Best Rock Albums of 2025

Automatic — Is It Now?

Automatic have spent over nine years perfecting their signature blend of avant-pop, dancepunk, and post-punk grooves, and Is It Now? finds the trio crafting a soundtrack for the end of the world that also makes you want to move. 

Blue Lake — The Animal

With The Animal, Blue Lake's compositions weave double bass, cello, clarinet, viola, and drums into ten tracks that feel warm and unpredictable, like a conversation in motion. 

Buy Blue Lake - The Animal vinyl here

Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek — Yarın Yoksa

Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek meld Anatolian folk tradition and psych-rock melodies into an album that shifts effortlessly between moments of meditation and climax. 

Buy Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek - Yarın Yoksa vinyl here

Geese — Getting Killed

Getting Killed captures Geese at their most combustible, an album that fuses art-rock sharpness with wiry punk energy and a sense of theatrical tension. 

Horse Vision — Another Life

Sweden duo Horse Vision fuse warm guitars and earnest vocals with hyperpop gloss, churning out a debut album that moves in exciting new ways.

Go Kurosawa — soft shakes

Formerly of Kikagaku Moyo, Go Kurosawa’s soft shakes is a gentle detour into sunlit psychedelia, built from soft guitar work, drifting rhythms, and a sense of calm exploration. 

Buy Go Kurosawa - soft shakes vinyl here

Cate Le Bon – Michelangelo Dying

Returning to Wales after a long-term breakup, Cate Le Bon leans into repetition and ornate arrangements that are contemplative, delicately unguarded, and full of beauty.

Juana Molina - Doga

Drawing from 30 hours of free-form sessions, Juana Molina's first album in eight years is wild, playful, and quietly menacing, with nursery-rhyme melodies rubbed up against eerie electronics and folk roots. Proof that no one bends the ordinary into the uncanny quite like she does.

Elias Rønnenfelt - Speak Daggers

Iceage frontman Elias Rønnenfelt pushes deeper into his own world on Speak Daggers, blending folk, post-punk, and hazy cloud-rap textures into a slow-burning, mood-heavy album. 

Buy Elias Rønnenfelt - Speak Daggers vinyl here

Sababa 5 — Nadir

Sababa 5’s Nadir pulls from Middle Eastern funk, vintage psych, and instrumental pop, creating a sound that’s bright without becoming too glossy. 

Buy Sababa 5 - Nadir vinyl here

Snuggle — Goodbyehouse

Across Goodbyehouse, Danish duo Snuggle balance lush, reverb-soaked guitars and fluttering synths with a quiet, piercing honesty. 

Buy Snuggle - Goodbyehouse vinyl here

The South Hill Experiment — EARTHBREAKS

Across eleven tracks, the South Hill Experiment blend faraway vocals, fractured guitars, and blue-feeling melodies with moments of Motown-like exuberance, producing a record that feels cathartic and alive. 

Stereolab — Instant Holograms On Metal Film

Stereolab’s first studio album in 15 years finds the veteran band sounding both familiar and refreshingly new, folding krautrock, electronic, and yé-yé into a precise but playful sound that's unmistakably the work of a band whose sense of possibility never faded.

Tortoise — Touch

Recorded remotely across three cities, Tortoise’s first album in nine years picks up right where the Chicago post-rock pioneers left off, but with a sharper, more restless edge. 

Buy Tortoise - Touch vinyl here

Turnstile — Never Enough

Never Enough finds Turnstile stretching past hardcore’s edges with the confidence of a band intent on building its own universe. The riffs still punch, but everything around them has grown stranger and more expressive than ever befoe, with electronic pulses, synths, and even flute-led meditations to compliment lead vocalist Brendan Yates, whose lyrics lean into vulnerability and the uneasy work of becoming yourself. 

ttwig & JUICEB☮X — Hang The Colors to Catch the Sun

ttwig & Juiceb☮️x form an imaginative collaboration where folk, electronic, and experimental pop merge into something that feels both intimate and expansive. 

Wilson Tanner — Legends

The Australia-based duo returns with another dose of beautifully faded psychedelic folk, the kind that feels like it was recorded in a beach hut with all the windows open. 

Buy Wilson Tanner - Legends vinyl here

Zé Ibarra — AFIM

Zé Ibarra blends Brazilian folk, modern pop, and gentle orchestral flourishes into the kind of album that settles in slowly, revealing its depth through tone, patience, and clarity.

Buy Zé Ibarra - AFIM vinyl here