This particular group of albums in our best of 2025 countdown is honestly worthy of a top 10 placement in any other year. There are so many tracks on the records we’ll review for this round that made my Spotify Wrapped songs playlist. Numbers and rankings aside, these are five albums you need to check out if you haven’t already, so let’s get to discussing numbers 15 – 11 in the best albums of 2025!

#15: Madi Diaz – Fatal Optimist

The latest record from Madi Diaz completely knocked me out of a music slump when it was released this past fall. With a stripped-down arrangement that highlights Diaz’s voice and guitar as the core storytelling elements, this collection of 11 songs is among the strongest projects of the year in terms of execution. After growing a following with her 2021 and 2024 projects, Fatal Optimist feels like a finale to a string of artistic thoughts that arrive at a powerful conclusion.

Far from a newcomer to folk, I believe Madi Diaz is poised to get her flowers and the praise she deserves in the near future. Stripped-down shows where she performs mere inches from the crowd have circulated on social media, and that connection she’s building to a fever pitch is something most artists dream about achieving. There’s huge potential for her discography to reach new audiences in 2026 and likely leave many wondering how they missed out on her work in the first place.

#14: Geese – Getting Killed

No band had a better year than Geese. Cameron Winter just finished historic solo shows at Carnegie Hall, and the group is grabbing accolades and acclaim from every journalist and artist who touches this record. I personally liked their last album more, but we are at a moment where the success of Geese is undeniable, and this set of tracks resonated with folks in a way that is quite uncommon. Gen Z and Gen Alpha see the group as their generational band, whereas Millennials and Gen X’ers understand them to be a new entrant in the long line of tight, precise rock bands that capture the attention of the world.

The comparisons to The Strokes or other bands that seemingly just oozed cool aren’t undeserved, but I do think they do the band a disservice. There’s a combination of Winter’s vocals and the band’s fluency in multiple rock-adjacent genres that works so well for the group that they’re doing something bigger than what the 00s New York rock scene aimed to achieve. There’s no turning back now; Geese are going to be a band to watch for years to come, and I’m glad that a wide variety of listeners are finding so much joy in these tunes.

#13: Hot Mulligan – The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still

My dream is to teach a course at a community college on the way in which emo or punk pop bands age into sounds beyond what they start with in their younger years. It’s a weirdly specific dream, but one that would certainly include a peek at this year’s record from Hot Mulligan. The song titles and general sound of this record still show us that Hot Mulligan is proud to not take itself too seriously. Still, the deeper themes of loss, grief, and self-control (or lack thereof) show us where the band could head in the future.

There’s not quite a vocalist like Tades Sanville, and much credit is due to the secondary vocalist, Chris Freeman. Without Freeman to break up sections that push Sanville’s voice to the brink, there wouldn’t be moments that fans adore. So many great emo bands utilize two vocalists to drive emotional storytelling, and Hot Mulligan is doing it in a way that others before them utilized to hit peak stardom in the scene. Nobody who loves this type of music would tell you Hot Mulligan is some secret group, but mainstream rock could easily hop on board if the band releases another album this consistent and compelling.

#12: The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie

“Mother Pray for Me” stopped me dead in my tracks when it was released as a single for the latest album from The Beths. The New Zealand band, known for its upbeat indie sound, deviated on this track to a sparse, heartfelt plea for love from someone who doesn’t quite understand you and vice versa. After two albums that creeped the band’s placement on broader indie’s radar up a few notches, this record is their arrival as a mainstay in the genre. A strong summer of performances at major festivals and shows could easily catapult them next year in a big way.

Tracks like “No Joy” feel quintessential to the band’s identity, but other, smaller hints at an expansion of their scope make this record special. “Metal,” for example, feels like the best song the band has ever released, and it’s the most approachable track to a newcomer because it feels like a song we’ve listened to for years. It’s familiar, catchy, and bright. The three things, in fact, that make The Beth’s so darn good.

#11: Jay Som – Belong

In my first year of doing these countdowns, I described Jay Som as an artist who “runs the spectrum of indie sounds from start to finish and feels a lot like an artist finding her way to a unique place in music.” Six years later, Jay Som put out one of the most well-executed indie rock records of the year. The secret sauce is how little surprises that you wouldn’t expect to hear on a standard indie song show up. An appearance from Hayley Williams is a great sign that others in this musical space see the vision as well.

Touring with Boygenius was huge for Jay Som, but I’m so delighted to see the solo work return. There are a lot of things I admire about these tracks, but more than anything, it’s a singular voice with which they’re delivered. I don’t think anyone else really sounds like this, and that’s so hard to do in 2025. We’re on our way to the top 10! Let us know in the comments what you thought of these five records we explored today!

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