Broken Dreams Club 20 Best Albums of 2025
This year featured the further emergence of the “indie-country” genre, a coming-out party for Kai Slater and some fascinating debuts from promising young artists, but no band owned 2025 quite like Geese. The Brooklyn indie rock band fronted by Cameron Winter were ubiquitous this year, but their sophomore LP, “Getting Killed,” more than proved that they were entirely worthy of the endless hype.
Check out why they topped my list for best albums of the year and read more about my 20 favorite records of 2025:
20.) Instant Holograms on Metal – Stereolab: Not only did these British legends not lose a step in their first album in 15 years, but this might also be the strongest Stereolab release since their 1997 jewel, “Dots and Loops.” Returning (and with the most Stereolab-sounding album title imaginable) after a decade-plus hiatus, the band has no trouble finding its stride with this lush blend of electronica krautrock.
19.) Burnover – Greg Freeman: Maintaining the long tradition of witty, urbane singer-songwriters who can’t quite hit all the high notes, Freeman is a latter-day Stephen Malkmus, mirroring the Pavement frontman’s ability to deliver memorably funny lines in a deadpan, bemused manner. Album highlight “Curtain” in a rollicking good time, full or Wurlitzers and juke joint pianos.
18.) Gift Songs / Luster: Jefre Cantu-Ledesma / Maria Somerville: Yeah, this is a bit of a cheat, here, squeezing two albums into one spot, but these ambient releases were the soundtrack to my post-work living room veg sessions for 2025. Understated, delicate gems, the both, “Gifts Songs” is a barely-there compendium of fragile sound collages, while “Luster” is propelled by Somerville’s ethereal vocals.
17.) Lonely People With Power – Deafheaven: After experimenting with a more conventional vocal delivery for 2021’s “Infinite Granite,” Deafheaven frontman George Clarke returned with a vengeance on “Lonely People With Power.” His paint-peeling growls are once again accompanied by a gorgeous backdrop of shoegaze sounds, proving once again that there isn’t a black metal band capable of matching Deafheaven’s endless ability to reinvent itself.
16.) Season of the Peach – Black Lips: From the Broken Dreams Club archive: There isn’t a bad album in the Black Lips catalog, but their latest release, “Season of the Peach,” is one of the best records in their formidable history. The Black Lips' current iteration of guitarists Cole Alexander and Jeff Clarke, bassist Jared Swilley, drummer Oakley Munson and saxophone player Zumi Rosow is among the longest-running versions of the group and tellingly, the band has never sounded tighter or more cohesive.
15.) Balloon Balloon Balloon – Sharp Pins: Released late in the year, this album is the feistier, scuzzier and more adventurous cousin to “Radio DDR” (which you’ll read more about later.) Kai Slater, the brainchild behind Sharp Pins, made the production on his second 2025 release just a little bit more echoey and tinnier (those are actually complimentary notes of legitimacy for the lo-fi scene) and leans even more into his British mannerisms, sounding practically like a Manchester native on this one. The licks and hooks are all still there, though, with “Balloon Balloon Balloon” further proof that Slater owned 2025, and that this young musician is a generational talent.
14.) Joy Coming Down – Club Night: From the Broken Dreams Club archive: Every track feels like an operatic suite, but where lesser bands might create that atmosphere through indulgent bombast, Club Night’s variegated approach is driven by pure, desperate emotion. There has never been a false note or a single point of artifice in Club Night’s catalog and “Joy Coming Down” is no exception. The key to Club Night is a musical formula that can only be described as generous. Egalitarian to the core, Club Night songs are composed like a puzzle, with each member nestling their contribution within the bigger picture—all making their individual mark known without distracting from the end goal. Tatum’s guitar licks range from delicate, gossamer ribbons to thick, chunky riffs, Trainer and Cowman’s rhythmic concision forms the foundation of the sound and an array of samples and eerie voice manipulations add to the world-building feel of the music.
13.) New Threats From the Soul / Sounds Like… / Planting By the Signs – Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Gang / Florry / S.G. Goodman: Again, another cheat here, combining these releases into a single spot, but the inspired products of these three outfits helped make 2025 the year of indie country. Whether through verbose storytelling (Ryan Davis), howling, electrifying vocals (Florry) or mordant, vivid scene-setting (S.G. Goodman), these three acts introduced even more fans to their burgeoning niche genre, grabbing all the stragglers who might have missed the MJ Lenderman / Wednesday bus.
12.) Racing Mount Pleasant – Racing Mount Pleasant: Almost like a sister album to “Caroline 2,” this self-titled release from Racing Mount Pleasant is another example of an indie band swinging for the fences. Wielding a horn section that acts more like lead guitars, the tunes on this release are all slow-building, cathartic anthems—intricately crafted ballads that reward you with satisfying emotional payoffs.
12.) Headlights – Alex G: At the moment, there is no more consistent musical force in indie rock than Alex Giannascoli. Despite moving up to the majors by signing with RCA, Giannscoli keeps the feeling intimate and disarmingly offbeat for “Headlights.” Once again combining trace elements of Americana with Giannascoli’s special brand of indie rock eclecticism, “Headlights” is an inward, bedroom pop album, belying its major label roots. In an album full of standout tracks, the most memorable might be “Far and Wide” , a symphonic suite featuring Giannscoli’s most unique vocal delivery to date.
11.)It’s a Beautiful Place – Water From Your Eyes: A zig-zagging post-rock journey at breakneck speed, “It’s a Beautiful Place” highlights once again the unique creative partnership between multi-instrumentalist Nate Amos and vocalist Rachel Brown. Building upon their celebrated 2023 release, “Everyone’s Crushed,” this album has the band once again specializing in byzantine, winding sonic landscapes, anchored by Brown’s port-in-the-storm delivery—monotone, dispassionate vocals that never get caught up in the tornado of sound surrounding them.
10.) Glory – Perfume Genius: What a fascinating career Mike Hadreas has enjoyed. His first two Perfume Genius albums were filled with wounded, vulnerable piano compositions, before he discovered his inner vamp with the bombastic releases “Too Bright” and “No Shape.” His 2022 album, “Ugly Season,” was an amorphous and difficult no-wave treatise, but “Glory” finds him pursuing his most straightforward sounding music in years, highlighted by song of the year candidate, “It’s a Mirror.”
9.) Sinister Grift – Panda Bear: Decades into his career, Noah Lennox still makes Beach Boy sounds for the modern age, and that formula is still absolutely winning. “Sinister Grift” is full of melodic, majestic baroque pop offerings, highlighted by the lilting “Anywhere But Here,” and the aqueous, shimmering epic, “Elegy for Noah Lou.”
8.) Phonetics On and On – Horsegirl: From the Broken Dreams Club archive: For “Phonetics On and On,” which was released in February, Horsegirl pursued negative space and withdrawn, hushed atmospherics in lieu of cranked-out guitar histrionics. Inspired by the pared-down approach of the Welsh collective Young Marble Giants, who released one legendary album, “Colossal Youth,” in 1980, Lowenstein said the group found it thrilling to peel away layers of music until only the most elemental traces remained.
7.) Ripped and Torn – Lifeguard: Here’s our second appearance from our pal Kai Slater, who along with fronting Sharp Pins is a member of this precocious Chicago group. While Sharp Pins specialize in making approachable offbeat melodies, Lifeguard are more abrasive and icy. All jagged guitars and production minimalism, “Ripped and Torn” is a no-frills blast of indie rock perfection, evoking all the best elements of the late, great Calgary band, Women.
6.) Waiting Room – Kathryn Mohr: From the Broken Dreams Club archive: Empty noise brims throughout the record—every missing note hums with tape hiss or pulsing feedback. That ghostly apparition is a character that recurs throughout “Waiting Room,” a lurking specter hiding in the recesses of the vast, cavernous industrial plant. You can practically see the wintry breath that accompanies each song. Mohr recorded nearly the entire record in a large windowless room, and that harshness bleeds into the songs. “Diver,” the album opener, is an austere acoustic number, with Mohr’s simple guitar strumming rising barely above her voice, which mordantly repeats, “This comfort/Discomfort is bad for your health /but what can we do / when it comes to you?”
5.) 45 Pounds – YHWH Nailgun: If a knife fight was distilled into album form, it would sound just like “45 Pounds”. Propulsive and percussive, YHWH Nailgun makes a warped kind of dance music—the feeling of having a raging party in the trunk of a car or in the boiler room of the Titanic. Vocalist Zack Borzone’s howling, feral deliveries add an explosive delivery to the electroclash adjacent tunes, but it’s drummer Sam Pickard’s polyrhythmic, disarming beats that are the true MVP of “45 Pounds” (and likely resulted in a Google search surge for Rototom.)
4.) Caroline 2 – Caroline: Evoking all the great kitchen sink collectives, from Broken Social Scene to The World is a Beautiful Place, this British outfit makes grand, ambitious statements from the most intimate of feelings. Employing twisted string sections that make songs feel tormented instead of exalted, songs like “Two Riders Down” are haunted, plaintive pleas for acceptance and belonging, delivered by group vocals that seem just beyond the horizon, desperate to be heard.
3.) Raspberry Moon – Hotline TNT: From the Broken Dreams Club archive: “Julia’s War” is just one example of Anderson and Hotline TNT honing the blown-out, maximalist sound of their previous two records into a tighter, more polished approach. They haven’t abandoned their roots—there are still plenty of wonderfully loud moments of white noise on the album—but “Raspberry Moon” represents an intriguing step forward for the band.
2.) Radio DDR – Sharp Pins: And here’s the final showing for our pal Kai. If you told me this was a lost Guided By Voices album between “Bee Thousand” and “Alien Lanes”, I wouldn’t bat an eye. Slater is clearly enamored with both British Invasion bands like the Kinks and with the universe of GBV’s Robert Pollard. From the fuzzed out opener, “Every Time I Hear,” to the sparse, guitar ballad closer, “With a Girl Like Mine,” the album is filled with earworm, lo-fi pop nuggets.
1.) Getting Killed – Geese: Believe ALL the hype. It just so happens that the most culturally relevant, zeitgeisty band of 2025 is also the year’s BEST band. Once just another intriguing art-rock collective from Brooklyn struggling to distinguish itself, Geese and its charismatic frontman Cameron Winter completely came into their own with “Getting Killed,” a noisy, bounding, ambitiously fearless guitar rock masterpiece. Containing no less than five of the year’s best songs, the album contains moments of blissful, liberating freedom and claustrophobic, painful paranoia—a perfect encapsulation of the dizzying times we live in. Although powered by an unstoppable rhythm section and weaving, intricate guitar work, the album is ultimately a calling card for Winter’s indescribable, undefinable voice—a powerful, rangy warble that captures a lifetime of frustrations, joys, triumphs and defeats in a single, beautiful document.
Other Great Albums from 2025: Turnstile – “Never Enough”; Bloodsports – “Anything Can Be A Hammer”; No Joy – “Bugland”; Bon Iver – “Sable, Fable”; Rocket – “R is for Rocket”; Preoccupations – “Ill at Ease”; Crushed - No Scope