Gatekeep!'s 2025: #50-11
The year is out! Long live the year!
2025 is finally over, and what better way to celebrate than to hurl out our inaugural year-end feature, waiting with bated breath for you, dear reader, to tell all your friends about it, to tear it to shreds, or simply to skim it on the toilet and see if your favourites are there. Hooray.
Whether it’s been a year of revelations or an awkward hodgepodge (our team is divided), this is as close to a list of surefire winners as anyone could possibly promise you (we promise).
Voting was open to all formats bar singles, with aggregation weighted more towards individual ballots than cross-ballot consensus. This means that this list (by design) includes every one of our personal releases of the year and (by happy chance) all of our runners-up, alongside a bunch of records that, say, two, three or four of us could all agree were killer, but not quite personal-top-five-of-the-year killer.
So that’s nice. The list is about as algorithm-proof as we could make it as such; we’ve ordered it alphabetically because we’re weary of seeing music journalism as a numbers-based consensus game, and also to avoid the conceit that what consensus we do have here is a natural basis for any kind of hierarchy. (There is, however, much more palpable consensus in our Top 10, which will be coming very soon.)
Speaking personally, this list in particular makes me immensely proud of what we represent together as a team, what patterns we’re able to trace within our weird collective taste mosaic, and what the rest of this gang is capable of doing with stupid ol’ prose.
I will now shut up.
Scroll down if you haven’t already!
Find something worth listening to and draw it into your life.
Go!
Adrianne Lenker - Live at Revolution Hall
126:25 // Indie folk // 4AD
An expansive live album by this generation’s wisest and most heartfelt songwriter is an exciting proposition by itself, but Live at Revolution Hall ends up being a package so completely unique and personal it’s hard to imagine a world without it. Lenker’s choice to embrace imperfection with fragile, lo-fi analogue recordings captures the electrifyingly intimate atmosphere of these cobbled-together performances far more faithfully than any perfectly-polished but sterile soundboard recording ever could, and results in what is perhaps the pinnacle of her accomplishments so far. - Tom Read
Bad Bunny - DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
62:01 // Reggaeton // Rimas
From the titular bellow of “NUEVAYoL,” Bad Bunny draws on the many traditions making up the Puerto Rican sound, featuring a nearly kaleidoscopic rotation of genres and musical subcultures, an approach that pays off creative dividends in the form of Bad Bunny’s telltale high energy. His lyrics, as well, here threading in gentrification and cultural identity with personal dilemmas and heartbreak, seem unusually wise. Dance to “EoO” or lay back to “BOKeTE”; just know you’re gonna get an education. - Alex Robertson and Tyler White
Bambara - Birthmarks
36:39 // Post-punk // Bella Union
Easy, reasonable comparisons to Nick Cave, Joy Division, or Flannery O’Connor only give Bambara so much credit—Birthmarks is crooked, conceptual post-punk done right, steered by Reid Bateh’s Southern Gothic narrative of murder and vengeance, reincarnation and possession, love and manipulation. By design, its chronology is contorted, full of red herrings and guesswork, but anyone predisposed to lyric-attentive listens won’t be let down by these songs’ nocturnal, seductive hooks, either. - Zack Lorenzen
billy woods - GOLLIWOG
52:40 // Hip hop // Backwoodz
Nine albums into his prestigious (solo) career, Billy Woods keeps finding new ways to inter hip-hop with violence. 2025’s Golliwog may be his most violent album yet, melding the truculent ambience of Aethiopes with horror stylings and Woods’ biting lyricism. Omnipresent dread sloughs from Golliwog, its tension a guillotine, waiting over some innocent neck for the listener to helplessly watch fall. Golliwog is an album of the moment – the song of a canary as masked men whisk away other people. - Fowl
Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe
57:33 // Progressive rock // Virgin
I will uphold to my dying breath that Window of the Waking Mind was not a bad Coheed album by any stretch of the imagination, just one so far from what we expected from them that it was tough to see it as anything more than inferior. Evidently, Coheed took that as a challenge, because the third entry in their Vaxis series is their strongest release in a long, long time, a true return to hard rocking form after so long. - Ben Rosenberg
Crippling Alcoholism - Camgirl
64:07 // Gothic rock // Portrayal of Guilt
Crippling Alcoholism’s most adventurous, even playful record to date, draws from previous musical experimentation and creates a fully formed, neon-hued but utterly demonic series of melancholic vignettes that remain accessible despite their despairing, bleak tone. They may have filtered out some of the noise rock brashness and psychedelic goth infusion of their first two full-lengths, but its poppy synth-driven textures and compelling musical unpredictability make it their most accomplished and unique work yet. - Benjamin Jack
Dead and Dripping - Nefarious Scintillations
44:05 // Death metal // Transcending Obscurity
Tones! Evan Daniele’s approach to writing has always erred on the side of ‘off-kilter’, and that mentality has greatly aided his compositions in tickling discerning death metal connoisseurs’ synapses (shout-out to his magistral work in Vulnificus). Dead and Dripping’s latest not only constitutes a true standout achievement in bedroom producing, but accomplishes the incredibly difficult task of making something as knotty as a Demilichian BDM record stick – through repetition of cannily constructed, habit-forming figures and brilliant tone choices. I bow before the sitar bass. - Nex
Deftones - private music
42:22 // Alternative metal // Reprise
Beautifully layered and textured guitars? Check. Tight and punchy drum chops? Check yet again. Distant Chino crooning? You got it. An arousing blend of melody and heaviness? Best believe it. private music is definitively Deftones, with a mix of their nu metal tinged aggression on songs like “ecdysis” and “cut hands,” their reverb-laden atmospheric cuts like “i think about you all the time” and ”departing the body,” and something in between with “milk of the madonna” and “souvenir.” It’s an effort that proves the consistency of Deftones as a major force in the metal world. - Tyler White
doseone & Steel Tipped Dove - All Portrait No Chorus
35:25 // Hip hop // Backwoodz
From melodically meandering to the oneiric tripscapes of cLOUDDEAD to maniacally morphing alongside the chameleonic abstraction of Steel Tipped Dove, doseone’s audacity is a rarity that deserves far more plaudits. His frantic performances on “Dial Up“ (as its hilariously shit bassline is artfully coerced into slapping), “Inner Animal” (apparently an Inspectah Deck impression), and “Breakdown” (like, wut?) are further elevated in their context amongst a vivid patchwork of disparate emotions, all rendered with outlandish artistry and precision. - Milo Ruggles
dustdust - PUT YOUR SOUL INTO IT
19:11 // Shoegaze // self-released
In Utah, counterculture is shaped by “exmos”, former LDS Church members deeply scarred by religious trauma and desperately seeking to replace the sense of societal faith and community they’ve left behind. This pain is crucial context for nearly anything produced by the local indie scene, but for Logan shoegazers dustdust, it’s outright text as well. Their debut EP is the sound of waking up trapped in the beating heart of American christofascism before clawing out of its chest, covered in viscera. - Kerry Renshaw
Enji - Sonor
40:11 // Chamber jazz // Squama
If there’s ever been a post-60s year in need of a soothing vocal jazz record, it’s this one. Accompanied by lo-fi beats and the classic New Orleans bar-mainstay piano ’n’ bass combo, Enji’s voice radiates calm and invites you to let your thoughts drift, wrapped in the warm embrace of an old soul. Transcending both language barriers and the concept of time, Sonor would work just as well as the soundtrack to a morning hike through the mountains as it would sweeten your contemplative 36-hour ride on the Đường sắt Bắc (or on a squeaky bike, if you catch my German). - Nex
Erika de Casier - Lifetime
30:17 // Alternative R&B // Independent Jeep
There’s comfort music, and then there’s Erika de Casier. From the crystalline pool that is “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to the smokey pulse of “Two Thieves,” Lifetime is an unchallenging but blissful goodie bag for anyone who can’t get enough trippy, turn-of-the-century-inspired beats. Her newest LP smartly adds intimate sprinkles of bedroom pop and vaporwave to her concoctions, crafting liminal pop soundscapes that feel truly displaced in time. For anyone looking to escape to another realm this past year, you could’ve done a lot worse than Lifetime. - A.R.O.
f5ve - Sequence 01
25:33 // Electropop // LDH
Sequence 01 finally sees f5ve bringing their mix of bouncy hyperpop and R&B to the west. Singles “Underground” and “UFO” are arguably two of the best pop songs of the year, the former being a caffeinated bass-driven dance banger and the latter having a masterful prechorus and chorus. Sometimes a good pop record doesn’t need to be a heady deconstruction of what makes pop fun, and in Sequence 01’s case, all it needs is some self-awareness and some ridiculously good hooks. So baby push that button. - Adam Amanse
Faetooth - Labyrinthine
54:49 // Doomgaze // The Flenser
I’ve tried since its release to put into words why I love Labyrinthine, only ever half succeeding, so here we are once more: Gatekeep! does not accept half measures! Faetooth’s sound is massive yet delicate at the same time, in the same songs, in the same melodies. The doomgaze trio crawls through crushing post metal, but refuses to be bogged down. Instead, an explosion like “Eviscerate” is followed by the gorgeous textures of “October”, which remains entirely doom in spite of its bare subtleties. However, it isn’t merely Labyrinthine‘s technical excellence that makes it my album of the year. It encapsulates everything I would want to feel in an album, all-encompassing yet soothing, as destructive as the world we have created and forced ourselves into, but twisting the devastation into something altogether gorgeous. - jesper
FKA twigs - EUSEXUA
42:52 // Art pop // Young
FKA twigs’ third studio album, EUSEXUA, is a love letter to electronic music. Describing what sort of love letter feels quite rote at this point, but if you still haven’t heard EUSEXUA (a real disservice to your life) I’ll say this much: it’s really dirty. FKA pulls at familiar strands from the wide tapestry of electronica, deconstructing subgenres from techno and house to trip-hop and alternative r&b to sew a hundred threads into one massive multiplicitous electronic quilt to fuck under. - Fowl
Fust - Big Ugly
44:07 // Alt-country // Dear Life
North Carolina countrified indie is having a moment,and Fust has joined the party. Big Ugly delivers consistent excellence - catchy tunes, tasteful playing, moving lyrics, and homespun vibes. It’s a real album, woven together by small-town themes, earnest emotions, and bar band feel, even as each tune is distinctive. Big Ugly is an ode to the simple things, a font of wisdom, and a quirky enough listen to stand out amid the twang revivalists. Not bad for an album with such an uninviting title. - Sunnyvale
Hadopelagyal - Haematophoryktos
44:50 // Death/black metal // Amor Fati
What defines greatness in extreme metal? Is it inventive riffcraft? Technical chops? Memorability? To me, it’s always been a combination of originality and cohesiveness, yet sometimes I just vibe with something even when what I’m hearing is, for the most part, iterative. Such is the case with this record: an album where the individual pieces are dovetailed so virtuosically that I don’t mind the riffs themselves taking clear cues from oft-cited inspirers. Writing, drums, vocals, production – everything simply falls into place to form a highly kinetic piece of grim entertainment. - Nex
Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
59:39 // Pop rock // Post Atlantic
Leaving the belabored chronology of her previous releases behind, Ego’s initial rollout as 17 separate singles gave a level of “in the moment” euphoria that Hayley Williams’ solo discography had never quite captured before. Ranging from full-course pop-rock meals to angsty guitar ditties that get by with little more than momentum and a memorable line, its final form is nevertheless an electrifying and fantastically-paced collection of songs. It’s undeniably the work of a pop songstress invigorated by the music her peers are making; Williams has successfully crafted a confident solo project that forges an original sound around alternative grooves and her trademark off-kilter—but undeniably catchy—vocal melodies. - A.R.O.
La Dispute - No One Was Driving the Car
64:22 // Post-hardcore // Epitaph
2019’s Panorama found La Dispute pushing their spoken word ephemera to its absolute limit, qualifying far more as a slam poetry session than a post-hardcore band with riffs, Car has the band returning from their heady musings on packing tape to far more direct and earthly pursuits, with the even bigger headline of remembering to play their instruments (there are even solos!). While the band still has sliver-thin appeal thanks to Dreyer’s vocal gymnastics, the results make for a comparatively easy listen that makes a strong bid for the band’s best work to date. I know a multilevel marketing scheme hates to see them coming. - Dakota West
Lady Gaga - MAYHEM
57:43 // Pop // Interscope
Ahh, yes, recession pop has returned. Lady Gaga’s newest album is full, undeniable proof that the 2000’s pop we thought was dead was merely in hibernation, waiting for the world to be in chaos once more so it could give us something to dance to. From late night party jams like “Zombieboy” to cutting examinations of fame like “Perfect Celebrity”, every inch of this album channels classic Gaga, and I couldn’t be happier. - Ben Rosenberg
Logic1000 - DJ-Kicks
76:39 // Downtempo // !K7
It’s been quite a moment for downtempo. Artists like Oklou, Smerz, Car Culture and James K each dropped their most significant work this year, and they weren’t alone. It’s enough to be a bit daunting. Logic1000’s entry in the legendary DJ-Kicks series is a brilliantly paced and blended mix of the best of what the scene has to offer, along with plenty of fresh sounds. If you’re trying to catch up, try this first. And if you’re already a fan, this is absolutely essential, the best mix of the year. - K Bowman
Luedji Luna - Um mar pra cada um
43:12 // Soul // self-released
Without a doubt the smoothest album of the year, this lush and surprisingly diverse slice of tropical neo-soul feels like the perfect antidote to my current struggles of surviving the treacherously cold British winter in a draughty old house, brimming with a deep innate warmth that proves infectious. This just feels like one of those albums the kids are gonna rediscover in a decade-or-so and make their whole personality for a while, and if that were to happen, well perhaps that time they’d be right. - Tom Read
McKinley Dixon - Magic, Alive!
34:58 // Jazz rap // City Slang
Magic, Alive! is another feather in McKinley Dixon’s cap; the record follows three kids navigating self-image and grief after the death of a close friend—a sentence containing multitudes of traits already present in the Richmond-raised, Chicago-based rapper’s small but increasingly lauded discography. Here those recurrent themes of discovery and vitality snuggle up with jazzy arrangements and cyclical purpose, each pang of winter ceding to cool spring days flush with the fragrance of budding life. - Zack Lorenzen
Meitei - Sen’nyū
47:31 // Ambient // Kitchen
The on-site field recordings in Sen’nyū of several real-world onsen mixed with traditional instruments and synth pads serve as a guide for the listener into an atemporal place. Meitei captured something wonderful with this project that I don’t think he’s quite captured to this degree before. There’s something haunted about Sen’nyū, not in a spooky sort of way, but one where the past lingers and reveals itself in the present. Close your eyes, hit play, and wade into its waters. - Adam Amanse
Momma - Welcome to My Blue Sky
39:25 // Indie // Lucky Number
Is Welcome to My Blue Sky an amazing album? No, but yes. I don’t think there’s music that brought me as much joy as these twelve straightforward yet dreamy indie rock songs. Hooks range from melancholic to bubbly to vicious (well, contextually), persistently propelled by layered vocals and fuzzy melodies. “Rodeo” is the song every post-Soccer Mommy artist has been trying to write for a decade; “How to Breathe” is the widescreen sadboy highlight; “My Old Street” is the epic massive riff closer. Welcome to My Blue Sky has it all: it’s not original, it’s not interested in pushing any boundaries. Instead, it is comforting and comfortable, and the one thing so many albums try and fail to be: good. - jesper
Moving Mountains - Pruning of the Lower Limbs
46:18 // Alternative rock // Wax Bodega
There are certain albums out there that make you sit back, stop, and think, even if only to think about how beautiful that piece of music was. For me, that honor goes to Pruning of the Lower Limbs, Moving Mountains’ comeback record after 12 years. Ethereal post-rock-meets-emo settles around your ears like a gentle blanket of snow under a sleet grey sky. If that sounds ambiguous, it’s because the album’s actual sound is too layered and beautiful to concisely describe in the small amount of space I’m given. - Ben Rosenberg
Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Plays Mulatu
61:25 // Ethio-jazz // Strut
Mulatu Astakte’s early recordings crackle with a youthful ambition to spark a musical movement — these new renditions of old tracks are performed with the calm and knowing smile of the wise. The interplay is selfless, the dynamics restrained shy of melodrama even in the boldest moments of composition, and the extended jams highlight the minute, ever-shifting details of these sublime recordings. Mulatu Plays Mulatu is a perfect starting point for prospective fans, and a smooth glass of topshelf for regulars. - Milo Ruggles
Natanya - Feline’s Return
14:47 // R&B // Human Re Sources
Natanya’s Feline’s Return blends highly refined and vibrant production with retro pop gestures (acoustic guitars, handclaps, and bubbling synths abound) and a clear-eyed perspective on romance’s relationship to self-worth. A key artistic coup comes with the gorgeous ambient whirr that bookends Disney-ish ballad “Ur Fool”: the amazing opening lines “Don’t go away, we had such fun this summer / We went from friends to lovers in the dark lonely night” are rendered profound by this sonic vignetting. - Alex Robertson
The Necks - Disquiet
189:29 // Minimalism/jazz // Northern Spy
The Necks’ minimalist jazz odysseys are famed for paving sprawling runtimes with microscopic structural developments, but with Disquiet, I’ve never been so unsure whether to crane my neck and glimpse the bigger picture, or ruin my eyes squinting at the details. Four tracks in three hours may raise eyebrows, but the dimensions don’t do this thing justice: from its most cyclical and oblique (”Ghost Net”) to its most immediate (the Jarrett-esque rhapsody of “Causeway”, a shot in the arm by Necks standards), this is the most generous creative vein the trio have mined in some time. - Hugh Puddle
Nourished by Time - The Passionate Ones
45:15 // Synthpop // XL
This year gave us more reasons than ever to give up. The Passionate Ones sounds like the alternative: sincere desire to enact positive change. This is art made by someone who is clearly inspired by the past, but has made something entirely unique, someone who lives in the reality so few celebrated artists actually do, but moves with hope, making his music all the more powerful. It’s an absolute blast of a record, guaranteed to get you bobbing your head and maybe even bring a tear to your eye. - K Bowman
OK Go - And the Adjacent Possible
45:40 // Indie pop // Paracadute
The majority of my engagement with new music this year was dragging THIS fucking review through a mile of writer’s block, and I frankly wouldn’t want it any other way. This is an album for all of us who still dare to believe in the power of love and poetry and GUITARS to save the world; the treadmill dance guys may not be the heroes we need, but god dammit, they’re the heroes we deserve. - Kerry Renshaw
Park Jiha - All Living Things
46:21 // Post-minimalism // tak:til
All Living Things is a lodestone for uninspired critical appraisal, easily labeled as a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist or otherwise cinematic, with the atypical choice in instrumentation a novel enough feature to draw in the musically curious. What Park Jiha has created here is more simple and appealing than such nebulosity and fanfare — it’s an album that’s effortless to grasp and near impossible not to float away with. It’s transportive without being cheap, and life-affirming without being saccharine. All Living Things is one to hold close on challenging days. - Milo Ruggles
Pile - Sunshine and Balance Beams
43:03 // Indie rock // Sooper
True to its title, Pile’s ninth LP is hinged on optimism and tailed by risk. Press releases have described it as “a Sisyphean fable of labor and living,” i.e., a lesson about the paltry payouts of hard work and the friction generated from seeking a zen distinct from workaholic distractions. The songs loom and leer, trekking through a dense forest of anxieties and feigned confidence where the band’s post-hardcore backbone gets dramatized by eerie strings and Escher-esque structural integrity. - Zack Lorenzen
Prayer - Dream of Heaven
59:15 // Drum and bass // YUKU
Thomas Daley’s fourth album as Prayer revolves around, in Daley’s own words, “hope within darkness”. It’s an emotional core that gives Dream of Heaven gravity and focus as an Album Experience. If Burial changed the face of British EDM by portraying “London after the rave”, Prayer might just change it again by reintroducing slick, physical breakbeats to the ghostly soundscapes of future garage. - Kerry Renshaw
Q Lazzarus - Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus
101:14 // New wave // Sacred Bones
What’s easy to get lost in the ubiquity of the “would you fuck me?” monologue from Silence of the Lambs is just how banging the tune soundtracking that moment is. It’s the only time that Diane Luckey (stage name Q Lazzarus) would be known to the world as an artist while she was alive, and Goodbye Horses lovingly demonstrates what a damn shame that is. Across this sprawling posthumous collection are successful stabs at everything from adult contemporary (”Heaven”) to Iron Maiden-esque heavy metal (”I Don’t Want to Love You Anymore”; “Flesh For Sale”) that all serve to highlight what a force in waiting this woman was. - Dakota West
Rafael Toral - Traveling Light
50:16 // Ambient // Drag City
The last Rafael Toral album had a bird on the cover, which handily ensured its spot on year-end lists. Like that one, Traveling Light takes jazz standards—wait, “sublime sound entities”—and adapts them into, er, “post-free jazz electronic“, slowing them to a droning ambient crawl. This time things are birdless and less wonky, showcasing gentle solos and chord progressions so immersive that they’re literally historic. The result is a slow morning preserved in amber, delicate and eternal. - Milo Ruggles
Rapt - Until the Light Takes Us
36:33 // Indie folk // Start Track
Until the Light Takes Us is clearly inspired by the lineage of sensitive, soul-crushing songwriters like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and Mark Kozelek. Indeed, I’d say it’s the finest release in years for this vein of folk/slowcore - moody, romantic, and flawlessly crafted. The sorrowful lyricism and aching atmosphere are preeminent here, pulling the listener into a sense of melancholic rural English sentimentality, the warmth of which never wavers, despite its omnipresent sadness. - Sunnyvale
Rosalia - LUX
49:27 // Art pop // Columbia
LUX has been sweeping end of year lists this year, and for good reason. It’s a masterwork of flamenco, art pop and classical music, a kaleidoscopic collage of themes and collaborations, languages and movements. Against all odds, it works, creating an album that solidifies her legacy as not just a great musician but one of the most ambitious artists of our generation. It’s said if you shoot for the moon you’ll hit the stars, but Rosalía tilted her bow higher, sending her arrow into the sun. - K Bowman
SENTRIES - Gem of the West
42:55 // Noise rock // self-released
Gem of the West is a sharp, sprawling record that pulses with stark intensity but ultimately wins you over through its deviations and detours. Each song follows its own internal logic, wearing its influences on its sleeve (whether the angular momentum of The Smile or the smoldering western punk-blues of Astral Pariah), yet finding its own momentum. Impressively, SENTRIES is a one-man band, with Kim Elliot pulling the strings (or sticks, whatever) of nearly every instrument on the record. The result more readily resembles a vulture picking at the corpse of whatever expectations I had for rock music this year—still, if Elliot’s blistering deconstruction of the genre is the best I got, I’m more than happy. - A.R.O.
Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film
59:36 // Art pop // Duophonic
Given their deadpan and pastiche, Stereolab have never been the most emotionally forthcoming act, and this beautiful comeback caught me off guard as such: backed by gorgeously melodious chord progressions, Laetitia Sadier sounds like a wise old owl spouting parables of balance and humanity, her tones full of weight and warmth. Once retro-leaning yet future-gazing, the band here are wholly out of time, an old friend mysteriously still in their prime, a precious reminder that some of the things worth holding onto do last. A great album for any time, but especially welcome in ours. - Hugh Puddle
SUMAC and Moor Mother - The Film
57:04 // Sludge metal // Thrill jockey
A broiling mix of sludge metal and poetry, The Film is about as interpretive a musical experience as is imaginable. A liberally oiled machine controlled from within by a greasy wrench-bearer, every aural element feels loose and crunchy yet still incredibly precise and intuitively suited to its purpose. It’s viscous but supremely well-orchestrated, and the resulting sluice of doomy, cranium-scraping bile is both impressively graceful and thoroughly repellent. Grotesque, joyless, and metal AF. - Benjamin Jack
…and that’s it from our 11-50 roundup! (If you were geeking out and counting these records, you’ll have noticed there are actually 41 of them — this is due to a tie for fiftieth place.)
Dig out a new jam, and let us know your favourites in the comments.
Our 2025 Top 10 will be dropping very imminently, so watch that frontpage
Great work! Excited to be in this endeavor with you all! Here's to another year and beyond!
this will unironically go down as the best eoy list of 2025, fantastic work all <3