrini Girls - Who Let the Dogs Out

It’s crass, it’s obnoxious, and its politics are ridiculous. But punk rock doesn’t need to be fact-checked, it only needs to shred. And this album brings it.

1. Wet Leg - moisturize

It’s the second time in three years I’ve had a Wet Leg album as the best of the year, but it is warranted. Perhaps seeing them live tipped the scales for me. But they have forged an entirely new sound for themselves - it’s effusive, confrontational guitar rock in an era that needs it now more than ever.

On to 2026!